My intuitive response to the title of this story—(in English) “The Cubs”—was that it would be some kind of tale of the law of the jungle. That it takes place within a comfortable middle-class neighborhood of Lima makes a very sad story sadder still. The imprecise nature of who exactly is narrating this story underlines the desperate and ever-shifting nature of social collectives and their illogical and unforgiving conventions, where remaining inside the dominant group and retaining that group’s dominance is all that matters (I am reminded of Michael Haneke’s recent film “The White Ribbon”). The innocent boys become conventional men, their irritation with their “wounded” friend Cuellar is that he will not conform to appearances. They do not actually care about his personal reality; they want him to not stand out or apart, to not complicate the conventions of their small lives with something so problematic as an individual identity different from their own. They want him to get a girlfriend like everyone else because his solitary state and wild acting out against his fate are not conducive to the smooth operation of their new status as boys with girlfriends.
They allude to wanting what is best for him, but in fact they are blind to the meaning or consequences of the shocking fact they already know. Their own cynicism and insincerity is horrifically broadcast when they tell him to take on a girl, just for appearances. When he sincerely asks them what will happen “afterwards,” their response is to dump the girl and get another—proposing an infinite round of posing, as if that could be a life. What they are in fact describing is their total inability to empathize, or to care what will happen to him—what is happening to him. Not at any moment can or do any of the other characters feel for him in his situation, rather they project onto him the same thoughtless generality they take for granted in their own lives—they want the problem that is him to go away, and do not understand that it is inextricable from who he is. Cuellar, too, wants it to go away. Pity and forbearance are allowed him as long as he stays within certain guidelines of convention—in other words, if he and his real condition will disappear or stay mute.
Since he participates in no way with his fate (he tries to avert it), it is not relevant to consider faux-psychological attitudes such as latent desire. Homosexuality is alluded to here and there with words and phrases, but it is exactly that Cuellar has no desire for the fate he has received that makes the story so potent.
As Vargas Llosa observes as he draws tight the net of social cruelty, no one wants to be the other—the outsider—everyone would much rather be comfortably, invisibly or transparently hidden within the pack of survivors; perhaps at the top, but inside.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Aura / Carlos Fuentes
The fantastic in Bombal or Bioy is easily seen as metaphor; Bombal tends toward the psychological, and Bioy toward the philosophical. For me, Fuentes brings these two approaches together and takes them a huge leap further. The essence of the story is now an expression—not just an analogy—of the nature of being and existence, and returns wonder far beyond charm to a world that is increasingly deadened through mechanical and technological patterns of reliability and predictability, and the worst aspects of rationality. It cannot be insignificant that Senora Llorente and the General are representations of bygone eras (Maximilian/Napoleon III), which were in their primes vastly diminished adulterations of previous heroic eras.
Sartre once said something to the effect that if one reads a story and enters or understands it—not with a wink to the character-accomplices or as if the entire work were an example of mass psychosis—but rather that somehow the absurd becomes credible by opening/expanding the seeming terms of what might be credible, then it achieves a genuine moment of the fantastic, where the opposites of real and unreal (irreal) reign in baffling equality. This seems to apply especially well to this story.
The younger instantiation of Consuela—Aura—is just that: a halo emanation of the old woman’s force and beauty, manifesting outside the realms of time and rationality. The old woman is not a demon-goddess, but is herself a personification of primal forces beyond comprehension, her own as well. –What a marvelous creative expression of the epigraph from Michelet.
Every era wants to believe that it has answered and exhausted the questions of all time; the endless repetition of history can persuade us to remember that the past of which we make fun or that we condemn, is little different than how our truths will appear to future generations.
The epigraph from Michelet can be understood via archetypes—that man will strive (through lifetimes) to find the animating source of his being/love, who is timeless and unfathomably imaginative in her embodiment of the powers and forces that animate all existence (relation to “Invention of Morel”?). Montero is compelled into re-instantiation, or finds himself, as the lover of the beloved who is herself the priestess (cat ritual) of the divine that is both monstrous and holy.
There are Faustian overtones as well as resonation with Turchetti’s “Fosca”—inspiration for “Passion d”amore” and Sondheim’s “Passion”, and Kenneth Branagh’s Hollywood send-up, “Dead Again.” In the first love transcends the ordinary, unconscious attraction of similarities; in the latter it transcends time; in “Aura” it transcends individuals.
Sartre once said something to the effect that if one reads a story and enters or understands it—not with a wink to the character-accomplices or as if the entire work were an example of mass psychosis—but rather that somehow the absurd becomes credible by opening/expanding the seeming terms of what might be credible, then it achieves a genuine moment of the fantastic, where the opposites of real and unreal (irreal) reign in baffling equality. This seems to apply especially well to this story.
The younger instantiation of Consuela—Aura—is just that: a halo emanation of the old woman’s force and beauty, manifesting outside the realms of time and rationality. The old woman is not a demon-goddess, but is herself a personification of primal forces beyond comprehension, her own as well. –What a marvelous creative expression of the epigraph from Michelet.
Every era wants to believe that it has answered and exhausted the questions of all time; the endless repetition of history can persuade us to remember that the past of which we make fun or that we condemn, is little different than how our truths will appear to future generations.
The epigraph from Michelet can be understood via archetypes—that man will strive (through lifetimes) to find the animating source of his being/love, who is timeless and unfathomably imaginative in her embodiment of the powers and forces that animate all existence (relation to “Invention of Morel”?). Montero is compelled into re-instantiation, or finds himself, as the lover of the beloved who is herself the priestess (cat ritual) of the divine that is both monstrous and holy.
There are Faustian overtones as well as resonation with Turchetti’s “Fosca”—inspiration for “Passion d”amore” and Sondheim’s “Passion”, and Kenneth Branagh’s Hollywood send-up, “Dead Again.” In the first love transcends the ordinary, unconscious attraction of similarities; in the latter it transcends time; in “Aura” it transcends individuals.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
The Pursuer / Julio Cortazar
I understand the theme of the piece to be the difficulty in the attempt to “live” fully and expressively in the moment (and also how un-seen and unappreciated that struggle can be/is by others, especially within any bourgeois context), and how this is at odds with all practical considerations of society and the desire to see oneself and one’s culture within historic development. The piece and its characters are as compromised, paradoxical, and difficult as the thing it attempts to reflect, as imperfect as lived life, which is always at a distant remove from the work of art that exists as a touchstone into deeper and other dimensions, and souvenir. (Borges’ Menard’s “Quixote” is an example of the impossibility of anything being “constant.”)
The piece is steeped in references to psychology, semiotics, Christianity, European literature and poetry, dedicated to Charlie Parker, and with epigraphs from The Apocalypse/Revelations and Dylan Thomas. (The schematic presentation of the life and death of the lead character is chiefly an imaginative blend of Parker and Thomas.)
The section in which Johnny is identified by the critic/narrator as the “pursuer” was, for me, particularly evocative of the struggle around expression and art. The critic/narrator is as paradoxical a character as Johnny, marvelously awful yet inescapable. The story of the history of art is itself problematic, any idea of development seems to imply limitation in that what has come before must stay put, to be appreciated as “historic,” but no longer capable of speaking immediately, let alone that any notion of aesthetics necessarily derives from a particular cultural point of view.
This story resonates with Keats’ "Ode on a Grecian Urn," and ideas of permanence in opposition to lived life. Perhaps this applies to some extent vis-à-vis the essays regarding Latin American Literature—I am too under-exposed to the topic to have any opinion worth mentioning. The only thought I have about all of this is a reflection on a well-known line from Yeats, “Players and painted stage took all my love, and not those things that they were emblems of.” Johnny and the critic seem to speak of these two extremes—the numinous and the instantiation.
The piece is steeped in references to psychology, semiotics, Christianity, European literature and poetry, dedicated to Charlie Parker, and with epigraphs from The Apocalypse/Revelations and Dylan Thomas. (The schematic presentation of the life and death of the lead character is chiefly an imaginative blend of Parker and Thomas.)
The section in which Johnny is identified by the critic/narrator as the “pursuer” was, for me, particularly evocative of the struggle around expression and art. The critic/narrator is as paradoxical a character as Johnny, marvelously awful yet inescapable. The story of the history of art is itself problematic, any idea of development seems to imply limitation in that what has come before must stay put, to be appreciated as “historic,” but no longer capable of speaking immediately, let alone that any notion of aesthetics necessarily derives from a particular cultural point of view.
This story resonates with Keats’ "Ode on a Grecian Urn," and ideas of permanence in opposition to lived life. Perhaps this applies to some extent vis-à-vis the essays regarding Latin American Literature—I am too under-exposed to the topic to have any opinion worth mentioning. The only thought I have about all of this is a reflection on a well-known line from Yeats, “Players and painted stage took all my love, and not those things that they were emblems of.” Johnny and the critic seem to speak of these two extremes—the numinous and the instantiation.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
The Chase / Alejo Carpentier
For me, Carpentier’s "The Chase" resonates with the language and voice of some of the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, and also with Bombal’s “Final Mist,” Bioys’ “Invention of Morel,” and Camus’ “The Myth of Sisyphus.”
The florid language of the first chapters mirrors, describes, and locates the (male) characters’ aspirational status. The upper class audience in the concert hall makes little effort to be other than itself—that is, perhaps, the real privilege of advantage. The impoverished ticket seller/musician and the provincial architecture student/revolutionary cannot find a way to rise, or to commit to their chosen fields. This is not only because of the corruption and immobility of colonial social externals, but also because of a failure within each character—a failure that expresses the contradiction of the inability to accept human limitation and yet attempt something greater than animal existence. Both characters relish expressions of dominance—not in their chosen fields, or mastery of self—but against others, especially Estrella. The arts and religion mentioned in the text are no longer potent instantiations of the transcendent to which one can dedicate oneself, but rather degraded enterprises that cannot prevail against the force of the body itself, or the humiliations of the alienated individual in a post-heroic world.
The quote from Beethoven is especially interesting, as well as the fact that the performance that takes place during the course of the novel’s “real” time is the “Eroica” symphony (composed 1803)—originally to be dedicated to revolutionary “liberator” Napoleon Bonaparte, who crowned himself Emperor of the French in 1804. Beethoven believed that Napoleon’s imperial action was the mark of a prideful “tyrant” who had descended from the higher ideals of democracy. Similarly, the ticket seller and the architecture student fall from their higher ideals and aspirations.
Supposedly, the quote is what Beethoven said to Prince Lobkowitz, his patron and the “new” ostensible dedicatee of the symphony: “Prince: You are what you are by the accident of birth; but I am what I am because of myself!” The exact words from Beethoven to exclaim his triumph of achievement—I am what I am because of myself—also explain the ticket seller/musician and the architecture student/revolutionary. The first could not resist the temptation of the large banknote, leaving the performance for which he had prepared for weeks, to visit the prostitute; the second gave up his studies for the sophisticated liberties of cosmopolitan life (sex, drinking, and “style”) and was swept beyond his control into a revolutionary movement for which he had no real appetite, interest, or understanding. His inability to endure an attack on his literal masculine pride renders him a traitor to his revolutionary group, from which he is then hopelessly on the run for his life.
The florid language of the first chapters mirrors, describes, and locates the (male) characters’ aspirational status. The upper class audience in the concert hall makes little effort to be other than itself—that is, perhaps, the real privilege of advantage. The impoverished ticket seller/musician and the provincial architecture student/revolutionary cannot find a way to rise, or to commit to their chosen fields. This is not only because of the corruption and immobility of colonial social externals, but also because of a failure within each character—a failure that expresses the contradiction of the inability to accept human limitation and yet attempt something greater than animal existence. Both characters relish expressions of dominance—not in their chosen fields, or mastery of self—but against others, especially Estrella. The arts and religion mentioned in the text are no longer potent instantiations of the transcendent to which one can dedicate oneself, but rather degraded enterprises that cannot prevail against the force of the body itself, or the humiliations of the alienated individual in a post-heroic world.
The quote from Beethoven is especially interesting, as well as the fact that the performance that takes place during the course of the novel’s “real” time is the “Eroica” symphony (composed 1803)—originally to be dedicated to revolutionary “liberator” Napoleon Bonaparte, who crowned himself Emperor of the French in 1804. Beethoven believed that Napoleon’s imperial action was the mark of a prideful “tyrant” who had descended from the higher ideals of democracy. Similarly, the ticket seller and the architecture student fall from their higher ideals and aspirations.
Supposedly, the quote is what Beethoven said to Prince Lobkowitz, his patron and the “new” ostensible dedicatee of the symphony: “Prince: You are what you are by the accident of birth; but I am what I am because of myself!” The exact words from Beethoven to exclaim his triumph of achievement—I am what I am because of myself—also explain the ticket seller/musician and the architecture student/revolutionary. The first could not resist the temptation of the large banknote, leaving the performance for which he had prepared for weeks, to visit the prostitute; the second gave up his studies for the sophisticated liberties of cosmopolitan life (sex, drinking, and “style”) and was swept beyond his control into a revolutionary movement for which he had no real appetite, interest, or understanding. His inability to endure an attack on his literal masculine pride renders him a traitor to his revolutionary group, from which he is then hopelessly on the run for his life.
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