Jump to Introduction + Chronology
Jump back to Previous: Doctor Faustus - chapter XX-XXI
[The wedding of Adrian’s sister, Ursula, is celebrated back in Buchel, his home town. The future children of this couple are mentioned including the youngest, Nepomuk by name, who we are told will feature in our story at the end.] p186 Adrian and I took a walk that afternoon to the Cow Trough and up Mount Zion. We needed to talk over the text of Love’s Labour’s Lost, which I had undertaken [translation into German] and about which we had already had much discussion and correspondence...
He was visibly glad to get away from the wedding party and out of doors. The cloud over his eyes showed that he was suffering from headache. It had been odd, in church and at the table, to see the same sign in his father too... [funny that Mann gets the inherited nature of this right while jumping on the syphilitic-Nietzsche bandwagon. Of course that does work well for his plot purpose here while also reinforcing his own beliefs about disease and art.]
p186 ...He spoke particularly of the favourable impression that Ursel’s betrothed, now her husband, had made upon him.
“Good eyes,” he said. “Good stock, a sound, clean, honest man. He could court her, look at her to desire her, covet her as a Christian wife, as we theologians say with justified pride at swindling the Devil out of the carnal concomitant and making a sacrament of it, the sacrament of Christian marriage. Very droll, really, this turning the natural and sinful into the sacrosanct just by putting in the word Christian -- by which it is not fundamentally altered. But one has to admit that the domestication of sex, which is evil by nature, into Christian marriage was a clever makeshift.”
p187 “I do not like,” I replied, “to have you make over the natural to evil. Humanism, old and new, considers that an aspersion on the sources of life.”
“My dear chap, there is not much there to asperse.”
“One ends, I said undeterred, “by denying the works of God; one becomes the advocate of nothing. Who believes in the Devil, already belongs to him.”
He gave his short laugh.
“You never understand a joke. I spoke as a theologian and so necessarily like a theologian.” ...
“And they twain shall be one flesh,” he began again: “Is it not a curious blessing? Pastor Schroder, thank God, spared himself that quotation. In the presence of the bridal pair it is rather painful to hear. But it is only too well meant, and precisely what I mean by domestication. Obviously the element of sin, of sensuality, of evil lust altogether, is conjured away out of marriage -- for lust is certainly only in flesh of two different kinds, not in one, and that they are to be one flesh is accordingly soothing but nonsensical. On the other hand, one cannot wonder enough that one flesh has lust for another; it is a phenomenon -- well, yes, the entirely exceptional phenomenon of love. Of course, love and sensuality are not to be separated. One best absolves love from the reproach of sensuality by identifying the love element in sensuality itself. The lust after strange flesh means a conquest of previously existing resistances, based on the strangeness of I and You, your own and the other person’s. The flesh -- to keep the Christian terminology -- is normally inoffensive to itself only. With another’s it will have nothing to do. Now, if all at once the strange flesh become the object of desire and lust, then the relation of the I and the You is altered in a way for which sensuality is only an empty word. No, one cannot get along without the concept of love, even when ostensibly there is nothing spiritual in play. Every sensual act means tenderness, it is a give and take of desire, happiness through making happy, a manifestation of love. ‘One flesh’ have lovers never been; and the prescription would drive love along with lust out of marriage.” [If Adrian wooed his Esmeralda in this wise I hope she charged him extra.]
p188 I was peculiarly upset and bewildered by his words and took care not to look at him... he had never come out of himself like this, and it seemed to me that there was something explicit and unlike him about the way he spoke, a kind of tactlessness too, against himself and also against his auditor... Yet with the sense of it I was entirely in sympathy.
“Well roared, lion!” I said, as lightly as possible. “That is what I call standing up to it! No, you have nothing to do with the Devil. You do know that you have spoken much more as a humanist than as a theologian?”
“Let us say a psychologist,” he responded. “A neutral position. But they are, I think, the most truth-loving people.”...
[Zeitblom then informs Adrian that he intends to marry his Helene. Though, of course, first he has to introduce the concept of Helene, since he has never mentioned her before. Here’s something that would be tricky to capture on film; after bandying some humorous lines from Shakespeare,] ...”If you knew the girl and the spirit of our bond, then you would know that there is no need to fear for my peace of mind, but that on the contrary everything is directed towards the foundation of love and tranquility, a fixed and undisturbed happiness.”
“I do not doubt it,” said he, “and doubt not of its success.”
A moment he seemed tempted to press my hand, but desisted. There came a pause in the talk, then as we walked home it turned to our all-important topic, the opera, and the scene in the fourth act, [when the messenger gives love letters to the wrong ladies with dire and humorous consequences] with the text of which we had been joking, and which was among those I definitely wanted to leave out...
And here we must take a break from Doctor Faustus to review Love’s Labour’s Lost. As with Salome, this Shakespeare play was obviously not picked at random. Here is some of what Wiki has to say about this early comedy -- or you can go Here for a more complete summary:
Love's Labour's Lost is one of William Shakespeare's early comedies, believed to have been written in the mid-1590s for a performance at the Inns of Court before Queen Elizabeth I. It follows the King of Navarre and his three companions as they attempt to forswear the company of women for three years of study and fasting, and their subsequent infatuation with the Princess of Aquitaine and her ladies. In an untraditional ending for a comedy, the play closes with the death of the Princess's father, and all weddings are delayed for a year. The play draws on themes of masculine love and desire, reckoning and rationalization, and reality versus fantasy.
-Wiki
Ferdinand, the King of Navarre and his three noble companions, the lords Berowne, Dumaine, and Longaville, take an oath not to give in to the company of women. They devote themselves to three years of study and fasting; Berowne agrees somewhat more hesitantly than the others...
The King ultimately chastises the lords for breaking the oath, but Berowne reveals that the King is likewise in love with the Princess. Jaquenetta and Costard enter with Berowne's letter and accuse him of treason. Berowne confesses to breaking the oath, explaining that the only study worthy of mankind is that of love, and he and the other men collectively decide to relinquish the vow...
-Wiki
It has never been among Shakespeare's most popular plays, likely because its pedantic humor and linguistic density are extremely demanding of contemporary theatregoers. The satirical allusions of Navarre's court are likewise inaccessible, "having been principally directed to fashions of language that have long passed away, and [are] consequently little understood, rather than in any great deficiency of invention."
-Wiki
Masculine desire structures the play and helps to shape its action. The men's sexual appetite manifests in their desire for fame and honour; the notion of women as dangerous to masculinity and intellect is established early on. The King and his Lords' desires for their idealized women are deferred, confused, and ridiculed throughout the play. As the play comes to a close, their desire is deferred yet again, resulting in an increased exaltation of the women.
Critic Mark Breitenberg commented that the use of idealistic poetry, popularized by Petrarch, effectively becomes the textualized form of the male gaze. In describing and idealizing the ladies, the King and his Lords exercise a form of control over women they love. Don Armado also represents masculine desire through his relentless pursuit of Jacquenetta. The theme of desire is heightened by the concern of increasing female sexuality throughout the Renaissance period and the subsequent threat of cuckoldry. Politics of love, marriage, and power are equally forceful in shaping the thread of masculine desire that drives the plot.
-Wiki
We are about to get knee deep in a discussion of music, so I’m going to take a short break and note that Mann has created an ideal intellectual situation with the two main characters, as they share the same foundation for their thought. Even more than with Renne and Kukiro and Paloma (in The Elegance of the Hedgehog), they speak the same language.
And, just to buy myself a little more time before I wade into the music: it occurs to me that while Mann is comparing the political and artistic realities of the early 20th century, you could do the same with military art. The Prussian army was a model of organization and conservative excellence that proved itself as sterile -- as out of ideas -- as the other major militaries when faced with the bloodbath of the Great War. And yet, out of that conflict came a new hint of what would follow. A new kind of freedom represented by Blitzkrieg tactics. I have written about (here) the slow development of armored warfare following the Great War, but one aspect of this process was that military men were suddenly cut free from doctrine and forced to find new tactics and principles (though I would argue they could have saved themselves a lot of bother by simply recreating the mature cavalry of the Napoleonic period with vehicles powered by gas replacing horses and mules.)
[to be continued]
No comments:
Post a Comment