My boys, taking a break from the world of Pokemon, have discovered the simple pleasures of the old Disney "Winnie the Pooh" adventures. Perhaps I can entice them with some of the original stories? In the meantime, this piece, written by Czelaw Milosz, I offer with love for them.
I must think suddenly of matters too difficult for a bear of little brain. I have never asked myself what lies beyond the place where we live, I and Rabbit, Piglet and Eeyore, with our friend Christopher Robin. That is, we continue to live here, and nothing changed, and I just ate my little something. Only Christopher Robin left for a moment.
Owl says that immediately beyond our garden Time begins, and that it is an awfully deep well. If you fall in it, you go down and down, very quickly, and no one knows what happens to you next. I was a bit worried about Christopher Robin falling in, but he came back and then I asked him about the well. "Old bear," he answered. "I was in it and I was falling and I was changing as I fell. My legs became long, I was a big person, I grew old, hunched, and I walked with a cane, and then I died. It was probably just a dream, it was quite unreal. The only real thing was you, old bear, and our shared fun. Now I won't go anywhere, even if I'm called in for an afternoon snack."
Saturday, February 09, 2008
Awaking with Blood in the Mouth
A pseudo-romantic satire on the "Arabian Nights", Robert Irwin's The Arabian Nightmare is a fun and engaging read. Intricate plot devices mirror the famous 1001 Nights and The Manuscript Found at Saragossa, challenging perceptions of reality through the adventures of a young Englishman in late 15th century Cairo.
The subject is reality and its manipulation through suggestion and dreams. As a medievalist, Irwin knows his setting, and the David Roberts etchings of Mamluk Cairo are a nice touch. The plot gains convolutions page by page, and I confess that I may not have puzzled out all its intricacies - is the narrator the talking ape on Yoll's shoulder, or the ventriloquist? If the later, what is his relation to the rest of the narrative? The title refers to a dream/disease causing excruciating but unremembered pain in the afflicted - could this be anything but life itself?
A delightful and rich reading experience, and deserving of a place on that exclusive list of books to be read again.
The subject is reality and its manipulation through suggestion and dreams. As a medievalist, Irwin knows his setting, and the David Roberts etchings of Mamluk Cairo are a nice touch. The plot gains convolutions page by page, and I confess that I may not have puzzled out all its intricacies - is the narrator the talking ape on Yoll's shoulder, or the ventriloquist? If the later, what is his relation to the rest of the narrative? The title refers to a dream/disease causing excruciating but unremembered pain in the afflicted - could this be anything but life itself?
A delightful and rich reading experience, and deserving of a place on that exclusive list of books to be read again.
Monday, February 04, 2008
A Decadent Jewel
William Beckford's Vathek is a decadent jewel and a masterpiece of faux Orientalism. The Caliph Vathek seeks ultimate knowledge, using violence and sensory indulgence (precursor of Rimbaud!). He finds this knowledge, and eternal damnation, in the subterranean kingdom of Iblis, the Islamic Satan.
The archaic 18th century prose drips of a heady perfume, a reflection of the baroque pleasures of Vathek. There are dim echoes of Dante's Hell, and of the sorcery of the Pharsalia, as the Caliph's mother raises the dead for necromantic purposes. The halls of perdition reflect Piranesi's labyrinthine prisons, and the palaces of the five senses are a libertine's paradise, with fantastic abundance of sensual pleasures for a man with a truly gargantuan appetite.
Borges wrote an essay on the novel, noting that Vathek's reward and his punishment are one and the same. Lured by a mysterious sword with ever-changing characters, Vathek's odyssey is an inversion of the spiritual quest, as he descends from his station as a beloved, if arrogant, defender of the faith, through cruelty and blasphemy to find himself in possession of all the riches and knowledge he desires, at the price of eternal damnation and torment. A rich and brilliant fantasy, the Arabian Nights as seen through the lens of a decadent 18th century British aristocrat.
The archaic 18th century prose drips of a heady perfume, a reflection of the baroque pleasures of Vathek. There are dim echoes of Dante's Hell, and of the sorcery of the Pharsalia, as the Caliph's mother raises the dead for necromantic purposes. The halls of perdition reflect Piranesi's labyrinthine prisons, and the palaces of the five senses are a libertine's paradise, with fantastic abundance of sensual pleasures for a man with a truly gargantuan appetite.
Borges wrote an essay on the novel, noting that Vathek's reward and his punishment are one and the same. Lured by a mysterious sword with ever-changing characters, Vathek's odyssey is an inversion of the spiritual quest, as he descends from his station as a beloved, if arrogant, defender of the faith, through cruelty and blasphemy to find himself in possession of all the riches and knowledge he desires, at the price of eternal damnation and torment. A rich and brilliant fantasy, the Arabian Nights as seen through the lens of a decadent 18th century British aristocrat.
French Whine: The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Considered an early example of "warts and all" autobiography and long considered a classic of the western canon, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions is a bizarre book.
The first portion, covering the philosopher's life up until 1741, is pleasant enough - a picaresque study of a wandering eccentric youth told, at times, with an alarming frankness.
The second part, chronicling his life as a writer with growing influence, gets stranger as the narrative progresses. Put simply, Rousseau had a full-blown persecution complex, and he relates in excruciating detail his perceptions of a growing cabal of opponents who have apparently (from his perspective, at least) committed themselves to making his life a veritable hell on earth. Prominent among Rousseau's tormentors are the encyclopediests Diderot and d'Alembert, as well as various members of the French aristocracy. The reasons for this persecution are never really explained by Rousseau, but the Confessions turns into one long protracted whine.
To himself, Rousseau was a noble, pure-hearted soul with never a mean or false word against anyone, unfairly attacked and hounded by those whose motives he claims never to have understood. Reading this, I longed for a good, objective biography of the writer - one that could explain just what the hell was really going on. Years ago, I read and enjoyed Rousseau's Reveries of a Solitary Walker, a series of writings which attempt to justify the author's character, with reference to his past indignities. The Confessions, which I believe predate that more melancholy work, doesn't clarify anything, other than Rousseau's paranoia and misanthropy. He protests that he is aloof from humanity, seeking nothing more than solitude and a life devoted to the contemplation of nature, while at the same time revealing his own penchant for gossip and intrigue. The Confessions strikes me as the writing of an entirely self-absorbed, deluded man.
The first portion, covering the philosopher's life up until 1741, is pleasant enough - a picaresque study of a wandering eccentric youth told, at times, with an alarming frankness.
The second part, chronicling his life as a writer with growing influence, gets stranger as the narrative progresses. Put simply, Rousseau had a full-blown persecution complex, and he relates in excruciating detail his perceptions of a growing cabal of opponents who have apparently (from his perspective, at least) committed themselves to making his life a veritable hell on earth. Prominent among Rousseau's tormentors are the encyclopediests Diderot and d'Alembert, as well as various members of the French aristocracy. The reasons for this persecution are never really explained by Rousseau, but the Confessions turns into one long protracted whine.
To himself, Rousseau was a noble, pure-hearted soul with never a mean or false word against anyone, unfairly attacked and hounded by those whose motives he claims never to have understood. Reading this, I longed for a good, objective biography of the writer - one that could explain just what the hell was really going on. Years ago, I read and enjoyed Rousseau's Reveries of a Solitary Walker, a series of writings which attempt to justify the author's character, with reference to his past indignities. The Confessions, which I believe predate that more melancholy work, doesn't clarify anything, other than Rousseau's paranoia and misanthropy. He protests that he is aloof from humanity, seeking nothing more than solitude and a life devoted to the contemplation of nature, while at the same time revealing his own penchant for gossip and intrigue. The Confessions strikes me as the writing of an entirely self-absorbed, deluded man.
Saturday, February 02, 2008
In the Land of the Blind
In Jose Saramago's Blindness, a sudden, inexplicable epidemic of blindness sweeps an unnamed city, plunging society into chaos. The squalor and violence that accompanies the blindness is vividly portrayed. One woman escapes the curse, and becomes responsible for guiding a small group, pilgrims in the land of the blind, to safety as an unchecked brutality descends upon the populace. The collective will and support of the group sustain them through unimaginable horrors.
Saramango shows how one vital change causes an expanding disruption of the social fabric, where human degradation and brutality rise quickly to the surface as opportunities for the abandonment of social norms arise. In the pilgrimage of the group, one thinks of the paintings of Breughel or Bosch, of the blind leading the blind through an apocalyptic landscape, through streets choked with corpses, wild dogs and the stench of human excrement. The basic necessities - food, shelter, and safety - become consuming obsessions as the comfortable trappings of modern life are stripped away.
The story is a descendant of Camus' The Plague, of the Decameron, and of the post-apocalyptic narratives of science fiction, most recently revived in Cormac McCarthy's harrowing The Road. In an Edwardian short story I read years ago, author forgotten, a blinding fog descends upon London, the consequence of environmental pollution, and society descends into violent chaos. Blindness is an expansion of that narrative, and in many ways a mirror of it. Saramago, writing in Portugese, is probably one of the few philosophical Marxists writing today. His Blindness is a remarkable and pessimistic exposition of the fragility of social order in the modern world.
Saramango shows how one vital change causes an expanding disruption of the social fabric, where human degradation and brutality rise quickly to the surface as opportunities for the abandonment of social norms arise. In the pilgrimage of the group, one thinks of the paintings of Breughel or Bosch, of the blind leading the blind through an apocalyptic landscape, through streets choked with corpses, wild dogs and the stench of human excrement. The basic necessities - food, shelter, and safety - become consuming obsessions as the comfortable trappings of modern life are stripped away.
The story is a descendant of Camus' The Plague, of the Decameron, and of the post-apocalyptic narratives of science fiction, most recently revived in Cormac McCarthy's harrowing The Road. In an Edwardian short story I read years ago, author forgotten, a blinding fog descends upon London, the consequence of environmental pollution, and society descends into violent chaos. Blindness is an expansion of that narrative, and in many ways a mirror of it. Saramago, writing in Portugese, is probably one of the few philosophical Marxists writing today. His Blindness is a remarkable and pessimistic exposition of the fragility of social order in the modern world.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Pynchon Clearinghouse
One of my favorite authors, and also one of the most frustrating, is Thomas Pynchon. Clearly a genius, but for every Gravity's Rainbow there is a Vineland, for every Mason & Dixon, there is an Against the Day. Actually, I shouldn't badmouth the latter, as I have yet to read it past the first 150 pages. One storyline is compelling, but another is so excruciating that I had to put the book down. Anyway, I now present for your enjoyment and argument a few short notes I have made over the years on some of Pynchon's work.
Slow Learner
Five early stories, with some of the same rambunctiousness of Pynchon's later novels. The only story that particularly feels out of place is "Under the Rose", a foray into John Buchan territory - a real yawner. "The Secret Integration" and "The Small Rain" are perhaps the most successful stories. The remainder seem to have something essentially Pynchonian missing, but of course they were written as the author was finding his voice. Pynchon's introduction attempts to put these stories from the late 50's - early 60's into perspective, and acts as a sort of apologia for the deficiencies of the stories. Necessary reading for the die-hard fan only.
The Crying of Lot 49
A short and readable novel by Pynchon, with a characteristic blend of paranoia, zany humor, and pathos. Oedipa Maas and a supporting cast try to decipher an underground postal network with roots in the Italian Renaissance. Entertaining but ambiguous: is Trystero a real conspiracy, or a practical joke being played on Oedipa by her ex-lover? Pynchon has spawned many imitators since this novel's 1966 publication, but seen as a product of its time, it is a lively and intriguing cultural document.
Gravity's Rainbow
Almost 900 pages of rocket equations, 1940's hepcat slang, surreal visions, druggie humor, occult arcana, homoerotic fantasy, orgies, tenderness, paranoia, coprophagia, chemical formulae, colonial American puritan theology, and a guest appearance by Mickey Rooney. Threads of meaning come through in a story that shifts time, voice, and focus. Catalogues of depravity and broad slapstick, like Rabelais on acid. Gravity's Rainbow, for me anyway, is a slow read - dreadfully slow in places - and one knows that much has been missed in a casual read. The story of priapic Tyrone Slothrop and his unique connection with the V-2 rockets that blitzed London in the Second World War is ultimately a dark cautionary tale of the dangers of power and technology. My next reading will be accompanied by Weisenburger's indispensable A Gravity's Rainbow Companion, an essential roadmap to this complex novel.
Mason & Dixon
I loved this rambling, rollicking, daffy funhouse mirror of an 18th century novel. Weird and anachronistic, it is also one of the sweetest and clearest of Pynchon's works. The general outline follows the work of the famed surveyors of the Maryland/Pennsylvania hinterlands, but the personalities and adventures recounted here are classic Pynchon. The duo smoke hemp with George Washington (as Martha bakes up cakes to satisfy the munchies and a slave does a fair imitation of a Catskills comic), receive recreational shock treatments from Ben Franklin, converse with a talking dog, dodge an apparently psychotic mechanical duck, and befriend a Chinese feng shui master as they clear the path between the Penn and Calvert estates. This path, it is revealed, serves as a conduit for a vast, ancient, and unnameable telluric force. There are Jesuit conspiracies, lost souls, giant cheeses, and tender loves lost and found. Mason and Dixon are drawn in comic contrast, but they are complementary in their humanity and ultimately quite sympathetic figures. A grand, fun, and, in the end, wistful novel.
P.S. One of my favorite Pynchon websites, Spermatikos Logos, is at http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/
Slow Learner
Five early stories, with some of the same rambunctiousness of Pynchon's later novels. The only story that particularly feels out of place is "Under the Rose", a foray into John Buchan territory - a real yawner. "The Secret Integration" and "The Small Rain" are perhaps the most successful stories. The remainder seem to have something essentially Pynchonian missing, but of course they were written as the author was finding his voice. Pynchon's introduction attempts to put these stories from the late 50's - early 60's into perspective, and acts as a sort of apologia for the deficiencies of the stories. Necessary reading for the die-hard fan only.
The Crying of Lot 49
A short and readable novel by Pynchon, with a characteristic blend of paranoia, zany humor, and pathos. Oedipa Maas and a supporting cast try to decipher an underground postal network with roots in the Italian Renaissance. Entertaining but ambiguous: is Trystero a real conspiracy, or a practical joke being played on Oedipa by her ex-lover? Pynchon has spawned many imitators since this novel's 1966 publication, but seen as a product of its time, it is a lively and intriguing cultural document.
Gravity's Rainbow
Almost 900 pages of rocket equations, 1940's hepcat slang, surreal visions, druggie humor, occult arcana, homoerotic fantasy, orgies, tenderness, paranoia, coprophagia, chemical formulae, colonial American puritan theology, and a guest appearance by Mickey Rooney. Threads of meaning come through in a story that shifts time, voice, and focus. Catalogues of depravity and broad slapstick, like Rabelais on acid. Gravity's Rainbow, for me anyway, is a slow read - dreadfully slow in places - and one knows that much has been missed in a casual read. The story of priapic Tyrone Slothrop and his unique connection with the V-2 rockets that blitzed London in the Second World War is ultimately a dark cautionary tale of the dangers of power and technology. My next reading will be accompanied by Weisenburger's indispensable A Gravity's Rainbow Companion, an essential roadmap to this complex novel.
Mason & Dixon
I loved this rambling, rollicking, daffy funhouse mirror of an 18th century novel. Weird and anachronistic, it is also one of the sweetest and clearest of Pynchon's works. The general outline follows the work of the famed surveyors of the Maryland/Pennsylvania hinterlands, but the personalities and adventures recounted here are classic Pynchon. The duo smoke hemp with George Washington (as Martha bakes up cakes to satisfy the munchies and a slave does a fair imitation of a Catskills comic), receive recreational shock treatments from Ben Franklin, converse with a talking dog, dodge an apparently psychotic mechanical duck, and befriend a Chinese feng shui master as they clear the path between the Penn and Calvert estates. This path, it is revealed, serves as a conduit for a vast, ancient, and unnameable telluric force. There are Jesuit conspiracies, lost souls, giant cheeses, and tender loves lost and found. Mason and Dixon are drawn in comic contrast, but they are complementary in their humanity and ultimately quite sympathetic figures. A grand, fun, and, in the end, wistful novel.
P.S. One of my favorite Pynchon websites, Spermatikos Logos, is at http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
The Hatred That Does Not Die
The War Against the Jews: 1933-1945
by Lucy Dawidowicz
The single minded effort of the Nazis to annihilate European Jewry remains one of the most brutal, incomprehensible events in the history of the world. The consolidation of power by a group of extremists, who plotted and carried out murder on a massive scale, was accomplished precisely because no one thought such a thing to be possible. The destruction of the Jews was one element of Hitler's dream of transforming, with atavistic zeal, the social fabric of Europe and Asia. Dawidowicz's book, exhaustive in scope, attempts to deal with this by looking first at the history of German anti-semitism from its beginnings, through its 19th century renaissance, to its carefully plotted policy under Hitler. She then examines the Jewish response to the Nazi threat, conditioned by a centuries old cycle of active, then dormant, hostility.
The cunning of the Nazis in making a rhetorical call for the destruction of the "Jewish vermin" a historical fact is well-known, but it cannot be adequately explained without a metaphysical understanding of the potential for human evil and depravity. Arendt famously wrote of the "banality of evil" - the institution of bold laws and regulations, so clear in their intent as to be incomprehensible are described, but can we today, while recognizing the brutality of the Nazi leadership and the intoxicating power of its functionaries, truly understand the complacency of the German populace as they see a significant section of the population quickly being deprived of their most basic human rights?
Dawidowicz deals with the death camps only in an appendix, perhaps because their story is so familiar. She focuses instead on the formation and maintenance of the ghettos of Poland, in essence a different, urban sort of concentration camp. The institutions established by the Nazis for control, such as the Judenrat, ingeniously served to break the Jewish spirit by degrees. The misplaced optimism which rationalizes that things that are horrific cannot get worse only collapses when the trap has already sprung, and no hope remains.* The brave resistance in the Warsaw ghetto, doomed by its lateness, is well documented, and an attempt to rationalize the ghetto mindset is hard to accept by later generations who, with hindsight, see the enormity of the tragedy. But we draw back, unable to comprehend the evil and suffering that - even after Stalin, Cambodia, Kosovo, Rwanda, Darfur, etc. - has never been equaled.
*I am sadly reminded of the film "Schindler's List". After each encroachment and degradation, the constant refrain is "it can't get any worse" or "the worst is over". Alas, fatal optimism!
Postscript: I read this book in 2000, and it was a rather old book even then, having been published in 1975. Despite a plethora of Holocaust books since that time, I believe Dawidowicz's book is worthwhile reading. For a number of years, I read several works relating to the Holocaust, including the excellent memoirs of Primo Levi and Elie Weisel. I recall an acquaintance asking why I was so interested in this, since I "wasn't Jewish". Leaving aside the banality of the question, I respond now that I believe the Nazi program was an example of a successful and horrific enterprise - the manipulation of public consciousness to allow for the perpetration of an absolutely evil agenda. Unfortunately, the potential for such manipulation and abuse did not end with the fall of the Nazi Regime. In the words of Herman Goering, interviewed at Nuremberg:
Naturally, the common people don't want war, but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.
Thursday, January 03, 2008
An Interpretation of Faust
The legend of the alchemist and magician Johann Faust has been around for centuries, and has been retold in various ways, from the sublime works of Goethe to the ridiculous manifestations of Hollywood (see the Pacino scenery-chewer "Devil's Advocate"). This evening I enjoyed a film by Czech director Jan Svankmajer which explores the Faust legend through the words of Marlowe and Goethe, and through the techniques of live action, puppetry, and claymation.
Set in the present day, a Czech man follows an enigmatic map to a subterranean theatre, where he re-enacts the story of the doomed magician with the help of various puppets (including a very funny jester) and shape-shifting demons. There are echoes of other stories of magic gone awry (the Golem, the Sorcerer's Apprentice) to give a bit of added interest. With apologies to Goethe, there is no redemption for Faust in this version - he is run over by a driverless car, and a wild-eyed old man makes off with his lower leg, presumably to replace the leg he previously had to throw into the river to fend off a black dog.
Quite imaginative and entertaining: I look forward to seeing other films by this director.
Set in the present day, a Czech man follows an enigmatic map to a subterranean theatre, where he re-enacts the story of the doomed magician with the help of various puppets (including a very funny jester) and shape-shifting demons. There are echoes of other stories of magic gone awry (the Golem, the Sorcerer's Apprentice) to give a bit of added interest. With apologies to Goethe, there is no redemption for Faust in this version - he is run over by a driverless car, and a wild-eyed old man makes off with his lower leg, presumably to replace the leg he previously had to throw into the river to fend off a black dog.
Quite imaginative and entertaining: I look forward to seeing other films by this director.
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
In Search of Lost Time in the Piedmont
For years, I knew Cesare Pavese mainly through his diaries - a seemingly bottomless pit of existential despair and suicidal thoughts. To discover that he killed himself only a few months after the completion of this novel hardly comes as a surprise.
The Moon and the Bonfires is a sort of backwards look - a longing for a past that was brutal, yet somehow tenderly regarded. The narrator begins his life as a foundling in the Lower Piedmont, taken in by a family of dirt-poor sharecroppers not out of affection, but because he provides an extra set of hands, and because they can count on a yearly stipend of 5 lire for his upkeep. As a child, he works for his daily bread and the opportunity to sleep in the barn with the animals. He later ends up working for a more prosperous family, and is fascinated by their life of comparable privilege.
Following his mandatory military service, the narrator ships out to America, where he makes his fortune. He finds himself rootless in America, and so after the war he returns to survey the aftermath of fascism in the Piedmont. He meets up with his old friend, the tight-lipped Nuto, a partisan who plays a semi-mute Virgil to his Dante. Providing background to what happened during the war, Nuto is a Marxist who sees no reason for optimism. When the narrator finds, on his old farmstead, a lame boy who is a mirror of his younger self whom he hopes to inspire to cast off his poverty and drink in the wider world, Nuto sees no point in fostering such futile dreams. Yet Nuto takes pity when the boy's father goes mad and murders his family, burns the farm to the ground, and hangs himself from a tree. It is only by the narrator's gift, a penknife, that the boy is able to defend himself and avoid his family's fate. Nuto takes the boy in to help him learn a trade, and pledges to work with the narrator to better his life.
Much of the novel is taken up by reminiscences of the fascinating daughters of the prosperous landowner, yet even they cannot persist in their idyll. They all come to tragic ends, and the murder and cremation of the youngest, Santina (who may or may not have been a fascist agent), is the culmination of the novel.
In the local folklore, bonfires lit on the feast of St. John help to regenerate the world. In his essay "Pavese and Human Sacrifice" Italo Calvino notes Pavese's interest in the idea of blood sacrifice and purification by fire, learned through his reading of Frazer's The Golden Bough. The burning of the farmstead and the cremation of Santina (ostensibly to keep her body from being defiled) are the signal events of this novel - modern sacrifices in an endless cycle of madness and regeneration - private holocausts in a poor and obscure corner of the Piedmont, under a cold and uncaring moon.
The Moon and the Bonfires is a minor masterpiece of fatalism.
The Moon and the Bonfires is a sort of backwards look - a longing for a past that was brutal, yet somehow tenderly regarded. The narrator begins his life as a foundling in the Lower Piedmont, taken in by a family of dirt-poor sharecroppers not out of affection, but because he provides an extra set of hands, and because they can count on a yearly stipend of 5 lire for his upkeep. As a child, he works for his daily bread and the opportunity to sleep in the barn with the animals. He later ends up working for a more prosperous family, and is fascinated by their life of comparable privilege.
Following his mandatory military service, the narrator ships out to America, where he makes his fortune. He finds himself rootless in America, and so after the war he returns to survey the aftermath of fascism in the Piedmont. He meets up with his old friend, the tight-lipped Nuto, a partisan who plays a semi-mute Virgil to his Dante. Providing background to what happened during the war, Nuto is a Marxist who sees no reason for optimism. When the narrator finds, on his old farmstead, a lame boy who is a mirror of his younger self whom he hopes to inspire to cast off his poverty and drink in the wider world, Nuto sees no point in fostering such futile dreams. Yet Nuto takes pity when the boy's father goes mad and murders his family, burns the farm to the ground, and hangs himself from a tree. It is only by the narrator's gift, a penknife, that the boy is able to defend himself and avoid his family's fate. Nuto takes the boy in to help him learn a trade, and pledges to work with the narrator to better his life.
Much of the novel is taken up by reminiscences of the fascinating daughters of the prosperous landowner, yet even they cannot persist in their idyll. They all come to tragic ends, and the murder and cremation of the youngest, Santina (who may or may not have been a fascist agent), is the culmination of the novel.
In the local folklore, bonfires lit on the feast of St. John help to regenerate the world. In his essay "Pavese and Human Sacrifice" Italo Calvino notes Pavese's interest in the idea of blood sacrifice and purification by fire, learned through his reading of Frazer's The Golden Bough. The burning of the farmstead and the cremation of Santina (ostensibly to keep her body from being defiled) are the signal events of this novel - modern sacrifices in an endless cycle of madness and regeneration - private holocausts in a poor and obscure corner of the Piedmont, under a cold and uncaring moon.
The Moon and the Bonfires is a minor masterpiece of fatalism.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
The Glass Bead Game (Magister Ludi)
I read most of Hermann Hesse's major works way back in High School (I was the odd kid wandering around with "unrequired reading" on top of the abhored textbooks). His novels appealed to my interest in eastern philosophy in general and Buddhism specifically, yet even then I feld that books such as Siddhartha and The Journey to the East were rather simplistic in their approach to eastern thought. I don't remember much about Steppenwolf, other than I had a greater appreciation for it than I had for the other works. Later, when I read Brecht, I thought some of his works had echoes of Steppenwolf (or was it the other way around?).
Hesse comes back again and again to the question of whether one should seek an ascetic path or, to paraphrase Blake, to approach the palace of wisdom by the road of excess. In his own life, Hesse seems to have tended towards the ascetic, although his writings sought to transcend the dualism. The Glass Bead Game is longer than Hesse's other novels (it was originally envisioned, per the Mann/Hesse correspondence, as a series of novels, or a multi-volume work) but the themes are the same. Hesse prosletyses for vegetarianism and meditation, but the duality of the meditative vs. the active life remains his subject.
The bulk of the novel takes place many centuries hence, in the province of Castilia, a mythical place where promising youth are taken for education and where the ritualistic pastime is the Glass Bead Game. The novel describes the early life and education of Joseph Knecht, who rises to the exalted position of Magister of Castilia. But Knecht has a crisis, and the life of splendid isolation, governed by ritual, becomes unbearable for him. He leaves the intellectual yet barren life of Castilia in order to go into the world and make his own small mark. He promptly drowns in ice-cold water. Tragically, swimming was one of the practical arts not studied in Castilia.
Hesse is not, regrettably, a first rate author. The vignettes of life in Castile are interesting, if somewhat stilted, but Hesse's concerns and his expressions of them seem to be a restatement of themes from his earlier novels. Hermann Hesse was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature following the release of this book.
Hesse comes back again and again to the question of whether one should seek an ascetic path or, to paraphrase Blake, to approach the palace of wisdom by the road of excess. In his own life, Hesse seems to have tended towards the ascetic, although his writings sought to transcend the dualism. The Glass Bead Game is longer than Hesse's other novels (it was originally envisioned, per the Mann/Hesse correspondence, as a series of novels, or a multi-volume work) but the themes are the same. Hesse prosletyses for vegetarianism and meditation, but the duality of the meditative vs. the active life remains his subject.
The bulk of the novel takes place many centuries hence, in the province of Castilia, a mythical place where promising youth are taken for education and where the ritualistic pastime is the Glass Bead Game. The novel describes the early life and education of Joseph Knecht, who rises to the exalted position of Magister of Castilia. But Knecht has a crisis, and the life of splendid isolation, governed by ritual, becomes unbearable for him. He leaves the intellectual yet barren life of Castilia in order to go into the world and make his own small mark. He promptly drowns in ice-cold water. Tragically, swimming was one of the practical arts not studied in Castilia.
Hesse is not, regrettably, a first rate author. The vignettes of life in Castile are interesting, if somewhat stilted, but Hesse's concerns and his expressions of them seem to be a restatement of themes from his earlier novels. Hermann Hesse was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature following the release of this book.
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