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The Confoederatio, in which limits - the banks
of sunny Lake Geneva - I had the honour to stay for a year, has been revisited
by misfortune recently. The state-of-the-art airline drowned, went under or, in
our terminology of late, became a Untergeher. The Gotthard Tunnel smoked and
took more lives than was necessary to feed us with discomfort. Finally a quite
American, but not European and certainly not Swiss drama of a maniac going nuts
and performing a disastrous shootout in Aargau, gave this tiny neutral jewel the
rest. And now his Excellence, ambassador of the Swiss Ambassy in Berlin,
with his sexy Texan wife gets called back to Switzerland to prevent the latter
of becoming a soap opera topic. So, Elmer, it is biting irony to start a post
with "Vale Confoederatio Helvetica". How embarrassing.
Yes, Böll's
clown. What was his name - Hans Schnier? And his girl, Marie? I urge you to come
to Cologne so I can make you look 'n feel the biting satire of the
nutshell-Cologne-life that stands for the catholic culture in general (that's
why Marie is called Marie) which Böll has on his agenda. The fact that Schnier
couldn't make it in the society of winners is less a story about the despair of
an artist who witnesses his own failure, but more a satire about the individual
personality loosing against the opportunist winners. It is not so much a
psychological study as rather a commedy of manners.
If there is an author
who comes close to Bernhads concept of consciousness about one's Untergang, then
I would put it the other way round and say Bernhard comes close to
Beckett.
My Euro account increases at about another two
cents.
Jost
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, April 11, 2002 2:33
PM
Subject: stunned by one's own
mediocrity
Vale
Conf?deratio Helvetica!
I wasn't really suggesting Bernhard
stole the plot from Schaffer. Just rather that this "stunned by one's own
mediocrity" musical plot has been treated before in modern literature, Berhard
fails to win the Originality Prize.
Do you like Böll? When he won The Prize, I was working in a
bookstore and so I stole a copy of "The Clown," not expecting very much,
between the translation and me being a dumb American. I was astonished. A
tremendously powerful, courageous book that "pulls no punches" (does that
translate well?).
Hey, I am doing your Europe another
favor and taking my wife to .NL to see the Floriade (big once-every-ten-years
flower extravaganzaloopa) 19-23 April. I will face to the east and yodel at
you. This time I will finally find and see Spinoza's House!
Bob
Elmer Elevator's Discount
Prep:
hello list Well ... first
... as long as Jost says that there is no German word "Untergeher," then I
like my translation better. I am copyrighting
it.
the noun
does not exist. but there is a verb called "untergehen" which simply means
"to drown" or "going under". therefore the title of the book can
roughly be translatet as The Drowning Man"
The plot sounds as if it was nicely lifted from "Amadeus." The
instant Solieri hears Mozart perform, he realizes for the first time in
his life that he (Solieri) is mediocre and condemned to be mediocre
forever. (It gets worse when Constanz shows him some of Mozart's scores
and tells Solieri he just writes them out once, he never revises.) Solieri
also is enraged to realize that God has chosen this vulgar, hedonistic
creature to make music through.
If I am correct then
Bernhard had the idea around the time of GG's untimely death so there is
only a small relation to the plot of amadeus Am I going to like this novel? This
doesn't sound like the Feel-Good Hit of the Season to
me.
Nah, definetly not. It is a
very difficult read, It is very hard to follow the plot (if one can call
it a plot anyway), the text has almost no paragraphs and the
language/attitude ist the sort of post-war post-1968 intellectual
blah-blah not uncommon to german intellectuals of the
time.
I also have to mention that
there are a few paralells between GG and Bernhard. Both of them were quite
eccentric (Bernard's landlord recalls that at one time in 1972 he made an
attempt to stage his funeral, amongst other things) and with age bernhard,
like gould, tetreated from society.
give it a read anyway
rgds
pat
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