Thomas Mann
"Disillusionment"
a short story
After rereading the post, I realized that I had focused on the relationship between the story and the song and had ignored some interesting points in the story, or at least, they seemed interesting to me.
I wondered about the source of his disillusionment. He
apparently believes that the problem lies in the situations themselves
rather than in any deficiency in himself: the problem is external
rather than internal. I think it is an internal problem: it is inside him. Either he has excessive expectations or he is deficient in some way.
Another of those ignored points is that the disillusioned man brought forth both types of disappointments: he recognized that he was disappointed not only in those situations where the joy did not reach the hoped for expected levels, but also in those situations where the grief or sadness also did not achieve those heights. It is almost as if he recognized that both had to be necessary: the great joy as well as the great sadness or grief. Is this true: one must be able to experience both?
I think there may be those who would have regretted missing out on the great joys of life while being happy to have escaped those situations of grief or sadness. Could there be those who never missed feeling even the great joys of life? In other words, are there people who would envy the disillusioned man?
Showing posts with label MANN Thomas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MANN Thomas. Show all posts
Monday, September 4, 2017
Saturday, September 2, 2017
Thomas Mann and Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller and Peggy Lee?
Thomas Mann
"Disillusionment"
a short story included in Stories of Three Decades
H. T. Lowe-Porter, translator
I, after a few decades of my own, dug out my copy of Thomas Mann's Stories of Three Decades, a collection of twenty-four short stories. It was while reading the second story in the collection, "Disillusionment," that something strange happened.
It's not a complicated tale at all. The first person narrator is sitting in a sidewalk cafe in Venice, enjoying the evening, when a man seated at the next table, begins to talk to him. After a few opening pleasantries, the stranger suddenly becomes quite serious.
"Do you know, my dear sir, what disillusionment is?" he asked.in low, urgent tones, both hands leaning on his stick. "Not a miscarriage in small, unimportant matters, but the great and general disappointment which everything, all of life, has in store? No, of course, you do not know. But from my youth up I have carried it about with me; it has made me lonely, unhappy, and a bit queer, I do not deny that."
One night, when he was a small child, his parents' house caught on fire, and it was only with some difficulty that the entire family was saved. After it was over, he thought:
"So this,' I thought, 'is a fire. This is what it is like to have the house on fire. Is this all there is to it?"
Later, the inevitable happens: romance enters his life.
"'Years ago I fell in love with a girl, a charming, gentle creature, whom it would have been my joy to protect and cherish. But she loved me not. . .and she married another. . .Many a night I lay wide-eyed and wakeful; yet my greatest torture resided in the thought: 'So this is the greatest pain we can suffer. Well, and what then--is this all?'"
Even the sea and a vast gorge disappoints him. And the last disappointment hasn't occurred yet, but when it does:
"'So I dream and wait for death. Ah, how well I know it already, death, that last disappointment! At my last moment I shall be saying to myself: 'So this is the great experience--well, and what of it? What is it after all?'"
It was a sad story, and I felt sorry for the disillusioned man to some extent. However, it seemed to me, though, that he had suffered from an exaggerated or excessive expectations about the upcoming events. He was much like a child, or so it seemed to me.
As I read the story, it not only seemed familiar to me (very possible as I had read it a long time ago), but I also associated a tune with it. Finally, at the end of the story, I remembered a hit song from the late '60s. The song, of course, is "Is That All There is?" sung by Peggy Lee.
Some of the lyrics:
I remember when I was a very little girl, our house caught on fire
I'll never forget the look on my father's face as he gathered me up
In his arms and raced through the burning building out to the pavement
And I stood there shivering in my pajamas and watched the whole world go up in flames
And when it was all over I said to myself, is that all there is to a fire?
And then I fell in love with the most wonderful boy in the world
We'd take take long walks down by the river or just sit for hours gazing into each other's eyes
We were so very much in love
And then one day he went away and I thought I'd die, but I didn't
And when I didn't I said to myself, is that all there is to love?
I know what you must be saying to yourselves
If that's the way she feels about it why doesn't she just end it all?
Oh, no, not me I'm not ready for that final disappointment
'Cause I know just as well as I'm standing here talking to you
When that final moment comes and I'm breathing my last breath, I'll be saying to myself
Is that all there is, is that all there is?
If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
Let's break out the booze and have a ball
If that's all there is
I went a bit further and found the following in a Wikipedia article titled "Is That All There Is?" The following is an excerpt from that article.
"The song was inspired by the 1896 story Disillusionment (Enttäuschung) by Thomas Mann. Jerry Leiber's wife Gaby Rodgers (née Gabrielle Rosenberg) was born in Germany, lived in the Netherlands. She escaped ahead of the Nazis, and settled in Hollywood where she had a brief film career in films noir. Gaby introduced Leiber to the works of Thomas Mann. The narrator in Mann's story tells the same stories of when he was a child. A dramatic adaptation of Mann's story was recorded by Erik Bauserfeld and Bernard Mayes; it was broadcast on San Francisco radio station KPFA in 1964."
The three events mentioned in both, of course, are the house fire, the unrequited love, and death. Of course, not all of the incidents in the story were included in the song, and the visit to the circus in the song was not in Mann's story. Two disappointments in the story that are not included in the song are visits to a magnificent river gorge scene in the mountains and a visit to the seashore. The river gorge scene could have become a trip to the Grand Canyon wherein Peggy Lee remarks that it's just a big hole in the ground and "Is that all there is?"
Rereading for me is positive pleasure. Of course, after all these years, it will almost be like reading them for the first time--one of the advantages of a slowly decaying memory. I wonder what else I shall find in the remaining 20+ stories. If you are looking for a collection of literate and intriguing short stories, I would like to recommend Stories of Three Decades by Thomas Mann.
I know there have been many poems that were adapted for songs, but this is the first short story that I have found that has been turned into a song. There probably are others, but so far I haven't come across them.
Do you know of any stories that became songs?
"Disillusionment"
a short story included in Stories of Three Decades
H. T. Lowe-Porter, translator
I, after a few decades of my own, dug out my copy of Thomas Mann's Stories of Three Decades, a collection of twenty-four short stories. It was while reading the second story in the collection, "Disillusionment," that something strange happened.
It's not a complicated tale at all. The first person narrator is sitting in a sidewalk cafe in Venice, enjoying the evening, when a man seated at the next table, begins to talk to him. After a few opening pleasantries, the stranger suddenly becomes quite serious.
"Do you know, my dear sir, what disillusionment is?" he asked.in low, urgent tones, both hands leaning on his stick. "Not a miscarriage in small, unimportant matters, but the great and general disappointment which everything, all of life, has in store? No, of course, you do not know. But from my youth up I have carried it about with me; it has made me lonely, unhappy, and a bit queer, I do not deny that."
One night, when he was a small child, his parents' house caught on fire, and it was only with some difficulty that the entire family was saved. After it was over, he thought:
"So this,' I thought, 'is a fire. This is what it is like to have the house on fire. Is this all there is to it?"
Later, the inevitable happens: romance enters his life.
"'Years ago I fell in love with a girl, a charming, gentle creature, whom it would have been my joy to protect and cherish. But she loved me not. . .and she married another. . .Many a night I lay wide-eyed and wakeful; yet my greatest torture resided in the thought: 'So this is the greatest pain we can suffer. Well, and what then--is this all?'"
Even the sea and a vast gorge disappoints him. And the last disappointment hasn't occurred yet, but when it does:
"'So I dream and wait for death. Ah, how well I know it already, death, that last disappointment! At my last moment I shall be saying to myself: 'So this is the great experience--well, and what of it? What is it after all?'"
It was a sad story, and I felt sorry for the disillusioned man to some extent. However, it seemed to me, though, that he had suffered from an exaggerated or excessive expectations about the upcoming events. He was much like a child, or so it seemed to me.
As I read the story, it not only seemed familiar to me (very possible as I had read it a long time ago), but I also associated a tune with it. Finally, at the end of the story, I remembered a hit song from the late '60s. The song, of course, is "Is That All There is?" sung by Peggy Lee.
Some of the lyrics:
I remember when I was a very little girl, our house caught on fire
I'll never forget the look on my father's face as he gathered me up
In his arms and raced through the burning building out to the pavement
And I stood there shivering in my pajamas and watched the whole world go up in flames
And when it was all over I said to myself, is that all there is to a fire?
And then I fell in love with the most wonderful boy in the world
We'd take take long walks down by the river or just sit for hours gazing into each other's eyes
We were so very much in love
And then one day he went away and I thought I'd die, but I didn't
And when I didn't I said to myself, is that all there is to love?
I know what you must be saying to yourselves
If that's the way she feels about it why doesn't she just end it all?
Oh, no, not me I'm not ready for that final disappointment
'Cause I know just as well as I'm standing here talking to you
When that final moment comes and I'm breathing my last breath, I'll be saying to myself
Is that all there is, is that all there is?
If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
Let's break out the booze and have a ball
If that's all there is
I went a bit further and found the following in a Wikipedia article titled "Is That All There Is?" The following is an excerpt from that article.
"The song was inspired by the 1896 story Disillusionment (Enttäuschung) by Thomas Mann. Jerry Leiber's wife Gaby Rodgers (née Gabrielle Rosenberg) was born in Germany, lived in the Netherlands. She escaped ahead of the Nazis, and settled in Hollywood where she had a brief film career in films noir. Gaby introduced Leiber to the works of Thomas Mann. The narrator in Mann's story tells the same stories of when he was a child. A dramatic adaptation of Mann's story was recorded by Erik Bauserfeld and Bernard Mayes; it was broadcast on San Francisco radio station KPFA in 1964."
The three events mentioned in both, of course, are the house fire, the unrequited love, and death. Of course, not all of the incidents in the story were included in the song, and the visit to the circus in the song was not in Mann's story. Two disappointments in the story that are not included in the song are visits to a magnificent river gorge scene in the mountains and a visit to the seashore. The river gorge scene could have become a trip to the Grand Canyon wherein Peggy Lee remarks that it's just a big hole in the ground and "Is that all there is?"
Rereading for me is positive pleasure. Of course, after all these years, it will almost be like reading them for the first time--one of the advantages of a slowly decaying memory. I wonder what else I shall find in the remaining 20+ stories. If you are looking for a collection of literate and intriguing short stories, I would like to recommend Stories of Three Decades by Thomas Mann.
I know there have been many poems that were adapted for songs, but this is the first short story that I have found that has been turned into a song. There probably are others, but so far I haven't come across them.
Do you know of any stories that became songs?
Monday, June 26, 2017
A Minute Meditation
We are most likely to get angry and excited in our opposition to some idea when we ourselves are not quite certain of our own position, and are inwardly tempted to take the other side.
-- Thomas Mann --
BuddenbrooksAnd it puzzle me to learn
That tho' a man may be in doubt of what he knows,
Very quickly he will fight. . .
He'll fight to prove that what he does not know is so!
"A Puzzlement"
Lyrics from the musical, The King and I
Obviously wrong, right? For everybody knows that those who fight the hardest and shout the loudest have no doubts whatsoever . . . for they never give any sign that they might be wrong. And those who admit that they have some questions or even doubts are the weakest in their faith. It's obvious, isn't it?
Tuesday, June 6, 2017
A Minute Meditation
Today is the birthday of Thomas Mann, the author of one of my top ten favorite novels: The Magic Mountain.
"Music awakens time, awakens us to our finest enjoyment of time."
-- Thomas Mann --
The Magic Mountain
I would add this: Music is the Voice of Time.
Friday, May 2, 2014
Some novels, stories, and poems that I revisit regularly
The following is a short list of some novels, poems, and short stories that I reread irregularly for the most part. There's no particular order or schedule to this. One day I will get the urge to read something once again, and so I dig it out, settle down in my recliner, surrender to the cat's demand for some lap time, and leave this world for a while. There are others whose names I can't come up with right now, but sometime tomorrow or the next day, week, month, year, I will see one in my bookcase or read a comment by somebody about it and that's it--time for a another visit.
J. R. R. Tolkien
The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings
These three books are the ones that I have read more than any other work on my reread list, which is strange because I prefer SF to fantasy. Right now, I am slowly reading The Silmarillion and expect to get to the others this year.
Thomas Mann
The Magic Mountain
This may be the second most reread book on my list. I first read it while an undergraduate sometime during the years 1958-1961. It was for a lit course, and I had to choose a novel from a list provided by the professor to write the outside paper on. I choose this one, probably because of the title, and I haven't stopped reading it since. I am now on my second hardbound copy as the first one is falling apart.
Life in a TB sanitarium doesn't sound that enthralling, but once begun, I found it impossible to put down. It's partially based on a true experience. Mann's wife went to a sanitarium for several months because of a lung complaint. While visiting her, Mann underwent some testing and, like his hero Hans Castorp, was told that it would be a good idea if he signed himself in. Unlike Castorp, he refused and, instead, wrote a novel about the experience.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Crime and Punishment
I've reread this a number of times, perhaps as often as The Magic Mountain, or close to it anyway. I consider this book a very significant work because it first introduced me to Dostoyevsky (I think I've read everything of his that's been translated into English), secondly it introduced me to Russian literature, and thirdly it was my introduction to foreign literature. Moreover, I may not have selected Mann's The Magic Mountain a year or so later. and instead. I might have gone with an English language work instead.
Raskolnikov believes himself to be a superior person who is not bound by the laws of human society. The average person is someone who, if he kills someone, is caught and punished. On the other hand, superior people, such as Napoleon, can be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, and are seen as one of the Great Ones. He kills a pawnbroker, someone useless and odious, to prove that he belongs among the elite.
Jack Finney
Time and Again
Simply the best time travel novel ever written. Time is a mental construct, and the mind can be fooled into traveling into the past if the environment is appropriate and if the individual can be convinced that he or she is actually living at that particular time. It's a mystery and a romance, and Finney provides sufficient information, along with appropriate photos, to make this a special work, and one that leaves me wishing this was real.
Umberto Eco
The Name of the Rose
A marvelous amalgam of mystery and history and religious conflict is all that this is. Brother William of Baskerville, a monk, has been called to the monastery to act as a mediator and a witness between two conflicting religious ideas of importance. While there, he is persuaded to investigate a series of murders in the monastery, and his name should provide a vital clue as to his methods. If he is unable to solve the murders, the Inquisition will be called in, and nobody wants that. Adso or Adson of Melk is his amanuensis. The novel is supposedly an edited copy of Adso's recounting of their stay at the monastery.
PD James
Anything
I've read all of her mysteries a number of times, even though I have figured out the villain shortly after getting into the story. The plots and characters are complex, carefully drawn out. There seldom is the expected denouement at the end where Commander Adam Dalgliesh gathers all the suspects in the drawing room and slowly works his way around the room, pointing his finger at each in turn. Instead, the process is a slow one, developing throughout the novel as each suspect is considered and then dismissed until it's a matter of uncovering the final bit of evidence rather than uncovering the identity of the guilty party.
Jane Austen
Everything including her juvenilia.
I tried reading Pride and Prejudice several times, but I always stopped reading. Then at age 42 I returned to graduate school in the English Department. In the first course I took, the reading list included Sense and Sensibility. I groaned a bit and then settled down to read it. I loved it and then went out to read everything else by her. I guess I had to mature a bit before I was ready for her. If I was forced to list my favorites among her works, I would say Persuasion would be No. 1 and Mansfield Park would be next. The others follow closely behind. It's been a while since I read them all, so I shall probably dust them off and settle down once again.
Russell Hoban
Riddley Walker
This is one of my favorite post-holocaust novels, thanks to a Chaucer course I took a year or two prior to reading the novel. In the Chaucer course, we had to read The Canterbury Tales in Middle English (the language it was written in). I struggled mightily because I had always hated reading something that wasn't written in Standard English. I really didn't want to pay attention to the language; that was too much work. However, at the end of the course, leaving the classroom for the last time, I felt as if I had lost a world somehow that I would never return to.
A year or so later, I had to take my qualifying exams and The Tales was on the list. I decided to play it smart and bought a modern translation and settled down to read. However, something important was missing, and so I got out the Middle English text and happily reread it in Middle English.
What has this to do with Riddley Walker? The answer is simple: Russell Hoban has written the novel in what he speculates English would be like maybe 500 years from now after a nuclear war and during that period most people have been illiterate. Those few who could read and write learned from their predecessors and not from teachers or texts which would have kept the language unchanged. If I had not learned to accept non-standard English texts from the Chaucer course, I never would have finished the novel. The following is the opening paragraph. If you read it out loud, as you should do with poetry, you will find it much easier to read.
"On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen. He dint make the groun shake nor nothing like that when he come on to my spear he weren't all that big plus he lookit poorily. He done the reqwyrt he ternt and stood and clattert his teef and make his rush and there we wer then. Him on 1 end of the spear kicking his life out and me on the other end watching him dy. I said, 'Your tern now my tern later. . ."
I've made some other posts about Riddley Walker and some other works by Russell Hoban. You may want to check them out. Russell Hoban is a unique writer, with a wild imagination. Reading anything by him is well worth the time spent.
Walter M. Miller, Jr.
A Canticle for Leibowitz
This is another of my favorite post-holocaust novels. It too is set hundreds of years after a nuclear war. The locale seems to be somewhere in New Mexico, where monks at a monastery manage to survive as monks did during the so-called Dark Ages perhaps almost 2000 years earlier. And, along with their farm duties (they have to be completely self-sustaining) they also are dedicated to keeping records of the achievements of the past, even if they don't know what it is that they are painstakingly copying. They have faith that some day human knowledge will increase to the point that these arcane books and schematics and diagrams will be not only intelligible but also help to spark a resurgence of human learning.
Their task is much like that of the Encyclopediasts in Isaac Asimov's "Foundation series." However, the monks of the Order of Blessed Leibowitz do not have high tech aides and spaceships to travel about, but only sandals, and if they are lucky, a mule. The novel is really three novellas, set roughly centuries apart, with only monastery and the monks' task of preserving knowledge to link them. Well, there's always Benjamin, but he really can't be the Wandering Jew, several thousand years old, could he?
Joseph Conrad
Heart of Darkness
I'm never certain about whether this is a short novel or a long novella, so I will guess this time and call it a novel. It's the work by Conrad that I've read most often for I find it fascinates me, both in its description of the countryside, the inhabitants, and the Europeans who plague the inhabitants. It's a biting indictment of the treatment of the black Africans by the white Europeans who have come there supposedly to civilize and bring the benefits of European civilization and in reality end up brutalizing them in search of profit.
The POV character is Marlow, but the center of the novel is Kurtz Marlow has taken a job as the captain of a steamer on the Congo River. Far up the river is a trading outpost run by Kurtz, who has been amazingly successful in obtaining ivory for the company. Suddenly all shipments stop, and after a few months of silence, Marlow is ordered to take the steamer up the river to Kurtz's trading post. He is accompanied by the district manager and a group of ivory hunters and treasure seekers, along with a crew consisting of a few cannibals. Marlow becomes obsessed with the idea of Kurtz and only slowly does he realize that Kurtz is not only at the heart of darkness, but also he is the heart of darkness.
The film, Apocalypse Now, is loosely, very loosely, based on the novel--more of an adaptation than a recounting. The film is set in Vietnam during the war. Captain Willard, of the US Army, is sent up the Nung River into Cambodia to find Col. Kurtz and assassinate who has set himself up as a god among the local tribes people and is conducting his own brand of guerrilla warfare against the Viet Cong. While much of the novel has been changed for the film, I still found the film to be very close in capturing the tone or atmosphere of the novel--the absurdity and arrogance of the white invaders.
Something happened that I did not account for. I initially said that this would be a short list, something around ten, maybe even fifteen, but the list keep growing. I'm now at ten and I still have the same amount left. I guess I will end this here and continue with the rest on Part Two. I hope this doesn't turn out to be similar to those fantasy trilogies that reach double digits.
J. R. R. Tolkien
The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings
These three books are the ones that I have read more than any other work on my reread list, which is strange because I prefer SF to fantasy. Right now, I am slowly reading The Silmarillion and expect to get to the others this year.
Thomas Mann
The Magic Mountain
This may be the second most reread book on my list. I first read it while an undergraduate sometime during the years 1958-1961. It was for a lit course, and I had to choose a novel from a list provided by the professor to write the outside paper on. I choose this one, probably because of the title, and I haven't stopped reading it since. I am now on my second hardbound copy as the first one is falling apart.
Life in a TB sanitarium doesn't sound that enthralling, but once begun, I found it impossible to put down. It's partially based on a true experience. Mann's wife went to a sanitarium for several months because of a lung complaint. While visiting her, Mann underwent some testing and, like his hero Hans Castorp, was told that it would be a good idea if he signed himself in. Unlike Castorp, he refused and, instead, wrote a novel about the experience.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Crime and Punishment
I've reread this a number of times, perhaps as often as The Magic Mountain, or close to it anyway. I consider this book a very significant work because it first introduced me to Dostoyevsky (I think I've read everything of his that's been translated into English), secondly it introduced me to Russian literature, and thirdly it was my introduction to foreign literature. Moreover, I may not have selected Mann's The Magic Mountain a year or so later. and instead. I might have gone with an English language work instead.
Raskolnikov believes himself to be a superior person who is not bound by the laws of human society. The average person is someone who, if he kills someone, is caught and punished. On the other hand, superior people, such as Napoleon, can be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, and are seen as one of the Great Ones. He kills a pawnbroker, someone useless and odious, to prove that he belongs among the elite.
Jack Finney
Time and Again
Simply the best time travel novel ever written. Time is a mental construct, and the mind can be fooled into traveling into the past if the environment is appropriate and if the individual can be convinced that he or she is actually living at that particular time. It's a mystery and a romance, and Finney provides sufficient information, along with appropriate photos, to make this a special work, and one that leaves me wishing this was real.
Umberto Eco
The Name of the Rose
A marvelous amalgam of mystery and history and religious conflict is all that this is. Brother William of Baskerville, a monk, has been called to the monastery to act as a mediator and a witness between two conflicting religious ideas of importance. While there, he is persuaded to investigate a series of murders in the monastery, and his name should provide a vital clue as to his methods. If he is unable to solve the murders, the Inquisition will be called in, and nobody wants that. Adso or Adson of Melk is his amanuensis. The novel is supposedly an edited copy of Adso's recounting of their stay at the monastery.
PD James
Anything
I've read all of her mysteries a number of times, even though I have figured out the villain shortly after getting into the story. The plots and characters are complex, carefully drawn out. There seldom is the expected denouement at the end where Commander Adam Dalgliesh gathers all the suspects in the drawing room and slowly works his way around the room, pointing his finger at each in turn. Instead, the process is a slow one, developing throughout the novel as each suspect is considered and then dismissed until it's a matter of uncovering the final bit of evidence rather than uncovering the identity of the guilty party.
Jane Austen
Everything including her juvenilia.
I tried reading Pride and Prejudice several times, but I always stopped reading. Then at age 42 I returned to graduate school in the English Department. In the first course I took, the reading list included Sense and Sensibility. I groaned a bit and then settled down to read it. I loved it and then went out to read everything else by her. I guess I had to mature a bit before I was ready for her. If I was forced to list my favorites among her works, I would say Persuasion would be No. 1 and Mansfield Park would be next. The others follow closely behind. It's been a while since I read them all, so I shall probably dust them off and settle down once again.
Russell Hoban
Riddley Walker
This is one of my favorite post-holocaust novels, thanks to a Chaucer course I took a year or two prior to reading the novel. In the Chaucer course, we had to read The Canterbury Tales in Middle English (the language it was written in). I struggled mightily because I had always hated reading something that wasn't written in Standard English. I really didn't want to pay attention to the language; that was too much work. However, at the end of the course, leaving the classroom for the last time, I felt as if I had lost a world somehow that I would never return to.
A year or so later, I had to take my qualifying exams and The Tales was on the list. I decided to play it smart and bought a modern translation and settled down to read. However, something important was missing, and so I got out the Middle English text and happily reread it in Middle English.
What has this to do with Riddley Walker? The answer is simple: Russell Hoban has written the novel in what he speculates English would be like maybe 500 years from now after a nuclear war and during that period most people have been illiterate. Those few who could read and write learned from their predecessors and not from teachers or texts which would have kept the language unchanged. If I had not learned to accept non-standard English texts from the Chaucer course, I never would have finished the novel. The following is the opening paragraph. If you read it out loud, as you should do with poetry, you will find it much easier to read.
"On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen. He dint make the groun shake nor nothing like that when he come on to my spear he weren't all that big plus he lookit poorily. He done the reqwyrt he ternt and stood and clattert his teef and make his rush and there we wer then. Him on 1 end of the spear kicking his life out and me on the other end watching him dy. I said, 'Your tern now my tern later. . ."
I've made some other posts about Riddley Walker and some other works by Russell Hoban. You may want to check them out. Russell Hoban is a unique writer, with a wild imagination. Reading anything by him is well worth the time spent.
Walter M. Miller, Jr.
A Canticle for Leibowitz
This is another of my favorite post-holocaust novels. It too is set hundreds of years after a nuclear war. The locale seems to be somewhere in New Mexico, where monks at a monastery manage to survive as monks did during the so-called Dark Ages perhaps almost 2000 years earlier. And, along with their farm duties (they have to be completely self-sustaining) they also are dedicated to keeping records of the achievements of the past, even if they don't know what it is that they are painstakingly copying. They have faith that some day human knowledge will increase to the point that these arcane books and schematics and diagrams will be not only intelligible but also help to spark a resurgence of human learning.
Their task is much like that of the Encyclopediasts in Isaac Asimov's "Foundation series." However, the monks of the Order of Blessed Leibowitz do not have high tech aides and spaceships to travel about, but only sandals, and if they are lucky, a mule. The novel is really three novellas, set roughly centuries apart, with only monastery and the monks' task of preserving knowledge to link them. Well, there's always Benjamin, but he really can't be the Wandering Jew, several thousand years old, could he?
Joseph Conrad
Heart of Darkness
I'm never certain about whether this is a short novel or a long novella, so I will guess this time and call it a novel. It's the work by Conrad that I've read most often for I find it fascinates me, both in its description of the countryside, the inhabitants, and the Europeans who plague the inhabitants. It's a biting indictment of the treatment of the black Africans by the white Europeans who have come there supposedly to civilize and bring the benefits of European civilization and in reality end up brutalizing them in search of profit.
The POV character is Marlow, but the center of the novel is Kurtz Marlow has taken a job as the captain of a steamer on the Congo River. Far up the river is a trading outpost run by Kurtz, who has been amazingly successful in obtaining ivory for the company. Suddenly all shipments stop, and after a few months of silence, Marlow is ordered to take the steamer up the river to Kurtz's trading post. He is accompanied by the district manager and a group of ivory hunters and treasure seekers, along with a crew consisting of a few cannibals. Marlow becomes obsessed with the idea of Kurtz and only slowly does he realize that Kurtz is not only at the heart of darkness, but also he is the heart of darkness.
The film, Apocalypse Now, is loosely, very loosely, based on the novel--more of an adaptation than a recounting. The film is set in Vietnam during the war. Captain Willard, of the US Army, is sent up the Nung River into Cambodia to find Col. Kurtz and assassinate who has set himself up as a god among the local tribes people and is conducting his own brand of guerrilla warfare against the Viet Cong. While much of the novel has been changed for the film, I still found the film to be very close in capturing the tone or atmosphere of the novel--the absurdity and arrogance of the white invaders.
Something happened that I did not account for. I initially said that this would be a short list, something around ten, maybe even fifteen, but the list keep growing. I'm now at ten and I still have the same amount left. I guess I will end this here and continue with the rest on Part Two. I hope this doesn't turn out to be similar to those fantasy trilogies that reach double digits.
Saturday, March 29, 2014
Seconds and Faces and Masks
Seconds
Directed by John Frankenheimer
Released in 1966
Cheryl, one of my frequent visitors here, suggested a resemblance between the Japanese film The Face of Another and the US film Seconds, starring Rock Hudson. The Face of Another is the story of a Japanese businessman whose face is horribly scarred in a laboratory accident. He covers his head with bandages, resembling the character in films of H. G. Wells' The Invisible Man. He is not adapting well, so his psychiatrist suggests a radical solution. He will make a mask that is so lifelike few will ever realize it is a mask.
In Seconds, the businessman is a successful officer at a bank and seems likely to become bank president in the near future. However, he is suffering from what was called a midlife crisis. His job is boring and the romance has gone from his marriage. His daughter has grown up and is now married and living far away, sending only a few letters and making an occasional phone call. He has come to the point that life means little or nothing to him--just endless tedium.
Then, he is contacted by a friend, a shock, for he thought Sam had died. Sam tells him there is a company that will solve his problems for him, for a fee of course. The solution is plastic surgery. The company will arrange everything: plastic surgery so he won't be recognized and his "death," so he won't be searched for. The company will even provide him with a new life--something like a witness protection program for the bored.
After a bit of coaxing, he finally agrees. This part is the one that doesn't work for me--the plastic surgery. He changes from a 50 year old man, of average height, and somewhat overweight to Rock Hudson, who is 6'4" with an athlete's body. A few weeks of workouts in the gym is not going to change his body that much nor can it add maybe a half foot to his height. However, once I got past that, I found it an interesting and absorbing film.
Rock Hudson comes up with one of his finest acting jobs in this film. Regardless of his physical appearance, Hudson really seems to be a 50 year old man, still tired and now lost in his new life. As in Face, events do not go the way all had hoped for.
While Face is concerned with a mask and Seconds employs plastic surgery, the overlying theme in the two films is the same--the change of one's external appearance and the effects of that change. In Face, the mask seems to release the inner monster or at least it allows one to become something other than it was without the mask, while the plastic surgery in Seconds may change one's physical appearance, it does not change the inner person.
In Thomas Mann's short novel (perhaps even a novella) The Transposed Heads, Mann proposes a third answer to the question of the significance of the physical body to the spirit. In the story two vastly different friends, one an intellectual and decidedly not athletic and the other a hardworking farmer commit suicide in order to allow the other to win the heart of the woman they both love. She, on her part, finds it impossible to choose between them. Discovering that they have committed suicide by praying to the goddess Kali to decapitate them, she attempts to save them by putting their heads back with their bodies and praying to Kali to resurrect them. Kali hears her plea and brings them back to life, but unfortunately in her grief and panic the young woman had placed the wrong heads on the bodies.
Over a period of time, the intellectual appearing head with the intellectual mind began to change a bit. The features coarsened somewhat, its interests and thinking processes were not quite as intellectual as before, and the body began to soften and to resemble the body of an intellectual. And, the head of the farmer on the intellectual body began to change in the opposite direction. The head began to resemble that of the intellectual while the body became tougher and stronger. Mann's point, as I see it, is that the spirit and the body are one unit and influence each other. The two friends over time may resemble each other in physique and mind more than they did before they committed suicide.
So, there are three positions here: the spirit controls the body or the outward appearance, the outward appearance greatly influences the spirit, and the spirit and the body mutually influence each other for they are really one.
One side note here--in psychology the term "persona" refers to "the role that a person assumes in order to display his conscious intentions to himself and others." The term "persona" comes from Latin and it means "mask." So, the persona is a mask assumed to display his conscious intentions to himself and others. The relationship to others is very clear, but what does it mean when we assume a mask to display our conscious intentions to ourselves?
I'm not sure what this all means, but the interrelationship among the terms persona, person, and mask is fascinating. And how does Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde fit in here, as well as stories about the doppelgangers by Poe, Dostoyevsky, and others?
Directed by John Frankenheimer
Released in 1966
Cheryl, one of my frequent visitors here, suggested a resemblance between the Japanese film The Face of Another and the US film Seconds, starring Rock Hudson. The Face of Another is the story of a Japanese businessman whose face is horribly scarred in a laboratory accident. He covers his head with bandages, resembling the character in films of H. G. Wells' The Invisible Man. He is not adapting well, so his psychiatrist suggests a radical solution. He will make a mask that is so lifelike few will ever realize it is a mask.
In Seconds, the businessman is a successful officer at a bank and seems likely to become bank president in the near future. However, he is suffering from what was called a midlife crisis. His job is boring and the romance has gone from his marriage. His daughter has grown up and is now married and living far away, sending only a few letters and making an occasional phone call. He has come to the point that life means little or nothing to him--just endless tedium.
Then, he is contacted by a friend, a shock, for he thought Sam had died. Sam tells him there is a company that will solve his problems for him, for a fee of course. The solution is plastic surgery. The company will arrange everything: plastic surgery so he won't be recognized and his "death," so he won't be searched for. The company will even provide him with a new life--something like a witness protection program for the bored.
After a bit of coaxing, he finally agrees. This part is the one that doesn't work for me--the plastic surgery. He changes from a 50 year old man, of average height, and somewhat overweight to Rock Hudson, who is 6'4" with an athlete's body. A few weeks of workouts in the gym is not going to change his body that much nor can it add maybe a half foot to his height. However, once I got past that, I found it an interesting and absorbing film.
Rock Hudson comes up with one of his finest acting jobs in this film. Regardless of his physical appearance, Hudson really seems to be a 50 year old man, still tired and now lost in his new life. As in Face, events do not go the way all had hoped for.
While Face is concerned with a mask and Seconds employs plastic surgery, the overlying theme in the two films is the same--the change of one's external appearance and the effects of that change. In Face, the mask seems to release the inner monster or at least it allows one to become something other than it was without the mask, while the plastic surgery in Seconds may change one's physical appearance, it does not change the inner person.
In Thomas Mann's short novel (perhaps even a novella) The Transposed Heads, Mann proposes a third answer to the question of the significance of the physical body to the spirit. In the story two vastly different friends, one an intellectual and decidedly not athletic and the other a hardworking farmer commit suicide in order to allow the other to win the heart of the woman they both love. She, on her part, finds it impossible to choose between them. Discovering that they have committed suicide by praying to the goddess Kali to decapitate them, she attempts to save them by putting their heads back with their bodies and praying to Kali to resurrect them. Kali hears her plea and brings them back to life, but unfortunately in her grief and panic the young woman had placed the wrong heads on the bodies.
Over a period of time, the intellectual appearing head with the intellectual mind began to change a bit. The features coarsened somewhat, its interests and thinking processes were not quite as intellectual as before, and the body began to soften and to resemble the body of an intellectual. And, the head of the farmer on the intellectual body began to change in the opposite direction. The head began to resemble that of the intellectual while the body became tougher and stronger. Mann's point, as I see it, is that the spirit and the body are one unit and influence each other. The two friends over time may resemble each other in physique and mind more than they did before they committed suicide.
So, there are three positions here: the spirit controls the body or the outward appearance, the outward appearance greatly influences the spirit, and the spirit and the body mutually influence each other for they are really one.
One side note here--in psychology the term "persona" refers to "the role that a person assumes in order to display his conscious intentions to himself and others." The term "persona" comes from Latin and it means "mask." So, the persona is a mask assumed to display his conscious intentions to himself and others. The relationship to others is very clear, but what does it mean when we assume a mask to display our conscious intentions to ourselves?
I'm not sure what this all means, but the interrelationship among the terms persona, person, and mask is fascinating. And how does Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde fit in here, as well as stories about the doppelgangers by Poe, Dostoyevsky, and others?
Friday, January 24, 2014
Some great DVDs viewed in 2013
This will be a short list, mostly because I bought a new computer and lost most of my files during the changeover. They are in no particular order, simply because I don't want to expend the effort necessary to rank them, and especially since I know quite well that, on another day, I might rank them differently!
The Man from Earth: I thought enough of this film to buy my own copy. It's the fascinating tale of a man who tells his friends and coworkers that he's thousands of years old and their response to that revelation. It's one of the best SF films I've viewed in many years. For more information, check out the post I did on it last year.
Doktor Fautus: based on the novel by Thomas Mann about a composer who makes a pact with the devil. I haven't read the novel in some time, so I can't comment on the fidelity of the dramatization. I will say though that it was an enjoyable film, even if much of it seemed strange to me, which might be caused by my failing memory, maybe. . .
1984: finally after many years Netflix found a copy to send me. It's the version with John Hurt as Winston Smith and Richard Burton as O'Brien. It was quite good as far as it went, but there was no way that any film could present the image upon which the tyranny of Oceania rested--"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.
12 Angry Men: starring Henry Fonda as Juror 8, the lone man who, at the beginning of the jury's deliberations, insists that they take time to discuss the case inasmuch as a guilty verdict would result in the death penalty. It's an exploration of the effects of prejudice on our perception of others and the judgements that result. What was equally fascinating was the discovery that there were two foreign versions of this film, both very close to the US version. The Russian version's title is 12, and while it follows closely the US version, there are some differences. The Hindi language version is titled Ek Ruka Hua Faisla, and it is very close to the US version. For more information, see the post I made of the three last year.
A Dance to the Music of Time: based on the novels by Anthony Powell. The film is a condensation of Anthony Powell's series of novels published under the same title as the film: A Dance to the Music of Time. The novels are published in four parts: First Movement, Second Movement, Third Movement, and Fourth Movement, and each of the four parts consists of three novels each. A symphony typically has four movements, so that suggests a lengthy and complex treatment of various themes. The film begins with a disparate group of people who meet while they are in school. The narrative follows one man from that point and down the years through the post WWII era. We see how he grows and develops and the way those people he had met during his academic years drop away and then reappear during this period. I found the film absorbing enough to go out and get the books.
Europa Report: an SF adventure/exploration film. It's somewhat reminiscent of 2001 in that the ship is headed towards Jupiter, or to be more precise, Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter. It's a skillful blending of NASA film clips and fiction. They have obviously studied NASA technology and methodology to create a very believable film of the way a journey to Europa just might take place. It's one of the better SF films I viewed last year.
Appalachian Journey: One night over a decade ago I was driving home from work and was listening to PBS radio KUAT-FM. It happened to be the broadcast from Lincoln Center, a chamber music event. It featured, among others, Edgar Meyer, Yo-Yo Ma, Mark O'Connor with special guests James Taylor and Alison Krauss. I was instantly captivated by the liveliness of the music--country, bluegrass, jazz, blues, and barnyard melodies. During an interview, Edgar Meyer stated that the program tonight was duplicated on a CD they had produced: Appalachian Journey. I immediately went out and purchased the CD. I then went out and searched for other CDs featuring Edgar Meyer, and I think I now have at least 5. A short time ago, I discovered that the concert at Lincoln Center had been filmed, so I immediately added it to my queue. Now I can listen to the CD and see them in my memory on stage. If you're not familiar with Edgar Meyer and his unique musical universe, you should check it out.
Steel Helmet: one of the few war pictures that I enjoyed watching. It is very different from the usual patriotic war films that came my way. It tells of Sgt Zack, a loner whose outfit had been wiped out by the North Koreans, and his encounter with several stragglers, a Korean boy, and an American unit searching for a Buddhist temple to be used as a forward observation post. The film came out in 1951, during the Korean War, and those expecting the typical John Wayne patriotic war film must have been shocked by what they saw. One reviewer called it an anti-American and pro-communist propaganda film. By today's standards, it probably isn't that shocking, but back then it had to be disturbing to many.
If I were told that I had to buy at least one war film, this would probably be the one.
THX 1138: This was one of George Lucas' early efforts. It's based on the film he produced and directed during his studies at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. It's a fascinating picture of a future USA where being unhappy and feeling any emotion but happiness is against the law. It also has one of the riskiest sequences I've ever seen in any film--a long period of time wherein the characters are set against an all-white background, where even the simple furniture is white. The characters' faces and hands provide a startling contrast. Of course, Lucas has to include a car chase scene, something he couldn't do without, even back then when he was producing films that had interesting plots and characters and weren't just excuses for action, action, action.
It is one of the eight DVDs that I have in my personal collection.
Twelve O'clock High: one of the few war pictures I have watched several times, probably mostly due to the fine performance by Gregory Peck, one of my favorite actors. As an HQ staff officer, he finds it necessary to remove a friend from command of a bomber unit based in England during WWII for he feels the commander has gotten too close to his men and can't make the hard decisions necessary. Peck's character then takes command and isolates himself from the unit, thereby triggering resentment from the men who had gotten used to the previous commander's more paternal style.
Zorba the Greek: I had heard much about this film many years ago and eventually watched it. I found the music so infectious that I bought the soundtrack for the film. I also so enjoyed the story that I bought the novel of the same name by Nikos Kazantzakis. I was hooked and over the years have purchased as many of his works as possible. I think my collection of his works exceeds ten books. Zorba is a free spirit, and his behavior and attitude might disturb many. The Englishman he mentors is at the exact other end of the spectrum--uptight and constrained--and this provides the conflict in the film. At the end, the Englishman returns to England, but he isn't the same person who came out here.
This is one of the few DVDs that I may add to my collection someday.
The Man from Earth: I thought enough of this film to buy my own copy. It's the fascinating tale of a man who tells his friends and coworkers that he's thousands of years old and their response to that revelation. It's one of the best SF films I've viewed in many years. For more information, check out the post I did on it last year.
Doktor Fautus: based on the novel by Thomas Mann about a composer who makes a pact with the devil. I haven't read the novel in some time, so I can't comment on the fidelity of the dramatization. I will say though that it was an enjoyable film, even if much of it seemed strange to me, which might be caused by my failing memory, maybe. . .
1984: finally after many years Netflix found a copy to send me. It's the version with John Hurt as Winston Smith and Richard Burton as O'Brien. It was quite good as far as it went, but there was no way that any film could present the image upon which the tyranny of Oceania rested--"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.
12 Angry Men: starring Henry Fonda as Juror 8, the lone man who, at the beginning of the jury's deliberations, insists that they take time to discuss the case inasmuch as a guilty verdict would result in the death penalty. It's an exploration of the effects of prejudice on our perception of others and the judgements that result. What was equally fascinating was the discovery that there were two foreign versions of this film, both very close to the US version. The Russian version's title is 12, and while it follows closely the US version, there are some differences. The Hindi language version is titled Ek Ruka Hua Faisla, and it is very close to the US version. For more information, see the post I made of the three last year.
A Dance to the Music of Time: based on the novels by Anthony Powell. The film is a condensation of Anthony Powell's series of novels published under the same title as the film: A Dance to the Music of Time. The novels are published in four parts: First Movement, Second Movement, Third Movement, and Fourth Movement, and each of the four parts consists of three novels each. A symphony typically has four movements, so that suggests a lengthy and complex treatment of various themes. The film begins with a disparate group of people who meet while they are in school. The narrative follows one man from that point and down the years through the post WWII era. We see how he grows and develops and the way those people he had met during his academic years drop away and then reappear during this period. I found the film absorbing enough to go out and get the books.
Europa Report: an SF adventure/exploration film. It's somewhat reminiscent of 2001 in that the ship is headed towards Jupiter, or to be more precise, Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter. It's a skillful blending of NASA film clips and fiction. They have obviously studied NASA technology and methodology to create a very believable film of the way a journey to Europa just might take place. It's one of the better SF films I viewed last year.
Appalachian Journey: One night over a decade ago I was driving home from work and was listening to PBS radio KUAT-FM. It happened to be the broadcast from Lincoln Center, a chamber music event. It featured, among others, Edgar Meyer, Yo-Yo Ma, Mark O'Connor with special guests James Taylor and Alison Krauss. I was instantly captivated by the liveliness of the music--country, bluegrass, jazz, blues, and barnyard melodies. During an interview, Edgar Meyer stated that the program tonight was duplicated on a CD they had produced: Appalachian Journey. I immediately went out and purchased the CD. I then went out and searched for other CDs featuring Edgar Meyer, and I think I now have at least 5. A short time ago, I discovered that the concert at Lincoln Center had been filmed, so I immediately added it to my queue. Now I can listen to the CD and see them in my memory on stage. If you're not familiar with Edgar Meyer and his unique musical universe, you should check it out.
Steel Helmet: one of the few war pictures that I enjoyed watching. It is very different from the usual patriotic war films that came my way. It tells of Sgt Zack, a loner whose outfit had been wiped out by the North Koreans, and his encounter with several stragglers, a Korean boy, and an American unit searching for a Buddhist temple to be used as a forward observation post. The film came out in 1951, during the Korean War, and those expecting the typical John Wayne patriotic war film must have been shocked by what they saw. One reviewer called it an anti-American and pro-communist propaganda film. By today's standards, it probably isn't that shocking, but back then it had to be disturbing to many.
If I were told that I had to buy at least one war film, this would probably be the one.
THX 1138: This was one of George Lucas' early efforts. It's based on the film he produced and directed during his studies at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. It's a fascinating picture of a future USA where being unhappy and feeling any emotion but happiness is against the law. It also has one of the riskiest sequences I've ever seen in any film--a long period of time wherein the characters are set against an all-white background, where even the simple furniture is white. The characters' faces and hands provide a startling contrast. Of course, Lucas has to include a car chase scene, something he couldn't do without, even back then when he was producing films that had interesting plots and characters and weren't just excuses for action, action, action.
It is one of the eight DVDs that I have in my personal collection.
Twelve O'clock High: one of the few war pictures I have watched several times, probably mostly due to the fine performance by Gregory Peck, one of my favorite actors. As an HQ staff officer, he finds it necessary to remove a friend from command of a bomber unit based in England during WWII for he feels the commander has gotten too close to his men and can't make the hard decisions necessary. Peck's character then takes command and isolates himself from the unit, thereby triggering resentment from the men who had gotten used to the previous commander's more paternal style.
Zorba the Greek: I had heard much about this film many years ago and eventually watched it. I found the music so infectious that I bought the soundtrack for the film. I also so enjoyed the story that I bought the novel of the same name by Nikos Kazantzakis. I was hooked and over the years have purchased as many of his works as possible. I think my collection of his works exceeds ten books. Zorba is a free spirit, and his behavior and attitude might disturb many. The Englishman he mentors is at the exact other end of the spectrum--uptight and constrained--and this provides the conflict in the film. At the end, the Englishman returns to England, but he isn't the same person who came out here.
This is one of the few DVDs that I may add to my collection someday.
Saturday, June 29, 2013
Thomas Mann's The Black Swan
Thomas Mann: The Black Swan
This short novel by Thomas Mann is one of his more unusual works, which really isn't saying much for an author who writes novels about a lengthy stay in a TB sanitarium or a composer's pact with the devil or the disintegration of a bourgeois family or the slow deterioration of an honored and respected scholar on vacation in Venice or about two young men in India who commit suicide over their love for a young woman who restores them by praying to the goddess and but gets their heads on the wrong bodies.
The Black Swan is described on the back cover as "the feminine counterpart" of Death in Venice. One could see that since it is the tale of an older woman who falls in love with a much younger man, perhaps half her age. But, the differences are much more striking than the rather obvious gender reversal.
Frau Rosalie von Tummler is fifty and "her health had been affected by certain critical organic phenomena of her time of life, the extinction of her physical womanhood, to whose spasmodic progress she responded with repeated psychological resistance."
Rosalie is a true romantic, a worshiper of Nature, in most of her forms. Upon seeing a gorge covered with blossoms, she exclaims to her daughter, Anna, "Child, child, how wonderful! It's the breath of Nature--it is!--her sweet, living breath, sun-warmed an drenched with moisture, deliciously wafted to us from her breast. Let us enjoy it with reverence, for we too are her children." Because of her intense attachment to and focus on the physical aspects of Nature, Rosalie decries the contemporary interest of artists in the abstract and the intellectual. Anna, a painter, is one of the "new" painters and part of the work consists of a dialogue between Rosalie and Anna about the lack of interest Anna shows in the colors and shapes and sounds and odors of the natural world.
And herein lies the paradox, for it is Nature, Rosalie's divinity, that has decreed the physiological changes that she is now undergoing. And her view? "When it has ceased to be with us after the manner of women, we are no longer women at all, but only the dried-up husk of a woman, worn out, useless, cast out of nature. My dear child, it is very bitter . . . But we, take it all in all, are given just thirty-five year to be women in our life and our blood, to be complete human beings, and when we are fifty, we are superannuated, our capacity to breed expires, and, in Nature's eyes, we are nothing but old rubbish!"
Anna paradoxically disagrees: "How you talk, Mama, and how you revile and see to want to reject the dignity that falls to the elderly woman when she has fulfilled her life, and Nature, which you love after all, transforms her to a new, mellow condition, an honorable and more lovable condition, in which she still can give and be so much, both to her family and to those less close to her." Rosalie, the worshiper of Nature, bewails what Nature has done to her, while Anna, the more cerebral and intellectual who ignores Nature in its physical manifestations, celebrates what Nature does for women at the later stages of life.
It is in this state of mind that Rosalie meets Ken Keaton. He is much younger than her, as Tadzio is much younger than Doktor Aschenbach in Death in Venice, but there the similarity ends. While Tadzio is fourteen, still a child, Ken Keaton is in his early twenties. He is, or was, in fact, an American soldier who had come over with the American Expeditionary Forces in WWI. He had been wounded, and after his release, he decided to take his discharge in Europe. He supported himself by teaching English.
It was in this capacity that Rosalie met him. Eduard, Rosalie's son, is studying to be an engineer and feels he must learn English because he wanted "to go to England for further study or perhaps straight to the El Dorado of technology, the United States." He persuades Rosalie to pay for English lessons with Keaton.
Keaton comes three times a week and eventually becomes almost part of the family. His presence at dinner following the lessons becomes a normal part of the von Tummler routine, and Rosalie soon becomes infatuated with him. She does nothing though because she feels that she is no longer a woman and therefore Keaton would reject any overtures on her part, even though she is fairly certain he is having an affair with one of the women in her circle.
It is at this point that the "miracle" happens. Rosalie greets Anna with the news: "Congratulate me, darling, there is reason of it! I am a woman again, a whole human being again, a functioning female, I can feel worth of the youthful manhood that has bewitched me, and no longer need lower my eyes before it with a feeling of impotence. The rod of life with which it struck me has reached not only my soul alone but my body too and has made it a flowing fountain again. Kiss me, my darling child, call me blessed, as blessed I am, and, with me, praise the miraculous power of great, beneficent Nature!"
But, she is mistaken. Nature, her divinity, has played a cruel trick on her. Ironically she unknowingly prefigures her own condition when she walks in the Palace Gardens with Anna one day in February when she speaks of the early blooming crocuses: "Isn't it remarkable. . . how much they resemble the autumn colchicum? It's practically the same flower! End and beginning--one could mistake them for each other, they are so alike--one could think one was back in autumn in the presence of a crocus, and believe in spring when one saw the last flower of the year."
Rosalie believes that Nature has restored her womanhood, but the sign she greets so happily is really a death sentence.
This short novel by Thomas Mann is one of his more unusual works, which really isn't saying much for an author who writes novels about a lengthy stay in a TB sanitarium or a composer's pact with the devil or the disintegration of a bourgeois family or the slow deterioration of an honored and respected scholar on vacation in Venice or about two young men in India who commit suicide over their love for a young woman who restores them by praying to the goddess and but gets their heads on the wrong bodies.
The Black Swan is described on the back cover as "the feminine counterpart" of Death in Venice. One could see that since it is the tale of an older woman who falls in love with a much younger man, perhaps half her age. But, the differences are much more striking than the rather obvious gender reversal.
Frau Rosalie von Tummler is fifty and "her health had been affected by certain critical organic phenomena of her time of life, the extinction of her physical womanhood, to whose spasmodic progress she responded with repeated psychological resistance."
Rosalie is a true romantic, a worshiper of Nature, in most of her forms. Upon seeing a gorge covered with blossoms, she exclaims to her daughter, Anna, "Child, child, how wonderful! It's the breath of Nature--it is!--her sweet, living breath, sun-warmed an drenched with moisture, deliciously wafted to us from her breast. Let us enjoy it with reverence, for we too are her children." Because of her intense attachment to and focus on the physical aspects of Nature, Rosalie decries the contemporary interest of artists in the abstract and the intellectual. Anna, a painter, is one of the "new" painters and part of the work consists of a dialogue between Rosalie and Anna about the lack of interest Anna shows in the colors and shapes and sounds and odors of the natural world.
And herein lies the paradox, for it is Nature, Rosalie's divinity, that has decreed the physiological changes that she is now undergoing. And her view? "When it has ceased to be with us after the manner of women, we are no longer women at all, but only the dried-up husk of a woman, worn out, useless, cast out of nature. My dear child, it is very bitter . . . But we, take it all in all, are given just thirty-five year to be women in our life and our blood, to be complete human beings, and when we are fifty, we are superannuated, our capacity to breed expires, and, in Nature's eyes, we are nothing but old rubbish!"
Anna paradoxically disagrees: "How you talk, Mama, and how you revile and see to want to reject the dignity that falls to the elderly woman when she has fulfilled her life, and Nature, which you love after all, transforms her to a new, mellow condition, an honorable and more lovable condition, in which she still can give and be so much, both to her family and to those less close to her." Rosalie, the worshiper of Nature, bewails what Nature has done to her, while Anna, the more cerebral and intellectual who ignores Nature in its physical manifestations, celebrates what Nature does for women at the later stages of life.
It is in this state of mind that Rosalie meets Ken Keaton. He is much younger than her, as Tadzio is much younger than Doktor Aschenbach in Death in Venice, but there the similarity ends. While Tadzio is fourteen, still a child, Ken Keaton is in his early twenties. He is, or was, in fact, an American soldier who had come over with the American Expeditionary Forces in WWI. He had been wounded, and after his release, he decided to take his discharge in Europe. He supported himself by teaching English.
It was in this capacity that Rosalie met him. Eduard, Rosalie's son, is studying to be an engineer and feels he must learn English because he wanted "to go to England for further study or perhaps straight to the El Dorado of technology, the United States." He persuades Rosalie to pay for English lessons with Keaton.
Keaton comes three times a week and eventually becomes almost part of the family. His presence at dinner following the lessons becomes a normal part of the von Tummler routine, and Rosalie soon becomes infatuated with him. She does nothing though because she feels that she is no longer a woman and therefore Keaton would reject any overtures on her part, even though she is fairly certain he is having an affair with one of the women in her circle.
It is at this point that the "miracle" happens. Rosalie greets Anna with the news: "Congratulate me, darling, there is reason of it! I am a woman again, a whole human being again, a functioning female, I can feel worth of the youthful manhood that has bewitched me, and no longer need lower my eyes before it with a feeling of impotence. The rod of life with which it struck me has reached not only my soul alone but my body too and has made it a flowing fountain again. Kiss me, my darling child, call me blessed, as blessed I am, and, with me, praise the miraculous power of great, beneficent Nature!"
But, she is mistaken. Nature, her divinity, has played a cruel trick on her. Ironically she unknowingly prefigures her own condition when she walks in the Palace Gardens with Anna one day in February when she speaks of the early blooming crocuses: "Isn't it remarkable. . . how much they resemble the autumn colchicum? It's practically the same flower! End and beginning--one could mistake them for each other, they are so alike--one could think one was back in autumn in the presence of a crocus, and believe in spring when one saw the last flower of the year."
Rosalie believes that Nature has restored her womanhood, but the sign she greets so happily is really a death sentence.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Thomas Mann: The Transposed Heads
Thomas Mann: The Transposed Heads: A Legend of India
This is not only a short novel by Thomas Mann, it’s also a very unusual novel for him. It’s set in India, in mythic times, so, therefore, it must be true. I’ll let Mann introduce the novel, for he does it much better than I ever could.
The story of Sita of the beautiful hips, daughter of the cattle-breeder Sumantra of the wqrrior caste and of her two husbands (if one may put it like that) is so sanguinary, so amazing to the senses, that it makes the greatest demands on the hearer's strength of mind and his power to resist the gruesome guiles of Maya. it would be well for the listener to take pattern from the fortitude of the teller, for it requires, if anything, more courage to tell such a tale that to hear it. But here it is, from first to last, just as it fell out:
As you may have guessed, this is a tale of the eternal triangle and the way it worked itself out in India of mythic times—the tale of Sita, Shridaman and Nanda.
Young Shridaman was a merchant, and the son of a merchant; Nanda, on the other hand, both a smith and a cowherd, for his father Garga not only kept cattle on the meadow and in the byre, but also plied the hammer and fanned the fire with a bird’s wing.
Shridaman followed in his father’s footsteps after “having previously devoted some years to grammar and the elements of astronomy and ontology, under the supervision of a guru or spiritual preceptor.
Not so Nanda, son of Garga. His karma was otherwise; and never, by either tradition or inheritance, had he had to do with things of the mind . . . His work as a smith had made powerful his arms; that as a shepherd had been further an advantage, for he had a well set-up body, which he loved to rub with mustard oil adn drape with gold ornaments and chains of wild flowers.
Shridaman, on the other hand, had a thin aristocratic face and a soft body, not hardened by exercise. It was the perfect body for "a noble and knowledgeable head piece." Nanda's head to the contrary was merely a "pleasing appendage" for the body was "the main thing."
In spite of, or perhaps because of, these differences Shridaman and Nanda became good friends. All was well until they met Sita, she of the beautiful hips. Both became enamored of her, but it was Shridaman who spoke first. She accepted his proposal, but they did not live happily ever after. Shortly after the wedding, Sita began to wonder if she hadn’t made a mistake, especially after seeing Nanda, for he was a frequent visitor. Eventually both Nanda and Shridaman became aware of the situation.
Six months after the wedding, the three went to visit Sita’s parents. On the trip, they found a temple to Kali. Shridaman said he wished to pray a moment and entered the temple. There he prayed to Kali and then cut his head off (obviously with Kali’s help), thus freeing Sita to marry Nanda.
Eventually Nanda goes looking for Shridaman and finds his friend. He realizes instantly why Shridaman has done this and feeling guilty as the cause of his best friend’s suicide, he resolves he cannot do anything but to follow his friend into death.
After a while, Sita becomes concerned and enters the temple in search of them. She finds them and although confused as to how it happened, she understands very well why it happened. She decides also to commit suicide by hanging herself. While she stands there with the noose around her neck, Kali appears and tells her to take the noose off or she will get her “ears boxed.”
Kali tells her that all will be well, for all Sita has to do is put the heads carefully back on the bodies and she (Kali) will do the rest. Sita does but in her sorrow and grief makes one minor mistake—she puts the heads back on the wrong bodies.
At first Nanda and Shridaman are happy with the transposition, for both had been afflicted with “the grass is greener” longings—Shridaman for Nanda’s physique and Nanda for Shridaman’s intellectual bearing and appearance. But, you may be surprised to learn (or perhaps not surprised) that all still is not well with the threesome.
From this point on, three issues are worked out in the story: (1) to whom is Sita married?; (2) what happens to Shridaman’s fine aristocratic head and intellectual capacities on Nanda’s strong young body?; and (3) what happens to Nanda’s broad happy face and rather ordinary intellect on Shridaman’s intellectual and clerkly body?
The ultimate question addressed here, therefore, is which creates and rules the person—the mind or the body?
Overall Reaction: an unanswerable question that Mann handles with tongue firmly planted in cheek. Lots of fun if you are looking for a novel that plays with ideas.
Monday, June 6, 2011
Thomas Mann: June 6, 1875-- August 12, 1955
Thomas Mann is one of my favorite writers, and The Magic Mountain would be one of the ten desert island books that I would choose to take with me.
It begins quietly:
An unassuming young man was travelling, in midsummer, from his native city of Hamburg to Davos-Platz in the Canton of the Grisons, on a three weeks' visit.
The novel ends:
Farewell--and if thou livest or diest! Thy prospects are poor. The desperate dance, in which thy fortunes are caught up, will last yet many a sinful year; we should not care to set a high stake on thy life by the time it ends. We even confess that is is without great concern we leave the question open. Adventures of the flesh and in the spirit, while enhancing thy simplicity, granted thee to know in the spirit what in the flesh thou scarcely couldst have done. Moments there were, when out of death, and the rebellion of the flesh, there came to thee, as thou tookest stock of thyself, a dream of love. Out of this universal feast of death, out of this extremity of fever, kindling the rain-washed evening sky to a fiery glow, may it be that Love one day should mount.
Castorp plans to visit Joachim, his cousin, who is in a TB sanitarium in Switzerland, but the projected three week visit lasts seven years for Castorp is discovered to have a "moist spot" that could be dangerous. His journey, therefore, has one more stage: from visitor to patient. His visit ends only with the beginning of World War I, when Castorp feels he must answer his country's call. He leaves and enlists in the army.
But during those seven years, Hans Castorp, manages to experience the various ideas, philosophies, and attitudes, along with issues of life, death, and love, prevelant in Western Civilization and, still prevalent today. Much of this is possible through the presence of two of the most unique mentors found in literature: Prof Settembrini and Herr Naptha. Their long-ranging debates? monologues? arguments? cover every possible topic, from the existence of God to politics to art to history to . . . Sometimes I think that by the end of one of their impassioned debates, the two have switched positions and now argue vehemently against their former positions
Overall reaction: What happens between the two quoted paragraphs can be tedious and also frustrating at times, but still it is one of the most fascinating novels I've ever read and reread and reread . . . and I will take it up again. It's well worth the time spent.
It begins quietly:
An unassuming young man was travelling, in midsummer, from his native city of Hamburg to Davos-Platz in the Canton of the Grisons, on a three weeks' visit.
The novel ends:
Farewell--and if thou livest or diest! Thy prospects are poor. The desperate dance, in which thy fortunes are caught up, will last yet many a sinful year; we should not care to set a high stake on thy life by the time it ends. We even confess that is is without great concern we leave the question open. Adventures of the flesh and in the spirit, while enhancing thy simplicity, granted thee to know in the spirit what in the flesh thou scarcely couldst have done. Moments there were, when out of death, and the rebellion of the flesh, there came to thee, as thou tookest stock of thyself, a dream of love. Out of this universal feast of death, out of this extremity of fever, kindling the rain-washed evening sky to a fiery glow, may it be that Love one day should mount.
Castorp plans to visit Joachim, his cousin, who is in a TB sanitarium in Switzerland, but the projected three week visit lasts seven years for Castorp is discovered to have a "moist spot" that could be dangerous. His journey, therefore, has one more stage: from visitor to patient. His visit ends only with the beginning of World War I, when Castorp feels he must answer his country's call. He leaves and enlists in the army.
But during those seven years, Hans Castorp, manages to experience the various ideas, philosophies, and attitudes, along with issues of life, death, and love, prevelant in Western Civilization and, still prevalent today. Much of this is possible through the presence of two of the most unique mentors found in literature: Prof Settembrini and Herr Naptha. Their long-ranging debates? monologues? arguments? cover every possible topic, from the existence of God to politics to art to history to . . . Sometimes I think that by the end of one of their impassioned debates, the two have switched positions and now argue vehemently against their former positions
Overall reaction: What happens between the two quoted paragraphs can be tedious and also frustrating at times, but still it is one of the most fascinating novels I've ever read and reread and reread . . . and I will take it up again. It's well worth the time spent.
Monday, May 30, 2011
Hermann Hesse: Steppenwolf
Warning: I will discuss significant plot elements and the endings of various works.
It’s been several decades since I last read Hesse’s Steppenwolf, so I was curious as to how well it would hold up and how I would understand it now, a half century later. At the end, I thought it still a very interesting and intriguing work, but my understanding of it now is quite different from what I understood the first time I read it. When I first read it, I saw it as a novel in isolation, something unique. Now, I see that Steppenwolf has its relatives; it does not exist in isolation.
Steppenwolf has essentially a two-part structure. Part One consists of defining Harry Haller’s personality, his conflicts, and his relationship to post-war society in Germany. Haller reveals himself and learns even more from a remarkable “free pamphlet” he is given —Treatise on the Steppenwolf: Not for Everybody.
In the second part, Harry meets the classic prostitute with a heart of gold who makes it her goal to teach Harry how to live and enjoy himself. Her lessons involve sex, drugs, and the fox trot. At the end, in the Magic Theater, Harry embarks on a trip of self-discovery with a rather unique goal—he is to learn to laugh.
Harry Haller can be seen in several different ways. One is that of the respected academic who is torn by conflicting feelings about himself and his relationship to society--a sense of isolation or alienation. Another would be that of a seeker who is searching for enlightenment. Yet, another would be that of a man undergoing a severe depression. One more might be what is called a “mid-life crisis” in pop psychology. The work would support any of these views, but the ending seems to support the second theory—that of the seeker searching for enlightenment, in a Buddhist sense, that is. This would give it ties to another work of his, Siddhartha, about which I posted a short commentary a short time ago.
Harry, though, sees himself as two conflicted beings: the respected academic and the Steppenwolf, the outsider, the free creature who is outside civilization. Frankly, however, Haller comes across, to me anyway, more like an wolf/dog who has run away, but who also clings to the outskirts of human society, fearing to enter, but unable to leave.
While reading it the second time, I was reminded throughout of several works which seemed, to me at least, to share common themes: Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground (1863), Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy ( 1872), and Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice (1911). Steppenwolf was the latest of the four, first published in 1927.
I think Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy serves as a unifier of all three works. Nietzsche’s definition of the Apollonian and Dionysian tendencies in human culture is exemplified by the three main characters: the German Gustave Aschenbach, the respected professor in Mann’s Death in Venice, the Russian underground man in Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground, and Harry Haller..
Nietzsche describes the Apollonian mind as possessing “that measured restraint, that freedom from the wilder emotions, that calm . . .” It is characterized by an intellectual, reasonable, temperate, and controlled life. The Dionysian is characterized as “chaos,” “a terror,” “blissful ecstasy,” or “intoxication,” “complete self-forgetfulness,” or ”union with nature.” It is the unpredictable, the irrational, the “uncivilized.” In other words, it is the two sides of human nature, antithetical but both necessary to art, to society and to culture—control and restraint civilization versus excess and extravagance and nature—the yin and yang of the Taoists.
The Notes from Underground has a structure that is similar to Steppenwolf. The first part consists of an extended passage in which the underground man (UM) reveals himself. He is a civil servant who has come into a small inheritance and has retired. He is an outsider with no friends or relatives. He lives in isolation. He sneers at society, but at the same time longs to join them, to be one of them, just as Harry mocks the bourgeoisie, but always lives among them and gains honor and respect as an academic.
In the second part, the UM forces himself upon some former student acquaintances who are giving a going-away party for one of the students. It is here we see, just as in Steppenwolf, the protagonist in action. The UM insists on attending the party, while mocking himself and eventually the others. He desires to be one with them, but actively works to make this impossible.
In the second part of Steppenwolf, Harry Haller meets Hermine who introduces him to a life of pleasure and sensuality drugs, music—especially dance music, alcohol, and sex—most of which Harry has sneered at in the past. Like the UM, Harry is immersed in society, but can’t really join them. Hermine is necessary to help him break out of his straitjacket, before he can move on.
The UM also meets a prostitute in the second part, but his encounter is quite the opposite of Harry’s. Where Harry is induced to join the pleasure seekers, the UM persuades Liza to escape from the life of a prostitute. However, when Liza appears at his apartment the next day, telling him that she wants to escape, he rejects her and sends her away.
Like Harry Haller, Thomas Mann’s Gustave Aschenbach is a respected academic. Unlike Haller, Aschenbach has dedicated his life to research and writing, with no contrary thoughts. Being a Steppenwolf is something Aschenbach has never considered throughout his life. However, at the beginning of Death in Venice, Aschenbach is tired, overworked, and sleeping badly. He decides to go for a walk, in hopes of reviving himself for another evening of productive work.
During the walk, he sees a traveler bearing a rucksack on his back, and this produces a most surprising emotional response: “the most surprising consciousness of a widening of inward barriers, a kind of vaulting unrest, a youthfully ardent thirst for distant scenes—a feeling so lively and so new, or at least so long ago outgrown and forgotten that he stood there rooted to the spot . . . a longing to travel. . . such suddenness and passion as to resemble a seizure . . .”
He ”imaged the marvels and terrors of the manifold earth. He saw. He beheld a landscape, a tropical marshland, beneath a reeking sky, steaming, monstrous, rank—a kind of primeval wilderness-world of islands, morasses, and alluvial channels. Hairy palm trunks rose near and far out of lush brakes of fern, out of bottoms of crass vegetation, fat, swollen, thick with incredible bloom. There were trees , misshapen as a dream . . .”
Nietzsche would recognize this as a Dionysian seizure, emerging from decades of a controlled life of mental activity. Unlike Haller though, Aschenbach has not led a tormented life of struggle between the two tendencies but had successfully suppressed that aspect of his personality. Now the desire to travel, actually more of an escape from his life of dedication to the intellect, has taken over and he flees to Venice. It is in Venice that he sees the Polish youth Tadzio and forgetting all restraint, becomes obsessed with him. Like Haller, he puts aside his Apollonian measured and controlled existence for the chaos and excesses of the Dionysian.
The three works conclude quite differently and, in fact, cover the possible spectrum of endings. The UM apparently is trapped in his self-induced isolation, with no exit seemingly possible. Aschenbach’s obsession ends in death. Haller really comes to no end in the work for he is now trapped in the Magic Theater.
“I would sample its tortures once more and shudder again at its senselessness. I would traverse not once more, but often the hell of my inner being.
One day I would be a better hand at this game. One day I would learn how to laugh.”
This has the flavor of the Buddhist belief that all are trapped within the endless cycle of birth and death until one becomes enlightened and now free to achieve the ultimate goal of existence—Nirvana. For Harry, the goal is to laugh the laugh of the immortals.
Is it coincidence that Harry Haller’s initials are HH, as are those of the author?
Overall Reaction: a remarkable book, which I now find richer and more thought-provoking than I found it the first time around, when it did not bring to mind the works of Nietzsche, Mann, and Dostoyevsky. No doubt there are other works that other readers can bring to mind while reading Steppenwolf.
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