Inspiration - name and explain yours

[Stavros]

You know, Konrad Lorenz was in the nazi party; Martin Heidegger’s very philosophy somewhat justified at some point, nazi ideology –ideology of exclusivism is an intrinsic part of his philosophy. And what about the case made often against Nietzsche? (His books were on the sleep table of many Nazis –as they couldn’t understand a word of poor Heidegger). If you were to make a case against stalinians, you would have to condemn, in all probability, more than 80% of all European intellectuals before what? 1950 maybe, if not 1960, Stavros.
You know, there’s no case to be made against Céline; it’s already all made. In fact, he made it himself. You would know that if you had read some of his pamphlets –and I’m sure that in fact you have. He was an abominable anti-Semite, the worst collaborationist and an obscurantist, anti-intellectual ass. Yet, there’s no denying, NONE, Stavros, that “Voyage au Bout de la Nuit” (Journey to the End of the Night) is one of the greatest literary masterpieces of the 20th century. Notwithstanding what Céline was as a human being…
Works of art have a life of their own. Great productions and accomplishments live in independence from their origin and their author. It’s exactly as if you were condemning Greek culture, philosophy, theatre, literature, poetry, because they all favoured and practiced slavery and torture, or because they could raze to the ground a city, kill all its male citizens and take all the women and children to sell them… Or as if you were disregarding Alexandria because it was founded on the idea of, and by, Alexander, the man who burn Persepolis to the ground, kill everyone, and did even worse in Thebes. Or else, as if you were arguing that all Aztek art couldn’t be anything but disgusting because of the innumerable sacrifices, striping the breast open of the victims to tear out their heart, before throwing their carcass on those stairways.
What do you think of Plato, then, who was obviously on the side of the aristocratic factions in Ancient Greece, against the democratic factions, because he favoured the factions that wanted a literal state of tyranny of the rich over the poor and miserable in all cities of Greece? who designed an abominable political “utopia” (admire the oxymoron as much as the anachronism) and desperately tried to realized it by negotiating with a terrible tyrant? What do you think of the work of Aristotle, who not only was on the same side, not only educated Alexander, the conqueror of the world, but also pronounced himself unequivocally in favour of slavery, and in fact went as far as to say that slaves were not quite as human as citizens (more like animals)? Do we throw the work of both Plato and Aristotle to the garbage? Do we throw away Augustin’s work for his insistence on pursuing heretics? Voltaire among a great many, was in favour of the death penalty for atheists; what about that?
Would you throw away all of Rousseau because he wanted to ban theatre and music and literature and anything fun? Would you throw away Kant because he rejoiced at the news of the “prise de la Bastille”? Would you reject all of Hegel because he was a Napoleon enthusiastic, or would you reject Beethoven’s 3rd because it celebrates Napoleon also? Should we burn all of Sartre’s and Simone de Beauvoir because they were Stalinists all the way up to the invasion of Hungary, and maoist after? I’m just citing a few examples out of my head, but you know how easy it would be to find an infinite number of them.
Should we then go further and throw away all of Hemingway because he was a drunk; all of Rousseau, once again, because he gave 5 children to public assistance; Henry Miller’s because of his insatiable desire to have sex; Ginsburg’s poetry because he was gay (oh! yes, being gay is ok, today); Alfred de Vigny for his monarchist position against the dying republicans (oups! you’re Brittish, sorry!). I mean, how much morals should enter our judgement on intellectual and artistic work? Don't you think it's all a bit relative? Because as much as I agree with you on Céline’s character (there’s no way not to), it’s a judgement of a moral value that we make on him. Who’s drawing the line on how much moral should enter our judgement on works of art? You mean to tell me, Stavros, that you can’t enjoy a work of art because of the personality of it’s author? Following such an idea, we could very easily fall back into the good old index, you know? that book the catholic Church was publishing, that forbid tons of printed paper to be read by good practitioners… Should we recreate an intellectual and artistic Saint Inquisition?

As a matter of principle, you are right in what you say,Tovey disputed the value of linking the biographical facts of Beethoven's life to his music, and the examples you give are for the most part problematic in an interesting way -but only if it matters to you. And this I think is the point. When George Steiner was questioned on Wagner's anti-semitism he replied, 'that's his problem!'. We can dispute the value of some of the individuals you mentioned -I read Sartre in the 1970s but was not impressed, although his memoir, Words is a good read; his reputation was inflated in much the same way that most contemporary intellectuals are inflated -consider the case of Christopher Hitchens as another example; in the 1950s Malcolm Muggeridge was a public intellectual in the UK, hard though it is to believe now.

If there was a universal moral standard applied to all those thinkers and artists you mentioned we would be living in a cultural desert, because not only would we have lost what we once had, the living would presumably have to pass all manner of tests before their work was considered valid.
Some interesting examples of the dilemma:
-you mentioned Henry Miller, lauded by George Orwell in his essay, Inside the Whale, trashed by Kate Millet in Sexual Politics (along with DH Lawrence and Norman Mailer).
-Paul Lawrence Rose in his book Wagner, Race and Revolution offers a comparison of humanism in music -the funeral march in Beethoven's Eroica, with violence in music -the Siegfried's funeral march in Gotterdammerung: he actually argues that Wagner's music, as music, is anti-semitic. Clearly he thinks that by crossing out Napoleon's name from the mss of the symphony, the Eroica was somehow 'saved' for humanity, but does it suggest that if E flat major is anti-semitic in Das Rheingold, it must always be anti-semitic after it -?
But perhaps the most extreme example would be from Theodor Adorno-'after Auschwitz all European culture is garbage', to which he added the dictum 'there can be no poetry after Auschwitz', written I think before he and the public became aware of Celan.
So for me it is a matter of choice: Heidegger is irrelevant as a philosopher regardless of his politics; Plato is an important philosopher in the tradition of absolutist politics, along with, say, Hobbes; just as Aristotle is a behavioural conservative; Sartre was a mediocrity, Simone de Beauvoir a colossal bore (although I suppose her shortest book, A Very Easy Death will survive) -she survives because she has a niche in the pantheon of 'feminist' writers. And, of course, it is possible to change tastes as one gets older.

However, on Celine I can quote you: Yet, there’s no denying, NONE, Stavros, that “Voyage au Bout de la Nuit” (Journey to the End of the Night) is one of the greatest literary masterpieces of the 20th century -and say, quite simply, Yes, I deny it. It bores me rigid. It is a waste of paper. Whatever next, Dan, that The Great Gatsby is a great novel?

[Prospero]

That last post was utterly fascinating Dan and Stavros.

Your last point. There amny who do, indeed, claim The Great Gatsby to be a great novel. Some who say that, along with Moby Dick, it is the closest thing yet to "the great American novel.'

I wonder, Stavros, what you feel about Ezra Pound with his embrace of Italian Fascism - or Eliot who was clearly anti-semitic?

[Stavros]

That last post was utterly fascinating Dan and Stavros.

Your last point. There amny who do, indeed, claim The Great Gatsby to be a great novel. Some who say that, along with Moby Dick, it is the closest thing yet to "the great American novel.'

I wonder, Stavros, what you feel about Ezra Pound with his embrace of Italian Fascism - or Eliot who was clearly anti-semitic?

Moby-Dick need not detain us, it is indeed a masterpiece, but if you want an example of English prose at its finest, the execution of Billy Budd in the story of that name (Episode 25) cannot be bettered; I read it often, in amazement and wonder. Melville has no superiors in American literature, he has few equals.

The 20th century probably resonates for us because of the central place occupied by the conflicts between various forms of fascism/nazism/nationalism and communism, and because taking sides has been a complex issue even if, morally, you could argue more respectability was given to the ideas associated with Marx and his successors, than say Chamberlain, Streicher or Gentile, the former survived the War, the latter did not.

At the time Pound and Eliot were in their prime, the conflict in Europe was as much about a crisis in the politics of the state as it was about modernism. Modernism thus presents a mixed picture with fissures that end up in Fascism -some of the Italian futurists, for example, Celine, and Pound, and Sinclair Lewis in the UK; while for others like Brecht, the young Auden and Spender there were commitments to, or temporary affections for Communism. But as Orwell points out in Inside the Whale, there was also a turn away from the ugliness of politics and a 'retreat' as he saw it, into the 'safety' of religion.

So on the one hand I try to judge Eliot and Pound in the context of the 1920s, when Pound was instrumental in giving modernism a new push through the publications of The Waste Land, and Ulysses. Pound's poetry suffers badly from a classical affectation which asks too much of the average, even the educated reader, as even most of the latter do not read Greek or Latin. His Cantos are occasionally but not often brilliant, and more obscure than say, Finnegan's Wake. They are also suffused, as is his long poem on the First World War (E.P. Ode Pour L'Election De Son Sepulchre), with a lot of bitterness which seems to reflect a belief that his vision of Europe had been sent to an unnecessary death in the trenches by a clique of capitalists who did not really have the interests of 'the masses' at heart -but like many critics of capitalism who have turned to extreme ideologies, he found some resonance with fascism -I don't know if all the radio broadcasts have been published, but I once met someone who had access to a lot of the typescripts and also Pound's correspondence from the era and it was pretty bad according to him. Pound, for me, is a sad eccentric, to be dipped into with caution.

But as with Eliot,and all the others, you make a choice about the art and the man, one the other or both, and end up taking sides -Eliot was a great poet, but like Dante poses the question to a non-Catholic or non-Christian when it comes to Four Quartets in particular: do you believe this?, while the interwar poetry is a poetry of modernist distress that some find tiresome, particularly when compared to Auden, whose poetry on average is better than Eliot's, and more human. Eliot's poetry can be appreciated for its tone, the use of language, metre, all the technical things literary critics look at, but as for his sneering remarks about Jews, or his desperate need to be English, or his Christian mysticism, that leaves a lot of people cold. It doesn't bother me, but I recognise that he was a great writer with many flaws, and some do get in the way of my enjoyment of his work.

You could pose a similr question with contemporaries -does it matter that Clint Eastwood is a Republican, or that Tom Cruise is a Scientologist? Does that mean you cannot enjoy their films?

[danthepoetman]

However, on Celine I can quote you: Yet, there’s no denying, NONE, Stavros, that “Voyage au Bout de la Nuit” (Journey to the End of the Night) is one of the greatest literary masterpieces of the 20th century -and say, quite simply, Yes, I deny it. It bores me rigid. It is a waste of paper. Whatever next, Dan, that The Great Gatsby is a great novel?

You got me there, Stavros. I really don’t know what to answer here. If it was only me, in my living room, feeling I’ve just read a “damn good book”, such a sentence would seem as admissible as any. But we’re talking about a novel that is classified by literary critics and historians as probably the best, if not, within the five best novels of the century. It completely renewed narrative language in French with its incredible mix of argot, elegant formulations, unusual expressions, intricate, sometimes weird yet always poetical and extremely dramatic syntactic constructions, and its tone uniquely appropriated to its spirit and its topic. I can’t think of any other novel with such an adequacy between its substance and its form, not even any of Dostoyevsky’s novels, which are already amazing in such matter. Besides, the vision depicted in the “Voyage” is one of the darkest yet the most lucid and vivid on human condition and human behaviour. Very dark, it was written before the Second World War and is not only more revealing about a certain spirit of the time, but has become since then a mirror of what no one could envision human beings to be, and to be capable of at this point in time, not even then, after the horror of the trenches and the misery of the Depression.
I could imagine that reading this in English is probably a problem that I, myself, often have encountered too even with great English language literary works in French (I have to resort to french translation when the English is too elegant or complex), or any other great work I had to read in translation. But Stavros, believe me, you have to read this one again, you have to give it another shot. Because I can’t figure you, amongst all people, not understanding this one. This is not a matter of opinion. It’s of the nature of the undeniable. It’s a literary monument, Stavros. No way around it. As much as I respect as a mark of intellectual assurance your way of judging if not “slicing” for yourself, I assure you this one opinion can’t be held seriously.

[Prospero]

I think I can read Eliot and be impressed and read past his anti-semitism. I haven't read enough Pound to know if he is more wilfully obscure than the Joyce of Finnigan's Wake - a greatly enjoyable but largely unintelligible playground romp.

I have never read Billy Budd but will now. Thank you.

And yes - taken as entertainers i can watch both Cruise (who I have a physical dislike for for reasons i can't really put into words) and Clint Eastwood - even if some of his later films are rather lame. Mystic River and Rowdy Yates remain touchstones.

[Stavros]

You got me there, Stavros. I really don’t know what to answer here. If it was only me, in my living room, feeling I’ve just read a “damn good book”, such a sentence would seem as admissible as any. But we’re talking about a novel that is classified by literary critics and historians as probably the best, if not, within the five best novels of the century. It completely renewed narrative language in French with its incredible mix of argot, elegant formulations, unusual expressions, intricate, sometimes weird yet always poetical and extremely dramatic syntactic constructions, and its tone uniquely appropriated to its spirit and its topic. I can’t think of any other novel with such an adequacy between its substance and its form, not even any of Dostoyevsky’s novels, which are already amazing in such matter. Besides, the vision depicted in the “Voyage” is one of the darkest yet the most lucid and vivid on human condition and human behaviour. Very dark, it was written before the Second World War and is not only more revealing about a certain spirit of the time, but has become since then a mirror of what no one could envision human beings to be, and to be capable of at this point in time, not even then, after the horror of the trenches and the misery of the Depression.
I could imagine that reading this in English is probably a problem that I, myself, often have encountered too even with great English language literary works in French (I have to resort to french translation when the English is too elegant or complex), or any other great work I had to read in translation. But Stavros, believe me, you have to read this one again, you have to give it another shot. Because I can’t figure you, amongst all people, not understanding this one. This is not a matter of opinion. It’s of the nature of the undeniable. It’s a literary monument, Stavros. No way around it. As much as I respect as a mark of intellectual assurance your way of judging if not “slicing” for yourself, I assure you this one opinion can’t be held seriously.

Ok Dan I was over the top, but you walked staight into it when you said I had to acknowledge the reputation of Voyage. I am still not convinced but will have another look at it, as it is a good idea to return to books years after their were first read. For darkness, how about Nostromo? A novel that presents you with an heroic incorruptible figure and gradually strips everything away until he ends up a corpse, shot by his best friend, if that isn't a spoiler. It also has a complex narrative that operates on different levels in different moments of time, set within the unfolding story of a revolution in South America. There are others too, I was recommended Dr Faustus by Thomas Mann but I find this author tedious and so haven't tried it again.
I am more interested in this problem of people who take sides, or who don't. I recall reading an article, but can't recall precisely where, in which a Jewish commentator argued that unless people abandoned the Third Reich or died as a result of it, their reputations were undermined, he said something to the effect that it was better to suffer and die because then you had everyone's sympathy -much of which was not passed on to Thomas Mann or Bertold Brecht, for example, precisely because they had the money and the contacts to get out. Brecht in particular was a target for living in East Berlin, just as a few felt Prokofiev had undermined his reputation by returning to live and die in the USSR.
There is a file on Wilhelm Furtwangler in the National Archive in Kew which was opened when he was planning to visit the UK in I think, 1947 with the Berlin Philharmonic. One well known singer of the day wrote to the Foreign Office to get him banned, using the phrase 'the man is an out and out Nazi' -which was commonly thought by some at the time, and for a long tme after there was a cloud of suspicion over Furtwangler until research documented how many Jewish musicians he helped escape from Germany and Austria. His problem was that he stayed behind, convinced he had to maintain the glory of German music -it doesn't look good to see him wearing a swastika armband when conducting Beethoven's 9th, but then the use of Beethoven as a national composer in times of crisis was also common, the most constant piece of music played in public during the First World War was the 9th. And anyway England played football in Germany in the 1930s and also gave the Sieg Heil salute on which they were badly advised.
Then the case of Richard Strauss emerges: a man who had lived through the eras of Bismarck, the first World War, and considered Hitler a vulgar little twerp, but had no interest in politics -he was the Reich's Commissioner for Music in 1933 and was sacked two years later when he wrote a sarcastic letter to Stefan Zweig because the Nazis refused to print his name on the playbills for the premiere of Die Schweigsame Frau in Dresden in 1935. Yet Strauss remained in Bavaria throughout almost the whole of the war, writing his last opera Capriccio -an opera about the contest between words and music- when all around him was chaos and destruction. He nipped across the border to Switzerland before the end, and although I read he was de-Nazified, I could never find the file. The truth is, he didn't much care what happened, it was just politics. And yet in another piece of music, Metamorphosen, written after he had seen the destruction caused to all those cities where his miusic was premiered, there is an eloquent melancholy, as if it were an elegy to his own indifference; yet there are some who can't listen to Strauss because of his indifference, just as one reasonably well-known British conductor once said he couldn't listen to Carmina Burana because Carl Orff had joined the Nazi Party.

[Stavros]

I think I can read Eliot and be impressed and read past his anti-semitism. I haven't read enough Pound to know if he is more wilfully obscure than the Joyce of Finnigan's Wake - a greatly enjoyable but largely unintelligible playground romp.

I have never read Billy Budd but will now. Thank you.

And yes - taken as entertainers i can watch both Cruise (who I have a physical dislike for for reasons i can't really put into words) and Clint Eastwood - even if some of his later films are rather lame. Mystic River and Rowdy Yates remain touchstones.

Prospero, if you haven't read the shorter stories, begin with Bartleby; then try and track down the film...

[loveboof]

how about Nostromo?

Oh, I read the first few pages of Nostromo last year but abandoned it when the new Game of Thrones book came out (A Dance with Dragons) lol. Worth returning to?

Btw I think you guys are scaring away the 'average HA member' with your highbrow discussion... Quick, somebody cite Tupac as their biggest inspiration!

[danthepoetman]

Ok Dan I was over the top, but you walked staight into it when you said I had to acknowledge the reputation of Voyage. I am still not convinced but will have another look at it, as it is a good idea to return to books years after their were first read. For darkness, how about Nostromo? A novel that presents you with an heroic incorruptible figure and gradually strips everything away until he ends up a corpse, shot by his best friend, if that isn't a spoiler. It also has a complex narrative that operates on different levels in different moments of time, set within the unfolding story of a revolution in South America. There are others too, I was recommended Dr Faustus by Thomas Mann but I find this author tedious and so haven't tried it again.
I am more interested in this problem of people who take sides, or who don't. I recall reading an article, but can't recall precisely where, in which a Jewish commentator argued that unless people abandoned the Third Reich or died as a result of it, their reputations were undermined, he said something to the effect that it was better to suffer and die because then you had everyone's sympathy -much of which was not passed on to Thomas Mann or Bertold Brecht, for example, precisely because they had the money and the contacts to get out. Brecht in particular was a target for living in East Berlin, just as a few felt Prokofiev had undermined his reputation by returning to live and die in the USSR.
There is a file on Wilhelm Furtwangler in the National Archive in Kew which was opened when he was planning to visit the UK in I think, 1947 with the Berlin Philharmonic. One well known singer of the day wrote to the Foreign Office to get him banned, using the phrase 'the man is an out and out Nazi' -which was commonly thought by some at the time, and for a long tme after there was a cloud of suspicion over Furtwangler until research documented how many Jewish musicians he helped escape from Germany and Austria. His problem was that he stayed behind, convinced he had to maintain the glory of German music -it doesn't look good to see him wearing a swastika armband when conducting Beethoven's 9th, but then the use of Beethoven as a national composer in times of crisis was also common, the most constant piece of music played in public during the First World War was the 9th. And anyway England played football in Germany in the 1930s and also gave the Sieg Heil salute on which they were badly advised.
Then the case of Richard Strauss emerges: a man who had lived through the eras of Bismarck, the first World War, and considered Hitler a vulgar little twerp, but had no interest in politics -he was the Reich's Commissioner for Music in 1933 and was sacked two years later when he wrote a sarcastic letter to Stefan Zweig because the Nazis refused to print his name on the playbills for the premiere of Die Schweigsame Frau in Dresden in 1935. Yet Strauss remained in Bavaria throughout almost the whole of the war, writing his last opera Capriccio -an opera about the contest between words and music- when all around him was chaos and destruction. He nipped across the border to Switzerland before the end, and although I read he was de-Nazified, I could never find the file. The truth is, he didn't much care what happened, it was just politics. And yet in another piece of music, Metamorphosen, written after he had seen the destruction caused to all those cities where his miusic was premiered, there is an eloquent melancholy, as if it were an elegy to his own indifference; yet there are some who can't listen to Strauss because of his indifference, just as one reasonably well-known British conductor once said he couldn't listen to Carmina Burana because Carl Orff had joined the Nazi Party.

Of course I agree that anybody is responsible for his choices and actions and should be judge with the same standards anybody else is or has been, be they great creators. Be judged that is, as human beings, of course. I felt myself, I still feel, that the subject is fascinating. I’ve looked into it pretty seriously for a while. There’s a lot of questions to be asked in many cases. I’m thinking of Sartre and de Beauvoir, whom we were talking about: their actions during the war were minimalistic and, when they finally did something, they put some people lives at risk to accomplish ridiculously meaningless things. In fact, Sartre was blamed to have had some plays given in theatres during the Occupation, and having had relatively cordial reports with Drieu LaRochelle, the director imposed on Gallimard by the Nazis. During that time, Camus was writing for underground, pretty important “Combat” and the communist Louis Aragon was the head of the very important organ of the resistance in France, “Les Lettres Françaises”. René Char, the poet, was in the maquis fighting with several other artists. Picasso had the courage to remain in occupied France and had several less than cordial meeting with Nazis officials. There’s for instance this famous story you certainly know about, when a german officer went to his studio, saw “Gernica”, the picture made after the bombing, and candidly asked Picasso: “You did this?” to what he answered: “No! YOU did this!” Max Jacob was arrested and died before his arrival in the camps; Chaim Soutine hid in Paris and finally died of hunger during the occupation.
Other surprising cases also, that of catholic writer François Mauriac, who remained in France and wrote several papers to vigorously denounce the Nazis and their hypocritical type of Christian faith. André Gide is one of the most surprising; viewed as a homosexual dilettante, and rich aesthete living on a rich pension, Gide started denouncing the Nazis from the very beginning, and Stalinism from the 20s! and moreover, colonialism in the 20s! Simultaneously, to invoke another example, the Surrealists took refuge in New York and had all in all a nice comfy war… Malraux, who participate in the Spanish war and ended up a colonel, waited a long while to enter the Resistance during the Occupation. He finally did and seems to have served with honour. Paul Nizan, a communist who denounced the Soviet-German pact of non-aggression and quit the party was the victim of a suspicious death. Etc.
The Jewish commentator you’re talking about, was it not Bernard Henry Levy, who wrote some texts about this and wrote and animated a good television series? At the time, he was mainly targeting the Nazi sympathizers, but later on came to look at the stalinians too, but always with much less severity –probably because he had been one himself, to some extent, and was the student of communist thinker Louis Althusser.
Anyways, yes, I find the subject important and fascinating myself! Many of the things you’re referring to in your post are things I didn’t know. It will be great to check all of this out. I don’t know that novel, Nostromo; I’ll definitely look into it. I know Thomas Mann, of course, but not Dr Faustus…

[Stavros]

Oh, I read the first few pages of Nostromo last year but abandoned it when the new Game of Thrones book came out (A Dance with Dragons) lol. Worth returning to?

Btw I think you guys are scaring away the 'average HA member' with your highbrow discussion... Quick, somebody cite Tupac as their biggest inspiration!

Nostromo is difficult reading, I accept that; I used to read it once a year and I think it took me 4 goes to really get inside it; the narrative dips in and out of 20 years of events without telling you which moment you are in, so it can be hard to grasp at first.

I think if I am surprised at anything it is that most transexuals I have known had one influential figure who helped them at the beginning or during their transition, and who thus must count as real inspirations; but there don't seem to be many here. Maybe people are shy about talking about it.