Even though Theodor Adorno was a philosopher, yet he wrote like a poet. It is a quality that few philosophers possess. Most philosophical writing is very arm-chair, erudite and tedious. Philosophizing and writing philosophy are thus different issues. To write is to affirm in a different medium while to speak and thus teach allows you to explain.
Adorno writes in a language that is accessible but not mundane, beautiful but not ineffectual, wonderful at times but never superfluous. Adorno co-wrote the Dialectic Of Enlightenment with Max Horkheimer and perhaps the language in that book is not entirely his. Yet his other works published as the Culture Industry, Negative Dialectics and Aesthetic Theory might occasionally present difficulties to a lay-person like myself, who bravely ventures into the intricacies of the Frankfurt School. However, after the initial difficulties are dealt with, one finds Adorno rewarding, particularly when you allow yourself to follow him.
However, I would like to draw attention to this great collection of reflections on a damaged life, wherein Adorno writes like a tragic poet, occasionally far away from the hassles of Marxism and Commodity Fetishism. Dedicated to his friend Max Horkheimer, the book begins with an epigram, life does not live. The book is in three parts with small chapters, the first of which is called For Marcel Proust. The book was written in America, when Adorno was in exile, when he became known as Teddy. The book has numerous anecdotes, parables and aphorisms and mostly reflections on exile, on damaged lives.
The tone of this book is definitely pessimistic for Adorno feels that in this capitalistic chaos, life is permanently damaged. Writes Adorno in the dedication..........The melancholy science from which i make this offering to my friend relates to a region that from time immemorial was regarded as the true field of philosophy, but, which, since the latter's conversion into method, has lapsed into intellectual neglect, sententious whimsy and finally oblivion: the teaching of the good life. With insights and reflections on marriage, divorce, on fish in water and on the dialectic of tact, this book is filled with aphorisms.The basic anxieties of his oeuvre are addressed as usual but the intensity of an argument is matched by the beauty of the prose.
It is well recognized that most of what Adorno wrote can be quoted or each sentence generally is a quotable quote and nowhere is it truer than this book. This is an unforgiving and an unforgettable book. And if all philosophy were written like this, I might consider a change in trade.
Love is the power to see similarity in the dissimilar, writes Adorno but then Minima Moralia has more.
Monday, August 13, 2007
Saturday, August 11, 2007
The Voice Imitator : Thomas Bernhard
Of all Bernhard's novels that I have read so far, The Voice Imitator is perhaps the most unusual. For here, the ranting and raving is not as obvious, as relentless but somehow the spectre, the shadow that lurks in this short book is never less sinister, never less haunting.
Described as short stories, the voice imitator is more of a collection of anecdotes, reports, gossip, hearsay. Underneath, one gets the feeling that something more sinister than what one has understood lurks, as the stories or conversations, ( each never more than a page long and some just a few lines) work like parables, like scattered drops of bright wisdom. Those familiar with Bernhard's oeuvre will however recognise his usual acerbic wit, his acidic sarcasm, the subtle and unsubtle bite of his prose, and his usual themes. The stories concern 13 acts of lunacy, 20 surprises, 4 disappearances, 2 instances of libel, 18 suicides, 6 painful deaths and so on.
The beauty of these short stories is the thumping effect that they produce within a few lines. In other words, what an ordinary writer will do with a big tome, Bernhard achieves on a Page, and this is no exaggeration. As Peter Filkin writes, the voice imitator works as a mini-anthology of Bernhard's obsessions with murder, madness and the inability of language to capture, or relieve, the absurdity of life. The other characteristic of these stories is the way the events are narrated, for what is revealed in a few lines is not as important as what is kept hidden, which is not annoying but disconcerting.
Although I liked most of the stories, I will quote this one and enthusiastically recommend The Voice Imitator, especially to those who are well versed with his other works.
This story is called Moospruggers mistake
Professor Moosprugger said that he had gone to the west station in Vienna to pick up a colleague whom he did not know personally but knew only from correspondence. He had expected a different person from the one who actually arrived at the west station. when I drew Moosprugger's attention to the fact that the person who arrives is always different from the person we expect, he got up and left simply and solely for the purpose of breaking off and abandoning all contacts he had ever established throughout his life.
Described as short stories, the voice imitator is more of a collection of anecdotes, reports, gossip, hearsay. Underneath, one gets the feeling that something more sinister than what one has understood lurks, as the stories or conversations, ( each never more than a page long and some just a few lines) work like parables, like scattered drops of bright wisdom. Those familiar with Bernhard's oeuvre will however recognise his usual acerbic wit, his acidic sarcasm, the subtle and unsubtle bite of his prose, and his usual themes. The stories concern 13 acts of lunacy, 20 surprises, 4 disappearances, 2 instances of libel, 18 suicides, 6 painful deaths and so on.
The beauty of these short stories is the thumping effect that they produce within a few lines. In other words, what an ordinary writer will do with a big tome, Bernhard achieves on a Page, and this is no exaggeration. As Peter Filkin writes, the voice imitator works as a mini-anthology of Bernhard's obsessions with murder, madness and the inability of language to capture, or relieve, the absurdity of life. The other characteristic of these stories is the way the events are narrated, for what is revealed in a few lines is not as important as what is kept hidden, which is not annoying but disconcerting.
Although I liked most of the stories, I will quote this one and enthusiastically recommend The Voice Imitator, especially to those who are well versed with his other works.
This story is called Moospruggers mistake
Professor Moosprugger said that he had gone to the west station in Vienna to pick up a colleague whom he did not know personally but knew only from correspondence. He had expected a different person from the one who actually arrived at the west station. when I drew Moosprugger's attention to the fact that the person who arrives is always different from the person we expect, he got up and left simply and solely for the purpose of breaking off and abandoning all contacts he had ever established throughout his life.
Friday, August 10, 2007
Poetry Is Like Water
Poetry is like water, colourless, it
leaves no space, no edges to touch
after the most recent pain has left, just left
me alone, just left me to think, of how common,
how dull, how alone my pain was.
Poetry is so dull, so listless, so deaf
to the hours I have, alone with words and
fathomless with memory, leaving no space, no edges to touch
after the most recent pain has come and left, just left
me alone, too thoughtless to complain,
a carbon paper sky.
Poetry has no speech even when it rises
like fever, like love, when it recedes
like fever, like love, leaving no space, no edges to touch
after the most recent pain has left, just left
me alone, amongst words too dull
to climb from the pages.
leaves no space, no edges to touch
after the most recent pain has left, just left
me alone, just left me to think, of how common,
how dull, how alone my pain was.
Poetry is so dull, so listless, so deaf
to the hours I have, alone with words and
fathomless with memory, leaving no space, no edges to touch
after the most recent pain has come and left, just left
me alone, too thoughtless to complain,
a carbon paper sky.
Poetry has no speech even when it rises
like fever, like love, when it recedes
like fever, like love, leaving no space, no edges to touch
after the most recent pain has left, just left
me alone, amongst words too dull
to climb from the pages.
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
Weekend: Jean-Luc Godard
The word that best describes this movie is riveting. That it is such utter captivity, such immense satire is what makes this a cinematic experience worth remembering, a tour de force for the senses. We are aware as we watch it that this is a movie of ideas, one after the other, like chapters in a book, thrown incessantly at your face, relentlessly, savagely. That there are so many of them, with so little warning, that it becomes a trifle difficult to watch it, to follow it sometimes.
An almost anarchic couple, who would not mind killing each other, leave Paris on a weekend to claim inheritance by shady, almost immoral means. They get trapped in a traffic jam, almost a vision of hell. There are cars lying in heaps, bodies by the roads, blood on the roads, a couple playing chess and all these things seem to be going on inspite of themselves. we watch this couple flee armed people, french revolutionaries, immigrant Arabs delivering speeches till they get caught up in a revolutionary militia that cannibalises , ending in the woman eating a bit of her husband too, after the mother has been murdered for money.
This movie is a ferocious response against bourgeoisie values. only a new horror can spare us from bourgeoisie horror, we hear. Marx equated with Christ, Engels and Morgan and we understand that this is not satire for satires sake but a revolt, an artistic attack against commodity fetishism, against not the usual dreary montage of existential angst but a profound indictment of social anarchy against a background of consumerism.
With Godard, one knows that we are watching a movie made not just by a great artiste but an intelligent man, a director making a movie of ideas, like a Russian novel of ideas. It is a phenomenal movie, a great movie, one that lingers in the retina, and one that can be made sense of long after having watched it. It is nothing short of brilliance. It must be watched a few times to grasp its luminosity.
An almost anarchic couple, who would not mind killing each other, leave Paris on a weekend to claim inheritance by shady, almost immoral means. They get trapped in a traffic jam, almost a vision of hell. There are cars lying in heaps, bodies by the roads, blood on the roads, a couple playing chess and all these things seem to be going on inspite of themselves. we watch this couple flee armed people, french revolutionaries, immigrant Arabs delivering speeches till they get caught up in a revolutionary militia that cannibalises , ending in the woman eating a bit of her husband too, after the mother has been murdered for money.
This movie is a ferocious response against bourgeoisie values. only a new horror can spare us from bourgeoisie horror, we hear. Marx equated with Christ, Engels and Morgan and we understand that this is not satire for satires sake but a revolt, an artistic attack against commodity fetishism, against not the usual dreary montage of existential angst but a profound indictment of social anarchy against a background of consumerism.
With Godard, one knows that we are watching a movie made not just by a great artiste but an intelligent man, a director making a movie of ideas, like a Russian novel of ideas. It is a phenomenal movie, a great movie, one that lingers in the retina, and one that can be made sense of long after having watched it. It is nothing short of brilliance. It must be watched a few times to grasp its luminosity.
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Code Unknown: Collage Or Art?
I was bored by Michael Haneke's The Piano Teacher where the moment of suffering never comes. If Haneke creates characters that cannot or will not communicate, then one must suffer from boredom, because he is a fine film maker and we must learn to suffer. However, if the attempt is to existentialise alienation, make it an art, showcase it to show cultural and racial isolation, depicting difficulty in communication also, then Code Unknown, Haneke's deft collage movement is actually quite good.
There are some powerful scenes or movements in this movie. My favourites are the Boulevard scenes, the metro scene and Juliette Binoche in the theatre. Of course, this movie can only exist in its deft style but the characters are actually caricatures for if, if they actually tell their stories, then the facade of pseudo-communication, the ghetto existence of most European cities will simply explode. If Haneke strikes a kind of balance between different racial subtypes in this movie, he does not allow his characters to speak, for speaking would involve politics, politics to do something. The artists aim is not just to showcase suffering but to take sides and we do not know whose side he is on.
Any person worth his salt can have an opinion. All opinions, even relating to what coffee one drinks could be political. Most European cinema, under the guise of Art, has escaped from attempting to answer, to speak. To highlight all this xenophobia, racialism, boredom is to stultify the subject matter, for the crisis must be lived, the love torn to pieces, the tumour touched and then, only then can this heartache be led to its proper denouement. Otherwise, this movie is only poster pain, a moving collage.
However, to be fair, this movie has its moments too. It takes courage to stick a poster to a city wall in Europe these days. And Haneke, after all, is quite brave.
There are some powerful scenes or movements in this movie. My favourites are the Boulevard scenes, the metro scene and Juliette Binoche in the theatre. Of course, this movie can only exist in its deft style but the characters are actually caricatures for if, if they actually tell their stories, then the facade of pseudo-communication, the ghetto existence of most European cities will simply explode. If Haneke strikes a kind of balance between different racial subtypes in this movie, he does not allow his characters to speak, for speaking would involve politics, politics to do something. The artists aim is not just to showcase suffering but to take sides and we do not know whose side he is on.
Any person worth his salt can have an opinion. All opinions, even relating to what coffee one drinks could be political. Most European cinema, under the guise of Art, has escaped from attempting to answer, to speak. To highlight all this xenophobia, racialism, boredom is to stultify the subject matter, for the crisis must be lived, the love torn to pieces, the tumour touched and then, only then can this heartache be led to its proper denouement. Otherwise, this movie is only poster pain, a moving collage.
However, to be fair, this movie has its moments too. It takes courage to stick a poster to a city wall in Europe these days. And Haneke, after all, is quite brave.
Monday, August 06, 2007
Ordet
It is hard not to think of Ordet without thinking of the end. For it is the end that most matters in this movie or so I think. To say that it is an extraordinary movie is to say the least. The images from this movie stay with you for these are not supposed to be ephemeral or even abstract but realistic, hard and sombre.
The movie is about a miraculous resurrection, set against religious doubt and hypocrisy in a farm house in a village in Denmark. The scepticism, religious fervour and lack of it is reflected in the principal household where the tensions simmer from frank disbelief to an almost insane religious grandiosity, somehow well played by an actor portraying a detachment from everyone, including himself and finally rescuing everyone, even from themselves, in the final scene that resurrects the daughter-in-law, the most affable person from the coffin, when she is about to be buried. The supposedly insane Johannes, the person who proclaims he is Jesus, claims reason in the end and magically breathes life into his sister-in-law. The last scene also brings together the other remaining jigsaw, that of the neighbouring tailor, who acknowledges his hypocrisy and his fanatic understanding of religion.
I was rather mystified by the ending but somehow not surprised for I thought I was watching not a movie about faith but a religious movie, a kind of toned down evangelism, a hushed preaching, a sophisticated call to arms. In the father figure, the head of the household, we behold a kind of a bibilical patriarch, with his unflinching and sometimes dour faith in God and yet who also has his doubts and drinks his cafe. He is waiting for a miracle and when he has nearly given up, after the resurrection he proclaims that this God and the God of old are the same.
I do not know what Carl Theodor Dreyer wants us to understand from this movie. If it is about faith, hope, belief in endless struggle, toil, and being truthful and good, then it is admirable. If this movie is about that sentimental belief in one's sin, redemption and all that never ending hypocrisy in man's ultimate destiny, then this movie simply crashes.
Apart from the ending, I believe that the interiors and the landscapes in this movie are breathtakingly melancholic, beautiful, subtle and understated to the point of oppressive brilliance. There is humour too, for when the pastor wonders whether Johannes' malady is due to love, his older brother immediately answers........."No, Kierkegaard". The hard outdoors, the wind, the menace of the interior of the house, the minimalist lighting at times and the constant pacing in and out of the rooms somehow matches the fervour in the souls of the main characters. Ordet is a great movie but the ending, miraculous that it is, and attractive as it seems, reflects despair rather than hope.
The movie is about a miraculous resurrection, set against religious doubt and hypocrisy in a farm house in a village in Denmark. The scepticism, religious fervour and lack of it is reflected in the principal household where the tensions simmer from frank disbelief to an almost insane religious grandiosity, somehow well played by an actor portraying a detachment from everyone, including himself and finally rescuing everyone, even from themselves, in the final scene that resurrects the daughter-in-law, the most affable person from the coffin, when she is about to be buried. The supposedly insane Johannes, the person who proclaims he is Jesus, claims reason in the end and magically breathes life into his sister-in-law. The last scene also brings together the other remaining jigsaw, that of the neighbouring tailor, who acknowledges his hypocrisy and his fanatic understanding of religion.
I was rather mystified by the ending but somehow not surprised for I thought I was watching not a movie about faith but a religious movie, a kind of toned down evangelism, a hushed preaching, a sophisticated call to arms. In the father figure, the head of the household, we behold a kind of a bibilical patriarch, with his unflinching and sometimes dour faith in God and yet who also has his doubts and drinks his cafe. He is waiting for a miracle and when he has nearly given up, after the resurrection he proclaims that this God and the God of old are the same.
I do not know what Carl Theodor Dreyer wants us to understand from this movie. If it is about faith, hope, belief in endless struggle, toil, and being truthful and good, then it is admirable. If this movie is about that sentimental belief in one's sin, redemption and all that never ending hypocrisy in man's ultimate destiny, then this movie simply crashes.
Apart from the ending, I believe that the interiors and the landscapes in this movie are breathtakingly melancholic, beautiful, subtle and understated to the point of oppressive brilliance. There is humour too, for when the pastor wonders whether Johannes' malady is due to love, his older brother immediately answers........."No, Kierkegaard". The hard outdoors, the wind, the menace of the interior of the house, the minimalist lighting at times and the constant pacing in and out of the rooms somehow matches the fervour in the souls of the main characters. Ordet is a great movie but the ending, miraculous that it is, and attractive as it seems, reflects despair rather than hope.
Friday, August 03, 2007
Lesson From The Kama sutra
I have never quoted any poem or any prose extract in great length, but I find this poem too irresistible not to do so, and it would be miserly not to share it with those who don't know Mahmoud Darwish, the Palestinian poet, the voice of freedom and a major world poet.
Wait for her with an azure cup.
Wait for her in the evening at the spring, among perfumed roses.
Wait for her with the patience of a horse trained for mountains.
Wait for her with the distinctive, aesthetic taste of a prince.
Wait for her with the seven pillows of cloud.
Wait for her with strands of womanly incense wafting.
Wait for her with the manly scent of sandalwood on horseback.
Wait for her and do not rush.
If she arrives late, wait for her.
If she arrives early, wait for her.
Do not frighten the birds in her braided hair.
Take her to the balcony to watch the moon drowning in milk.
Wait for her and offer her water before wine.
Do not glance at the twin partridges sleeping on her chest.
Wait and gently touch her hand as she sets a cup on marble.
As if you are carrying the dew for her, wait.
Speak to her as a flute would to a frightened violin string,
As if you knew what tomorrow would bring.
Wait, and polish the night for her ring by ring.
Wait for her until the night speaks to you thus:
There is no one alive but the two of you.
So take her gently to the death you so desire,
and wait.
Wait for her with an azure cup.
Wait for her in the evening at the spring, among perfumed roses.
Wait for her with the patience of a horse trained for mountains.
Wait for her with the distinctive, aesthetic taste of a prince.
Wait for her with the seven pillows of cloud.
Wait for her with strands of womanly incense wafting.
Wait for her with the manly scent of sandalwood on horseback.
Wait for her and do not rush.
If she arrives late, wait for her.
If she arrives early, wait for her.
Do not frighten the birds in her braided hair.
Take her to the balcony to watch the moon drowning in milk.
Wait for her and offer her water before wine.
Do not glance at the twin partridges sleeping on her chest.
Wait and gently touch her hand as she sets a cup on marble.
As if you are carrying the dew for her, wait.
Speak to her as a flute would to a frightened violin string,
As if you knew what tomorrow would bring.
Wait, and polish the night for her ring by ring.
Wait for her until the night speaks to you thus:
There is no one alive but the two of you.
So take her gently to the death you so desire,
and wait.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Dilletantism And Blogging
A question that so called literary blogger's must continually ask themselves is the worth of their opinions expressed about the things that they write, this writer not excluded. Under the garb of criticism, a whole host of senseless twaddle finds its way in this medium, which though superficially alluring, is eventually jarring to the senses. Because one must write, one finds oneself getting immune to the superficiality of opinions expressed and even carried away occasionally by praise expressed herein, praise that sometimes helps flagging literary self esteem.
I found an interesting post on this subject, quite randomly I must admit, on the internet recently about this subject. Racquel Recuero has questioned whether blogging is actually literature? For every Swift and Johnson writing in the 18th century, a host of other writers wrote junk, he tells us. The new technology of blogging, he reminds us, has unleashed a geyser of sludge. And in the future, he warns, no one will read this sludge, written by drunken college students and ex-spouses. He describes the blog's mostly as rants, meanderings, neurotic, chaotic, lacking purpose and structure. He does not deplore blogging, only that he finds it is necessary to understand what worth it will have in the future. He is aware of why people might want to write but is sensitive to what they should be writing.
It is only bad literature that has made good literature great. Whether people burden us with weekend parties or the movies they rant about or whether it is some other reason to write, blog writing, mute and inglorious, can still support more ambitious efforts. Mercifully, he recognizes blog's as literature, but that is besides the point. I think he raises serious questions that blogger's need to address.
I find some literature blog's, read randomly on the internet, actually raving conversations rather than serious writing. The purpose, if these blog's have a purpose, must be to understand rather than to sermonize, to attempt to do so rather than base one's opinions on pre-conceived prejudices. It is exceedingly difficult for Europeans to actually understand the nuances in an Asian or South American literary genre and vice versa. To claim to actually get between the sentences would be a foolish thing to do. One must let the snow fall on one's shoulders, feel the icy winds of winter before one can call snow romantic, deserts beautiful and dusty plains dusty.However, language gives us a kind of unwritten license, poets have fancy, they imagine about countries not seen, faces not touched, loves not loved and out of that imagination we get true literature sometimes.
What matters is earnestness in writing and not expressing half-baked opinions about things not seen, without evidence, without knowledge. One must fall in love to understand the pain of this emotion. I do not exclude myself from these faults and sometimes wonder at my own temerity to write, but write we must, even if these blog's exist in an artificial nether no-world, at the crossing of true literature and chaotic mumbling.
I found an interesting post on this subject, quite randomly I must admit, on the internet recently about this subject. Racquel Recuero has questioned whether blogging is actually literature? For every Swift and Johnson writing in the 18th century, a host of other writers wrote junk, he tells us. The new technology of blogging, he reminds us, has unleashed a geyser of sludge. And in the future, he warns, no one will read this sludge, written by drunken college students and ex-spouses. He describes the blog's mostly as rants, meanderings, neurotic, chaotic, lacking purpose and structure. He does not deplore blogging, only that he finds it is necessary to understand what worth it will have in the future. He is aware of why people might want to write but is sensitive to what they should be writing.
It is only bad literature that has made good literature great. Whether people burden us with weekend parties or the movies they rant about or whether it is some other reason to write, blog writing, mute and inglorious, can still support more ambitious efforts. Mercifully, he recognizes blog's as literature, but that is besides the point. I think he raises serious questions that blogger's need to address.
I find some literature blog's, read randomly on the internet, actually raving conversations rather than serious writing. The purpose, if these blog's have a purpose, must be to understand rather than to sermonize, to attempt to do so rather than base one's opinions on pre-conceived prejudices. It is exceedingly difficult for Europeans to actually understand the nuances in an Asian or South American literary genre and vice versa. To claim to actually get between the sentences would be a foolish thing to do. One must let the snow fall on one's shoulders, feel the icy winds of winter before one can call snow romantic, deserts beautiful and dusty plains dusty.However, language gives us a kind of unwritten license, poets have fancy, they imagine about countries not seen, faces not touched, loves not loved and out of that imagination we get true literature sometimes.
What matters is earnestness in writing and not expressing half-baked opinions about things not seen, without evidence, without knowledge. One must fall in love to understand the pain of this emotion. I do not exclude myself from these faults and sometimes wonder at my own temerity to write, but write we must, even if these blog's exist in an artificial nether no-world, at the crossing of true literature and chaotic mumbling.
Friday, July 27, 2007
Season Of Migration To The North
It has been a while since I have wanted to write about this fantastic novel by the Sudanese writer Tayeb Saleh. Two years and two readings apart, this novel can be described as seminal, a kind of a post colonial answer or a response to Heart Of Darkness, only that this novel is not an apology but a re-examination of exile and migration.
Born in Sudan, Saleh moved to London and wrote this short novel in the sixties, a work that has been translated into numerous languages. Saleh is a novelist and a poet too. This novel has for long remained a classic and has in the past been declared as the most important Arabic novel of the last hundred years. Since I can only read the translated novel, which is written so beautifully, one wonders as always at the original magic of Arabic. And surprisingly enough, the novel is written in a modern language, devoid of pretensions and unlike other Arabic novels that somehow do not follow the structure of the novel in the Western European sense.
The story, told by a narrator in flashbacks from his own life mixed with following the fortunes of Mustafa Saeed, who having returned back from England to Sudan previously, finds parallels between his and Mustafa's life. Whilst in England, Mustafa, having become Moozie, uses his exotic charm to seduce women in England and driving some to despair. He gets married and in a scene of sexual imagery and violent tension, he kills his wife and, and later when back in Sudan, Mustafa disappears mysteriously in the Nile following a flood, having been in and out finally of an unhappy marriage. The narrator too has returned to Sudan from England and his own reflections and experiences are revealed in spasms of emotions, in surreptitious and enigmatic ways.
This is a novel about migration, of self imposed exiles, of clashes of culture, of thought, language and feelings and the language of feelings. But the clashes are not just external, they are internal too, forcing one to question one's place in a new culture, and the place one has left behind or only thought to have done. One cannot belong anywhere because the battles are fought inside, the doubts are within, the pain of dislocation is inside. The narrator's grief is in not being accepted on his return and his not accepting and his inability to reject his new past, that of an ex-colonial country, wherein he remained an outsider too, always. The dialogue is between the colonized and the coloniser, only the tragedy of discourse is within the same person, now no longer a subject but newly subjugated by his own fears.
There is politics here but then even a love poem has its politics and we expect Saleh to exhume this colonial stuff but the exhumation is a subtle one, going on inside the narrator torn between his pasts. The murder of the English woman has been interpreted as a revenge against colonialism and I think it is a kind of response if not revenge, though Saleh has denied it. The style is hauntingly lyrical, calling it only poetry is an injustice. Says the narrator about his lover in England.............. when she saw me, she saw a dark twilight like a false dawn. Unlike me she yearned for tropical climes, cruel suns, purple horizons. In her eyes I was a symbol of all hankerings. I am south that yearns for the north and the ice. There is a sense of belonging always, of his torn identity between the North and South, and Mustafa's return to the North is an affirmation of new found confidence and freedom, of reversing the flow of people Southwards, of the joys of freedom and the restrictions of life in the North. It is the narration of what has been called counter flows to colonialism, a reversal of Conradian journeys into the Congo, a return back.
To say that this novel is important is only to undermine it. The debates it evokes are as vital now as when it was written. We have been warned these days of clashes of religions and civilizations, colour and sex and languages and of course power. Yet , the most subtle clashes and the only important ones are those that take place inside our minds, where all battles and clashes are decided.
The narrator is towards the end waking from his nightmare, and he decides, he chooses. I quote this final, beautiful paragraph from this beautiful novel......
All my life I had not chosen, had not decided. now I am making a decision. I choose life. I shall live because there are a few people I want to stay with for the the longest possible time and because I have duties to discharge. It is not my concern whether or not life has meaning. If I am unable to forgive, then I shall forget.
Born in Sudan, Saleh moved to London and wrote this short novel in the sixties, a work that has been translated into numerous languages. Saleh is a novelist and a poet too. This novel has for long remained a classic and has in the past been declared as the most important Arabic novel of the last hundred years. Since I can only read the translated novel, which is written so beautifully, one wonders as always at the original magic of Arabic. And surprisingly enough, the novel is written in a modern language, devoid of pretensions and unlike other Arabic novels that somehow do not follow the structure of the novel in the Western European sense.
The story, told by a narrator in flashbacks from his own life mixed with following the fortunes of Mustafa Saeed, who having returned back from England to Sudan previously, finds parallels between his and Mustafa's life. Whilst in England, Mustafa, having become Moozie, uses his exotic charm to seduce women in England and driving some to despair. He gets married and in a scene of sexual imagery and violent tension, he kills his wife and, and later when back in Sudan, Mustafa disappears mysteriously in the Nile following a flood, having been in and out finally of an unhappy marriage. The narrator too has returned to Sudan from England and his own reflections and experiences are revealed in spasms of emotions, in surreptitious and enigmatic ways.
This is a novel about migration, of self imposed exiles, of clashes of culture, of thought, language and feelings and the language of feelings. But the clashes are not just external, they are internal too, forcing one to question one's place in a new culture, and the place one has left behind or only thought to have done. One cannot belong anywhere because the battles are fought inside, the doubts are within, the pain of dislocation is inside. The narrator's grief is in not being accepted on his return and his not accepting and his inability to reject his new past, that of an ex-colonial country, wherein he remained an outsider too, always. The dialogue is between the colonized and the coloniser, only the tragedy of discourse is within the same person, now no longer a subject but newly subjugated by his own fears.
There is politics here but then even a love poem has its politics and we expect Saleh to exhume this colonial stuff but the exhumation is a subtle one, going on inside the narrator torn between his pasts. The murder of the English woman has been interpreted as a revenge against colonialism and I think it is a kind of response if not revenge, though Saleh has denied it. The style is hauntingly lyrical, calling it only poetry is an injustice. Says the narrator about his lover in England.............. when she saw me, she saw a dark twilight like a false dawn. Unlike me she yearned for tropical climes, cruel suns, purple horizons. In her eyes I was a symbol of all hankerings. I am south that yearns for the north and the ice. There is a sense of belonging always, of his torn identity between the North and South, and Mustafa's return to the North is an affirmation of new found confidence and freedom, of reversing the flow of people Southwards, of the joys of freedom and the restrictions of life in the North. It is the narration of what has been called counter flows to colonialism, a reversal of Conradian journeys into the Congo, a return back.
To say that this novel is important is only to undermine it. The debates it evokes are as vital now as when it was written. We have been warned these days of clashes of religions and civilizations, colour and sex and languages and of course power. Yet , the most subtle clashes and the only important ones are those that take place inside our minds, where all battles and clashes are decided.
The narrator is towards the end waking from his nightmare, and he decides, he chooses. I quote this final, beautiful paragraph from this beautiful novel......
All my life I had not chosen, had not decided. now I am making a decision. I choose life. I shall live because there are a few people I want to stay with for the the longest possible time and because I have duties to discharge. It is not my concern whether or not life has meaning. If I am unable to forgive, then I shall forget.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Stalker
Stalker, to put it simply, is the best movie ever made. It sounds like a tall claim, I know. However, if we look at it dispassionately, we realize that Stalker is more than a movie, it is a minefield of cinematic excellence, exploding when we least expect and rewarding on every new viewing.
Andrei Tarkovsky needs no introduction. Son of the Poet Arseni Tarkovsky, Tarkovsky made immortal movies in a mortal world, though amusingly this movie was shot twice, as the first original prints were lost in a mysterious fire. The second effort drained everyone, and it is a tribute to his grit, imagination and his entire cast.
What do we expect from a movie? Entertainment, passing a vacant hour or so, debate on crime, politics, social imagery? How relevant is an environmental issue to a man in spiritual torment or to people who have chosen to choose and oppose? What use drama, stories, immaterial plots of suburban housewives, infedility, war angst, remorse after killing people, emotional tripe for holocausts when new holocausts are being perpetrated every day? What use watching absurdism and existentialism on a screen, why allow ourselves to be sermonized, to be prepared, to be made malleable for propagandist emotional nonsense?
We need the stalker, in every sense, in every measure for cinema to flourish in our minds, for real spiritual metaphysics to bloom in our lives, for cinema to enhance and not impinge on our sensibilities, not drag us into the morass of cinematic illusions. Stalker brings into our ken not just technical excellence but spiritual cinema, food for lesser Gods and tormented mortals.
In a setting described as tranquil and desolate and peaceful and isolated, I watched Stalker again for perhaps the sixth time. Each new viewing of stalker rewards one with fresh insights into the complex imagery of this movie, and leaves one feeling emboldened to face one's demons.
Two men, a writer searching for inspiration and a physicist searching for empirical truth, employ a man, simply called the Stalker to lead them into an area called the Zone, where there is a room that grants one any conceivable wish. After reaching there, he shows and guides them to this room, with restrictions on how to actually get there, following certain rituals that the two men find baffling. They reach the room and the writer decides against wishing anything leaving the physicist wanting to blow up the entire zone and the Stalker aghast, dumbfounded and broken at their empty eyes and lack of faith. This is the bare story and seems quite simple. However, into this tapestry is woven an intricate pattern of illusions, allusions, religious imagery, symbolism, and metaphysical allegory.
Throwing the nuts
The stalker allows the two men to look for the room in the zone only by following a certain path that is free from danger, for one cannot offend the zone. The zone, the stalker warns is not for casual strolls, for it can punish if offended. The path is made safe by the nut throwing ritual, tied to a bandage, signifying safety. The procedure seems so medieval, so bizarre that from the point of view of the two men, the stalker could be insane. However, his warnings ring true for their is surreptitious fear in the zone where flowers don't smell, where damaged tanks and armoured cars lie broken covered with overgrown vegetation.
Tunnel scene
The tunnel scene is a heart-stopper, a cinematic rarity, a sequence that leaves one rattled and dumb, in mortal terror, but then all quest is uncertain, all search is madness. The tunnel has to be traversed for there is no easy path to the room, no short cuts. The harder the path, the reward is more, the benefits better. There is no scene in any cinema like the tunnel scene and I am not being flippant. The tunnel seemingly too long and narrow, goes more than into the room, it goes into our psyche's where fear lurks, where unfaith and faith jostle.
Stalker is a movie about the quest for hope and God, the most important question in all ages, about the absence of faith, about spiritual cogitations, about mental fatigue, about not knowing and believing. Mercifully it does not elevate faith or atheism into a glorious ideal but elevates search, the hunt, the quest for faith into a cinematic discourse as never sen before. Bergman's The Seventh Seal seems a child's attempt in a similar vein, though Bergman was a great director.
Stalker could only have been made in Russian by a Russian for Russia is in the East and the intense religious nature of this movie cannot be replicated in Western Europe and will never be achieved by Hollywood. The discourses, soliliquies, debates between the principal characters are a joy to watch and Arseni Tarkovsky's poems add and enhance the fervour and the aura of this movie. Alexander Kajdanovsky, who played the Stalker has succeeded in portraying the mystic fervour of a religious guide, not zealous prejudice or fanatic fascism but a spiritual torment, such as is commonly reported to be the experience of Muslim Sufi's or hermetic Sadhus. His performance elevates the art of acting to heights that can be achieved by only a few.
Stalker stays with you, with its iconic imagery, its haunting performances, its poetry, its drama, its fear, its beauty. Regarding the dog in this movie, I don't know why but I have a hunch.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
The Book Of Franza: Ingeborg Bachmann
I must acknowledge that this post is not an attempt to write a critique of this short novella but an attempt to understand it, and in the process perhaps experience the poetry of words.
This is the first Bachmann novel that I have read and I am yet to decide where to classify it, for the style is neither excessively poetic nor mundanely dull, but a mixture of what I now feel are thoughts, fragments written on paper, elements of existence, without a a priori reflection. Just like how thoughts occur to us everyday, every single moment of our existence. The fascinating mix of memory and desire, regret and pain.
It is not possible for a reader without tools to understand any writer, any language without knowing the dominant, the consensual reality of that or any culture or any reality. Thus, perhaps after reading this novel or while reading it, I was wondering whether it is realistic to read a translation of Bachmann or any other writer? However, because we must, I feel there will be a permanent gap in my approach towards translated literature and this book is no exception.
Since there are different undercurrents running around the story of Franza, we must try to seek the answers from them. There is the large shadow of Nazi persecution, the haplessness of its victims to which, in a way that seems natural and logical to Bachmann, the supposed persecution of Franza is weaved. The narrator , alternating between what I thought was Franza and the other, equates the same persecution with the atrocities suffered by the Egyptians at the hands of the Whites, including the oppression of the Mummies by the whites too. There are references to historical events like the Suez Canal war, as if these are important elements to understand Franza's sickness. The events in Franza's childhood are clues to her mental state later on, her first love with whom she calls the Sire, perhaps her love for Martin, her brother, love incestuous.
There are heart warming times for me in this novel, things that happen that we don't even mention, out of fear. The young Franza kisses the sire as he drives away and then we have this beautiful passage........With that, Franza's first love came to an end, and she remained behind, with no afterglow, only dazed, the glow flickering out within her, as she stood amid the dust cloud that floated behind.......... And years later when she meets her sire and he doesn't recognize her, Franza remembers........ And no one stood anymore at the edge of a road, somewhere in Europe, feeling as if she would collapse while trembling, or simply stand there forever in a cloud of dust, as the four tanks rolled on- which could not be seen.
I am a prime example of post traumatic stress, Franza tells us, for there is no summer day upon which a noxious shower of rain does not fall, no night during which I am not obsessed, no forgetfulness that is not buried in freudian slips and meaningless babble. And later on, suddenly, Franza asks..........Why does one only refer to fascism when it has to do with opinions or blatant acts? The middle portion of the book finds Franza attempting to explain her married life with the Professor in disjointed fragments, images, words, hints. This is a difficult read as we are in and out of her past, present, her desires, her willingness to die, allusions, memories, desires, memories. Franza feels that she is a Papuan, robbed.
And then Bachmann writes.........The puzzle of my days is more important than the puzzle of my dreams, for you should understand that there is no dream puzzle, but rather the puzzle itself, the puzzle of days, the undetectable chaos of reality........ Then she writes about fear, how it cannot be charted, measured by a cardiogram. We reach the final denouement near the pyramids and then Franza dies, which one expects or even suspects. The book ends as if you expect it to tell you more, for we have just seen Franza only from the outside, without understanding her. But is not that what franza Fells us in the beginning, that it is not possible to understand anything, anyone?
The book of Franza is a difficult novel to understand and even read in one attempt, for there are techniques that the writer uses which surprise us and come upon us suddenly. How are we expected to know about Franza anyway? How can we actually even consider this attempt at understanding? I felt that there is a suppressed poetry inside this book, a poetry that sometimes seems broken, disjointed, I guess deliberately...........There is talk of fascism in relations but perhaps one must understand this from the point of view of both men and women, for fascism is not the prerogative of men alone.
This is a well written, sometimes beautifully written novel that is possible to understand only if we allow ourselves no mercy, for there are images in here that are universal, parting and heartbreak, treachery, sexual jealousy and the inability to express, to understand, to convey, to communicate, to reflect maybe but an inability to convey that reflection, that understanding. There is sufficient politics too, hints of oppression, of colonial sadism, sadistic oppression of the dead too, interwoven perhaps with Bachmann's vision of a world dominated by sadistic men, cruel husbands, loss and failure of love, misery in togetherness or just a pure impossibility in existing together.
I will end by these beautiful few lines from The Book of Franza.
You have to come down to the Nile with me some night. An enigma. During a night on the Nile, which I shall never experience, during a night on the Nile when there are no village lamps but rather the stars. On the Nile, the upper Nile. Far away from the shadowy years during which no stars hung in my mouth.....
This is the first Bachmann novel that I have read and I am yet to decide where to classify it, for the style is neither excessively poetic nor mundanely dull, but a mixture of what I now feel are thoughts, fragments written on paper, elements of existence, without a a priori reflection. Just like how thoughts occur to us everyday, every single moment of our existence. The fascinating mix of memory and desire, regret and pain.
It is not possible for a reader without tools to understand any writer, any language without knowing the dominant, the consensual reality of that or any culture or any reality. Thus, perhaps after reading this novel or while reading it, I was wondering whether it is realistic to read a translation of Bachmann or any other writer? However, because we must, I feel there will be a permanent gap in my approach towards translated literature and this book is no exception.
Since there are different undercurrents running around the story of Franza, we must try to seek the answers from them. There is the large shadow of Nazi persecution, the haplessness of its victims to which, in a way that seems natural and logical to Bachmann, the supposed persecution of Franza is weaved. The narrator , alternating between what I thought was Franza and the other, equates the same persecution with the atrocities suffered by the Egyptians at the hands of the Whites, including the oppression of the Mummies by the whites too. There are references to historical events like the Suez Canal war, as if these are important elements to understand Franza's sickness. The events in Franza's childhood are clues to her mental state later on, her first love with whom she calls the Sire, perhaps her love for Martin, her brother, love incestuous.
There are heart warming times for me in this novel, things that happen that we don't even mention, out of fear. The young Franza kisses the sire as he drives away and then we have this beautiful passage........With that, Franza's first love came to an end, and she remained behind, with no afterglow, only dazed, the glow flickering out within her, as she stood amid the dust cloud that floated behind.......... And years later when she meets her sire and he doesn't recognize her, Franza remembers........ And no one stood anymore at the edge of a road, somewhere in Europe, feeling as if she would collapse while trembling, or simply stand there forever in a cloud of dust, as the four tanks rolled on- which could not be seen.
I am a prime example of post traumatic stress, Franza tells us, for there is no summer day upon which a noxious shower of rain does not fall, no night during which I am not obsessed, no forgetfulness that is not buried in freudian slips and meaningless babble. And later on, suddenly, Franza asks..........Why does one only refer to fascism when it has to do with opinions or blatant acts? The middle portion of the book finds Franza attempting to explain her married life with the Professor in disjointed fragments, images, words, hints. This is a difficult read as we are in and out of her past, present, her desires, her willingness to die, allusions, memories, desires, memories. Franza feels that she is a Papuan, robbed.
And then Bachmann writes.........The puzzle of my days is more important than the puzzle of my dreams, for you should understand that there is no dream puzzle, but rather the puzzle itself, the puzzle of days, the undetectable chaos of reality........ Then she writes about fear, how it cannot be charted, measured by a cardiogram. We reach the final denouement near the pyramids and then Franza dies, which one expects or even suspects. The book ends as if you expect it to tell you more, for we have just seen Franza only from the outside, without understanding her. But is not that what franza Fells us in the beginning, that it is not possible to understand anything, anyone?
The book of Franza is a difficult novel to understand and even read in one attempt, for there are techniques that the writer uses which surprise us and come upon us suddenly. How are we expected to know about Franza anyway? How can we actually even consider this attempt at understanding? I felt that there is a suppressed poetry inside this book, a poetry that sometimes seems broken, disjointed, I guess deliberately...........There is talk of fascism in relations but perhaps one must understand this from the point of view of both men and women, for fascism is not the prerogative of men alone.
This is a well written, sometimes beautifully written novel that is possible to understand only if we allow ourselves no mercy, for there are images in here that are universal, parting and heartbreak, treachery, sexual jealousy and the inability to express, to understand, to convey, to communicate, to reflect maybe but an inability to convey that reflection, that understanding. There is sufficient politics too, hints of oppression, of colonial sadism, sadistic oppression of the dead too, interwoven perhaps with Bachmann's vision of a world dominated by sadistic men, cruel husbands, loss and failure of love, misery in togetherness or just a pure impossibility in existing together.
I will end by these beautiful few lines from The Book of Franza.
You have to come down to the Nile with me some night. An enigma. During a night on the Nile, which I shall never experience, during a night on the Nile when there are no village lamps but rather the stars. On the Nile, the upper Nile. Far away from the shadowy years during which no stars hung in my mouth.....
Friday, July 20, 2007
This Night
This familiar night is here again,
after many days and many nights,
after many rains in midsummer wetness,
after another summer that just finished
even before it began.
I must say, I must say how I had waited
for that hour of infinite meeting, besides a dusty road
under a dark sky, in a place that was my own.
Where summers and winters were equally welcome,
equally romantic, equal peace.
And this music, Fingal's Cave, alien to my unmusical ears,
like a town bereft of rain, some old unsheltered woman
disowned by all, counting the stars against a stony sky
and losing it all, all again. This unmusic is my night,
and I hear it despite all this rain.
This is a different night, I must admit, night of poison,
of slow sleep. This pain, not pain is only memory,
only surmise, only regret, only deep regret.
This is the pain of having waited for and having lost,
a moment to rub deep into my eyes the faces of love.
after many days and many nights,
after many rains in midsummer wetness,
after another summer that just finished
even before it began.
I must say, I must say how I had waited
for that hour of infinite meeting, besides a dusty road
under a dark sky, in a place that was my own.
Where summers and winters were equally welcome,
equally romantic, equal peace.
And this music, Fingal's Cave, alien to my unmusical ears,
like a town bereft of rain, some old unsheltered woman
disowned by all, counting the stars against a stony sky
and losing it all, all again. This unmusic is my night,
and I hear it despite all this rain.
This is a different night, I must admit, night of poison,
of slow sleep. This pain, not pain is only memory,
only surmise, only regret, only deep regret.
This is the pain of having waited for and having lost,
a moment to rub deep into my eyes the faces of love.
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
On Owning Books
Buying and reading books are different activities but might seem similar. Buying and owning books are however entirely different. To buy a book, leaf through it, think and then buy it is one of the most pleasurable things to do. And perhaps not buying one, the lingering doubts that remain, the nagging images of the book covers in one's mind, what delights.... ...However, I must admit that I am a cover fetishist and I look unfavourably at a book that doesn't inspire thought, that doesn't seem odd or mysterious. A proven masterpiece fails to impress me if the cover is dull. An example being The Man Without Qualities, by Picador, front cover dull. One of my all time favourite front covers is Pale Fire, by Penguin amongst so many others. I know it sounds ridiculous but then some obsessions are.
Owning books, keeping them, treasuring them is a jealous activity. All reading is jealous, frantic and obsessional. I look at my books, these novels and poems, these unread philosophies as somewhat as my own peripheral existence, a kind of out of body, detached essence of my own being, and that is not being superfluous. Over the years, I have got out of the habit of borrowing books from a library. I forget to return the books in time, it is embarrassing, besides paying needless fines. I cannot read a book now if it is not mine. I must own it, it should be mine. It lingers in my hands as I touch it, I touch it for the effect of owning it, knowing that it is mine. This is not a book fetish, I must reassure.
Reading books is an aesthetic activity as well. It is nocturnal, and pleasurable usually in winter, when it rains, when my childhood snows accumulate. Outside the fresh hush of fallen snow, the hesitant crepitus of trodding feet on snow, or the wind at night, during long winter nights, pages transformed and reflected outside, panthers and monsters leaping out, some Dostyevsky, some other story. Summertime reading is not my forte but I try. I have never been able to read Dostyevsky in summer. I have read Genet, but it seems winter then.
Owning books is a kind of paranoia, a deep sense of disaffection, a helpless feeling in a transitory world. One can go back and think of times when a particular novel or philosophy meant so much. It brings back visceral memories sometimes, of people and times, of seasons and nights, for reading is generally a nocturnal activity. There are names and loves etched on familiar books, people associated who only visit us now in bizarre dreams. Old books, on shelves, near and in distant familiarities, even if dusty have an aura of memory and desire, my usual memory, my usual thwarted desire.
One can only, I can only give away my books to people who really care for the indiscreet and secret charm of the written word, to people who share this awful desire to read, to feed on ideas, the black white love of the written page. I don't usually share books out of miserliness, but when I do, I pray for the well being of these pages, usually paperbound. There are some crafty readers who are well read but don't ever buy a book. How can one savour a passage, a poem and not actually have it nearby? Does one have to part with all loves? Is seperation needed?
I can see my Pasolini Poems now, out in the corner, stacked amongst my other afflictions. I know there is a poem inside called Prayer To My Mother that I can read again, next to The Conference Of Birds by Attar that I must read. These stones don't sleep at night or rest during the day. They wait for me, when I am tired, unsure and not sure of anything.
Owning books, keeping them, treasuring them is a jealous activity. All reading is jealous, frantic and obsessional. I look at my books, these novels and poems, these unread philosophies as somewhat as my own peripheral existence, a kind of out of body, detached essence of my own being, and that is not being superfluous. Over the years, I have got out of the habit of borrowing books from a library. I forget to return the books in time, it is embarrassing, besides paying needless fines. I cannot read a book now if it is not mine. I must own it, it should be mine. It lingers in my hands as I touch it, I touch it for the effect of owning it, knowing that it is mine. This is not a book fetish, I must reassure.
Reading books is an aesthetic activity as well. It is nocturnal, and pleasurable usually in winter, when it rains, when my childhood snows accumulate. Outside the fresh hush of fallen snow, the hesitant crepitus of trodding feet on snow, or the wind at night, during long winter nights, pages transformed and reflected outside, panthers and monsters leaping out, some Dostyevsky, some other story. Summertime reading is not my forte but I try. I have never been able to read Dostyevsky in summer. I have read Genet, but it seems winter then.
Owning books is a kind of paranoia, a deep sense of disaffection, a helpless feeling in a transitory world. One can go back and think of times when a particular novel or philosophy meant so much. It brings back visceral memories sometimes, of people and times, of seasons and nights, for reading is generally a nocturnal activity. There are names and loves etched on familiar books, people associated who only visit us now in bizarre dreams. Old books, on shelves, near and in distant familiarities, even if dusty have an aura of memory and desire, my usual memory, my usual thwarted desire.
One can only, I can only give away my books to people who really care for the indiscreet and secret charm of the written word, to people who share this awful desire to read, to feed on ideas, the black white love of the written page. I don't usually share books out of miserliness, but when I do, I pray for the well being of these pages, usually paperbound. There are some crafty readers who are well read but don't ever buy a book. How can one savour a passage, a poem and not actually have it nearby? Does one have to part with all loves? Is seperation needed?
I can see my Pasolini Poems now, out in the corner, stacked amongst my other afflictions. I know there is a poem inside called Prayer To My Mother that I can read again, next to The Conference Of Birds by Attar that I must read. These stones don't sleep at night or rest during the day. They wait for me, when I am tired, unsure and not sure of anything.
Monday, July 02, 2007
Thomas Bernhard's Yes : Study In Antistudy
Thomas Bernhard's short novel Yes is another example of his ability to write the same story, recounted in a narrative that is neither less rhetorical nor less repititive as some of the previous works I have read so far. If this narration is to be considered a case study in depression, then it is well documented. At the same time, the over riding concerns of his tirades are as usual well written and sometimes too well.
The narrator , like his usual one, lives in isolation, forced on himself in a remote village. We are told that he is working on a scientific study, on antibodies. Here he comes into contact, after self imposed isolation of some months with a Swiss man and his Persian woman friend at the house of his friend Moritz. The meeting causes a refreshment of my hearing and of my whole mental state, by the manner of her speaking and thinking, which logically, gave rise to speech from thought and thought from speech. The preceding contactlessness, he tells us had progressively developed into a mental sickness. Meeting the Persian woman is just the right thing the narrator wants. He attempts to meet her at the local inn. He finds she is not ready. Women, no matter what kind, are never ready at any definite agreed time. They go out later for a walk in the nearby larch-wood. He realizes instantly that she is a person of intellect.
We are then told in some detail about the narrator's mental sickness, as he calls it, initially sporadic symptoms of illness and then finally as an illness and indeed as a severe illness. The arrival of the couple causes an attenuation of my state of sickness, naturally not a cure but a suspension....He tells us then that with each passing attack the illness had become worse causing him to feel powerless and helpless, partially with an inability to work, caused by my sickness and the frightful political conditions in our country and Europe had triggered this catastrophe as political conditions had deteriorated. He finds everything dictatorial, brutal and vile. We are then told of his abiding admiration for The world as will and idea and for Schumann and how he finds the Persian woman also admiring schumann.
So long as we have but a single person near us with whomwe can talk ultimately about everything we can hold out, otherwise we cannot. Meeting the Persian woman liberates him, as he suddenly decides to get outside and run away. It causes a clearing of my mind and head. Existence seems possible again. I was compelled not to reflect on myself. This is all atrributed to the Persian woman, as he informs us that he had missed a foreign language person all his life. For with the Persian it was possible to have a philosophical conversation. The present being no age for philosophy and there being no contemporary philosopher, he finds the Persian as philosophizing. On the second walk with her, he describes it as musical, philosophy being music, music philosophy.
The story ends in tragedy though usually Bernhard's stories start with one. We are briefly told of the possible reasons or there are hints here and there. There is a house to be built, there always is in Bernhard, and there is this woman, this time exotic, foreign language and Persian. There is no obvious incest, I am not sure if two walks in the larch wood constitute adultery. The woman has made a sacrifice for her Swiss friend and in fact given up everything. However, Bernhard says.....for the asian female it is no more than natural that she subordinates and sacrifices to the male totally and in the most unreserved manner. that sacrifice ensures to her a meaning to her life. I am not sure how Bernhard comes up with such a sweeping statement and how many Asian women he knew. There is somewhat a slight prejudging attitude here, even though he talks of her as regenerating.
I find Yes as funny as his other novels. The themes are depressing and yet we find them strangely funny. I think the narrator is not only depressed but also paranoid but then most of Bernhard's narrators are. The novel is well written, giving us expressions like work-prison and existential prison, and the quality of his ranting, which I find strangely musical is relentless. The fact that there are no philosophers left might reflect his admiration for Wittgenstein and we find the same obsessive rants against Austria which perhaps as a defense, might serve as his hidden love for his country. The narrator has political views and whether he is more ill than he actually lets us know is anybody's guess. The strangeness of this music grows on one, and I don't regret reading him.
The narrator , like his usual one, lives in isolation, forced on himself in a remote village. We are told that he is working on a scientific study, on antibodies. Here he comes into contact, after self imposed isolation of some months with a Swiss man and his Persian woman friend at the house of his friend Moritz. The meeting causes a refreshment of my hearing and of my whole mental state, by the manner of her speaking and thinking, which logically, gave rise to speech from thought and thought from speech. The preceding contactlessness, he tells us had progressively developed into a mental sickness. Meeting the Persian woman is just the right thing the narrator wants. He attempts to meet her at the local inn. He finds she is not ready. Women, no matter what kind, are never ready at any definite agreed time. They go out later for a walk in the nearby larch-wood. He realizes instantly that she is a person of intellect.
We are then told in some detail about the narrator's mental sickness, as he calls it, initially sporadic symptoms of illness and then finally as an illness and indeed as a severe illness. The arrival of the couple causes an attenuation of my state of sickness, naturally not a cure but a suspension....He tells us then that with each passing attack the illness had become worse causing him to feel powerless and helpless, partially with an inability to work, caused by my sickness and the frightful political conditions in our country and Europe had triggered this catastrophe as political conditions had deteriorated. He finds everything dictatorial, brutal and vile. We are then told of his abiding admiration for The world as will and idea and for Schumann and how he finds the Persian woman also admiring schumann.
So long as we have but a single person near us with whomwe can talk ultimately about everything we can hold out, otherwise we cannot. Meeting the Persian woman liberates him, as he suddenly decides to get outside and run away. It causes a clearing of my mind and head. Existence seems possible again. I was compelled not to reflect on myself. This is all atrributed to the Persian woman, as he informs us that he had missed a foreign language person all his life. For with the Persian it was possible to have a philosophical conversation. The present being no age for philosophy and there being no contemporary philosopher, he finds the Persian as philosophizing. On the second walk with her, he describes it as musical, philosophy being music, music philosophy.
The story ends in tragedy though usually Bernhard's stories start with one. We are briefly told of the possible reasons or there are hints here and there. There is a house to be built, there always is in Bernhard, and there is this woman, this time exotic, foreign language and Persian. There is no obvious incest, I am not sure if two walks in the larch wood constitute adultery. The woman has made a sacrifice for her Swiss friend and in fact given up everything. However, Bernhard says.....for the asian female it is no more than natural that she subordinates and sacrifices to the male totally and in the most unreserved manner. that sacrifice ensures to her a meaning to her life. I am not sure how Bernhard comes up with such a sweeping statement and how many Asian women he knew. There is somewhat a slight prejudging attitude here, even though he talks of her as regenerating.
I find Yes as funny as his other novels. The themes are depressing and yet we find them strangely funny. I think the narrator is not only depressed but also paranoid but then most of Bernhard's narrators are. The novel is well written, giving us expressions like work-prison and existential prison, and the quality of his ranting, which I find strangely musical is relentless. The fact that there are no philosophers left might reflect his admiration for Wittgenstein and we find the same obsessive rants against Austria which perhaps as a defense, might serve as his hidden love for his country. The narrator has political views and whether he is more ill than he actually lets us know is anybody's guess. The strangeness of this music grows on one, and I don't regret reading him.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Melancholy, Again
The ability to write a new thing, an entirely new train of thought, a new idea, think about something else, something different, something else seems difficult. When we are almost complacent, half seduced by nature and half by this material world, we are reminded of our mortality and of those around us. It should not shock us but it does since we almost believe that death happens to others and not us, the most ignoble and unfortunate assaults on our mortal frames happen in medical text books to people unwittingly or to those who are in some way prone.
Hence this sadness and this melancholy again. This inability to write anything cheerful, different and wise. For true wisdom is outside lamentation and in acceptance, outside defiance and in fortitude. The same thought runs through these paragraphs whenever it suits me, thoughts of parting and meeting, of desire and memory. I thus naturally look for allies, for kind words and sullen prose, for sad poems. Sometimes one gets lucky and discovers The Loser and so on, because the great bulk of sad and not so cheerful reading has finished by now, leaving no trace however.
Yet I remember that I did not want to write about myself but about the uncertainty of being, the hilarious idea of trying to seek permanence and the helplessness of trying to communicate or help another kindred spirit, one in some agony and in distress. For words are useless when nights are long, poems worth nothing in desert suns, all philosophy child babble and heart's echoes songless when the spirit is mute.
Our mortality prevents the establishment of anything realistic and permanent. Words and people have piled up over the centuries and vanished. Culture and barbarism have seen eye to eye and reason has rubbed shoulder with ignorance. After winter, usually after a cold winter, the suffering earth has forgotten and welcomed spring and warmth as a natural friend, ignoring the myriad deaths that winter claimed. Then all that spring and summer do is to prepare for a torturous falling, a turning of colours, a failure of holding, a maturing, a call and a plea for winter and death.
Everything artistic and aesthetic and things barren and crude die in the way of death. How many brave and authentic thoughts and how many sad and tender expressions melt in its heat. We who linger outside the domain of words, outside the real realms of writing greatness too feel the papable sadness of this world.
Hence this sadness and this melancholy again. This inability to write anything cheerful, different and wise. For true wisdom is outside lamentation and in acceptance, outside defiance and in fortitude. The same thought runs through these paragraphs whenever it suits me, thoughts of parting and meeting, of desire and memory. I thus naturally look for allies, for kind words and sullen prose, for sad poems. Sometimes one gets lucky and discovers The Loser and so on, because the great bulk of sad and not so cheerful reading has finished by now, leaving no trace however.
Yet I remember that I did not want to write about myself but about the uncertainty of being, the hilarious idea of trying to seek permanence and the helplessness of trying to communicate or help another kindred spirit, one in some agony and in distress. For words are useless when nights are long, poems worth nothing in desert suns, all philosophy child babble and heart's echoes songless when the spirit is mute.
Our mortality prevents the establishment of anything realistic and permanent. Words and people have piled up over the centuries and vanished. Culture and barbarism have seen eye to eye and reason has rubbed shoulder with ignorance. After winter, usually after a cold winter, the suffering earth has forgotten and welcomed spring and warmth as a natural friend, ignoring the myriad deaths that winter claimed. Then all that spring and summer do is to prepare for a torturous falling, a turning of colours, a failure of holding, a maturing, a call and a plea for winter and death.
Everything artistic and aesthetic and things barren and crude die in the way of death. How many brave and authentic thoughts and how many sad and tender expressions melt in its heat. We who linger outside the domain of words, outside the real realms of writing greatness too feel the papable sadness of this world.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
The Dust Of Meeting
When we met
after many days and nights,
days and nights that had spread and hardened layers on my heart,
layers of seperation
in seperation,
after many days and nights when seperation stays in the eyes,
hard to drop off.
When we met after this black science had destroyed my essence,
the vitality of my humour, the lies of my reason,
I thought of the trigger that will appear soon,
that spawns nights and days of thoughtless despair,
hard to break from.
When we met after endless hours, struggling to look each other
in eyes that have published misery and made it a discipline,
a perfection in silence. After all, who dares to look at love?
Love that is hard, not easy, never asked for,
hard to name.
When we met surrounded by symbols of parting, at an airport
beside the car park, lifting my heavy heart into the boot of the car,
driving blindly down a road that leads to a willow,
and a magnolia, bright with flowers or sad with waiting,
hard to cut down.
We always part in the afternoon, besides a garden that we grew,
surrounded by hedges, by silence.
You never look at me and I always look back, hoping
that you might turn, hoping that I might turn back,
hard to leave.
after many days and nights,
days and nights that had spread and hardened layers on my heart,
layers of seperation
in seperation,
after many days and nights when seperation stays in the eyes,
hard to drop off.
When we met after this black science had destroyed my essence,
the vitality of my humour, the lies of my reason,
I thought of the trigger that will appear soon,
that spawns nights and days of thoughtless despair,
hard to break from.
When we met after endless hours, struggling to look each other
in eyes that have published misery and made it a discipline,
a perfection in silence. After all, who dares to look at love?
Love that is hard, not easy, never asked for,
hard to name.
When we met surrounded by symbols of parting, at an airport
beside the car park, lifting my heavy heart into the boot of the car,
driving blindly down a road that leads to a willow,
and a magnolia, bright with flowers or sad with waiting,
hard to cut down.
We always part in the afternoon, besides a garden that we grew,
surrounded by hedges, by silence.
You never look at me and I always look back, hoping
that you might turn, hoping that I might turn back,
hard to leave.
Monday, June 18, 2007
On Meeting A Dear Friend
Since I met a dear friend A.W recently, after nearly a decade, I have realized the impossibility of memory and the stupidity of desire. We met in a haze of sunshine, in a place previously familiar to us. Time has added its signs to us both and we quickly recognized these. It was not a new meeting but a continuation of the last one, only this time we did not talk about being acrobats. I have started my deterioration process long ago and I sensed so had he.
We did not suffer for lack of words, in fact prolixity was dancing its wings. We interrupted each other and suffered. Obviously we sat on a bench, in a garden formerly liked, looking at stones adored once in a world of hope and without cynicism. I remember now that I looked straight when I talked, shielding him from cigarette smoke which light breeze blows into faces. We did not remember old times because that was too tiring.
Time flew. We walked through corridors sometimes hated and mostly ignored. Faces had disappeared, the trees shrunk in the glow of a volatile sun of memories. We talked about present times, times of discontent, bright melancholy in different worlds, beyond different seas, across oceans that must be heaving. We surmised and perhaps lied too. Yet, I sensed it was the natural thing to do.
Things change. The awful sadness of time makes one grow old. Many other people have grown older and some are simply resigned to waiting and patience. We have left behind that time, a time when I thought only others lie to themselves, times of idealism, without disgust, when eyes shine, faces glow, mornings are warm.
Yes, we left then, I to collect those words and spread their sadness and think of more comfortably numb times. I told him about the deterioration process and how it must be continued. I remember the frantic speed of that meeting and the inevitable slow fast parting.
We did not suffer for lack of words, in fact prolixity was dancing its wings. We interrupted each other and suffered. Obviously we sat on a bench, in a garden formerly liked, looking at stones adored once in a world of hope and without cynicism. I remember now that I looked straight when I talked, shielding him from cigarette smoke which light breeze blows into faces. We did not remember old times because that was too tiring.
Time flew. We walked through corridors sometimes hated and mostly ignored. Faces had disappeared, the trees shrunk in the glow of a volatile sun of memories. We talked about present times, times of discontent, bright melancholy in different worlds, beyond different seas, across oceans that must be heaving. We surmised and perhaps lied too. Yet, I sensed it was the natural thing to do.
Things change. The awful sadness of time makes one grow old. Many other people have grown older and some are simply resigned to waiting and patience. We have left behind that time, a time when I thought only others lie to themselves, times of idealism, without disgust, when eyes shine, faces glow, mornings are warm.
Yes, we left then, I to collect those words and spread their sadness and think of more comfortably numb times. I told him about the deterioration process and how it must be continued. I remember the frantic speed of that meeting and the inevitable slow fast parting.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
The Melancholy Of Departure Lounges
Departure lounges at Airports and waiting areas at Train stations are symbols of oppression. One has parted and suffered, one has to part and suffer and the neon bright luminosity of these places sticks its poison in the system. People, all different, rush in and through these mazes and brightness, there is incessant and loud chatter, suffocating the one, who arguably, more sensitive or less adaptable, sits in a corner, revisiting memories, imagining the profound faces of love or the dismal colors of seperation.
This lament, lament as it is, is not for the happy traveller. The happy traveller travels bound by nothing, surrounded by sun even in winter. He or she travels for something, aided by the false and unreal reality of all travel. This man gloats in the sophistication of modern travel, inspite of its suffocation. Since there is a place, and since men can fly, one must get there, though the place visited is the same as the previous place.
But I am talking about the person who is travelling inspite of himself, beside himself, because he has to. The only colours he sees are of seperation and parting, memory and desire. He has seen it before and will see it again. This searing pain and sometimes lack of it is cause for pain. He has left behind himself and others, himself in others and others in himself. He has done that before because he does not know anything besides that.
Then at night, and after break of day, once the traveller has deposited his mortal materials around himself, redecorated his so-called reason with the illusion of words and convinced himself that that parting was an illusion, he settles down with a pen and a blank sheet of paper. He must write something, to help him to help him. But the pen has broken, the ink has dried and the blank piece of paper is still blank.
This lament, lament as it is, is not for the happy traveller. The happy traveller travels bound by nothing, surrounded by sun even in winter. He or she travels for something, aided by the false and unreal reality of all travel. This man gloats in the sophistication of modern travel, inspite of its suffocation. Since there is a place, and since men can fly, one must get there, though the place visited is the same as the previous place.
But I am talking about the person who is travelling inspite of himself, beside himself, because he has to. The only colours he sees are of seperation and parting, memory and desire. He has seen it before and will see it again. This searing pain and sometimes lack of it is cause for pain. He has left behind himself and others, himself in others and others in himself. He has done that before because he does not know anything besides that.
Then at night, and after break of day, once the traveller has deposited his mortal materials around himself, redecorated his so-called reason with the illusion of words and convinced himself that that parting was an illusion, he settles down with a pen and a blank sheet of paper. He must write something, to help him to help him. But the pen has broken, the ink has dried and the blank piece of paper is still blank.
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Weekend Tryst With Words
Because some colours are generally dull by nature and much music odious, one struggles to struggle away from the relentless dullness that such time evokes. However, rainbows and the illusions they give disappear as soon as sighted. Yet, frail as human nature is and unlearning that goes on everytime one learns something, one lingers on the fringes of desperate vitalities, of some warm music.
Because of the generosity of a dear friend, JR , a kind of socratic atmosphere was recently recreated, a world of supposition, starting with serendipity and ending on a windswept morning, against the promise of a Tarkovskyan journey.
Words always exist on their own. They however live in a shadow world, without meaning. Voices give them texture, emotions make them more generous, the world seems humane, life becomes worth living. However, what does this existence convey apart from silent solitude, hushed steps, music heard alone, words whispered in vain, unambitious soliloquies, Hamlet in chains. It is the emotion of feelings, the rush of expression, of shared expression that makes one moment more vital than the next. And because a certain hush must be suppressed, a desperate vitality chained, a certain fire lit and another stamped out, we assemble like suicidal moths around a hot flame, burning with what love left us with.
I along with similiar survivors, dwelled on such ethereal nights recently, surrounded by logical, poetic, leftist, centrist, rational, romantic and such other thoughts, interpersed with the glow that a certain affinity gives, a kind kindred sense of belonging.
And like what life does usually, such hours too ended, after ideas and thoughts were seemingly rattled and given a shape that those hours decided was suitable.
Such is life. Everytime one thinks one's deterioration process is in temporary suspension, it begins again. A new kind of fanaticism begins, a word radicalism. Like the writer in Stalker, it is A prim , B prim C prim. And like Bernhard, it is just being a discussion fanatic.
One gets up from such fond burning, tired but enriched. A new solitude has been born. A new memory must dance. More laughter, fresh insight, same heartache, same pain.
Yet, one's deterioration process must never cease.
Because of the generosity of a dear friend, JR , a kind of socratic atmosphere was recently recreated, a world of supposition, starting with serendipity and ending on a windswept morning, against the promise of a Tarkovskyan journey.
Words always exist on their own. They however live in a shadow world, without meaning. Voices give them texture, emotions make them more generous, the world seems humane, life becomes worth living. However, what does this existence convey apart from silent solitude, hushed steps, music heard alone, words whispered in vain, unambitious soliloquies, Hamlet in chains. It is the emotion of feelings, the rush of expression, of shared expression that makes one moment more vital than the next. And because a certain hush must be suppressed, a desperate vitality chained, a certain fire lit and another stamped out, we assemble like suicidal moths around a hot flame, burning with what love left us with.
I along with similiar survivors, dwelled on such ethereal nights recently, surrounded by logical, poetic, leftist, centrist, rational, romantic and such other thoughts, interpersed with the glow that a certain affinity gives, a kind kindred sense of belonging.
And like what life does usually, such hours too ended, after ideas and thoughts were seemingly rattled and given a shape that those hours decided was suitable.
Such is life. Everytime one thinks one's deterioration process is in temporary suspension, it begins again. A new kind of fanaticism begins, a word radicalism. Like the writer in Stalker, it is A prim , B prim C prim. And like Bernhard, it is just being a discussion fanatic.
One gets up from such fond burning, tired but enriched. A new solitude has been born. A new memory must dance. More laughter, fresh insight, same heartache, same pain.
Yet, one's deterioration process must never cease.
Friday, May 04, 2007
Chains And Ties
There are chains that tie us
with chains to chains and ties,
to things that have hooks, to places
and people with chains that tie us
with chains and ties.
Sometimes, when it is breezy and often when it is
warm, I wonder if I could untie myself
of these chains and ties, of these ties
that tie me to things and people
with chains and ties.
Because I know, deep inside of a swing that swings
from memory to despair, because with each pull
at these chains that tie, the ties get more chained
and tied, I let go and see myself
with chains and ties.
One more sunset, more afternoons, new breezes
and there are still spectres of further onslaughts,
of more memory and less reality, of real memories,
of new chains and ties that tie me to things and people
with chains and ties.
with chains to chains and ties,
to things that have hooks, to places
and people with chains that tie us
with chains and ties.
Sometimes, when it is breezy and often when it is
warm, I wonder if I could untie myself
of these chains and ties, of these ties
that tie me to things and people
with chains and ties.
Because I know, deep inside of a swing that swings
from memory to despair, because with each pull
at these chains that tie, the ties get more chained
and tied, I let go and see myself
with chains and ties.
One more sunset, more afternoons, new breezes
and there are still spectres of further onslaughts,
of more memory and less reality, of real memories,
of new chains and ties that tie me to things and people
with chains and ties.
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