Transparent Things

When I went to see this play, one of the finest ever written, at this theater a couple of years ago, I sat enraptured for four hours with one twenty-minute intermezzo, so magnificent was the acting.  This is the exception.  If poems are the dalliances of youth and epics the diaries of age, novels plausibly fit the middle road.  They are complete but rarely epic; and their breadth is attenuated by motifs that, unless the author is of staggering talent, have to be repeated to have any substance.  What then of the novella, that undernourished cousin of the novel so relevant to the cinematographic attention span we have developed over the last couple of generations?  Eighty to one hundred sixty pages of leanness, streamlined prosody whose brief glimpse often allows for sustained lyricism?  Sometimes it will be wasted on a short story drawn out in excruciating detail (I will spare you the names of the countless culprits); occasionally, however, you get a work of divine perfection, such as this novella.

Our protagonist is a humble American fellow by the name of Hugh – Hugh Person, as is the running joke.  The most interesting things about Hugh (according to Hugh) are that he has a Ph.D., is a confirmed Esperantist, speaks fluent French and is half−Canadian (which influences his accent in French).  He is accompanied in this, his fourth trip to Switzerland, residence of the novella’s author at the time of its writing, by an especially wraithlike omniscient narrator who shadows his every step.  The narrator is soon revealed to be R., an established novelist already in the silver years of life and the subject of Hugh Person’s previous trip to Switzerland many years before.  On that trip, as happens in novellas, Person finds Armande Chamar (her surname not quite a “peacock fan” as she claims), a lecherous excuse for an eternal, knee-wobbling beauty who becomes his wife, his pain, and then the reason it takes him so long to return to the Alps with a clear conscience.

Nabokov connoisseurs, whose company I probably deserve, will often say that a Nabokov story without death is a rarity.  So it is the next trip that proves to be fatal, and who can pity Armande when the narrator states:

Was she faithful to him throughout the months of their marriage spent in frail, lax, merry America?  During their first and last winter there she went a few times to ski without him … While alone, he forbade himself to dwell in thought on the banalities of betrayal, such as holding hands with a chap or permitting him to kiss her good night.  Those banalities were to him quite as excruciating to imagine as would be voluptuous intercourse.  A steel door of the spirit remained securely shut as long as she was away, but no sooner had she arrived, her face brown and shiny, her figure as trim as that of an air hostess, in that blue coat with flat buttons as bright as counters of gold, than something ghastly opened up in him and a dozen lithe athletes started swarming around and prying her apart in all the motels of his mind.

After such behavior (we are informed that his estimates were not far off the mark), there is little to do with dear Armande except end her treachery in the manner that all stage villainesses see their comeuppance.  Once the deed is done, Hugh is sent back home frail, lax, but not particularly merry.  His respite is a quarter of his life lived hitherto, and he returns to Switzerland one last time at precisely the age of forty.

And what he comes back for is the mystery of the novella.  There is another girl named Julia who hovers like some succoring angel in and out of our condemned man’s life, and there are the machinations of R. who is everywhere and only really in Switzerland.  Nabokov’s prose, whose only fault is an overreliance on foreign words and parentheses, has rarely bloomed in such lilac shades as in this sad tale of revenge and love: one Person’s journey to a beautiful country of beautiful memories where nothing ever becomes transparent to anyone except R. and the reader.  And when all has been accomplished according to plan, there is night, “which is always a giant but [which] was especially terrible,” and not only because it is a “common grave of sleep.”

The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum

For those who like your etymologies straight and simple, consider an interpretation of the heroine's name from this famous novella.  Katharina is a Teutonic form of a Greek name widely understood to mean pure (catharsis is often cited as a related term), while Blum is almost a German flower, just like virág is a Hungarian flower and the original surname of this great epic's protagonist.  And our heroine is indeed a pure flower, a lonely bead of buds lying in a corner of a small, semi–urbanized apartment whose market value she could not possibly afford.  She works as a housekeeper for two well–off  couples, has her own car, and generally leads the plain but unencumbered life of the average or slightly above–average German.  She is young and lean, shy and sexually prudish, sensitive and attractive, educated and cultured if skeptically religious, and, most of all, hard–working and lonely.  She also has two "life–endangering qualities": loyalty and pride.  In other words, she is a perfect metaphor for postwar Germany itself.  

 

Now one may ask oneself, as so many Germans did in the 1970s when even the closest adviser to the West German Chancellor turned out to be a spy, how did someone like Katharina Blum ever come into such plebeian ease?  Consider her demographic: "those pretty young brown–haired things, thin, between 5'4" and 5'6" in height and 24 and 27 in age; here at the Carnival you'll see hundreds of thousands of them walking about. "  She is at once beautiful and common, but in the way a solitary rose is beautiful and common.  That is because we cannot have a heroine to embody Germany that looks or acts or talks like no one else.  She must be representative, typical, forgettable; otherwise she would not be a nation but an artist.  However you choose to examine the matter, Katharina is so symbolic that she acquires her own personality.  Now and then, she is portrayed by our omniscient narrator as fickle and moody; she looks after her gravely ill mother with an indifferent air, but waits to weep in private upon her death; she does not allow some of the older men in her life, usually patrons of a club where she tends bar and serves drinks, to do more to her than drive her home, although they certainly try to do more; and we are informed early on that she was once married.   To a parasitical drunk no less, who was one of the first persons to libel her once news of her crime is made public.

 

That crime of hers.  What Katharina is ultimately accused of having done is hardly surprising given the circumstances.  But the bitter irony is that her reputation is already tarnished even before she decides to act.  And here, I must say, the reader more familiar with the political events of 1970s Germany will grasp nuances that elude those who think that the RAF only stands for Britain's air squadrons.  That Katharina is vilified for cavorting with and bedding a known criminal, a whim made even more reprehensible by the fact that her nickname is "the nun," should tell you a great deal about what Böll thought of the establishment in his homeland.  A curious notion, that.  Having been born in the mid–1970s I have always cultivated an image of 1960s and 1970s Germany, a period of remarkable economic and cultural resurgence known in German as "The Miracle," as one of the paradises I can only visit in dreams and magnificent works of art.  Böll, however, doesn't quite see things that way.  His vision of Germany is strewn with remarks about its hypocrisy and yellow journalistic tendencies sprung from an overattentiveness to scandal that is both typically German and a reaction to the unending international scrutiny of German ethics in the twentieth century.  Katharina, like Germany, is isolated and assailed on all sides.  Her family is retconned into a band of profligate leftists and every trace of humanity and decency is erased from her record.   In the end, we are duly aware of whose honor has been violated and we smile.  We smile because we know that Katharina, despite her flaws, will flourish and rise to the heights she deserves.          

The Hound of the Baskervilles

An egregious mistake was rectified with the publication of this novella, one of the finest in the English language.  In it returned the most renowned of all fictional detectives, and with him, we are told, thousands of readers.  All to a man were relieved that one of their constants in life was back from, well, the dead.  Yet if you are familiar with the arc of this story you know that Conan Doyle was more than a little reluctant to resurrect his immortal.  This hesitation was caused in part by his wish to become more than a “writer of detective stories,” an honorable calling, doubtless, although not literature’s highest.  In the felicitous creation of Holmes and Watson, Conan Doyle ensured that readers would celebrate the  quadricentennial of his birth as they once feted the centennial.  Sure enough, Conan Doyle forayed into other fields, including some books on spirituality that I will probably never bring myself to read, and we can definitely respect his literary ambitions.  But his genius lay in his development of an art form that seems lesser but was actually superior.  Superior because it had no peers, and perhaps its most glorious manifestation remains the tale of the evil hell–hound on the moors.

The setup will be old hat to mystery buffs: an aged millionaire dies under mysterious circumstances and his young heir pays no heed to warnings about a family curse.  To make matters even worse, the heir is an American and untrained in the ways of his British ancestors, rendering him even less suitable to handle the situation, the mansion, and, of course, the beast that allegedly scared his relative to death.  Since the family Baskerville is a known commodity, Holmes monitors the developments.  He is initially delighted to be consulted on the matter by Dr. Mortimer, the family doctor of the recently deceased Charles Baskerville.  Holmes’s enthusiasm wanes, however, when Mortimer argues for the hound’s supernatural origin, to which Holmes suggests that he might make better use of a priest than of the residents of 221B.  Nevertheless, a personal meeting with the heir, Henry Baskerville, and another series of what could not possibly be coincidences motivate Holmes to venture out into the granite upland of Dartmoor.  There he meets a few more characters who will be pieces in the puzzle and begins his investigation in typical Holmesian fashion by retreating, masquerading, and for a long time leaving Watson as befuddled and uninformed as his readers.

Holmes’s other three novellas share one fatal flaw that escapes The Hound of the Baskervilles: a wholly unnecessary back story that, while thorough in its explanation, casts the meat of the novel in a rather superficial light.  The most unfortunate of these devices can be found in this novella written after The Hound of the Baskervilles, but inferior in every way imaginable, although the methodology of the crime itself is ingenious.  But the tale of the padfoot might also be the best Sherlock Holmes tale by virtue of its freshness and observation of the fundamental rules of suspense, character development, and plot.  One occasionally gets the feeling in other stories that many of the barbs and details are throwaways for the sake of atmosphere and propriety (this later adventure is one example of too much talk, not enough snooping).  Nothing of the kind here.  We get instead an allegory, which when done garishly is one of the lowest forms of literature, and when done with great artistry sublimates into the stratosphere of the magnificent.  The fact that we are uncertain about the nature of the beast, or even of its ambitions (Dr. Mortimer relates the gory legend with great relish), whether it be flesh at all or simply a maudlin ruse in animal form, makes the book a late cloudy afternoon one–sitting classic.  And let us not forget the moor, because after this experience, you never will.             

Despair

There are some literary themes that will always seem well–worn, perhaps because they are so essential.  Love in its myriad forms; betrayal, the greatest of all sins; nostalgia for a lost opportunity, a lost childhood, or a lost homeland.  In fact, love, betrayal, and nostalgia could very well form the essential triptych of human journeys.  When we love unrequitedly, we are betrayed.  And when our love is returned, rare is it that such a sensation lasts more than a few weeks or months of actual time.  Love is unique in that it cannot be fully realized until  much later in the future.  The perspective that love brings in relation to all the other petty details of life is one of richness, unending richness, and is the feeling that comes closest to giving us a sense of what consciousness beyond all these buildings and clocks might be.  Not everyone gets the chance to be truly, madly, and deeply in love; some wallow in the grim, sadistic dungeon of quelled lusts and voyeuristic itches.  No surprise then that some of our society's most resentful souls (let us leave aside for the moment the pathologically and maniacally ill) are those who believe they should be loved, believe also they have much to offer prospective partners, and then shun the world because all the world's lovers have shunned them.  This vicious cycle may, in some circumstances, lead to crime.  But more often than not it leads to misanthropy, bitterness, and a need to channel this frustration into something productive like work or art.  And this last observation should inform our reading of this brilliant novel.
 
Our narrator, Hermann Karlovich (his Russian patronymic; no surname is ever provided) sells chocolates in Berlin.  He is, much like the protagonist of this classic Russian tale, a bilingual Russo–German equally at home in both cultures.  And like the German of Pushkin's story, Hermann is Russian in his social circles but German in his thoughts.  This means, in general terms, the company and culture he keeps are Russian and russophone, but his philosophizing and emotional limitations suggest a more austere upbringing full of rules, regulations, and harmony.  Before I am castigated for espousing such multicultural rot, you should consider the author of Despair and his view on the matter (better yet, read Nabokov's scathing reflections on German culture in this book reviewed earlier on these pages).  The whole point is that Despair is about cultural clichés, romantic clichés, even the much–belabored thematic cliché of the double, resulting in a monstrous parody of all these approaches.  Not that all critics of the novel agree with this assessment.  Their summary (and the one furnished by Hermann himself) would read as follows: a man, frustrated by a boring job, an unfaithful wife and, perhaps, unrealized literary aspirations, finds his Doppelgänger in a Prague park, and plots his own murder so as to abscond with the insurance money, thereby altering his tedious lifestyle.  Now if you know anything about Nabokov you know he is a master stylist and a master plotter – a rare combination in the annals of literature.  While Despair injects some of the "rhetorical venom" (Nabokov’s own comment in his introduction) that would be found in two later works, if this were indeed the plot and sequence it would be as worthless as the pulp novels that so fascinate Hermann’s airhead wife Lydia.  Critics retort that Hermann, a "failed artist," is raving mad and unable to conjure up anything more than the most recycled of plots, see the whole endeavor as Nabokov’s critique of bad writers with evil intentions, and gladly write off the work as one of the grandmaster’s least successful gambits.        

Yet they are, I say in all modesty, completely wrong.  The description that Hermann provides – indeed, the ostensible events of the novel itself – are mired in a deception so fantastic and ingenious that every cell of my being wants to reveal at least one card of Nabokov’s hand.  But I cannot.  I cannot say what numerous readings of this novel indicate might be the true storyline, the true motivations of Hermann, of his double Felix, and of his wife and her perfidious cousin, Ardalion.  If I were to hint at the trick that Nabokov plays on his unsuspecting readers, I would direct your attention to Hermann's treatment of one subject in particular: that of art.  Art for Nabokov is the pinnacle of human achievement, God's work refashioned and regurgitated in the finest form our earthen clay can muster.  If someone in Nabokov's world is a friend and champion of art, true art, it is likely that his negative character traits will be offset by a bit of favoritism from his creator (as in this novel, Nabokov's best).  Keep this in mind when judging Hermann's and Felix's discourse in the country inn, or Ardalion's letter, or Hermann's bizarre machinations in a Berlin post office that so reminded me, for some reason, of the Berlin post office which I would frequent.  There are so many layers of suggestion in Despair that, if you are in the mood for a murderous allegory of revenge, you cannot put it ... And there, I fear, I have said too much already.

Confessions of a Justified Sinner

We are no longer naive enough to believe in an evil force that could manipulate our actions and cause our damnation.  I fear that some readers may not bother to venture past that last sentence, and may think impatiently to themselves what other fringe topics divert my attention (there are indeed others).  Malevolence in the human soul is considered by many theologians to be the wage of weakness and indulgence, of giving in to the primeval, selfish and often highly destructive desires that besiege us from all corners of our fallen world.  Yet we should not forget that while evil may or may not involve free will, it is necessarily an active force.  It cannot exist in a vacuum, nor lack an object upon which it may direct its action; in other words, if you were alone on a desert isle, you could not be evil.  You may injure or mutilate yourself, or subject your body and mind to deprivation and fatigue, but could you be justly charged with anything more than self–loathing or masochism?  To inflict woe you need another soul or another body, which brings us to this lesser-known masterpiece.

You will be surprised to learn, as was I, that the author became literate at a rather late age.  The only advantage of such a delay is the chance to devote oneself to a mastery of the colloquial language quite out of sorts with a school education, as well as an intimate knowledge of the objects of a bookless life.  Obviously, reading and writing are so essential to the development of the soul that it is hard to imagine an existence without their joys.  But sometimes, in rare cases of outstanding genius, one will find a mind that has been broadened not shrunk by its lack of exposure, dimensions which then increase exponentially once pen and paper are befriended.  Hogg’s interspersion of Scots dialect is not forced.  This is, one assumes, exactly the tone and delivery that these characters would have used.  That does not prevent it, however, from becoming somewhat of an annoyance and something gladly skipped in favor of Hogg’s magnificent normal style.  Look at how a street brawl comes to life in his able hands:

The unnumbered alleys on each side of the street had swallowed up the multitude in a few seconds; but from these they were busy reconnoitring; and, perceiving the deficiency in the number of their assailants, the rush from both sides of the street was as rapid, and as wonderful, as the disappearance of the crowd had been a few minutes before.  Each close vomited out its levies, and these better armed with missiles than when they sought it for a temporary retreat.  Woe then to our two columns of victorious Whigs! 

To the modern ear this style goes above the rich conversational language that contemporary writers use and which, unless the writer is staggeringly talented, tends to commix with plain talk.  Hogg is rehearsing the battle for a soul, split as it were in half.  Following these guidelines, the book folds into two parts: the first describes events mysterious and sinister in nature with no immediate explanation; the second part details a horrible alliance.

 

The soul in question belongs to Robert Wringhim Colwan, the adopted son of a Scottish clergyman and a beautiful if tortured youth.  The title tells us that he will fall hard upon the materialist wickedness of the world, but to what degree he has repented, if repentance is at all an option, makes us read on.  Robert has a half—sibling, George, and it is a dark day when Robert becomes his brother's shadow and keeper.   He lurches in his proximity at every corner and stretch of the gloomy, dour Edinburgh streets until George cannot believe that a mortal could know all his moments and move with such alacrity.  Soon enough, he is provoked into crime, or that is at least what the first narrative states plainly while hinting otherwise.  Then something even worse happens to George, and Robert is, well, somehow both implicated and perfectly alibied.  Yet when Mrs. Logan (the helpmeet of George's father) and Mrs. Calvert (a prostitute) travel to the country:

Mrs. Calvert sat silent, and stared the other mildly in the face.  Their looks encountered, and there was an unearthly amazement that gleamed from each, which, meeting together, caught real fire, and returned the flame to their heated imaginations, till the two associates became like two statues, with their hands spread, their eyes fixed, and their chops fallen down upon their bosoms.  An old woman who kept the lodging-house, having been called in before when Mrs. Logan was faintish, chanced to enter at this crisis with some cordial; and, seeing the state of her lodgers, she caught the infection, and fell into the same rigid and statue-like appearance. 

What they saw precisely will not be revealed here.  But the novel's second half has sufficient data to spin a thick web of conjecture around these events, if these were really events to begin with and not the ravings of a mad mind.  I would guess that many readers will find the second half too drawn out, each step too ponderous, each stride overextended.  I would also guess that immediate gratification of the type found in popular novels of the supernatural eschews suspense for horror, and deprives the reader of the most terrifying of all revelations:  an evil that knows no bounds and which seems to grow larger the more one knows of it.  This is the quandary of Robert Wringhim, a wretched youth who has little of the hero in him and much of the jackal.  It is here that we realize that the title is not meant to evoke pity, but is taken in all seriousness, and we shudder at the consequences.