Thoughts on Zinovyev’s “Zateya”

The book is a collection of satirical vignettes and thoughts about life in the Soviet Union, gathered into chapters with loose connections both within and between themselves. It looks like it was never finished by the author, so while the looseness is partially intended by the author, it’s also partially due to incompleteness and lack of clarity to the editors of which parts belonged where.

Reading the book thirty years after the end of the USSR, it doesn’t offer much that is new to anyone who is reasonably well-read on the Soviet Union. The most interesting part to me was not the satire, but Zinovyev’s thoughts about the Soviet system. He sees it as something not imposed on the Russian people from the side, by outside forces or a minority, but as something grown out of the character of the people itself, a system imposed by the people on itself. The system is due to moral degradation and causes further moral degradation. Abolishing the system won’t heal that; this can be only done by healing the moral degradation, by making people care about others more than their status and material well-being, by rejecting the temptation to use others for one’s own purposes and ignore their humanity and dignity.

This is a thought that I’ve seen showing up elsewhere; a person depicted as an example for such positive behavior is Viktor Maksimovich in Fazil Iskander’s “Stoyanka Cheloveka”. It’s certainly a sobering thought for someone like me who had hoped for a trajectory to improvement for Russia after the fall of Communism; seeing how the country now reverts to old patterns of behavior. We see the old patterns of collectivist behavior, of serving power and following the crowd for one own’s gain and in a misguide belief that this is the way to serve one’s country. It is now clear that Russia only did an incomplete reckoning with its past. I can only hope that it will free itself again, and won't miss out on the reckoning this time.

---

Александр Зиновьев, «Затея», Центрополиграф, Москва 2000

 

An H.H.

Dem jungen Mann das Herze bricht,

Die holde Jungfer liebt ihn nicht.

Ein Ritter stirbt zur gleichen Stund,

Die Liebe schlug ihm rote Wund.

Zwei Brüder streiten tief im Tann,

Weil einer nur sie haben kann.

Der Jüngling sinkt ins kühle Grab

Und zieht Feinsliebchen mit hinab.

Nie enden Herzeleid und Tod,

Dem Dichter sind’s das täglich Brot.

Your hair is like a poem

Your hair is like a poem,

It flows from your crest,

It curls in a cadence.

It falls from your shoulders,

Its tiny feet dangling,

Dancing to the rhythm

Of your head moving,

Beating like gentle waves

Against the beach of your back.

Brushing across your face,

Opening,

Closing,

A curtain before a show,

A recital before a play,

Preparing the passion,

Announcing the drama,

Brush it away

And let me see.

Philemon

Philemon paws at the glass door, 

Answering what call? 

No cat no dog no bird to catch, 

Going against his own self? 

Up against the pane, 

Reared and aroused. 

Bring him a toy of fluffy felt 

And he’ll forget the mirror world, 

No lure no mates no more.

Reading Shakespeare - Part I: The Comedies

Over the last couple of months, I’ve read the collected works of William Shakespeare. I don’t think that I can add any deep insights to the vast literature on the Bard, so I just give a quick personal judgment on all of them, in the order they are printed in my collection (“The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Edited, with a Glossary, by W.J.Craig M.A., Trinity College, Dublin”; Reprint by Henry Pordes, London 1987.)

I will start with the comedies:

The Tempest

The “Tempest” left me disappointed – it’s a trite morality play, the characters left me cold. The only character I felt sympathy with is the savage Caliban, who had welcomed the shipwrecked Prospero and his daughter, then was subjugated by his magic, and is depicted as a monster to boot. I remember reading discussions of Caliban where his treatment is compared to that of indigenous people – cheated out of their homelands and then demonized when they don’t take it lying down. Caliban is no angel, but Prospero would have been more in his right to punish him for assaulting Miranda if he hadn’t enslaved him before. As in many of the following plays, the most entertaining part is the banter of the lower class people, here the sailors and servants.

The Two Gentleman of Verona

An unbelievable plot with cardboard characters and wafer-thin psychological motivation. Again, the only saving grace are the banter and the monologues of the servants.

The Merry Wives of Windsor

A really funny comedy. Not really original or psychologically deep, but well executed and full of wordplay, even if some aspects (“foreign accents are funny”) may not cater to more refined tastes nowadays.

Measure for Measure

The plot and plot twists are very construed, but it has some interesting thoughts on justice and sin. The sense of justice and the reasoning partially seem alien from today’s point of view. E.g., almost everybody accepts that sex out of wedlock is a crime, even worthy of death, and only argues that either punishing it is impractical because too many people are guilty of it, or asks for forgiveness because even those who punish for it are subject to sin. No-one comes up with what would be the main arguments today, that sex out of wedlock shouldn’t be punished at all or that the death penalty is much too harsh. On the whole, it doesn’t really work for me – the comedic parts distract from the serious issues.

The Comedy of Errors

I don’t especially like comedies of mistaken identity, but I imagine that this one can be funny on the scene if played well. As I just read it, I didn’t find it really funny. The only psychologically interesting part was where her supposed husband’s strange behavior fueled Adriana’s jealousy.

Much Ado About Nothing

Again a comedy that is saved mostly by the banter. Neither the “tragic” plot (Hero’s slander and rehabilitation), nor the “comedic” plot (Beatrice and Benedick being duped into loving each other) really work. That’s not astonishing for the tragic plot, because the tragic plots tend to be cardboard-flimsy in other Shakespearian comedies as well, but also the change for both Benedick and Beatrice from being convinced bachelors to loving each other just by being told that the other one is secretly desperately in love with them is not convincing at all.

Love’s Labour’s Lost

This one doesn’t even have got much of a plot, and it’s the better for it. Lots of banter, puns, and comic relief.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

I liked this one – a fluffy comedy with lots of wordplay and banter, and it has really funny moments – Bottom in fairyland, the bitch fight between Helena and Hermia, the audience panning the artisans’ play. The invocation of fairy magic also makes the plot about erring love and subsequent reconciliation believable. Both Helena feeling mocked by suddenly being the object of declarations of love by two men, and Hermia’s despair at her love abandoning her add some depth to the play.

The Merchant of Venice

This play has three plots that seem welded together. One of them is a morality play – the choice of boxes demanded from Portia’s suitors. The second is light comedy - Portia and Nerissa testing the faith of their fiancés. The third and central plot, Shylock trying and failing to get his revenge on Antonio, is the most serious and quite tragic.  The tragic figure is Shylock, who despite his riches loses control of his daughter and has to suffer from prejudice against his religion and from contempt for taking interest, even though the credit he provides is part of the basis for the ventures of the Christian merchants who despise him. And, as often with the oppressed, when he sees a chance for revenge, he overshoots and then is brought down by a system that is rigged against him. His demand for Antonio’s flesh is cruel and inhumane, but Shakespeare shows very well that this cruelty has its roots in the behavior of those who mercilessly mocked and abused Shylock, and suddenly plead for and demand mercy when the sharp end is pointed at them. This central plot and its execution make the play a masterpiece.

As You Like It

This play is a bit like a salad – several subplots have been mixed in a bowl, and none of them, by themselves, is very convincing or original. The villains are cardboard, and the resolutions are mostly dei ex machina – a brother’s hatred is converted to love by the other brother saving him from a conveniently arisen danger, another villain is converted to virtue by a conveniently met holy man, and both conversions happen off-stage and are just related by narrators in the play. Some scenes and characters look bolted on, as if they were meant to play a bigger role and were cut short, but forgotten to be totally taken out – an example are the scenes with Oliver Martext and William, and in general it seems to me that Touchstone’s wooing of Audrey is just a remnant of what was a bigger subplot. Nevertheless, the play has a nice cast of funny characters and a sufficient amount of witty dialogue, so it looks like it would be fun to watch.

The Taming of the Shrew

I can’t see how this play can still be played as a straight comedy nowadays. It’s quite witty, and has many funny scenes, and in this piece, even the mistaken identities make sense. But the central idea, that women need to be subservient to men and that using psychological bullying in order to subdue them is clever and to be applauded, this is an idea that today would be shared only by very misogynistic or reactionary persons. Here, Shakespeare is just a man of his times, and he isn’t even able to show Katharina the degree of understanding that he shows for Shylock in the “Merchant”. Therefor I can read it only as a document of a worldview that I don’t share, but not enjoy it as a comedy.

Another thing is the framing plot about a Lord playing with poor drunkard, making him believe that the drunkard is really a Lord who had lost his mind, having the taming of the shrew staged as a play for him to watch, and then sending him back to his life as a poor drunk again. While it is known that Shakespeare found that framing plot in a previous version of the play by another author that he re-wrote, it’s not clear how much of the framing plot was actually included when the play was staged at the Globe Theatre.  It can be read as a kind of commentary, because this is also about someone (the Lord) using his power to abuse someone less powerful, even though less damage is inflicted.

All’s Well That Ends Well

My German Shakespeare edition that I’m reading in parallel calls this “not so much a comedy as a drama with a happy ending”. That’s quite a fitting description, depending on what you call “happy”. Is it a happy ending if the girl gets the boy she wants, but the boy is a jerk? The young Count Bertram may be a valiant soldier, but he’s not only full of class conceit – which would be understandable to a degree for a man of his time and rank -, he also forgets his vows to a woman he swore to love, and slanders her when she holds him to his vows. He tells lies when he’s found out. And I can’t shake the feeling that the love he says he’s developed for Helena after her supposed death is only show for the sake of his mother and the king, whom he wants to please. (He also doesn’t love cats, which is a sure mark of a bad character.) With all this, I can’t understand why Helena still wants him after all she’s endured and witnessed from him; love surely makes blind.

Despite these misgivings, I liked the play, which has a relatively straightforward plot that is not driven mostly by accidents and dei ex machina, like many other of the comedies, but by the actions and personalities of the main characters, who also are interesting and not just cardboard. There also are comedic elements, like the scenes with the fool of the Countess of Roussillon, and the plot around the exposure of the boastful but cowardly Captain Parolles.

Twelfth-Night, or What you Will

A light but entertaining comedy of errors, with main female protagonists fleshed out enough that one cares for them. It also has a funny sub-plot about a pompous, self-important servant who is played for a fool.

The Winter’s Tale

Like “All’s Well”, this is more of a drama with a happy ending, than a full comedy. King Leontes’s jealousy, which causes the chain of events depicted, is well executed. King Polixenes’s rejection of his son’s courtship for Perdita has a certain irony – he is ruining the relationship with his son, and risks losing him, in a similar manner like Leontes ruined his friendship with him and lost his wife and children. The reconciliation and Hermione’s “resurrection” are too melodramatic for my taste. The comedic elements, especially Autolycus’s mischief, don’t really fit – it looks like Shakespeare tried to mix up a piece to please everybody.

Alexander Osang: „Die Leben der Elena Silber“

S. Fischer, 2019, 617 S.

Der Roman beschreibt die bewegte Lebensgeschichte von Elena Silber, im vorrevolutionären Russland geboren und kurz vor Ende des Sozialismus in der DDR gestorben, sowie die Versuche ihres Enkels Konstantin Stein, die ungelösten Fragen in ihrer und seiner Familiengeschichte aufzuklären. Elena Silber wird Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts geboren; ihr Vater, Anhänger der Sozialisten, wird 1905 von einem reaktionären Mob getötet. Damit beginnt eine Geschichte von Vertreibung, Flucht und Suche nach besseren Lebensmöglichkeiten. Elena heiratet einen deutschen Ingenieur und landet dadurch in NS-Deutschland; nach dem Krieg bleibt sie in Berlin hängen, wo sie 1982 stirbt. Ihr Enkel Konstantin, Anfang vierzig, geschieden, Filmemacher, wird von seiner dominanten Mutter (einer von Elenas fünf Töchtern) dazu bewegt, Elenas Lebensgeschichte zu erforschen, in dem es ungelöste Widersprüche gibt, besonders um das Verschwinden ihres Mannes nach Kriegsende. Laut Klappentext wurde der Roman von der Familiengeschichte seines Verfassers inspiriert.

Der Roman wird mit vielen Rückblenden mal aus der Sicht Elenas, mal aus der Sicht Konstantins erzählt. Abgesehen von den Rückblenden ist der Erzählstil geradlinig und gut lesbar. An vielen Stellen, besonders wenn aus der Sicht von Konstantin geschrieben, wird sie vom Dialog vorangetrieben. Die Stellen aus Elenas Sicht wirken oft distanziert, wie angelesen, und Elenas Persönlichkeit bleibt fern und verschwommen. Das trifft vor allem auf die Stellen zu, die ihr Leben in Russland beschreiben, während ihr Leben in Schlesien kurz vor und nach Kriegsende und die Jahre in Berlin lebendiger beschrieben ist, so, als wenn die größere geografische Nähe auch eine größere Nähe zur Person bewirkt. Konstantin dagegen und seine Welt gewinnen ein sehr viel klareres Profil; man merkt, dass der Verfasser die Welt, die er beschreibt – Konstantins Kindheit, die dominante Mutter, die Demenz des Vaters, die Beziehung zum Sohn aus der geschiedenen Ehe, die verschiedenen Ostberliner Milieus, in denen Konstantin sich bewegt – gut kennt.

Insgesamt ein gut lesbares Buch. Die russischen Elemente bieten eine gewisse Exotik, aber wirken oberflächlich auf jemanden, der eine gewisse Vertrautheit mit Russland mitbringt. Interessanter ist es als Teil eines großen Mosaiks, als ein weiterer Blick auf vertraute Fragen – was bedeutet Familie, wie gehen Menschen mit Beziehungen um, in welchen Formen suchen sie nach Nähe und Distanz, nach Liebe, Anerkennung, wo ist Heimat, was für Geschichten erzählen sie sich selbst und anderen. Dieser Roman ist ein weiteres Steinchen in diesem Mosaik, und dabei ein unterhaltsames, auch wenn nie wirklich aufgeklärt wird, was aus den verschwundenen Männern in der Familie der Silbers geworden ist.

Рубить!

As I've recently been reading a lot of Babel, I just had to think that's how the Red Cavalry would have approached maths.
В последнее время я читал много Бабеля, и увидев это, я подумал что вот так конармия бы решила математические проблемы.

Ich habe in der letzten Zeit wohl zu viel Babel gelesen. Jedenfalls ist mir hierzu als erstes eingefallen, dass dies die Art sein muss, wie die Reiterarmee mathematische Probleme löst.

A Clockwork Clocked

I had put off reading "A Clockwork Orange" for a long time. It's a book that has become part of common cultural knowledge, and the things I knew about it - the ultraviolence, the nadsat slang - didn't really entice me to read it. That despite the fact that I liked what else I've read by Burgess - "One Hand Clapping" is a very funny read, and "Language Made Plain" is the one book I'd recommend for a popular introduction into the history and workings of the English language.

But then my daughter left her edition of "Clockwork" behind when she went off to study recently, and I started reading. And I didn't put it down - well, almost, I interrupted reading maybe once or twice.

It turns out that the ultraviolence, while taking up a substantial part of the book, is described not too gorily, and then we're probably nowadays too used to graphically described violence - the book contains less blood and gore than the average episode of Game of Thrones. And the violence is not gratuitous, but again, it's a well-known fact that good and evil and the role of choice betwen them are central topics of the book.
The nadsat - a slang containing a large part of Russian - was also less of a hindrance to understanding than I had assumed. As I speak Russian reasonably well, some of it grated and felt unnatural; gloopy for "stupid" sounds natural, but a lot of the loaned verbs didn't look like natural candidates for loaning and their English adaptations feel forced. But on the whole, it gives the book its very own flavour. Some of the words escaped me for quite some time, simply because the adaptations in English don't sound much like their Russian originals. I only understood in the middle of the book that horrorshow is Russian хорошо, and even more embarrassingly, it took me until the last pages to get that lewdies "people" is not derived from lewd, but Russian люди.

Now you ask, this is all faint praise or no praise at all, so what kept me hooked? It's the voice, the language, the way Alex (the first-person-narrator) talks.  It's enchanting, taking you along on the ride, making you want to find out more about the character. He has a great lot of negative traits and for his actions he'd deserve contempt or hate, and in the chapters after his treatment he's quite pathetic, but still the narrating voice is like a tasty drink that I couldn't put down. The only other narrator who can capture me like that is Isaak Babel, who also knows how to tell horrible tales with a voice that you don't want to stop listening to.

And despite the fact that the book's content has become a part of popular culture, the ending still was surprising.

Kitchens by the Dozen

When I was a boy, "Cheaper by the Dozen" and "Belles on their Toes" (In German: "Im Dutzend billiger" und "Aus Kindern werden Leute") were among my favourite books. I liked these memoirs of living in a large, "rationally organised" family, which to me, at that age, seemed to be extremely funny and attractive at the same time. I was vaguely aware that the Gilbreths were supposed to be real people, not inventions of a fiction author's imagination, but somehow I'd never expected for information about them to show up in the real world. So it was a pleasant surprise to find this article in Slate about Lilian Gilbreth's contribution to modern home kitchen organisation. It's a bit like finding out that, say, Sindbad was a really existing merchant adventurer who plied the seas at the times of Harun Al-Rashid.

Zeitlos? Forever true? Вечное?

Beim Blättern in unserer Anthologie deutscher Gedichte stoße ich vorgestern auf diesen Sinnspruch von Schiller ("Erwartung und Erfüllung", 1796):

In den Ozean schifft mit tausend Masten der Jüngling,

Still, auf gerettetem Boot treibt in den Hafen der Greis.

Gestern abend höre ich eine Sampler-CD meiner Tochter und stoße auf das hier:

Ich bin kein großer Freund von Karel Gotts Gesang - der Mann könnte wahrscheinlich "Highway to Hell" schnulzig klingen lassen, wenn er sowas singen würde - und auch Hiphop und Rap lassen mich meistens kalt, aber diese Mischung hat etwas, auch wenn der Text von Klischees strotzt.
Der Grund? Es geht um dasselbe, den Gegensatz zwischen Kraft und Aufbruch in der Jugend, Schwäche und Resignation im Alter. Irgendwann kommt das auf alle von uns zu, wenn uns Gevatter Hein nicht davor bewahrt. Das weiß auch meine russische Lieblingsband DDT:

Ты уехал за счастьем и вернулся просто седым ("Ты не один", ДДТ)

("Du fuhrst fort auf der Suche nach dem Glück und kamst bloß grauhaarig zurück", aus "Ty ne odin").

Und was bringt man auf dem geretteten Boot in den Hafen? Die Erinnerung und die Menschen, die du in deinem Leben um dich geschart hast. Wir hoffen, dass das möglichst viele sind:
Die Träume mögen bei jedem anders sein und es müssen ja auch nicht unbedingt hundert Enkel werden, aber "Alle kommen vorbei, ich brauch nie rauszugehn" ist doch eine schöne Vorstellung.
Wenn noch jemand da sein wird, der unsere zeitgenössischen Sprachen beherrscht, werden diese Gedanken noch in hunderten und tausenden von Jahren verständlich sein. Ob die Form dann auch noch dem Zeitgeschmack entsprechen wird, ist eher zweifelhaft; Schillers prägnanter Sinnspruch hat da sicher größere Chancen als die vorgestellten musikalischen Beiträge. Aber jedes Lied, jedes Gedicht über die immerwährende condition humaine ist ein Schritt zur Unsterblichkeit.

Перевод или подлинник? / Translation or original?

Вчера вечером, листая афоризмы Лихтенберга, я увидел рядом стоящего "Героя нашего времени" на немецком, и я просто не мог вспоминать, читал ли я эту книгу в переводе или в подлиннике? У меня на книжной полке и подлинник, и перевод, и только, когда я заглянул в послесловие немецкого издания, я убедился, что именно читал перевод. У меня так и бывает с беседами - я их вспоминаю на другом языке, чем том, на котором они на самом деле проводились.

Yesterday, while browsing Lichtenberg's Aphorisms, the German translation of Lermontov's "A Hero of our Times" caught my eye and I could't remember whether I read that book in German or in the Russian original; I've got both on my book shelve. Only after I checked the afterword I was sure that I indeed read that novel in translation. Something similar happens to me with conversations - I frequently remember them in another language than the one they were actually held in.

Die Vermessenheit der Vermessung (A note on Kehlmann "Measuring the World")

Ein weiteres Weihnachtsgeschenk war Daniel Kehlmanns "Die Vermessung der Welt". Es gibt dazu genug im Internet (z. B. diese Besprechung und dieses Interview), also nur eine kurze Bemerkung - das Buch lässt sich gut lesen und ist intelligent geschrieben, aber es ist mit Vorsicht zu geniessen, da es historisch falsche Behauptungen enthält und die Hauptprotagonisten - Gauß und Alexander v. Humboldt - zu Karikaturen verzerrt.

If you come across Daniel Kehlmann's "Measuring the world" (I got it as a Christmas present), enjoy reading it, but if you're interested in Gauss or Humboldt, better read a biography - the characters are distorted to illustrate points about life, knowledge, and Germanness Kehlmann wants to make, and for that reason he also takes liberties with the facts.

Having read "The Reader"

I put the book on my Christmas wish list, and Santa acted accordingly. So now I know I was wrong as well - the real reason why Michael isn't able to build lasting relationships with women is simply that he cannot get over Hanna, even after he finds out what she has done. In the book, he not only doesn't turn down one-night stands, he even marries and has a daughter, but the marriage ends in divorce for the simple reason that his wife cannot compete with his memories of Hanna, a problem shared by all the girl friends he has afterwards. There is guilt and agonising, as well as phases of total emotional numbness, after Michael discovers Hanna's past, but the book is never as simple as "I can't have any woman any more because I slept with a Nazi". I cannot tell whether the film or its reviewer are guilty of this over-simplification, but it doesn't do justice to the book. In any case, I recommend reading it.

Guilt & Trust

I normally don't talk about books or films I haven't read. But I came across this review of the film version of "The Reader", and I really was puzzled by the reviewer's seeming lack of understanding:

Maybe I'm lacking in moral complexity (or maybe this is a uniquely German story that translates poorly to an American context), but The Reader's central problem (which seems reducible to "I shagged a Nazi") strikes me as a bogus one.
If Michael can say, truthfully, that he knew nothing about his lover's past, doesn't that effectively absolve him of guilt? A lifetime of Fiennes-ian brooding seems a steep price to pay for one summer of unwitting fascistic congress. And even if Michael can't help but feel haunted by his fling, shouldn't others (like the Holocaust survivor he confronts near the end of the film, played by Lena Olin) let him off the hook? Why on earth should a horny teenage boy have to abstain from sex with a willing blond goddess on the off chance she might be SS?

Just by reading the review, it is clear that we're not talking about a one-night stand, but about a relationship enduring a summer long that was deep and meaningful for Michael, even if perhaps not for Hanna. Without having read the book or seen the film, I would assume that Michael's problem is not so much guilt, but disappointment and loss of trust, especially in his own feelings - how could he fall in love with a woman who did such unspeakable deeds? How can he be sure that the next woman he falls in love with, or he simply is attracted to, doesn't hide a hideous character behind a beautiful face?
Even if Michael's reaction, to reject all deeper relationships with women, may still seem exaggerated, I think it's much easier to understand as based on loss of trust and confidence in his own ability to correctly assess other people's character, than as based on guilt by association. It's a feeling probably known to many people who, after the excesses of the 20th century, had to find out that a loved person had perpetrated crimes against humanity in the past.

Gute Besserung!

Sometimes, doing term papers is good for something - back during my Slavistic studies, I had to do one on a collection of short stories by Vassiliy Aksyonov, and since then I love his works and his style.
So I'm sad to see that he's been hospitalised after a stroke - I wish him a full and speedy recovery!
Meanwhile, if you know Russian, you can read his Alternative History novel "Остров Крым" ("The Island Of Crimea") online.

Иногда сочиняешь семинарные работы не зря - давным-давно, когда я учился славистике, мне задавали писать об одном сборнике рассказов Вассилия Аксёнова, и с тех пор я - поклонник его творчества.
Поэтому мне очень грустно узнавать, что он попал в больницу; желаю ему скорейшего выздоровления!
Может быть, это повод перечитать "Остров Крым"?