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English Pages [376] Year 2001
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SUSAN SONTAG what
earliest idea of
one who
a writer
interested
is
years after her classic Against
first
JO
.
has sa.d that her
should be was "some-
everything." Thirty-five
in
now
collection of essays, the
our most important
Interpretation,
chosen more than forty longer and
essayist has
shorter pieces from the trate a deeply
felt,
last
two decades
that
illus-
kaleidoscopic array of interests,
passions, observations, and ideas.
"Reading" offers ardent, freewheeling consid-
own
private
canon, such as Marina Tsvetaeva, Randall
Jarrell,
erations of talismanic writers from her
Roland Barthes, Machado de Assis, W. G. Sebald,
Borges.and Elizabeth Hardwick. "Seeing"
is
a series
of luminous and incisive encounters with film, dance,
photography, painting, opera, and theatre. the
final
some
section,
of her
And
in
"There and Here," Sontag explores
own commitments:
to the
work
(and
activism) of conscience, to the concreteness of historical understanding,
and to the vocation of the
writer.
Where
the Stress Falls records a great
ican writer's urgent
most late
engagement with some of the
significant aesthetic
and moral issues of the
twentieth century, and provides a
clear-eyed appraisal of century,
in
Amer-
what
is
brilliant
at stake, in this
the survival of that inheritance.
and
new
Civic Center New Books 814. 54 Sontag Sontag, Susan, 1933Where the stress falls
essays 31111021750284
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http://www.archive.org/details/wherestressfallsOOsont
SONTAG
BY SUSAN
FICTION The Benefactor Death Kit I,
The Way
etcetera
We Live Now
The Volcano Lover In America
ESSAYS Against Interpretation Styles of Radical Will
On
Photography
Illness
As Metaphor
Under the Sign of Saturn
AIDS and Its Metaphors FILM
SCRIPTS
Duet for Cannibals Brother Carl
PLAY Alice in
A
Bed
Susan Sontag Reader
WHERE THE STRESS FALLS
Susan Sontag
WHE RE THE STRESS FALLS essays
FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX
NEW YORK
Farrar, Straus 19
Union Square West, Copyright
©
and Giroux
New York
10003
2001 by Susan Sontag All rights reserved
Distributed in Canada by Douglas
& Mclntyre Ltd.
Printed in the United States of America First edition, 2001
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sontag, Susan,
Where
93 3— falls
:
essays / Susan Sontag.
—
1st
ed.
cm.
p.
ISBN I.
1
the stress
0-374-28917-4 (hardcover
:
alk.
paper)
Title.
PS3569.O6547 814'. 54
W48
2001
—dc2i 2001033704
Designed by Cassandra
J.
Pappas
for Elizabeth Hardwick
Continent, the choice
And
city, is
country, society:
never wide and never
here, or there
.
.
.
free.
No. Should we have stayed
at
home,
wherever that may be?
—Elizabeth Bishop "Questions of Travel"
CONTENTS
READING A Poet's Prose Where
3
the Stress Falls
Afterlives:
The Case of Machado de
Assis
1
o
3
o
A Mind in Mourning
4
The Wisdom
49
Writing
Project
Itself:
On
Roland Barthes
6
3
Walser's Voice
8
Danilo Kis
92
Gombrowicz's Ferdydurke
97
9
Pedro Paramo
1
DQ
109
A Letter to Borges
1 1
o6
SEEING
A Century of Cinema
1
1
Novel into Film: Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz
1
2
3
A Note on Bunraku A Place for Fantasy
1
3
2
1
3
6
The Pleasure of the Image
1
42
1
Contents
About Hodgkin
A Lexicon
Jl
for Available Light
i
6
of Their Feelings
1
78
Dancer and the Dance
1
8
Lincoln Kirstein
1
94
Wagner's Fluids
1
97
An
2
1
o
2
1
6
In
Memory
Ecstasy of
One Hundred
On
Lament Years of Italian Photography
Bellocq
223
Borland's Babies
227
Certain Mapplethorpes
A Photograph
7
Is
233
Not an Opinion. Or
Is It?
238
THERE AND HERE Homage
to Halliburton
2
5
5
Singleness
2
5
9
Writing As Reading
263
Thirty Years Later ...
268
Questions of Travel
274
The Idea of Europe (One More
Elegy)
28
5
The Very Comical Lament of Pyramus and Thisbe (An Interlude)
Answers
to a Questionnaire
290
294
Waiting for Godot in Sarajevo
299
"There" and "Here"
3*3
Joseph Brodsky
330
On
334
Being Translated
Acknowledgments
349
B.EAD N G I
A
"I I
WHO WOULD century
Pasternak
.
.
—one
.
,"
BE
Camus
Poet's Prose
nothing without the Russian nineteenth declared, in 1958, in a letter of
homage
to
whose
of the constellation of magnificent writers
work, along with the annals of their tragic destinies, preserved, recovered, discovered in translation over the past twenty-five years, has
made
the Russian twentieth century an event that
be) equally formative and,
it
is
(or will
prove to
being our century as well, far more impor-
tunate, impinging.
The Russian nineteenth century achievement of prose writers.
Its
that
changed our souls was an
twentieth century has been, mostly, an
achievement of poets
—but not only an achievement
their prose the poets
espoused the most passionate opinions: any ideal
in poetry.
About
of seriousness inevitably seethes with dispraise. Pasternak in the
decades of his
life
last
dismissed as horribly modernist and self-conscious
the splendid, subtle memoiristic prose of his youth (like Safe Conduct),
while proclaiming the novel he was then working on, Doctor Zhivago, to
be the most authentic and complete of
his poetry
committed
was nothing
in
comparison.
all
his writings, beside
More
typically, the
which
poets were
to a definition of poetry as an enterprise of such inherent
superiority (the highest aim of literature, the highest condition of lan-
became an
guage) that any
work
were always
communication,
a
in prose
inferior venture
a service activity.
—
as
if
"Instruction
prose is
the
SUSAN SONTAG
4
nerve of prose/' Mandelstam wrote in an early essay, so that "what
be meaningful to the prose writer or
essayist, the
may
poet finds absolutely
meaningless." While prose writers are obliged to address themselves to the concrete audience of their contemporaries, poetry as a whole has a
more or
less distant,
unknown
addressee, says Mandelstam: "Exchang-
Mars ...
ing signals with the planet
is
a task
worthy of
a lyric poet."
Tsvetaeva shares this sense of poetry as the apex of literary en-
deavor
—which means
"Pushkin was
etry.
Pugachev"
(1937),
identifying
all
great writing, even
if
prose, as po-
she concludes her essay "Pushkin and
a poet,"
and "nowhere was he the poet with such force
the 'classical' prose of
as in
The Captain's Daughter"
The same would-be paradox with which Tsvetaeva sums up her love for Pushkin's novella
elaborated by Joseph Brodsky in his essay
is
prefacing the collected edition great prose,
it
(in
must be described
Russian) of Tsvetaeva's prose: being as "the continuation of poetry
with
other means." Like earlier great Russian poets, Brodsky requires for his definition of poetry a caricatural Other: the slack mental condition
he
equates with prose. Assuming a privative standard of prose, and of the poet's motives for turning to prose ("something usually dictated
economic considerations,
cessity"), in contrast to the
(whose "true subject"
etry
—poetry be
Such
be regarded
as the aristocrat of letters, the
poetry
identical with the "prosaic."
idea.
dull,
(The
is
actually a tautology
And
OED
's
im-
gives 18
13
as
its
literatures of
earliest
as if
prose were
is
precisely a
Romantic
use in this figurative sense.)
one of the signature themes of the
is
Western Europe, poetry
language and being: an ideal of
—
"prosaic" as a term of denigration,
commonplace, ordinary, tame,
In the "defense of poetry" that
Romantic
— another of Brodsky
aviation, prose the infantry.
a definition of
meaning
by
by polemical ne-
"absolute objects and absolute feelings"),
prose writer the bourgeois or plebeian; that ages
rarely
most exalted, prescriptive standard of po-
is
inevitable that the poet
it is
more
'dry spells,' or
is
a
form of both
intensity, absolute candor, nobility,
heroism.
The
republic of letters
always been a bility
titre
is,
in reality,
de noblesse.
But
an aristocracy.
in the
Romantic
And
"poet" has
era, the poet's no-
ceased to be synonymous with superiority as such and acquired
A an adversary
5
poet as the avatar of freedom. The Romantics
role: the
vented the writer
Poet's Prose
as hero, a figure central to
Russian literature (which
does not get under way until the early nineteenth century); and,
happened, history made of rhetoric are heroes
—they have no choice
if
The
a reality
in-
as
it
great Russian writers
they are to be great writers
—and
Russian literature has continued to breed Romantic notions of the poet.
To the modern Russian
poets, poetry defends nonconformity,
freedom, individuality against the
communal
the
drone.
(It is
State.)
No wonder
and
radical difference
its
PROSE
as if
its
wretched vulgar present,
true state were,
finally,
the
they go on insisting on the absoluteness of poetry
from prose.
TO POETRY,
IS
social, the
prose in
said Valery, as walking
is
to dancing
—Ro-
mantic assumptions about poetry's inherent superiority hardly being confined to the great Russian poets. For the poet to turn to prose, says Brodsky,
The
is
always a falling
contrast
is
off, "like
the shift from
full
gallop to a trot."
not just one of velocity, of course, but one of mass:
lyric
poetry's compactness versus the sheer extendedness of prose. (That
virtuoso of extended prose, of the art of anti-laconicism, Gertrude Stein, said that poetry
nouns, prose
is
tinctive genius of poetry
process, time
major poet
—
who
and
—
is
The
future.)
has written major prose far bulkier
something equivalent
is
verbs. In other words, the dis-
naming, that of prose, to show movement,
past, present,
delstam, Tsvetaeva
There
is
is
—
collected prose of any
Valery, Rilke, Brecht,
Man-
than his or her collected poems.
in literature to the prestige the
Roman-
conferred on thinness.
tics
That poets regularly produce prose, while prose writers rarely write poetry,
not, as
is
Brodsky argues, evidence of poetry's
cording to Brodsky, "The poet, in principle, writer
.
whereas
.
.
because
a
hard-up poet can
in similar straits a
is
than writing prose but that
it is
its
superiority.
Ac-
'higher' than the prose
down and compose
an
article,
prose writer would hardly give thought to a
poem." But\he point surely
and
sit
is
not that writing poetry special
is
less well
—the marginalizing of poetry
audience; that what was once considered a normal
playing a musical instrument,
paid
now seems
skill, like
the province of the difficult
SUSAN SONTAG
6
and the intimidating. Not only prose writers but cultivated people gen-
no longer write
erally
poetry. (As poetry
course, something to memorize.)
no
is
longer, as a matter of
Modern performance
in literature
shaped by the widespread discrediting of the idea of
partly
tuosity;
by
now seems
a very real loss of virtuosity. It
is
literary vir-
utterly extraordi-
nary that anyone can write brilliant prose in more than one language;
we marvel
at a
Nabokov,
a Beckett, a
centuries ago such virtuosity until recently,
was the
would have been taken
ability to write
In the twentieth century, writing
prose writer's youth (Joyce, Beckett, ticed with the left to
Cabrera Infante
—but
until
two
for granted. So,
poetry as well as prose.
poems tends
Nabokov
hand (Borges, Updike
.
.
.).
.
.)
.
be
to
a dalliance of a
or an activity prac-
Being
a
poet
is
assumed
be more than writing poetry, even great poetry: Lawrence and
Brecht,
who wrote
poets. Being a poet
great poems, are not generally considered great is
to define oneself as, to persist (against odds) in
being, only a poet. Thus, the one generally acknowledged instance in
twentieth-century literature of a great prose writer poet,
Thomas Hardy,
who was
someone who renounced writing novels
is
order to write poetry. (Hardy ceased to be a prose writer. poet.) In that sense the
also a great
Romantic notion of the poet,
as
He became
An
a
someone who
has a maximal relation to poetry, has prevailed; and not only
modern Russian
in
among
the
writers.
exception
is
made
for criticism, however.
master practitioner of the
critical essay loses
no
The poet who
is
status as a poet;
also a
from
Blok to Brodsky, most of the major Russian poets have written splendid
critical prose.
fluential critics
Indeed, since the Romantic era, most of the truly
have been poets: Coleridge, Baudelaire, Valery,
That other forms of prose are more rarely attempted marks a great ference from the Romantic era.
in-
Eliot. dif-
A Goethe or Pushkin or Leopardi, who
wrote both great poetry and great (non-critical) prose, did not seem
odd or presumptuous. But
the bifurcation of standards for prose in
succeeding literary generations
—the emergence of
of "art" prose, the ascendancy of
made
that kind of
illiterate
accomplishment
Actually, the frontier
and more permeable
far
and
a minority tradition
para-literate prose
—has
more anomalous.
between prose and poetry has become more
—unified by the ethos of maximalism
characteris-
A tic
modern
of the
artist:
to create
work
that goes as far as
standard that seems eminently appropriate to
which poems may be regarded further can be done,
Poet's Prose
lyric poetry,
as linguistic artifacts to
now influences much
it
of what
is
7
can go. The
according to
which nothing
distinctively
mod-
some of
ern in prose. Precisely as prose, since Flaubert, has aspired to
the intensity, velocity, and lexical inevitability of poetry, there seems a
need to shore up the two-party system
greater
in literature, to distin-
guish prose from poetry, and to oppose them.
Why
prose, not poetry, that
it is
always on the defensive
is
the party of prose seems at best an ad hoc coalition.
be suspicious of
a label that
now encompasses
the novel or short story, the play? Prose state of
language defined negatively, by
qui nest point prose est
vers, et tout ce
is
forms
literary
tion,
prose.)
that, in their
Now
it
modern
tively recent notion.
that couldn't
When
essays
called essays,
and long and short
called novels
and
stories,
we
call
qui nest point vers est prose" as
is
a
liptical,
usually in the
forms, that
is
his life
he has been
catchall for a
panoply of
a
term used to describe
be called poetry, "prose"
no longer seem
fictions
like
no longer
like
to
be
what used
to
be
of twentieth -century literature has
kind of prose: impatient, ardent,
more reasonable)
voice.
activity, to
The
if
not,
by writers with the
The
criticism
to prac-
and
cultural journalism of Eliot
as they are, are
not written in poet's
and occasional pieces of Mandelstam and Tsve-
taeva are. In contrast to a poetics
is
have a different (more persuasive,
criticism
and Auden and Paz, excellent prose.
el-
person, often using discontinuous or broken
mainly written by poets (or
genuinely different
a rela-
what used
standard of poetry in mind). For some poets, to write prose tice a
is
them prose.
a particular first
all
evolution and high-speed dissolu-
ONE OF THE GREAT EVENTS been the evolution of
the essay, the memoir,
opposite: poetry. ("Tout ce
one no longer knows how to name. As
what Tsvetaeva wrote
one not
not just a ghostly category, a
its
claims, so that the bourgeois can discover that
—speaking
that
Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme pro-
the philosophy teacher in Moliere's
surprise!
How can
is
Mandelstam
—who wrote
criticism, journalism,
("Conversation about Dante"), a novella (The Egyptian
SUSAN SONTAG
8
memoir (The Noise of Time)
Stamp), a
—Tsvetaeva
in
her prose offers a
narrower range of genres, a purer example of poet's prose. Poet's prose not only has a particular fervor, density, velocity, fiber. It
has a distinctive subject: the growth of the poet's vocation. Typically,
takes the
it
The
autobiographical.
form of two kinds of narrative. One
other, also in the shape of a
directly
is
memoir,
is
the
portrait of another person, either a fellow writer (often of the older
generation, and a mentor) or a beloved relative (usually a parent or
Homage
grandparent). self:
the poet
his or
to others
is
complement
the
saved from vulgar egoism by the strength and purity of
is
homage
her admirations. In paying
evoking the decisive encounters, both in writer
to accounts of one-
to the important real life
and
enunciating the standards by which the self
is
Poet's prose
is
mostly about being a poet.
And
the poet
is
ruthlessly sacrificed.
which the
to
self,
The poet
self is the real self, the
and when the poet
selves
the definition of a pathetic fate.)
is
self dies, the
umphant emergence of
form
the poet
—
self.
is
daily self,
the two.
The
to
be judged.
self.
The
person
Much
self deis
other one
dies.
often is
the
(To have two
of the prose of poets
devoted to chronicling the
tri-
(In the journal or diary, the other
major genre of poet's prose, the focus
and the
is
daily self (and others)
carrier;
particularly in the memoiristic
in literature, the
to write such auto-
biography, as to be a poet, requires a mythology of the scribed
models and
is
on the gap between the poet
and the often untriumphant transactions between
diaries
—
for example, Baudelaire's or Blok's
with rules for protecting the poet
self;
desperate
—abound
maxims of encourage-
ment; accounts of dangers, discouragements, and defeats.)
Many
of Tsvetaeva
poet. In the
Man"
writings in prose are portraits of the self as
s
memoir of Max Voloshin, "A Living Word about
evokes the bespectacled, defiant schoolgirl
(1933), Tsvetaeva
with a shaved head
who
has just published her
Voloshin, an established poet and rived
unannounced
eighteen. Like
cious
s
to call
on
her.
of her
gifts.)
herself.
first
The more
book of poems;
having praised her book,
(The year
is
genuine"
writers, she
is,
ar-
1910 and Tsvetaeva
The fond evocation
"insatiability for the
avowal about
critic,
most poets, unlike most prose
command
Voloshin
a Living
was
is
in preco-
of what she calls
of course, Tsvetaeva 's
directly memoiristic texts are also ac-
A
Poet's Prose
9
counts of the growth of the poet's vocation. "Mother and Music" (1935) describes the birth of the poet's lyricism
immersion
in music; Tsvetaeva's
mother was
through the household's a pianist.
"My Pushkin"
(1937) recounts the birth of the poet's capacity for passion (and culiar
by
— bent
"all
the passion in
me
for
its
unhappy non- reciprocal
pe-
love")
recalling the relation Tsvetaeva had, in the very earliest years of her
childhood, with the image and legend of Pushkin.
The prose of poets
is
subject evoked belongs,
may be
sion
But
it is
typically elegiac, retrospective. It
by
a literal death
The
occaBely.
definition, to the vanished past.
exile,
and suffering endured by Tsvetaeva
not even the atrocious privation
in exile
turned to the Soviet Union in 1939 (where,
ter.
in
In prose the poet
August is
as if the
—the memoirs of both Voloshin and
not the tragedy of the
committed suicide
is
and up
now
to the time she re-
an internal
exile,
she
1941), that accounts for this elegiac regis-
always mourning a lost Eden; asking
memory
to speak, or sob.
A work
poet's prose is
is
the autobiography of ardor. All of Tsvetaeva's
an argument for rapture; and for genius, that
a poetics of the
Promethean. "Our whole relation to
in favor of genius," as Tsvetaeva
the Light of Conscience."
wrote
To be
in her
a poet
is
art is
an exception in
a state of being, elevated
There
is
the
quality of emotional soaring in her prose as in her poetry:
no
modern
is
highest."
writer takes one as close to an experience of sublimity.
Tsvetaeva points out, river.
for hierarchy:
stupendous essay "Art
being: Tsvetaeva speaks of her love for "what
same
is,
"No one
As
has ever stepped twice into the same
But did anyone ever step twice into the same book?" [1983]
Where
the Stress
Falls
for P.D.
T I
BEGINS,
this great
American novel
(let's
American short novel"), with the voice of
not
call
it
"this great
recollection; that
the voice of uncertainty:
The Cullens were
Irish;
but
it
was
in
France that
I
met them and was
able to form an impression of their love and their trouble.
on
their
way
to a property they
noon they came That was
in
and she met
Needless to
and now the
to Chancellet to see
May
my
had rented
my
in
Hungary; and one
great friend Alexandra Henry.
of 1928 or 1929, before
we
all
returned to America,
say,
forties in
the twenties were very different from the thirties,
have begun. In the twenties
some country
as foreign to
it
was not unusual
them
as to you,
peregrination just crossing theirs; and you did your best to
an afternoon or
so;
and perhaps you
knowledge, friendship. There was a kind of riosity in the air.
And
peace that goes on even importance.
10
after-
brother and married him.
meet foreigners
in
They were
called that idealistic
know them
little
lightning
or optimistic cu-
vagaries of character, and the various
in the
to
your
war and
psyche, seemed of the greatest interest and
is,
Where To
cite the
had barely it
the Stress
—the novel was published begun — puts an additional on decade
Falls
I
I
in 1940, so the forties
glaze
the story, investing
with the allure of the untimely; supervening World Events,
it's
suggested, have wilted the importance of the "war and peace that
goes on in the psyche." This digested in
lives,
is
be merely some
to
about private
stuff
record time: "an afternoon or so"
exactly the
is
duration of the story, for the Cullens arrive after lunch, around twothirty,
and bolt
just as
these few hours
an elaborate dinner
— good deal — storm of a
of Mrs. Dalloway
a
less
about to be served. In
is
than the entire day and evening
feelings will batter the constraints of
and the ferocious indissoluble union of the Cullens,
gentility,
"their
love and their trouble," will have been subjected to a cunningly
thorough examination. "Lightning knowledge" edge
—what kind of knowl-
that?
is
The
novel,
neglected, ever astonishing,
still
by Glenway Wescott.
It
belongs, in
my
view,
is
The Pilgrim
among
the treasures of
twentieth-century American literature, however untypical are subtle vocabulary, the density of
its
attention to character,
pessimism, and the clipped worldliness of
thought to be typically American
is
Hawk
its
its
sleek,
fastidious
point of view. What's
its
brash, broad,
and
a little simple,
even simpleminded, particularly about such venerable subjects of Eu-
ropean discernment
as marriage,
and The Pilgrim
Hawk
is
anything
but simple about marriage.
Of
course,
American
literature has always
provided complex per-
formances of the moral imagination, some of which are dramas of tricate psychic violence as
consciousness.
watch, to
what
is
The
who
narrates
Who are this bluff, fleshy,
exquisitely dressed
a witnessing
The Pilgrim
Hawk
is
to
understand (which also means to be puzzled by)
reflect, to
going on.
observed and mulled over by
job of the "I"
in-
woman
self-conscious
with a full-grown hooded
man and
this
falcon, or pilgrim
hawk, clinging to the rough gauntlet on her wrist? The narrator finds their presence, their
derangements, stimulating.
He
is
quick with elo-
quent summary assessments of their character. These evolve as their turmoil unfolds.
The opening of
the novel suggests the uncanny speed at which an
SUSAN SONTAG
12
omnivorous observer might form "an impression" of two hitherto-
unknown
people: "you did your best to
masterly vagueness about in
May
when
know them."
It
also
proposes a
impression was formed: "That was
this
we all returned to America ..." Why make the narrator unsure of the year? It
of 1928 or 1929, before
would Wescott choose
to
could be to mute the import of 1929, the year of the Crash, for such as his
two
idle-rich
but seriously
Europe.
American expats
rich, as in a
Or maybe
one assigned the
manners may
this
all
— not Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald
rich
Henry James novel about Americans "doing"
vagueness
is
simply the good manners of some-
name
too Jamesian
dictate the narrator's
fits
of
Alwyn Tower. And good
of doubt about his
own
acuity:
an Alwyn Tower would not wish to appear to be merely trying to be clever.
Name
follows function. Detached,
virtually pastless
being loved;
we
novel,
is
and
that, disabused,
(we don't learn what has exiled him from loving and
name
don't even learn his last
through the book, and to divine his
Alwyn Tower
more than
until nearly halfway
name we have
first
to
know
that
the central figure in Wescott 's early autobiographical
The Grandmothers), the narrator
ous as he might seem. In
fact,
is
nevertheless not as mysteri-
The Pilgrim Hawk's
"I"
is
a familiar
personage, the shadowy bachelor friend of one or more of the principal characters
who,
in
kindred versions, narrates Hawthorne's The
Blithedale Romance, James's
The Sacred Fount, and
gree by the
more
The
Fitzgerald's
Great Gatsby. All these recessive narrators are abashed to
some
de-
reckless or vital or self-destructive people they
observe.
The narrator
as spectator
posed to
at a
at least
hotel
a treetop
room window where he can
house opposite. The Sacred Fount peephole novel. The key revelation tred of his wife's creature,
window and
something of
seeing
a voyeur.
more than one
is
sup-
Coverdale, the creepy narrator of The Blithedale Ro-
see.
mance, observes his friends from post
necessarily,
is,
Gazing can become snooping, or
is
the
in
mirador and also from see into the
consummate
his
windows of
a
narrator-at-the-
The Pilgrim Hawk, Cullen's ha-
comes when Tower happens
sees Cullen, stealthily approaching
to look out a
the falcon,
who
has
Where been removed to the garden
unhooding
her,
Marriage
is
and then
after a
slicing
the normative
the Stress
Falls
13
bloody meal, pulling out
through her leash to
tie in this
set
her
a knife,
free.
world of couples that includes
not only the Cullens and a stormily mated pair of servants but the
pseudo-couple formed by Alex Henry and her opaquely sexed, rumi-
and houseguest. Maybe Tower's unease with the working
native friend
of his
own understanding proceeds from
side the
awareness of being out-
his
deep experiences of coupledom, and alone. "Life
perch. There
is
no
and no one
nest;
is
is
almost
with you, on exactly the same
rock or out on the same limb. The circumstances of passion are petty to be companionable." His
is
wisdom
the arid
unmarried consciousness. "Whether or not understanding of people,
I finally
often begin in the
I
all
arrive at a
way of
all
too
of a profoundly
proper
a vexed, intense
superficiality.
Tower falls
is
and exercises
Hawthorne's "frosty bachelor,"
in writers' self-mortification. Coverdale, is
a poet. Wescott's
bachelor narrator
embittered by his failure to become a "literary
warned me stop
as the pit-
of understanding. All these valetudinarian narrators are also writ-
ers' self-portraits
still
much
describing the vagaries of novel writing as
him from thinking
like a novelist,
to others'
which may There
observing like a novelist, flaunt-
temper or temperament; and
turn, almost
is
("no one
which does not
that I really did not have talent enough"),
ing a novelist's volatility of judgment. "Sometimes
woman
artist"
I
it is
am a
as sensitive as a
kind of
sensitivity
by chance, for them or against them."
no smugness
in
Tower's acknowledgment of a novelist's
ambivalence toward his subject, in contrast to Coverdale 's chilling flection:
The thought impressed
itself
upon me,
that
I
had
left
duties unper-
formed. With the power, perhaps, to act in the place of destiny, and avert misfortune
from
my
friends,
That cold tendency, between
I
instinct
had resigned them and
intellect,
to their fate.
which made
me
pry
with a speculative interest into people's passions and impulses, ap-
peared to have gone far towards unhumanizing
But
a
man
is
my
heart.
cannot always decide for himself whether his
own
heart
re-
SUSAN SONTAG
14
cold or warm.
is
It
now
impresses
Hollingsworth, Zenobia, and pathy, rather than too
Tower
more
serving
Priscilla,
mixed
his
He
explicit.
that, if I erred at all in it
was through too much sym-
feelings about the couple
He
feels repelled.
with the wife, sometimes with the husband
and re-form several times
them
alters.
body
type,
seems
—
(The neurasthenic,
becoming robust,
way
risks
as the
more
Wescott does not go that
—
even appears to change
Sometimes Tower
interesting natures,
sometimes he
He is
far.
is
manner of
late
Henry James. But
content to stay wdth the benefits, for
the advancement of the story, of so self-conscious a narrator.
who
ters
tell
will
plausible,
about him, his tortuous and
a story
in the
to
balance of power between
fragile wife
becoming
of seeing
with a painful story to
ob-
sympathizes, sometimes
seems to be imposing more complexity on their story than
and the narration
is
she so driven and sexually
coarse, indomitable.)
in arrears of their ever
self- torturing
he
and dejected. The Cullens themselves seem
vibrant, he so desperate
dissolve
regard to
little.
make
able to
is
me
want
to furnish
reveal themselves only gradually.
it
What more
nomical method than to make the complexity of
A novelist
with complex characingenious, eco-
a character the result
of the instability of a first-person narrator's perceptions? For this pur-
pose Tower could hardly be better suited. His appetite for discovering
and repudiating There
is
significances
only one
way
another recoil from his
is
insatiable.
for such a narrator to conclude: with yet
own knowingness.
After the drunken con-
fidences and weeping and shouting and dangerous flirting, after a large revolver has been brandished (and flung into a pond), after nervous farewells have
papered over the abyss and the Cullens and the hawk
have spun off into the night
long dark Daimler, after Tower and
in the
Alex have wandered into the garden to muse on
Tower
ior,
recalls to himself the visions of rapacity
has mustered throughout the Cullens'
we have been
.
.
.
and
all this
I
visit
—
unruly behav-
and inhumanity he
recalls, that
is,
the
book
reading:
blushed. Half the time,
just guessing; cartooning.
I
am
afraid,
Again and again
I
my
give
opinion of people
way
is
to a kind of inex-
Where act
and vengeful
and
I
cannot
lyricism; I
am ashamed
of
Sometimes
it.
moral matters; and so long as
I
what
tell I
the Stress
right
15
have to be avenged,
my judgment
doubt
entirely
propose to be
I
Falls
a story-teller, that
is
in
the
whisper of the devil for me.
Is this frenetic reflectiveness
without being able to prove
something of these tones anguish
—
one
is
it.
American?
distinctively
The only English novel
—the tormented
that plainly served
diffidence
Wescott
think so,
I
know
I
and the muffled
as a partial inspiration for
The Pilgrim Hawk: Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier Ford's novel
is
also
routines of idleness
drama
can couple.
It is
is
(191
5).
both a story of marital agony breaking through the
and
undertaken by an
a project of recollection
American expatriate whiling away ter of the
with
his life
on the Continent. At the cen-
an English couple abroad, friends of a rich Ameri-
the American husband,
now
died since the time of the "sad affair" he
is
a
— wife has the —who
widower
recalling
his
tells
story.
Both
in fiction
and
needs a pretext
ally
—
in autobiography, first-person narrating gener-
known
also
as a justification
—
about oneself used to be considered unseemly: the
to begin.
To
talk
classic autobiogra-
phies and the classic novels that pretend to be somebody's
memoir
all
begin by offering extenuating reasons for doing something so egotisti-
Even now, when self-centeredness hardly
cal.
book of
self-examination, a novel cast as a personal recollection, con-
tinues to invite a self-justifying explanation. I
requires an apology, a
know how
to do.
It's all that's left
don't understand, and
I
want
for
me
It's
useful to others.
to do.
There
is
It's all
something
I
to understand. I'm not really talking
about myself but about them.
The Good Soldier that
he
sits
down
did not understand tain
and
when
it
and Mrs. Ashburnham another sense,
yet, in
know then happen fret
starts
—
—by the
is
to
with
its
deracinated narrator explaining
"today" in order "to puzzle out" what he lamentably
was happening. "My wife and as well as
it
was possible
we knew nothing
rules of fiction,
know now. The
from time to time over
at all
where (unlike
narrator
may
to
I
knew Cap-
know
anybody,
about them." Not to life)
something has to
restate his bewilderment,
his inability to describe properly,
worry that
SUSAN SONTAG
16
he has not got some
fact quite right.
There
no way
is
for readers to take
these avowals of deficient understanding other than as evidence that he sees all
—
or, rather,
allows us to see
—the doomed Captain Ashburnham
too well.
MARRIAGES ARE CENTRAL M A T E R
I
A
in
L
most great novels and
are likely to activate the generalizing impulse. In novels recounted in
the third person, a ization
is
good place
The
acknowledged, that
good fortune must be
author, sarcastically.
Austen
of a general-
call
right at the beginning.
"It is a truth universally
sion of a
sound the trumpet
to
And
want of
in
man
Who
a wife."
in posses-
saying this?
is
the denizens of the small world in which
her story actually think
sets
a single
it
—which makes
this
maxim some-
thing less than "a truth universally acknowledged."
And who ily is
saying "All
is
unhappy
happy
own way"?
in its
families are alike; each
Again, the author. Or,
unhappy fam-
if
you
will,
the
book. There's only a touch of irony in the opening line of Tolstoy's synoptic marriage novel. But does anyone, inside or outside the novel, actually think this?
The
No.
authority of the
renowned
and Anna Karenina depends on
first
sentences of Pride and Prejudice
their floating free
from any particular
were the nature of wisdom
to
be impersonal, oracular,
anonymous, overbearing. Neither assertion
is
actually true.
speaker, as
if it
Both seem
unchallengeably mature and pertinent as impatient observations about the cruelties of the marriage market and the despair of a naive wife
upon discovering her husband's which
to
open
a novel,
families are
.
.")
.
This
is
hand with
a strong
some axiom about human behavior
emptively or ironically as an
happy
infidelity.
offered pre-
eternal verity. ("It is a truth
Knowingness about human nature,
.
.
."
"All
old-style,
is
always in the present tense.
Wisdom spective,
in the
contemporary novel
intimate-sounding.
more appealing and seems the display tivity
is
The to
—the intrusion —of
suspect;
it's
is
more
likely to
be
retro-
vulnerable, self-doubting voice
is
be more trustworthy. Readers crave
personality; that
is,
of weakness. Objec-
thought to be bogus or cold. Generalizations
Where can be proposed, but wryly.
welcome
Good
I
have ever heard"
Sad
Soldier.
Falls
is
exude
stories
17
and self-doubt are always
Certitude seems like arrogance. "This
flavors.)
dest story
(Pathos
the Stress
is
the sad-
the famous opening sentence of The signs, like sweat,
many
narrator voice will undertake, with
which
hesitations
a
squeamish
and doubts, to de-
cipher.
While
a narration
conducted
in the third
person can create the
illu-
sion of a story happening now, freshly told, a first-person narrator's story
there ity
one from the
inevitably
is
past. Telling
is
—no, the likelihood—of
mourn on
mind
its
error.
be
will
of the
human
is
a feast of reflection fallibility
And where
always the possibil-
A first-person novel with
backward look so error-prone: the bility
retelling.
is
self-conscious retelling, witnessing, there
anything to
on what makes
that
of memory, the impenetra-
heart, the obscuring distance
between past and
present.
Evoking that distance person
is
a strong
a blur of a year,
the start of a novel narrated in the
at
first
new opening move. Thus The Pilgrim Hawk gives us "May of 1928 or 1929," since which so much has
changed, and follows that with a bit of decade-mongering: the twenties,
the
which were, "needless
"now" of the
from the
thirties
and
opens with another tease of a time-marker:
(1979)
It is
do
to say," very different
Elizabeth Hardwick's novel Sleepless Nights
forties.
June. This
this
life,
is
what
I
have decided to do with
work of transformed and even
the one
I
am
How
nice
it is
squalid nursing home. apathetic battle
—
that
—
its
this
The is
pink and blue and gray squares and diaproduction of a broken old
I see.
a decision
You can
knew what
More
beautiful
it
down
to
like a
be marked Rand Avenue
in a
is
the table with the
in the street.
remember or pretend
and what you want from the
take
woman
magazines, the Times at the door, the bird-
song of rough, grinding trucks only one
lead this
niceness and the squalor and sorrow in an
what
telephone, the books and
If
memory and
I will
leading today. Every morning the blue clock and the
crocheted bedspread with
monds.
distorted
my life just now.
in
can from a
Kentucky
.
remember. Make
lost things will present itself.
shelf. .
to
.
Perhaps.
One
can would
SUSAN SONTAG
18
The weird
specificity of a
month, June, minus the
year; the statement of
the project ("transformed and even distorted memory"); the inventory
of homely comforting objects (clock and bedspread) followed by the
plunge into the world of the disfavored (the broken old nursing home), a foretaste of
more
from the
("this
knowing what
is
past; and,
what
I
finally,
is
a
to attempt to retrieve, in
of Hardwick's
have decided to do with
method
my
human
is
by
told
is
a
book of judgments
a
somewhat
veiled first-person narrator
who
make narrator— —both the protagonist of the book and the voice of deis
to
that
a ver-
tached, brilliant spectatorship. In Sleepless Nights there narrative but many,
most of the
in-
with special attention to marriage, and, like
(what else?) a writer. Hardwick's feat
sion of herself
—such
as a writer.
relations,
Wescott's novel,
now")
life just
tale are a signature aspect
Like The Pilgrim Hawk, Sleepless Nights
about
mem-
the wistful stipulativeness of the venture
comparably rapid modulations of tone and
is
by the narrator with
sophisticated inventory (books, magazines, the Times at the
door); the worry about ory,
of the book's raw feeling and un-
see"); the return to the comforts enjoyed
I
in the
assumption of possibly erroneous subjectivity ("that
ease; the brave
what
much
woman
and the
"I"
is
chooses to
stories she
not
at
retell
is
not one
the center but to the side of
—conjuring up,
talking to, re-
proving, grieving over ghosts.
"Back to the 'long
makes
down
it
streaming and
There
member
Trawling through the past,
is
like a
fitful
damming up
remembering
is
to voice
—
of associations, makes a montage of
for remembering's sake.
to cast
form of address. There
description,
is
Many
I
will
memories
remember
and none of the usual appetite
many
—
are those borne
self.
re-
this for you.")
To
— and
is,
always,
others than
self-
in autobiographical fiction
The
injuries described
—and
by others.
of the memories are discomfiting;
ness. In contrast to
You can even
into language
more invocation of
for the describing of injury to the
there are
Hawk,
memory
can from a shelf"), then, guided by the steady
for others. ("Dear old Alex:
remember a
"
narrow, arbitrary- seeming selection of what to relate ("You
a
can take
that.
ago.'
some reek of spent
what understanding accomplishes
the awareness garnered in Sleepless Nights
is
in
painful-
The Pilgrim
cathartic. It
is felt
Where and
composed, written down, wrung
it is
the Stress
out,
—he doesn't
luctant to
seem
to
really like (or at
19
speeded up. In The
Pil-
—one has the
grim Hawk, the narrator has only himself to talk impression
Falls
to, a self
any rate upon
whom
he
is re-
be bestowing any kind of approval). In Sleepless
Nights, the narrator has the gallery of
bered, fondly or ruefully, to talk
all
the people
who
remem-
are
and the wry magnanimity she ex-
to,
tends to most of those she describes she extends to herself as well.
Some memories
are brought to
and
are allowed to dilate
and quickly dismissed, while others
life
many
fill
pages. Everything
questioned; everything, in retrospect, a breath of complaint (and there
was,
it's
gone now, part of the
is
("Can
self.
it
much
be that
the commenting,
to complain of): whatever
it
past, the nothing-to-be-done, the was-it-
am
I
is
both absorbed by and
the subject?")
pungent astuteness complement each
When
there to be
drenched with poignancy. Not
is
really-like-that, all retold in a voice that
ferent to
is
indif-
The doubts and
the
other.
summing-up observer
is
impervious to
doubts, the register inevitably shifts to the comic. Take that most assured
T
of fictional people-watchers, the witty Pictures
from an
although, as cultural conventions
—
tively superior
that of a
New
reflective, learned,
Benton College,
York
City,
cheeky is
where the famous
even a while before
someone with
by being unidentified,
it,
a voice that
—would be
that
he (and
and
we
that
novelist
he
is
is
so attrac-
assumed
it is
a "progressive" college for
arrived to teach for a semester, It's
would have
man. All we do come to know
faculty of
from
voice of Randall Jarrell's awesomely
Institution (1954). It starts
a he)
is
women
to
on the
not far
Gertrude Johnson has
married.
realize there
is
a first-person narrator,
Recounting matters that only an
a small role in the story.
omniscient narrator could know, the novel's
first
seven pages point
refutably in the other direction. Then, speeding through a hilarious
on the vanity and presumption of little
Gertrude thought Europe overrated,
too; she
voyaged
there,
voyaged
back, and told her friends; they listened, awed, uneasy somehow. She a
icans,
wonderful theory that Europeans are mere children to us Amer-
who
are the oldest of
men
ir-
riff
his writer-monster, Jarrell delivers a
surprise:
had
be
—why
I
once knew: because our
polit-
SUSAN SONTAG
20
ical institutions are older,
their
Who
is
some
—
stage of forget.
I
who once knew, who forgets? Not someone memory lapses. Though the first-perso"n voice of
worried
this "I"
about his
from an
or because Europeans skipped
development, or because Gertrude was an American
Institution pipes
up
avowal of incertitude. But
and self-possessed mind.
belatedly, this
We
a
is
it is
Pictures
in canonical fashion,
mock
with an
avowal, surely, by a nimble
wouldn't expect the narrator to
every one of Gertrudes glib pronouncements; to have forgotten is
recall
some
rather to his credit. In the world of Jarrell's novel, genuinely doubt-
ridden narrators need not apply.
Only the incertitude.
and what
foolish is,
tragic
—or the bleak— can accommodate, even promote,
Comedy depends on is
not,
types. In Pictures
too,
is
a
certitude, the certitude about
and on characters who are "characters," that
from an
come
Institution they
school of fools and apt targets,
mockery. To poke fun
mix
a
in pairs (for this,
the college's professionally boyish president, and their
amusingly discontented or complacent spouses
He
is
marriage novel): Gertrude and her husband; the composer, the
sociologist,
ish.
what
at
all,
—
all
in residence at this
for the narrator's genial, inspired
everyone might have
made Jarrell seem
churl-
obviously preferred to risk being sentimental, and added to the
No
paragon of sincerity and niceness by the name of Constance.
bashfulness about showing himself to be feverishly erudite, proteanly intelligent, terminally droll,
and
a
wizard phrase-maker.
trary {autre temps, autres mceurs), these
perhaps there was be, too mordant.
a
An
glimpsed working
were
On
the con-
clearly glorious assets.
But
shade of anxiety about being, or being thought to adorable, tenderhearted young
in the office of the president,
ously what the narrator sees fiercely.
woman who
is first
Constance sees gener-
Her indulgence
allows
him
to
go
on.
The
true plot of Jarrell's novel, such as
coruscating descriptions of characters
it is,
—above
fascinating, appalling Gertrude. Characters
and
over, not
consists of the flow of all,
the inexhaustibly
need to be described over
because they ever act "out of character" and so surprise
us,
or because the narrator, like
his
mind about them. (The
Tower
in
The Pilgrim Hawk, changes
characters in Wescott's novel can't be types:
Where it's
the Stress
them
precisely the function of the narrator's attention to
them ever more complicated.) In
Pictures
from an
Falls
21
to
make
Institution, the "I"
keeps on describing his characters because he continues to devise new, ingenious, giddy, ever
more hyperbolic phrases
keep on being
and he
foolish,
ventive. His restlessness ethical. Is there yet
is
—the
to
narrative voice
lexical, or rhetorical,
one more way to pin these
sum them
up.
They
—keeps on being
in-
not psychological or
follies
down
verbally?
Forward!
HOW
TO CIRCUMSCRIBE and
story are
To
two
sides of the
same
refine a story
and how
to
open up
a
task.
explain, to inform, to amplify, to connect, to color in
the essayistic digressions in Lost Illusions and
A
—think of
Harlot High and Low,
Moby-Dick, Middlemarch, The Egoist, War and Peace, In Search of Lost Time, The Magic Mountain. Such pursuit of completeness plumps out a novel. Is there a verb "to encyclopedize"?
To condense, nounce, to
distill,
There has to be.
speed up,
to pare away, to
pile up, to
to leap ahead, to conclude (even
conclude again and again)
—think of the
be ready
if
to re-
one intends
aphoristic glitter of
The
to
Pil-
grim Hawk, Pictures from an Institution, Sleepless Nights. Such pursuit of celerity brings a novel's weight and length
down
drastically.
Novels
driven by the need to summarize, to intensify inexorably, tend to be single-voiced, short,
and often not novels
sense. Occasionally, they will
go
after the
at all in
of an allegory or fable, as does Donald Barthelme's there a verb "to angularize"?
Compressed
Or
"to ellipsify"? There ought to be.
first-person narrations don't
tend to project a few distinctive moods. bring worldly
mated.
It's
wisdom
A
tell
any kind of
surfeit of experiences that
(and, usually, disenchantment)
moods
which can darken but does
is
often
inti-
color the whole span of the narration,
not, strictly speaking, develop. In fictions
narrated by a resident observer the end
lies
much
closer to the begin-
ning than in fictions enhanced by digressions. Not is
story; they
hard to imagine a naive narrator with a penchant for tren-
chant summary. Such
novel
the conventional
mock smoothness The Dead Father. Is
deadpan,
shorter but because the look
is
just
because the
retrospective and the tale one
SUSAN SONTAG
22
whose end
is
known from
narration tries to be,
the beginning.
However
few tremors of
can't help registering a
it
straightforward the antici-
pated pathos: the pathos of the already known, and the not prevented.
The beginning what
will
be an early variant on the end, the end
deflating variant
ellipsis
and refined judgments rather than
tened by essayistic expansiveness not.
Even with sentences
der.
Every exquisite
of
stasis, a
some-
on the beginning.
by
Stories kept lean
a late,
may look
like a
that are fired like bullets, attention can
linguistic
moment
fat-
quicker read. They're
(or incisive insight)
a
is
potential ending. Aphoristic finalities sap forward
wan-
moment momen-
tum, which thrives on more loosely woven sentences. Sleepless Nights
—
a novel of
mental weather
of the narrative voice,
matic dash.
It
—enchants by the scrupulousness and
its lithe,
has no shape in the usual novelistic sense.
It
has no
arrives
and de-
shape as the weather has no shape. Like the weather,
it
parts, rather than, in the usual structured way, begins
and ends.
A first-person voice drawn
to reporting
its
devoted to looking and reflecting
displacements, as
tary consciousness does with
its
time.
if
that
These
is
likely to
were mainly what
fictions
or frankly superior narrators are often travelers'
among
the peripatetic rich.
picted in Pictures from an Institution
coming from or on
their
way
to
The
tales, stories
is full
somewhere
staid
be
a soli-
with melancholy of a wan-
dering of some sort, or a halt in that wandering. The Pilgrim takes place
zip
semi-staccato descriptions and epigram-
academic
Hawk
village de-
of successful professionals else.
Such well-oiled
travels
are about as dramatic as the story gets. Perhaps the fictions that con-
dense have to be
accommodated
Many
relatively plotless, large
in fat
brawling events being better
books.
displacements are recorded in Sleepless Nights, none uncon-
nected with a lifetime of incessant reading,
From Kentucky
to
New
fat
books and
thin:
York, to Boston to Maine, to Europe, carried
along on a river of paragraphs and chapters, of blank verse, of
little
books translated from the Polish, large books from the Russian
—
consumed that
it is
in a
sedentary sleeplessness.
the truth.
Is
that sufficient
all
—never mind
Where The voyaging of pleasures, to
doesn't
by
a
many keen had
life
failed
career of mental traveling,
and
il-
relative comfort,
drama
of:
white-bearded frigate master on the dock and signed up
But
for the journey.
am
one's
for a very exciting plot. "It certainly hasn't the
old,
unknown
A
a fair bit of real traveling in safety
make
saw the
interest.
if
23
Falls
the bookish, undoubtedly a source of
nevertheless an occasion for irony, as
meet an agreed standard of
lustrated
I
is
the Stress
after all"
—best
to
name
the formidable constraint
to other representatively brilliant first-person narrators
—
"
T
woman."
COMPARED WITH BEGINNINGS, to resound, to
endings of novels are
What
have an aphoristic snap.
they convey
less likely
is
the per-
mission for tensions to subside. They are more like an effect than a statement.
Hawk
The Pilgrim
and stop very soon
until they leave
tution also
To the
New
draws to
joy of
with the Cullens' arrival and must go on
starts
all,
a close
after they do. Pictures from
an
Insti-
with a departure, actually two departures.
Gertrude and her husband are on the
train
York City the moment the spring term ends. Then we
back
to
learn that
the narrator himself, having accepted the offer of a better job at an-
other college, will be leaving Benton soon, with
than a
some
regret
and more
little relief.
The Pilgrim marriage.
Hawk
ambiguous
signs off with an
Tower claims
to
be worrying about the
reflection
effect
about
on Alex of the
spectacle of the Cullens' torment:
"You'll never marry, dear," after this fantastic
"What bad
my mockery was "Fantastic
bad
luck,
if
self
did not quite
.
.
.
"You'll be afraid to,
you please?" she inquired, smiling
to
show
that
welcome.
bad object
And
Alex
luck."
lessons."
"You're no novelist," she
you know?"
said, to tease
I
I
said, to tease
me.
"I
envy the Cullens, didn't
concluded from the look on her face that she her-
know whether
she meant
it.
SUSAN SONTAG
24
For
last lines,
Wescott's novel confects a flurry of doubts about what
meant and what
is felt,
marry." "You're
no
novelist."
To readers who have retained
information dropped into the very
and marry the
first
paragraph (Alex
and
narrator's brother)
to those
perhaps too
light;
Or
light.
It's
revved up of observers,
who
all
to himself.
Summer
the
soon meet
joyless narrator, the
too neatly da capo.
do the great comedies, with
Pictures from an Institution finishes as
celebration of marriage.
will
a piece of
gripped by the
still
by the
histrionic misery of the Cullens as parsed
ending may seem
is
an exchange of teasing untruths: "You'll never
no-name
narrator, until
has the becalmed
last
a
the most
scene of the novel
campus
vacation has started; the
now
deserted; he
is
has been in his office going through books and papers ("I worked hard for the rest of the afternoon:
away
.
.").
.
When steps
Then he
I
threw away and threw away and threw
leaves:
went downstairs everything was hollow and
at last I
echoed along the corridor,
as I
sunlight in the trees outside. There
body,
I felt,
in all the buildings of
booth on the hello
first floor,
was small and
dialed the
walked down
was nobody Benton.
number
that
all
we know
virtually
his entirely notional wife,
shelter
Of
course,
and Tightness of
And
here are the
gle story to
Pictures
tell,
can.
house, and
my
"Can you come I'll
be
—no-
nothing of the narrator,
tragic) marriages
wife's
get
me
right over."
still
this
ends
as
less
about
novel about it
does, with
which evokes, with exquisite economy, the
a true marriage.
last lines
of Sleepless Nights, which, having no sin-
has no obvious place to end. The Pilgrim
from an
my the
stood in the telephone-
seems appropriate that
it
comic and pathetic (but never that italicized
I
at
in the building
my
far-off in the silence; I said,
now, darling?" She answered, "Of course
For
I
of
silent;
looking
it
Institution
move forward
in
Hawk
and
an announced, framed
length of time: an afternoon and early evening; a spring semester. Sleepless
Nights stretches over decades, darting backward and forward in
time,
its
gallantly de-married narrator accumulating solitudes. Best to
affirm solitude
—
writing, the
—while
work of memory
edging the longing to reach out, to write
letters, to
also acknowl-
telephone.
Where Sometimes
my
about
such fact
I
resent the glossary, the concordance of truth,
have
real life,
is
the Stress
me
to
Otherwise
I
a
an extra pair of spectacles.
like
I
many have mean
known by
love to be I
am
those
I
care
for.
Public assistance,
always on the phone, always writing
always waking up to address myself to B. and D. and C.
whom
that
hindrance to memory.
beautiful phrase. Thus, ters,
25
Falls
let-
—those
dare not ring up until morning and yet must talk to through-
I
out the night.
So Sleepless Nights ends with delicately excluding
is,
care for"),
who
is
—the reader
presumed
dance of truth about
have
all
I
a "real life."
(Pasternak's Safe Conduct), Stories)
that
to read intrusively, looking for the concor-
in the guise of a journal
Notebooks of Malt e Laurids Brigge),
(Rilke's
—
be known by those
("I love to
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL FICTION
AN
ends by leaving
a departure, too. It
and
a
a
memoir
in poet's prose
volume of stories (Isherwood's Berlin
been mentioned by Hardwick
as
books she found em-
boldening when she came to write the genre-buster that
Sleepless
is
Nights.
To be
sure, fiction of
detail in a
work of
wish, or
a sincere
is
all
fiction
kinds has always fed on writers'
was once an observation or
homage
a
lives.
Every
memory
to a reality independent of the
self.
or a
That
both the pretentious novelist and the pretentious women's college Pictures from an Institution have
well-known models
practices of fiction. (In a satire this if
Jarrell did
is
the norm:
it
in
illustrates familiar
would be
surprising
not have a real novelist, a real college, in mind.)
And
au-
thors of first-person narratives will often be discovered to have lent to that voice a
few
The Pilgrim
stray bio-facts.
Hawk
to recall
For instance,
it
helps explain the end of
having been told that Alex Henry will
marry. But that she will marry the narrator's brother, of is
ever said in the novel, seems like noodling.
who
It's
not.
whom
The
nothing
great friend
inspired the character Alex, a rich i92os-era American expatriate
with a house near Paris in fashionable Rambouillet (the village
named
Chancellet), did, after returning
re-
home, marry Wescott's brother.
SUSAN SONTAG
26
Many make
endowed with enough
first-person narrators are
resemblance to their authors. Others
a pleasantly self-regarding
are there-but-tor-the-grace-of-God creations, (or hopes)
Tower and
—
odd
it is
grim
that
often reproached himself
someone capable oi
Hawk would
only once in a long
Hawthorne was always Peabody
ing to Sophia
operative
what the author believes
he or she has escaped being. Wescott, though not
a tailed writer,
a
book
life
as
—
like
being a lazy one,
fo"r
marvelous as The
Pil-
write at the top of his form.
wrestling with the Coverdale in himself. Writin
from Brook Farm, the model
841
1
community depicted
ing "a feeling of coldness
for the co-
The Blithedale Romance, Hawthorne
in
blesses his future wife for imparting a sense of
heart;
to
traits
life's
"reality"
and keep-
and strangeness" from creeping into
his
other words, tor rescuing him trom being someone like
in
Coverdale.
But what about when the "I" and the author bear the same name or have identical
life
circumstances, as in Sleepless Sights, or in Y.
Naipauls The Enigma of Arrival and W. G. Sebald's Vertigo?
much
fact
from the author's
coming reluctant
to call the
most daringly with
plays
life
S.
How
can be sponged up without our be-
book
novel? Sebald
a
this project
is
who
the writer
now. His narratives of mental
haunting, which he wants to be regarded as fiction, are related by an
emotionally distressed alter ego ality to
photographs that annotate
from Sebald
s
his
fiction
in
Of course,
the
many
almost everything that
an autobiographical work
is
absent
withholding
—
is
—which might be
essential to
called reticence, or discre-
keeping these anomalous works of
trom tipping over into autobiography or memoir. You can use
life,
but only
a little,
tor oi Sleepless Sights ot the writer
named
soon after coming to
Holland in
books.
among
books.
Actually, secretiveness
your
presses the claim of solemn factu-
the point of including photographs of himself
would normally be disclosed
tion, or
who
in
and
at
draws on
an oblique angle. a real life.
Elizabeth Hardwick. live in
Manhattan
the early 1950s, did have
a
in
We know
Kentucky
who
is
the narra-
the birthplace
did meet Billie Holiday
the 1940s, did spend a year in
great friend
named
Boston, has had a house in Maine, has lived for
many
M—
,
did
live
years on the
Where West Side of Manhattan, and so on. glimpses
—the
designed as
telling
the Stress
27
Falls
All this figures in her novel, as
much
to conceal, to
put readers off
the track, as to reveal.
To fied
your
edit
with your
to see
life is
life
to save
it,
as others see
for fiction, for yourself. Being identi-
it
may mean
you come eventually
that
that way, too. This can only be a hindrance to
it
memory
(and,
presumably, to invention).
There
more freedom
is
memories are not
set
be
to
down
late
tell
there
only a single story
at all, especially
much about
is
where one
too
is
husband
in a
Husband-wife: not a
pendence
new move
The ensuing
tradition."
be
that has to
to
fifth
in
fifty
pages
is
story.
And
simply too
sometimes, to
re-
be discovered
silence about the
friends of the narra-
Holland. Her
page: "I was then a 'we'
"we"
own .
.
.
in that strong classical
—
a declaration of inde-
intrinsic to the fashioning of the authoritative,
questing "I" capable of writing Sleepless Nights
some
fast,
Dutch couple,
announced thus on the
is
The memories
expected. For instance,
and her then husband when they lived
marriage
the
marriage, notably a long-running soap opera star-
ring the philandering tor
at a time;
when
as chains of luxuriant
of acute compression and decentering
art
any story
—emerge
wind around, and conceal, the kernel of
notations that
Hardwick's
to abridge
in chronological order.
fragments of memories, transformed
fast-paced to
and
elliptical
later: "I
am
alone here in
Years, decades even, have passed."
—
New
lasts until a
sentence
York, no longer a we.
Maybe books devoted
to exalted
standards of prose will always be reproached for not telling readers
enough.
But
made
it's
not an autobiography, not even of this "Elizabeth,"
is
out of materials harvested from, but not identical with, Elizabeth
Hardwick. others. Its
It's
about what "Elizabeth" saw, what she thought about
power
sympathies.
is
and
linked with
Her assessments
are pitiless, but she ers
who
is
class traitors
its
refusals,
and
its
distinctive palette of
of long-term sufferers in lousy marriages
kind to Main Street, touched by inept wrongdo-
and self-important
failures.
Memory
conjures up a
procession of injured souls: foolish, deceiving, needy men, some briefly lovers,
who have been much
indulged (by themselves and by
women)
SUSAN SONTAG
28
and come
no good end, and humble, courteous, simple women
to
who
archaic roles
have
known
in
only hard times and been indulged
by nobody. There are desperately loving evocations of the narrator's mother, and several meanderingly sustained, Melanctha-like portraits of
women who When
are invoked like muses:
women
think of cleaning
I
with unfair diseases
I
think of you,
When I must iron or use a heavy pot for cooking, I think of Ida. When I think of deafness, heart disease and languages I can-
Josette.
you,
not speak,
me
of
I
think of you, Angela. Great washtubs
more than
The work of memory,
women,
think about
those
whom
full
of sheets remind
one.
this
memory,
especially
exquisitely written
quires that they be
choosing, most emphatically, to
is
women
serving out lives of hard labor,
books customarily ignore. Justice
remembered. Pictured. Summoned
re-
to the feast of
the imagination and of language.
Of ers
course, you
summon
ghosts
can bleed into your soul.
ventive.
Memory Hence
turn away.
remembering
what make vited
it
is
a
peril.
The
sufferings of oth-
Memory
invites itself,
hard for you to
sleep.
Memories
procreate.
to the point. (As in fiction:
The boldness and
and
book
intimately connected with insomnia.
is
Memory
try to protect yourself.
performance.
connected.)
is
your
the ravishing insight that gives the
memories always seem
cluded
You
at
virtuosity
is
is
hard to
its title:
that
Memories
And
in-
are
the unin-
whatever
is
in-
of Hardwick's
associativeness intoxicate.
On
the last page, in the peroration with which Sleepless Nights con-
cludes, the narrator observes, in a final
summative delirium:
Mother, the reading glasses and the assignation near the clammy so gray, of the intense church ladies.
mound
of
men
climbing on and
The torment of personal disguise,
and
in the
pierced by daggers
at
And
faces,
then a lifetime with
its
off.
relations.
Nothing new there except
in the
escape on the wings of adjectives. Sweet to be the end of paragraphs.
Where
the Stress
Falls
29
Nothing new except language, the ever found. Cauterizing the torment of personal relations with hot lexical choices, curial sentence rhythms. Devising
more
knowing, of sympathizing, of keeping It's
where the
jumpy punctuation, mer-
subtle,
more engorged ways of
at bay. It's a
matter of adjectives.
stress falls.
[2001!
Afterlives:
The Case of Machado de
IMAGINE long
life
A
WRITER WHO,
be
right:
where he was born, created
a nineteenth-century writer,
you
president of his country's
Academy
and you
will
stories, plays, essays,
political chronicles, as well as reporter,
government bureaucrat, candidate
huge body of
a
will interrupt;
author of a profusion of novels, novellas,
poems, reviews, tor,
course of a moderately
which he never traveled farther than seventy-five
in
miles from the capital city
work ...
in the
Assis
for public
magazine
office,
edi-
founding
of Letters; a prodigy of accom-
plishment, of the transcending of social and physical infirmity (he was a
mulatto and the son of a slave in a country where slavery was not
abolished until he was almost
fifty;
he was
epileptic);
managed
vividly prolific, exuberantly national career,
number
this
to write a sizable
of novels and stories deserving of a permanent place in world
literature,
and whose masterpieces, outside
honors him
as its greatest writer, are little
Imagine such a
which continue Normally, the
to
writer,
who
existed,
his native country,
known, and
his
rarely
most
be discovered more than eighty years
filter
of time
is just,
successful, rescuing the forgotten,
the afterlife of a great writer
30
who, during
—
this
which
mentioned.
original books, after his death.
discarding the merely celebrated or
promoting the underestimated. In is
when
the mysterious questions of
The Case of Machado de
Afterlives:
Assis
value and permanence are resolved. Perhaps
it is
whose
the recognition
afterlife
work
has not brought his
3
1
fitting that this writer, it
merits,
should have had himself so acute, so ironic, so endearing a sense of the
posthumous.
WHAT
IS
Since
is
it
meaning
TRUE
of a reputation
only a completed
a life can have, a
—should be true—of
that reveals
a
life.
shape and whatever
its
biography that means to be definitive must
wait until after the death of can't
life
true
is
subject. Unfortunately, autobiographies
its
be composed under these
And
ideal circumstances.
virtually all
the notable fictional autobiographies have respected the limitation of
while conjuring up a next-best equivalent of the illumina-
real ones,
more
tions of death. Fictional autobiographies, even
ones, tend to be autumnal undertakings: an elderly
seasoned) narrator, having retired from old age
may bring
he or she a
know
now
(or, at least, loss-
writes. But, close as
the fictive autobiographer to the ideal vantage point,
wrong
writing on the
makes
a life story, finally
life,
I
is still
life,
often than real
side of the frontier
beyond which
sense.
only one example of that enthralling genre, the imaginary
autobiography, which grants the project of autobiography it
turns out, comical
—
fulfillment,
and
Memorias postumas de Bras Cubas under the first
paragraph of Chapter
1,
now
the masterpiece called
Small Winner. In the
am a deceased writer not in the sense of one who now deceased, but in the sense of one who has died
is
Here
writing."
considering that the
is
the novel's
book
in
hand
is
in its entirety.
life is
not a
To slow down,
at length, to
framing joke, and
invited to play the
it
is
game of
an unprecedented literary
feat.
much less a life, can ever be replot. And quite different ideas of
to a narrative constructed in the
in the third person.
comment
A
is
first,
in the first person.
course, not even a single day,
decorum apply
to
as
"The Death of the Author," Bras Cubas
Posthumous reminiscences written
counted
—
(1880), introduced into English
about the writer's freedom. The reader
Of
ideal
gaily: "I
has written and is
is
pointless, interfering title Epitaph of a
announces
and
that
its
first
person and to one
to race ahead, to skip
withhold comment
whole
—these done
as
stretches;
an "I" have
SUSAN SONTAG
32
another weight, another
Much
of what
feel,
when
than
one
else.
first
person would seem the opposite
affecting or
is
said about or
pardonable or insufferable
if
book
Assis's
"L" (To sample the
in the
uttered in the third person, and
by reading aloud any page
vice versa: an observation easily confirmed
from Machado de
on behalf of some-
first as it is,
a
second time with "he" for
fierce difference within the
codes governing the third
person, then try substituting "she" for "he.") There are registers of
feel-
can accommodate.
And
ing,
such
as anxiety, that only a first-person voice
aspects of narrative performance as well: digressiveness, for instance,
seems natural
but amateurish in an
in a text written in the first person,
impersonal, third-person voice. Thus, any piece of writing that features
an awareness of the
first
own means and methods
its
person, whether or not the main pronoun
To write about oneself be
felt
should be understood as in
to
—the
true, that
be presumptuous, and to need
is,
is
"I."
the private story
justifying.
—used
Rousseau's Confessions, Thoreau's Walden, and most of the other tually ambitious classics of
to
Montaigne's Essays, spiri-
autobiography have a prologue in which the
author directly addresses the reader, acknowledging the temerity of the enterprise, evoking scruples or inhibitions (modesty, anxiety) that to
be overcome, laying claim to an exemplary
leging the usefulness of
had
artlessness or candor, al-
all this self- absorption
to others.
And,
like real
autobiographies, most fictional autobiographies of any stylishness or
depth also
start
sion to write the
of
with an explanation, defensive or defiant, of the deci-
book
self- deprecation,
egotism. This
is
the reader has just
begun
—
or, at least, a flourish
suggesting an attractive sensitivity to the charge of
no mere
throat-clearing,
the reader time to be seated.
It is
some
polite sentences to give
the opening shot in a campaign of se-
duction in which the autobiographer
tacitly agrees that there
is
some-
thing unseemly, brazen, in volunteering to write at length about oneself
—exposing oneself
to
unknown
others without any evident interest (a
great career, a great crime) or without
some documentary
ruse, such as
pretending that the book merely transcribes existing private papers, like a journal or letters, indiscretions originally destined for the smallest, friendliest first
readership.
person, to as
many
minimal prudence
With
a life story offered straight-out, in the
readers as possible
(a
"public"),
it
seems only
as well as courtesy for the autobiographer to seek
Afterlives:
The Case of Machado de
Assis
33
permission to begin. The splendid conceit of the novel, that these are
memoirs written by someone who on
this regulatory caring
dead, just puts an additional spin
is
about what the reader thinks. The autobiog-
rapher can also profess not to care. writing from
Still,
beyond the grave has not
relieved this narrator
from showing an ostentatious amount of concern about the reception
mock
of his work. His
tinctive velocity of the
mounted,
anxiety
book.
is
embodied
It is in
the
in the very form, the dis-
way
the narrative
is
cut
and
stop-and-start rhythms: 160 chapters, several as brief as
its
two sentences, few longer than two pages. usually at the beginning or
("This chapter
is
to
It is in
end of chapters,
be inserted between the
chapter 129." "Please note that this chapter
found." "But
let
us not
become involved
the playful directions,
for the best use of the text. first
two sentences of
not intended to be pro-
is
in psychology," et cetera.) It
in the pulse of ironic attention to the book's
is
means and methods, the
repeated disavowal of large claims on the reader's emotions ("I like jolly chapters").
Asking the reader to indulge the narrator's penchant
much a seducer's ploy as promising the reader strong emotions and new knowledge. The autobiographer's suave fussing over
for frivolity
is
as
the accuracy of his narrative procedures parodies the intensity of his self- absorption.
Digression of the book. self
adept
at
of realism
He
is
The
the main technique for controlling the emotional flow narrator,
whose head
expert descriptions
—of how poignant
is full
of literature, shows him-
—of the kind
flattered with the
shows himself understandably beyond
also
name
feelings persist, change, evolve, devolve. all
that
by the dimen-
sions of the telling: the cutting into short episodes, the ironic, didactic
overviews. This oddly fierce, avowedly disenchanted voice (but then
what
else
should
we
expect a narrator
who
is
dead to be?) never
an event without drawing some lesson from
"The episode that ..."
serves to illustrate
it.
Chapter
relates
133 opens:
and perhaps amend Helvetius' theory
Begging the reader's indulgence, worrying about the reader's
attentiveness (does the reader get
it?
is
the reader amused?
is
the
reader becoming bored?), the autobiographer continually breaks out of his story to invoke a theory
about
it
—
as if
it
illustrates, to
formulate an opinion
such moves were needed to make the story more
inter-
SUSAN SONTAG
34
esting. Bras
such
Cubas's socially privileged, self-important existence
lives often are, starkly uneventful; the
is,
main events are those which
did not happen or were judged disappointing.
The
rich production of
witty opinions exposes the emotional poverty of the
by having the
life,
narrator seem to sidestep the conclusions he ought to be drawing. digressive
method
also generates
much
with the very disparity between the
life
of the book's humor, starting
(modest
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy
in events, subtly artic-
of course the principal
is
The method of
for these savory procedures of reader awareness.
the tiny chapters and ter 55
The
and the theories (portentous, blunt) he invokes.
ulated)
model
as
some of the typographical
("The Venerable Dialogue of
("How
I
Did Not Become
narrative rhythms
Adam and
stunts, as in
Chap-
Eve") and Chapter 139
a Minister of State"), recall the
whimsical
and pictographic witticisms of Tristram Shandy. That
Bras Cubas begins his story after his death, as Tristram Shandy
mously begins the story of
his consciousness before
he
is
born
fa-
the
(at
—
moment of his conception) that, too, seems an homage to Sterne by Machado de Assis. The authority of Tristram Shandy, published in installments between 1759 an
I
on
a writer
born
in Brazil in the
nineteenth century should not surprise us. While Sterne's books, so celebrated in his lifetime and shortly afterward, were being reassessed in
England
as
too peculiar, occasionally indecent, and finally boring,
they continued to be enormously admired on the Continent. In the
English-speaking world, where in this century he has again been
thought very highly
Sterne
of,
ginal genius (like Blake)
who
prematurely, "modern."
When
literature,
however, he
still
is
most notable
looked
may be
mar-
figures as an ultra-eccentric,
at
for being uncannily,
and
from the perspective of world
the English-language writer who, after
Shakespeare and Dickens, has had the greatest influence; for Nietzsche to have said that his favorite novel original a
judgment
as
it
may
was Tristram Shandy
is
not quite as
seem. Sterne has been an especially po-
tent presence in the literatures of the Slavic languages, as
is
reflected in
the centrality of the example of Tristram Shandy in the theories of Viktor Shklovsky
and other Russian formalists from the 1920s forward.
Perhaps the reason so much commanding prose suing for
literature has
decades from Central and Eastern Europe
been
as well as
is-
from
Afterlives:
Latin America
is
strous tyrannies jects,
The Case of Machado de
Assis
35
not that writers there have been suffering under mon-
and therefore have had importance, seriousness, subbestowed on them
relevant irony
Europe and the United
(as
many
writers in Western
States have half enviously concluded) but that
these are the parts of the world
where
for over a century the author of
Tristram Shandy has been the most admired.
Machado de foonery
Assis's novel
belongs in that tradition of narrative buf-
—the —which runs from
talkative first-person voice attempting to ingratiate itself
with readers
Natsume
Am
Soseki's I
Solitude,
much
century,
a Cat, the short fiction of Robert Walser,
Svevo's Confessions of Zeno and
Loud a
own
Sterne through, in our
As
a
Man Grows
of Beckett. Again and again
Older, Hrabal's Too
we meet
in different
guises the chatty, meandering, compulsively speculative, eccentric narrator: reclusive (by
and
choice or by vocation); prone to futile obsessions
fanciful theories
and comically designed
efforts of the will; often
an autodidact; not quite a crank; though sometimes driven by at least
male.
one time by
(No woman
and
unable to mate; usually elderly; invariably
love,
likely to get
is
lust,
even the conditional sympathy these
ragingly self-absorbed narrators claim
from
us,
because of expectations
women be more sympathetic, and sympathizing, than men; a woman with the same degree of mental acuity and emotional separatethat
ness
would be regarded
as
Cubas
is
tudinarian Bras
madcap,
simply a monster.)
Machado de
considerably less exuberant than Sterne's
effusively garrulous Tristram Shandy. It
from the incisiveness of Machado's to the story of his
own
Assis's vale-
life,
only a few steps
is
narrator, with his rueful superiority
to the plot malaise that characterizes
recent fiction in the form of autobiography. But storylessness intrinsic to the
genre
—the novel
as autobiographical
most
may be
monologue
—
as
is
the isolation of the narrating voice. In this respect the post-Sternean anti-hero like Bras
Cubas parodies the protagonists of the
tual autobiographies,
who
stances, unmarried. It
is
are always profoundly, not just
without a spouse, even
peopled
at
by circum-
almost a measure of an autobiographical
narrative's ambition: the narrator tainly
great spiri-
must
when
be, or
there
is
be recast
one; the
as, alone, cer-
life
must be un-
the center. (Thus, such recent achievements of spiritual
autobiography in the guise of a novel as Elizabeth Hardwick's Sleepless
SUSAN SONTAG
36
Nights and V.
who were
Naipaul's The
S.
Enigma of Arrival leave out
the spouses
actually there.) Just as Bras Cubas's solitariness
a
is
parody
of a chosen or an emblematic solitude, his release through
understanding
for
is,
self-
self-confidence and wit, a parody of that
all its
sort of triumph.
The seductions fesses to
The
of such a narrative are complex.
be worrying about the reader
—whether the
narrator pro-
reader gets
Meanwhile, the reader can be wondering about the narrator the narrator understands display of mental agility
all
the implications of what
and inventiveness which
is
is
—whether
being told.
Ostensibly, this social
how
is
and psychological
of a
life.
portraiture,
remains a tour of the inside of
it
French expatriate
by Xavier de Maistre,
a
his long life in Russia)
who
dueling,
My Room,
funny story
aristocrat (he lived
when he was
written in 1794, his diagonal
verting sites as the armchair, the desk, is
marvelous book
a
most of
invented the literary micro- journey with his
and which recounts
mental or physical, that
is.
Yet, despite the narrator's gift for
someone's head. Another of Machado's models was
journey around
mind
emotionally isolated and forlorn the narrator
book
the
A
designed to amuse
the reader and purportedly reflects the liveliness of the narrator's
mostly measures
it.
and zigzag
in prison for
such
visits to
and the bed.
A
not acknowledged as such can
di-
confinement,
make
a very
one charged with pathos.
as well as
At the beginning,
in a flourish of authorial
graciously includes the reader,
Machado de
pher name the eighteenth-century
literary
self-knowingness that
Assis has the autobiogra-
models of
his narrative with
the following somber warning:
It is,
in truth, a diffuse
adopted the sibly
added
The work
free
work,
form of
man
which
I,
a Sterne or of a
a certain peevish
of a
in
Bras Cubas,
I
wrote
it
my
own. Quite
I
have
possibly.
with the pen of Mirth and
the ink of Melancholy, and one can readily foresee what
such
indeed
Xavier de Maistre, have pos-
pessimism of
already dead.
if
may come
of
a union.
However modulated by whimsy, through the book.
If
Bras Cubas
is
a
vein of true misanthropy runs
not just another of those repressed,
The Case of Machado de
Afterlives:
desiccated, pointlessly self-aware bachelor narrators
be seen through by the full-blooded
which
by the end of the book
is
The Sternean
playfulness
reader,
it is
Assis
who
37
exist only to
because of his anger
full-out, painful, bitter, upsetting.
lighthearted.
is
It is
a comic, albeit ex-
tremely nervous, form of friendliness with the reader. In the nineteenth century this digressiveness, this chattiness, this love of the this pirouetting
hues.
It
from one narrative mode
little
theory,
on darker
to another, takes
becomes identified with hypochondria, with erotic disillusion-
ment, with the discontents of the
(Dostoyevsky's pathologically
self
voluble Underground Man), with acute mental distress (the hysterical narrator,
on
deranged by
injustice, of Multatuli's
obsessively, repetitively,
Max Havelaar). To
(Think of Shakespeare's plebeian grumblers, beth',
natter
used to be invariably a resource of comedy.
think of Mr. Pickwick,
among
Mac-
like the porter in
other inventions of Dickens.) That
comic use of garrulousness does not disappear. Joyce used garrulousness in a Rabelaisian
Gertrude
Stein,
as
spirit,
a vehicle of
champion of verbose
comic hyperbole, and
writing, turned the tics of ego-
tism and sententiousness into a good-natured comic voice of great orig-
But most of the verbose first-person narrators
inality.
literature of this century
ness
have been radically misanthropic. Garrulous-
identified with the baleful, aggrieved repetitiveness of senility
is
(Beckett's prose
monologues
and with
that call themselves novels)
paranoia and unslakable rage (the novels and plays of hard).
ambitious
in the
Thomas Bern-
Who does not sense the despair behind the loquacious,
sprightly
musings of Robert Walser and the quirkily erudite, bantering voices the stories of
in
Donald Barthelme?
Beckett's narrators are usually trying, not altogether successfully, to
imagine themselves as dead. Bras Cubas has no such problem. But then
Machado de
Assis
was trying
to be,
morbid about the consciousness of contrary, the perspective of wittily, a tive.
and
consciousness
posthumous narrator can claim
Where
Bras Cubas
is
writing from
funny. There
posthumous
his
maximum
is,
—
is
is
nothing
on the
narrator;
—which
in itself a
not a true
is
is
what,
comic perspec-
afterlife
(it
has no
the idea of authorial detachment.
The
neo-Sternean narrative hijinks of these memoirs of a disappointed
man
geography), only another go
do not
issue
at
from Sternean exuberance or even Sternean nervousness.
a
SUSAN SONTAG
38
They
are a kind of antidote, a counterforce to the narrator's despon-
dency: a
way of mastering
dejection considerably
more
specialized than
the "great cure, an anti-melancholy plaster, designed to relieve the de-
spondency of mankind" that the narrator Life administers
form of
its
fantasizes about inventing.
hard lessons. But one can write
as
one pleases
—
liberty.
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis was only forty-one when he published these reminiscences of a
opening of the book
makes
his creation
—
man who
(Machado was born
at sixty-four.
anticipating of old age
is
temperament continue
to
my
first
The novel
nounces
at
life.
— above
was writing
all
all
first
I
and of
a religiously
whom
I
as I think
fantasist,
man
a
who
an-
my head were
to
me
my new
thought
I
me)
certain cherished (by
it
now,
Farrar Straus,
it,
as
I
mostly
nourished inwardness. (What
about
my
1952, in his previous incarnation as the
by
and
I
another
is
story.)
The Benefactor accepted by the
to have
submitted
good luck of having assigned
cently acquired
when
that he has reached a harbor
on optimism and on
life
melancholy
a
late twenties
be the reminiscences of
literary references in
had the good fortune
publisher to
ne
in 1839;
experience finished, he can look back on his
was going on unconsciously,
When
my
in
Candide and Descartes 's Meditations;
a satire
ideas of the inner
to
book
the beginning of the
The few conscious
French
was
I
sixties, a rentier, dilettante,
of serenity where,
the
at
an exercise in the
as
which writers of
a venture to
be drawn.
which purports
novel,
then in his early
—we learn
Bras Cubas, the posthumous autobiographer, more
than a generation older, born in 1805.)
wrote
has died
publisher),
I
had the further
who
editor Cecil Hemley,
head of Noonday Press
had brought out the
in
(re-
translation
of Machado's novel that really launched the book's career in English.
(Under that
title!)
At our
first
meeting Hemley said to me:
"I
can see
you have been influenced by Epitaph of a Small Winner." Epitaph of what? "By, you know, Machado de Assis."
and several days Although
I
later I declared
me
a
a
copy
myself retroactively influenced.
have since read a good deal of Machado in translation,
Memorias postumas de Bras Cubas twenty-eight years after writing
genius
Who? He
lent
— remains my
favorite. I
—the
it)
am
first
of five late novels (he lived
generally thought the told
it is
summit of
his
the one that non-Brazilians
The Case of Machado de
Afterlives:
Dom
often prefer, although critics usually pick
Assis
Casmurro
39
am
(1899). I
astonished that a writer of such greatness does not yet occupy the place
Up
he deserves. Brazil
to a point, the relative neglect of
may be no more
whom
writer of genius
if
—
if
he were,
But the impediment writer.
Latin America
—
est novelist that
as if
it
were
still
his
hard to digest the
fact that the great-
Latin America has produced wrote in the Portuguese,
ways been the outsider country
may be
in racist terms.
A writer from
literature of Brazil,
produced on
great writer
Machado de
some
was translated
With enough
al-
South Amer-
is
far likelier to
Borges, the other supremely
Machado
And
time,
seems never to have read
is
even
who
less
read him
it
enough
afterlife, a great
book does
is
a
decade
find
its
right-
probably one of those
books that
will always
hardly seems
compliment
more than
to say that this novel, written .
Spanish
perhaps some books need to be rediscovered again and
It
.
to
The
(twice) into English.
readers with the force of a private discovery.
and
known
in English.
was written and
The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas
seems, well
well
finally translated into
eighty years after
thrillingly original, radically skeptical
inality
has
whereas Brazilian writers are acutely
that continent,
Indeed,
Assis.
only in the 1960s,
again.
it
good deal of condescension
a
literature.
Spanish-language readers than to those
ful place.
rest of
these countries
Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas was
it
largest city), but
of the European literatures or literature in English than to
aware of Spanish-American
after
its
the continent's biggest
—regarded by the
Hispanophone South America, with
know any know the
European
read in the rest of
country (and Rio in the nineteenth century
and often
a
absence from the stage of world
little
rather than the Spanish, language. Brazil
ica,
life in
known and
he has been very
that
is
better
whole
Machado was not
not simply that
is
his
or Russian, or even Portuguese.
say, Italian
Even more remarkable than
literature
Machado would be
Surely
Soseki.
he hadn't been Brazilian and hadn't spent
Rio de Janeiro
outside
Eurocentric notions of world literature have
Natsume
marginalized:
known
Machado
mysterious than the neglect of another prolific
.
modern.
Isn't every
work
lucidity we're capable of
conscript into what
we understand
impress
much
of a
a century ago,
that speaks to us with an orig-
acknowledging one we want to
as
modernity?
Our
standards of
SUSAN SONTAG
40
modernity are
a
system of flattering
tively to colonize the past, as are
permit some
illusions,
our ideas of what
provincial. Surely
a point of
to
provincial,
all
the
The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas
become
rest.
selec-
which Being
view that cannot be accused of being
most entertainingly unprovincial books ever is
is
parts of the world to condescend to
dead may stand for
book
which permit us
a little less provincial
written.
about
And
literature,
is
one of the
to love this
about
litera-
ture's possibilities, oneself.
[1990]
A
IS
LITERARY GREATNESS
still
Mind
in
Mournin
possible? Given the implacable
devolution of literary ambition, and the concurrent ascendancy
of the tepid, the glib, and the senselessly cruel as normative fictional subjects,
what would
a
noble
literary enterprise
look like now?
the few answers available to English-language readers
W. G.
of
work of
Sebald.
Vertigo, the third of Sebald's
how he
began.
appeared
It
forty-six; three years later that,
the
is
One
The Rings of Saturn.
1996, the acclaim
autumnal even, as exotic as
it
books to be translated into English,
German
in
in 1990,
was
its
author was
came The Emigrants; and two
When
The Emigrants appeared
bordered on awe. Here was
in his
when
persona and themes,
irrefutable.
is
years after
in English in
a masterly writer, mature,
who had
The language was
a
book
delivered a
—
wonder
delicate,
dense, steeped in thinghood; but there were ample precedents for that in English.
What seemed
foreign as well as
the preternatural authority of Sebald's voice: its
precision,
its
its
most persuasive was gravity, its sinuosity,
freedom from all-undermining or undignified
self-
consciousness or irony. In
W
G. Sebald's books, a narrator who, we are reminded oc-
casionally, bears the
name
W
G. Sebald,
travels
about registering
evidence of the mortality of nature, recoiling from the ravages of
41
— SUSAN SONTAG
42
modernity, musing over the secrets of obscure
memory
of investigation, triggered by a
lives.
On some
mission
or news from a world irretriev-
ably lost, he remembers, evokes, hallucinates, grieves. Is
the narrator Sebald?
Or
a fictional character to
whom
the author
has lent his name, and selected elements of his "biography? Born in
Germany he
1944, in a village in
and
German
"W."
in his
Wertach im Allgau),
jacket identifies for us as his early twenties,
calls
a career
books (and the dust England
settled in
in
academic currently teaching modern
literature at the University of East Anglia, the author in-
cludes a scattering of allusions to these bare facts and a few others, as well
among
as,
other
self- referring
documents reproduced
in
his
books, a grainy picture of himself posed in front of a massive Lebanese
new
cedar in The Rings of Saturn and the photo on his
passport in
Vertigo.
And
yet these
books
ask, rightly, to
they are, not least because there
invented or altered, just
happen
—names,
glish
is
that
the story
is
it
is
One
—
may
it
to believe that
some of what he
and
all.
fiction. Fiction
much
is
relates really did
Fiction and factuality are, of
of the founding claims for the novel in En-
a true history.
untrue
good reason
as, surely,
places, dates,
course, not opposed.
is
be considered
What makes
a
work
fiction
not that
is
well be true, in part or in whole
—but
its
use, or extension, of a variety of devices (including false or forged doc-
uments) which produce what real." Sebald's fictions
— and
literary theorists call "the effect of the
their
accompanying
visual illustration
carry the effect of the real to a plangent extreme.
This "real" narrator
promeneur tary,
even
solitaire of
when
a
an exemplary fictional construction: the
is
many
generations of romantic literature.
companion
is
mentioned
paragraph of The Emigrants), the narrator neys
at
ended
whim, (as, in
to follow
some
The Emigrants,
(the Clara of the
is
to America).
soli-
ready to undertake jour-
flare-up of curiosity about a in the story of Paul, a
life
that has
beloved primary-
school teacher, which brings the narrator back for the
new Germany," and
A
opening
first
time to "the
of his Uncle Adelwarth, which brings the narrator
Another motive for traveling
The Rings of Saturn, where
it is
is
proposed
clearer that the narrator
in Vertigo is
and
also a writer,
A Mind
Mourning
in
43
with a writer's restlessness and a writer's taste for isolation. Often the narrator begins to travel in the
journey
is
even
a quest,
if
wake of some
And
crisis.
the nature of that quest
usually the
not immediately
is
apparent.
Here
is
the beginning of the second of the four narratives in Vertigo:
In October 1980
I
traveled from England,
where
had then been
I
me
grey skies, to Vienna, hoping that a change of place would help
my
over a particularly difficult period in
life.
up by my customary routine of writing and gardening not
know where
to turn.
Every morning
walk without aim or purpose through the
get
In Vienna, however,
now they were
found that the days proved inordinately long,
erally did
living
which was almost always under
for nearly twenty-five years in a county
I
tasks,
would
I
not taken
and
set
I lit-
out and
streets of the inner city.
This long section, entitled "All' estero" (Abroad), which takes the narrator
from Vienna
to various places in northern Italy, follows the open-
ing chapter, a brilliant exercise in Brief-Life writing which recounts the
biography of the much-traveled Stendhal, and
followed by a brief
is
third chapter relating the Italian journey of another writer, "Dr. K," to
some of ter, as
the sites of Sebald's travels in
fourth,
long as the second and complementary to
torno in patria" (The Return Home).
adumbrate
all
The four
it,
haunted and being
visions of destruction. In the
covering from an
illness,
ends with Sebald
London destroyed by
last,
chap-
entitled "II
is
narratives of Vertigo
And
of the great
fire
of
Moscow; and
the last nar-
over his Pepys and dreaming of
this
same four-part musical
structure, in
all
which
Sebald's narratives: the narrator's
lives, all in
some way
own
displaced, that the narra-
tor evokes. first
always, there are
longest and most powerful. Journeys of one kind
and the
the
who
narrative, Stendhal dreams, while re-
falling asleep
or another are at the heart of peregrinations,
first
light.
ri-
the Great Fire.
The Emigrants uses the fourth narrative
Compare
is
and
Sebald's major themes: journeys; the lives of writers,
are also travelers; being
rative
The
Italy.
sentence of The Rings of Saturn:
"
SUSAN SONTAG
44
In August 1992,
when
the dog days were drawing to an end,
walk the county of Suffolk, takes hold of
me whenever
in the I
off to
hope of dispelling the emptiness
have completed
The whole of The Rings of Saturn
I set
is
a
long
the account
stint
that
of work.
ofthis walking
trip
un-
dertaken to dispel emptiness. For whereas the traditional tour brought
one close
to nature, here
opening of the book
traces of destruction"
it
measures degrees of devastation, and the
us that the narrator was so overcome by "the
tells
he encountered
day
that, a year to the
after be-
ginning his tour, he was taken to a hospital in Norwich "in a state of
most
al-
total immobility.
Travels under the sign of Saturn, subject of struction
all
three books Sebald wrote in the
his
is
stroyed by
disease
The Emigrants
life.
of melancholy, are the
first
half of the 1990s.
De-
master theme: of nature (the lament for the trees de-
Dutch elm
and those destroyed
1987 in the next-to-last section of
ways of
emblem
tells
in the hurricane of
The Rings of Saturn); of
of a trip to Deauville in
1
cities;
of
991, in search
perhaps of "some remnant of the past," which confirms that "the once legendary resort, like everywhere else that one the country or continent, was hopelessly run fic,
visits
now, regardless of
down and
ruined by
traf-
shops and boutiques, and the insatiable urge for destruction."
And
the return home, in the fourth narrative of Vertigo, to W., which the
narrator says he had not revisited since his childhood,
is
an extended
recherche du temps perdu.
The climax left their
memoir
of The Emigrants, four stories about people
native lands,
in
manuscript
is
the heartrending evocation
—of an
idyllic
cause
this life it
had been
cause the subject of the
Max
Ferber,
safety in ther,
lived, to see
was The Emigrants
is
a
England
—
his
last narrative, a
mother,
by most of the reviewers
the town, Kissingen,
traces of
it
remained. Be-
who
(especially,
literature.
and be-
famous painter given the name
sent out of Nazi
perished in
being the author of the memoir
ample of Holocaust
what
visit
that launched Sebald in English,
German Jew
have
German-Jewish childhood. The
narrator goes on to describe his decision to
where
—
who
purportedly a
Germany
as a child to
the camps with
his fa-
—the book was routinely labeled
but not only, in America) as an ex-
Ending
a
book of lament with
the
ulti-
A Mind
mate subject of lament, The Emigrants may have
translation,
The Rings of Saturn. This book
is
that followed
Thomas Browne,
one story leads
Holland, was present
visiting
anatomy lesson depicted by Rembrandt; remembers lude, during his English
Roger Casement's noble rule in the
in
The Rings of Saturn, the well-stocked mind speculates
to another. In Sir
Se-
it
not divided into distinct
narratives but consists of a chain or progress of stories:
whether
45
up some of
set
work
bald's admirers for a disappointment with the
Mourning
in
Congo; and
tures at sea of Joseph
exile,
in the life of
at
an
a romantic inter-
Chateaubriand;
recalls
efforts to publicize the infamies of Leopold's
retells
Conrad
the childhood in exile and early adven-
—these
stories,
and many
cavalcade of erudite and curious anecdotes, and
its
others.
With
its
tender encounters
with bookish people (two lecturers on French literature, one of them a Flaubert scholar; the translator and poet Michael Hamburger), The
Rings of Saturn could seem grants It
"literary."
would be
a pity if the expectations
makes
still
about Sebald's work created
also influenced the reception of Vertigo,
Travel frees the
their
in
mind
obsessions; fictional in their reach.
for the play of associations; for the afflictions
(and erosions) of memory; for the savoring of solitude. of the solitary narrator it is
which
clearer the nature of his morally accelerated travel narra-
—history-minded
when
The Emi-
after the high excruciation of
—merely
by The Emigrants
tives
—
The awareness
the true protagonist of Sebald's books, even
is
doing one of the things
it
does best: recounting, summing
up, the lives of others. Vertigo
idence.
is
the
book
in
which the
narrator's English
life is least in
And, even more than the two succeeding books,
this
portrait of a mind: a restless, chronically dissatisfied mind; a
mind;
a
mind prone
to hallucinations.
Walking
in Vienna,
recognizes the poet Dante, banished from his
being burned
at
Venice, he sees
a self-
harrowed
he thinks he
hometown on pain
of
the stake. Sitting on the rear bench of a vaporetto in
Ludwig
II
of Bavaria; riding on a bus along the shore of
Lake Garda toward Riva, he like
is
ev-
sees an adolescent
who defines himself some German tourists in
Kafka. This narrator,
hearing the babble of
did not understand them; "that
is,
that
boy who looks exactly as a foreigner
—over-
a hotel, he wishes he
he were the
citizen of a better
SUSAN SONTAG
46
country, or of
no country
moment, the narrator
at all"
—
is
also a
he does not
says
A
posthumous. for
is
both: both alive and,
journey
some unfinished
The Emigrants acts of
—
if
his imagination
business, to retrace a
plete) an experience; to offer oneself
to the final,
up
—
It is
Vertigo
tigo," the
word used
that
is
it
more on
to repeat (or
com-
as in the fourth narrative of
most devastating
dwells
the guide,
is
the return to a place
memory,
revelations.
remembering and retracing bring with them
power of
in the
is still
else.
often a revisiting.
is
mourning. At one
in
know whether he
land of the living or already somewhere In fact, he
mind
These heroic
a price. Part of the
the cost of this effort. "Ver-
to translate the playful
German
Schwindel.
title,
Gefiihle (roughly: Giddiness. Feeling), hardly suggests
all
the kinds of
panic and torpor and disorientation described in the book. In Vertigo,
he
how,
relates
after arriving in Vienna,
he walked so
far that,
he
dis-
covered returning to the hotel, his shoes had fallen apart. In The Rings of Saturn and, above itself;
the narrator
about the narrator's
evoked mental awareness
What
is
all,
The Emigrants, the mind
in
more
is
own
elusive.
is
less
focused on
the later books, Vertigo
afflicted consciousness.
distress that
never
More than
is
But the laconically
edges the narrator's calm, knowledgeable
solipsistic, as in the literature
of lesser concerns.
anchors the unstable consciousness of the narrator
ciousness and acuity of the details.
As
travel
is
the spa-
is
the generative principle
of mental activity in Sebald's books, moving through space gives a
ki-
netic rush to his marvelous descriptions, especially of landscapes. This is
a propelled narrator.
Where
has one heard in English a voice of such confidence and
precision, so direct in
its
expression of feeling, yet so respectfully de-
voted to recording "the real"? D. H. Lawrence the Naipaul of The
may come
Enigma of Arrival. But they have
sionate bleakness of Sebald's voice. For this one
man
little
Bernhard are
a
few of the
"The Lord Chandos
affiliations
to a
Stifter,
Letter,"
Ger-
Robert
Thomas
of this contemporary master
of the literature of lament and of mental restlessness. sus about English literature for
of the pas-
must look
genealogy. Jean Paul, Franz Grillparzer, Adalbert
Walser, the Hofmannsthal of
mind, and
to
The consen-
most of the past century has decreed
A Mind
Mourning
in
47
the relentlessly elegiac and lyrical to be inappropriate for fiction,
overblown, pretentious. (Even so great a novel, and exception, as Vir-
The Waves has not escaped these
ginia Woolf's
German and
literature,
mindful of how congenial the grandiosity of past of
literature, particularly that
work of
Postwar
strictures.)
German Romanticism, proved
to the
mythmaking, has been suspicious of anything
totalitarian
art
like
the romantic or nostalgic relation to the past. But then perhaps only a
German
writer permanently domiciled abroad, in the precincts of a
erature with a in so
modern
lit-
predilection for the anti-sublime, could indulge
convincing a noble tone.
Besides the narrator's moral fervency and
gifts
he parts company with Bernhard), what keeps never merely rhetorical,
words;
is
the saturated
of compassion (here
this writing
naming and
and the ever-surprising device of pictorial
that,
tures of train tickets or a torn-out leaf calling card,
newspaper
from
pocket
a
from
clippings, a detail
always fresh,
visualizing in
illustration. Pic-
diary,
drawings, a
a painting, and, of
Thus, in Vertigo,
at
many instances, the imone moment the narrator loses
his passport; or rather, his hotel loses
it
for him.
charm and,
course, photographs have the
perfections of
relics.
ment made out by the in
W. G. Sebald inked
issued by the
eigner travels
police in Riva, with out.
And
the
in
—
a
And
all
German consulate in Milan. (Yes, this professional foron a German passport at least he did in 1987.) In The
—
is
merely
a
funerary
Swinburne
cemetery
monument
scribes in detail,
If the narrator
illustrative.
a small portrait of
relating a visit to a
by
to a
In Vertigo the true,
fiction
what
in the
sides,
It
seems
likely that
been
telling
speaks of Swinburne,
middle of the page;
his attention
if
captured
died in 1799, which he de-
to the holes
we
is
bored
are given a blurry
in the stone little
photo-
middle of the page.
documents have
I've
where
woman who
from fulsome epitaph
graph of the tomb, again
set in the
in Suffolk,
on the upper edges of the four
It's
—the G
with the photograph
of them are genuine. In The Rings of Saturn they seem, less in-
terestingly,
there
the docu-
is
touch of mystery
new passport,
Emigrants these visual documents seem talismanic. not
here
a
you
more poignant message. They
—which
normally demands. To offer evidence
is
say,
hardly what a reader of
at all is to
endow what
has
48
SUSAN SONTAG
been described by words with photographs and other
relics
a
mysterious surplus of pathos. The
reproduced on the page become an ex-
quisite index of the pastness of the past.
Sometimes they seem thor
is
Shandy: the au-
like the squiggles in Tristram
being intimate with
us.
At other moments,
-these insistently prof-
fered visual relics seem an insolent challenge to the sufficiency of the verbal.
And
yet. as
Sebald writes in The Rings of Saturn, describing a
favorite haunt, the Sailors'
pored over
entries
Reading
from the log of
Room
a patrol ship
during the autumn oi 19 14, "Every time I
am astounded
in
I
Southwold. where he
anchored off the pier
decipher one of these entries
that a trail that has long since vanished
the water remains visible here on the paper." ing the marbled cover of the logbook, he
from the
And, he continues,
pondered
u
air
or
clos-
the mysterious
survival of the written word."
[2000]
The Wisdom
Another Adam
beauty,
a wise, iridescent
book by
Zagajewski, dips in and out of
many
Project
the Polish writer
genres: coming-of-
age memoir, commonplace book, aphoristic musings, vignettes, and
defense of poetry It is,
be
to
—
that
a defense of the idea of literary greatness.
something of a misnomer to
sure,
who
writer: a poet
is,
call
Zagajewski a
also writes indispensable prose does not thereby
forfeit the better title.
Prose being the wordy
good many more pages than
his
affair
poems. But
it is,
Zagajewski's
in literature's canon-
fills
a
ical
two-party system, poetry always trumps prose. Poetry stands for
literature at its
eted. it,
most
serious,
most improving, most
"The author and reader always dream of
reading
ened; for a
From
it,
living
moment,
it."
a great
we
nuance may require a
little
would hold
a
As
has even less credibility
among younger
live,
deep-
application.) Literature as soul
And
it
last
all
century and a
half.
the calm and delicacy
view of poetry more akin to that of
Shelley than of Ashbery.
writing in English.
it;
expect Slavic intensities. (The partic-
seems hardly surprising that Zagajewski, for
of his poet-voice,
poem, of writing
saved.
nourishment has been a Slavic specialty for the It
most cov-
Living the poem: being elevated by
a great Polish writer
ular Polish
intense,
happens, the
reality of self-transcendence
Polish poets than
among
those
Zagajewski's transposed religious longings
through poetry, on a "higher plane"
—
—
to
are never voiced without a
49
SUSAN SONTAG
50
grace note of mild self-deprecation.
their readers access
is
one that defective human nature bars us from
Poems
habiting except fleetingly. "
because
is
it
moment
"a
The
first
memoiristic, with
that prevail today." All they
two are made up of
The new book
titles.
high-velocity variance of
volume of poems
—
pieces, a
is
so short takes. Its
What kind
mood and
lyric
discontinuous intensities,
some
poems, anyway
at different
is
is,
got that.)
And
but that
is
some
mix of
we
narratives, obser-
Another Beauty
more with
associate
—which
a succession of
is
prone to wonder. Then and with con-
oscillates, vibrates,
like that.
Or:
we expected
this,
The meteorological depressions them
of Paris have an oceanic
it's
feel;
At times the heavens' face appears,
The
the At-
The winds
in the direction of the continent.
blow, dark clouds scurry across the city like racecars. spiteful slant.
rain falls at a
a scrap of blue.
Then
dark again, the Seine becomes a black pavement. The lowlands of
Paris seethe with oceanic energy, thunderbolts corks.
Wnereas
a
typical
Central
somewhere above the Carpathians
pop
champagne
like
European depression
—behaves completely
—centered
differently:
it's
subdued and melancholy, one might say philosophical. The clouds barely move. They're shaped differently; they're like an
blimp drooping over Krakow's Central Market. The ally;
the violet glow fades, giving
skulks
but
everything reeks of dissimilarity, savor, message,
metaphor. Even the weather:
lantic dispatches
a
what kind of prose?) Thought-
—the whole book
like this,
essayistic,
in
pitches of concern.
precise; rhapsodic; rueful; courteous;
(This
appear
to
flow of untitled (and un-
attack that
of intensities? (That
now, here and there
we
sturdier, if only
is
book of prose
Zagajewski's third
is
vations, portraits, reflections, reminiscences gives
trasts.
in-
Zagajewski observes
last,"
of intense experience." Prose
numbered) short and not
ful,
is
takes longer to get through.
Another Beauty English.
"don't
poems
particularly the short lyric
can offer
a
poems
recent collection of
inwardness) to which poetry gives poets and
lyrical feeling, of ecstatic
wryly,
A
with charming sobriety. Mysticism for Beginners. The world (of
called,
somewhere behind
way
enormous
light shifts
to yellow spotlights.
silken clouds, illuminating the
gradu-
The sun
most varied
The Wisdom Project strata of earth
and
Some
sky.
51
of the clouds resemble deep-sea fishes that
have ascended to the surface and swim with mouths wide open, startled
the a
by the
meek
taste of
air.
thunderstorm does
strike,
a sharp, decisive shot,
pa
—
This kind of weather can
climate of Central Europe. it
And
behaves as
as if
last for several days,
after lengthy deliberations,
if,
if it
were
stuttering. Instead of
emits a series of drawn-out sounds, pa pa pa
it
an echo instead of a
Thunder on the
blast.
installment plan.
In Zagajewski's rendering, nature turns out to be wittily steeped in the
bathos of national histories, with the crisp, bullying weather of Paris
good fortune and Krakow's
flaunting France's indefatigable
tired,
melancholy weather summing up Poland's innumerable defeats and other woes.
The poet
can't escape history, only transmute
magic geography.
for purposes of bravura descriptiveness, into
MAY YOU
BORN
BE
era,
it
in interesting times, runs the ancient (or at
Chinese curse. Updated for our
least proverbial)
might run:
May you be born
What Czeslaw
Milosz
calls,
from strange lands where Poland, Ireland,
Israel,
it
is
Bosnia
hausts a writer like Zagajewski ture.
History means
strife.
in
difficult to
—from the
—
escape history"
whose standards
I),
are set
—think of
by world
History means tragic impasse
litera-
—and your
means perennial challenges
to the
had two centuries of his-
First Partition in 1772,
brought about the end of an autonomous
World War
hyperinteresting
prods and pinches, exalts and ex-
nation's very right to exist. Poland, of course,
chokehold
own
an interesting place.
mordantly, "the privilege of coming
friends being jailed or killed. History
tory's
sometimes,
it
which
in a
few years
state (not restored until after
to the collapse of the Soviet-style regime in 1989.
Such countries
—such
histories
—make
it
hard for their writers ever
completely to secede from the collective anguish. Here of another great writer living in a newer nation
is
the testimony
condemned
to
nonstop
dread, A. B. Vehoshua:
You
are insistently
summoned
to solidarity,
summoned from
within
yourself rather than by an external compulsion, because you live from
SUSAN SONTAG
52
one newscast
to the next,
and
it
becomes
automatic from the standpoint of
now you
to any piece of
plane shot down, are predetermined.
inability to
be alone
is
technical,
emotional reaction, because by
its
way and
are completely built to react that
Your emotional reactions a
a solidarity that
live in tension.
news about an
Hence
in the spiritual sense
and
Israeli casualty,
the Jack of solitude, the
to arrive at a life of intel-
lectual creativity.
Yehoshua's terms are identical with those of Zagajewski, whose prose book in English
is
a collection of six pieces
first
published in the early
1980s called Solidarity, Solitude. Solitude erodes solidarity; solidarity
corrupts solitude.
The
solitude of a Polish writer
community formed by the
is
always inflected by a sense of the
literature itself. Milosz, in his
own
great de-
fense of poetry, the address that he delivered at the Jagiellonian University in 1989 entitled
homage
"With Polish Poetry Against the World," pays
to Polish poetry for having protected
him "from
in emigration," recalling that "in solitude too difficult
recommend
to
never escape being responsible to others. By
counterexample of Witold Gombrowicz darily egocentric,
Poetry"
—
despair
and painful
anyone" there was always "the sense of duty toward
predecessors and successors." For Milosz, born in 191
may
sterile
offers
—
1,
to
my
a Polish writer
this rule, the stellar
in his fiction, in his legen-
truculent Diary, in his brazen polemic "Against
evidence, convulsive evidence, of the authority of
idealism in Polish literature. History
is
present even by
Milosz observes in a late book of prose, Milosz
s
its
absence,
ABC's\ and the cult of
altruism and high-mindedness flourishes,
if
wicz's denial of responsibility to anything
beyond the
perversely, in self's
Gombroanarchic
clamor, his ingenious harangues on behalf of the menial, the immature, the low-minded.
Squeezed
right,
every
life
can be construed as embodying exem-
plary experiences and historical momentousness.
could not help but see his tic
—
a
rebuke to
life as
his origins
Even Gombrowicz
exemplary, making something didac-
—out of
his gentry childhood, his preco-
And a writer much piety to-
cious literary notoriety, his fateful, irrevocable emigration.
whose love of
literature
still
entailed, unresentfully, so
The Wisdom Project ward old masters, such eagerness
to feed
on the magnificent
on offer from the past, could hardly help seeing his early circumstances
Soon
—
some kind of
as
Lwow,
ish city of
his family
—
traditions
at least his
representative destiny.
October 1945
after Zagajewski's birth in
life
53
was uprooted
in the
medieval Pol-
in the great displacements
(and redrawings of maps) that followed the Yalta agreements of the
Three Old Men, which put
and the poet grew up
Lwow
in the
in the formerly
German, now
Gliwice, thirty miles from Auschwitz. In
book
Two
when
I
my
childhood in an ugly industrial
was barely four months
old,
town of
second prose
was brought there
city; I
and then
was told about the extraordinarily beautiful
I
Polish,
Cities, his
translated into English, Zagajewski writes:
spent
I
hands of the Soviet Union;
for
many
city that
years afterward
my family had to
leave.
The
family mythology of an expulsion from paradise
him
feel,
he
says, forever
writing, to have
homeless.
made him an
witching Krakow" above to attend university,
all,
It
for
on the evidence of his
also seems,
expert lover of
which he
left
and where he remained
may have made
cities
—
"beautiful, be-
unredeemable Gliwice he was thirty-seven.
until
Dates are sparse in Another Beauty, and the arrangement of from-a-life
unchronological. But there
is
is,
implicitly,
stories-
always a where,
with which the poet's heart and senses are in dialogue. Not the traveler,
—most of the great Polish poets have gone westward, and Zagajewski not one of the exceptions — but the continually not even the emigre
is
stimulated city dweller
no bedrooms and
libraries
in
and
is
Another Beauty, but more than trains.
"we" disappears; there
where he each year
is
cities:
Once is
at
few public squares
he's past his student years, the occasional
now lives
in Paris
and teaches one term
the University of Houston. "I'm strolling through Paris,"
Symphony
Lwow
a
only an "I." Occasionally he will mention
writing: Zagajewski
one entry begins. "And enth
featured here. There are few living rooms and
in
at this
very
moment I'm
listening to the Sev-
Houston," notes another. There are always two
and Gliwice, Gliwice and Krakow, Paris and Houston.
More poignant
oppositions infuse this book: self and others, youth
SUSAN SONTAG
54
and
age.
There are plangent evocations of
cranky professors: for
tenderness toward the old.
its
and
dors, literary
odds with the
political,
difficult elderly relatives
of the poet as a young
this portrait
And
man
is
and
striking
the account of the decorous ar-
of his student years sets his
book
quite at
and pointedly indiscreet contents,
narcissistic purposes,
of most autobiographical writing today. For Zagajewski, autobiography is
an occasion to purge oneself of vanity, while advancing the project of
self-understanding pleted,
—
call
To describe oneself
And
it
however long the
a pithy
the
young
as
acknowledgment
death in their
train,
past.
glimpses, secures several
good
And
it
project
—which
is
one
to face that
is
epiphany. There
how
to talk
results. It
keeps the prose dense, quick.
is
the stories reminds us that in a riousness, change
—
way of
some
insight, or
telling, a lesson in
about oneself without complacency.
not a school for heartlessness,
a
Telling the stories discontinuously, as
a larger lesson in the very
is
no longer young.
that the debilities of age approach, with
invites telling only those stories that lead to
moral tone:
never com-
is
one of the many observations that cut short
is
from Zagajewskis
story
wisdom
life.
an education life
in
Life,
sympathy. The
when
sum
of
of a certain length and spiritual se-
sometimes not for the worse
—
is
as real as
just
death.
ALL
writing
a species of
IS
remembering.
triumphalist about Another Beauty ing the
book contains seem
the past to mental
life
definition a success.
—
is
it
is
so frictionless. Imagining
there as needed;
it
—
never
seems
less
that
is,
falters;
of course,
obligation: the obligation to persist in the effort to truth. This
remember-
that the acts of
The recovery of memory,
anything
If there is
is
bringing it
is
by
an ethical
apprehend the
apparent in America, where the work of
mem-
ory has been exuberantly identified with the creation of useful or therapeutic
fictions,
than in Zagajewskis lacerated corner of the
world.
To recover
a
memory
—
to secure a truth
—
is
a
supreme touchstone
of value in Another Beauty. "I didn't witness the extermination of the
Jews," Zagajewski writes:
The Wisdom Project I
was born too
late. I
bore witness, though, to the gradual process by
which Europe recovered lowland
like a lazy,
evil if
river
condemned
biguously
55
memory. This memory moved
its
than a mountain stream, but
it
slowly,
finally,
more
unam-
the evil of the Holocaust and the Nazis, and the
of Soviet civilization as well (though in this
reluctant to admit that
was
it
less successful, as
two such monstrosities might simultaneously
coexist).
That memories are recovered reemerge
—
modicum Once
is
—
that
that the suppressed truths
hope one can have
the basis of whatever
of sanity in the ongoing
is,
life
for justice
do
and
a
of communities.
recovered, though, even truth
may become complacent and
Thus, rather than provide yet one more denunciation
self -flattering.
of the iniquities and oppressiveness of the regime that was shut
down
in 1989,
Zagajewski chooses to stress the benefits of the struggle
against evil that flowed to the idealistic
young
in his portrayal of the
flawed beginnings of his vocation, as a "political poet," and his ties in
dissident student
and
literary circles in the
Krakow
activi-
of the late
1960s and 1970s. (In 1968, Zagajewski was twenty-three years old.) In
those heady days, poetry and activism rhymed. Both elevated, height-
ened; engagement in a just cause, like service to poetry,
made you
feel
larger.
That every generation its
successor
memory
—
this, too, is a
(history being
Each generation has which brings with
memories young,
a
who
it
its
what
misunderstands, and condescends to
function of the equivalence of history and it is
agreed on,
distinctive
a steady
remember).
collectively, to
memories, and the elapsing of time,
accumulation of
loss,
confers on those
normativeness which cannot possibly be honored by the are busy compiling their memories, their benchmarks.
of Zagajewski illustrious
fears,
s
most moving
member
portraits of elders
Bruno Schulz) and now
the university living in isolation and penury. realization, thinking back, that like fools
he and
Its
by new schools, new papers, new
radio,
known
a retired professor at
point
is
Zagajewski's
his literary friends
and savages, "shaped by
One
of Stefan Szuman, an
of the interwar Polish intelligentsia (he had
Stanislaw Witkiewicz and
have seemed
is
a
could only
postwar education,
new TV,"
to the defeated,
SUSAN SONTAG
56
homely, embittered
Szuman and
upon
generation looks
his wife.
The
successor generation as barbarians.
its
Zagajewski, himself no longer young and
can students,
committed
is
now
Nor
despair and incomprehension.
—the true
is
believers
his friends
were
As
angels.
and those who
kind of
his generation's
artists,
just sold
out
—
for turpi-
any more than he and
devils,
"who began by
for those
Ameri-
he content to write off an entire
tude and cowardice: they weren't simply
ilization"
a teacher of
to not replicating, in his turn, that
older Polish generation of intellectuals and
"enemy"
seems to be: each
rule
serving Stalin's civ-
but then changed, Zagajewski writes: "I don't condemn them
for their early, youthful intoxication. I'm
generosity of
human
nature,
which
more
inclined to marvel at the
young people
offers gifted
a
second
chance, the opportunity for a moral comeback."
At the heart of
assessment
this
the
is
wisdom
of the novelist, a pro-
fessional of empathy, rather than that of a lyric poet. (Zagajewski has
written four novels,
none
monologue "Betrayal"
Why
did
who was
I
do
I? I
am
this interview.
moment
that?
in
Why
moment
The one you were too
I
The dramatic
Cities begins:
did
do what?
I
Why
was
already beginning to regret that
For years
or in a
as yet translated into English.)
Two
refused;
of anxiety
I
who
I
.
.
What
And
me
weak
at a
did that world look like?
know. The same
late to get to
was?
agreed to grant you
you must have asked .
I
as this one.
Com-
pletely different.
That everything Actually,
Of
is
wisdom
always different
.
.
.
and the same:
a poet's
wisdom.
tout court.
course, history should never be thought of with a capital H.
governing sense of Zagajewski's memory-work
is
his
The
awareness of hav-
ing lived through several historical periods, in the course of which things eventually got better. Modestly, imperfectly
The young Zagajewski and
better.
sumed years,
that
when,
communism would in fact,
not immutable.
The
it
had
reality
less is,
his
last
comrades
—not
utopianly
in dissidence
had
as-
another hundred, two hundred
than two decades to go. Lesson:
everyone outlives an old
than one, in the course of a reasonably long
life.
self,
often
evil is
more
The Wisdom Project Another Beauty
tory: liberating the self
from "the grimaces and caprices" of
That should not be so hard has
come
into being in
easily liquidated is,
on easing the clamp of
in part, a meditation
is,
1989.
But
institutions
may be more
is
rooted in an era
an option, and ethical rigor
at least
to negotiate a soft landing onto the
moral expectations and shabby the Central European writers
artistic
whose
new lowland
standards
tenacities
is
when
something ad-
still
mired and consecrated by the genius of several national
How
history.
than a temperament. Zagajewski's temperament (that
the dialogue he conducts with himself)
heroism was
his-
public world that
in the less flagrantly evil
Poland since
57
literatures.
of diminished
the problem of
were forged
in the
all
bad
old days.
The maturing
be described
that Zagajewski chronicles can
as the
relaxing of this temperament: the rinding of the right openness, the right calmness, the right inwardness.
he
(He
says he can only write
— and who can gainsay member of the generation of — viewed with
happy, peaceful.) Exaltation
feels
ment from tical eye.
religious
a
this judg-
'68?
Hyperemphatic
when
intensity holds
no
is
a skep-
His end of the
allure.
spectrum does not include any notion of the sacred, which
figures centrally in the
work of the
late Jerzy
Grotowski and the theatre
center in Gardzienice led by Wlodzimierz Staniewski. While the sacralecstatic tradition cially this
is still
alive in Polish theatre
kind of theatre,
contemporary Polish
is
—but then espe— has no place theatre,
compulsorily collective
literature.
Another Beauty
is
suffused with the hu-
and envisages no
mility of a spiritual longing that precludes frenzy,
large gestures of sacrifice.
As Zagajewski
notes:
in
it
"The week
isn't
made
up only of Sundays."
Some
of his keenest pages are descriptions of happiness, the every-
day happiness of a connoisseur of
Beethoven or Schumann. The "I" of Another Beauty
listening to
scrupulous, vulnerable, earnest
And
—without
neither Zagajewski nor this reader
would come meet
solitary delights: strolling, reading,
in the
ally for
at
the cost of so
world of
art,"
much
is
a jot of self-protective irony.
would wish
otherwise. Irony
it
pleasure. "Ecstasy
Zagajewski observes.
"When
and irony they do
rarely
it's
usu-
the purposes of mutual sabotage; they struggle to diminish each
other's power."
And he
is
unabashedly on the side of
ecstasy.
SUSAN SONTAG
58
These descriptions are tributes to what produces happiness, not celebrations of the receptive
he
loves, or
tions
simply describe something
quote a favorite poem: the book
Adam
(who while
others, in a is
He may
is
a
sampling of apprecia-
and sympathies. There are penetrating sketches of admired
friends such as
ship
self.
in
Michnik, a beacon of resistance to the dictator-
jail
book he
wrote about the poet Zbigniew Herbert, among
titled
From
the History of Honor in Poland); there
doyen of Polish emigres
a reverential salute to the ancient
the painter, writer,
Czapski. Lenfer,
and heroic alumnus of Soviet prison camps Jozef
No,
c'est les autres.
ski declares in the
in Paris,
poem
it is
that gives the
others
book
who
save us, Zagajew-
its title
and serves
as
its
epigraph.
Here tor,
is
"Another Beauty"
in the
new
version by the book's transla-
Clare Cavanagh:
We find
comfort only
in
another beauty, in others' music, in the poetry of others. Salvation
with others,
lies
though solitude may
taste like
opium. Other people aren't if
you glimpse them
their
brows are
This
is
to use,
betrays
why
at
clean, rinsed
pause: which
I
you or
he.
in others'
here
it is
as
it
where
it is
word
Each he
its
time
poems.
appeared
jewski's first collection of
czynski,
by dreams.
some you, but
calm conversation bides
And
hell
dawn, when
in 1985 in Tremor: Selected
poems
in English, translated
entitled "In the Beauty Created
Only
in the
by others
is
beauty created there consolation,
Poems, Zaga-
by Renata Gor-
by Others":
The Wisdom Project in the
music of others and
Only others save
in others'
tastes like
opium. The others are not
you see them
poems.
us,
even though solitude
if
59
early,
hell,
with their
foreheads pure, cleansed by dreams.
That
is
why I wonder what
word should be is
used, "he" or "you." Every "he"
a betrayal of a certain
in return
someone
else's
"you" but
poem
offers the fidelity of a sober dialogue.
A
defense of poetry and a defense of goodness,
or,
more
exactly, of
good-naturedness.
Nothing could take the reader
in a
more contrary
direction to
today's cult of the excitements of self than to follow Zagajewski as
he
unspools his seductive praise of serenity, sympathy, forbearance; of "the calm and courage of an ordinary truth!" and, in another passage,
mation points!) seems,
if
life."
To declare
"Goodness does
"I believe in
exist!" (those excla-
—one American reviewer dethe book— then
not Panglossian
tected a touch of Panglossian uplift in
at least quixotic.
This culture offers few current models of masculine sweetness, and those
we
already possess, from past literature, are associated with
naivete, childlikeness, social innocence: tions,
Joe Gargery
in
Great Expecta-
Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov. Zagajewski's persona in An-
other Beauty gift for
is
anything but innocent in that sense. But he has a special
conjuring up states of complex innocence, the innocence of ge-
"Franz Schubert:
A
Press
Beauty makes clear
at
every
nius, as in his heartrending portrait-poem
Conference."
THE TITLE MAY MISLEAD. Another
turn that, worshipper of greatness in poetry and other arts that he
Zagajewski higher:
is
"Woe
not an aesthete. Poetry to the writer
who
is
to
be judged by standards
is,
still
values beauty over truth." Poetry must
SUSAN SONTAG
60
be protected from the temptations to arrogance inherent
in
its
own
left
over
states of elation.
Of course, both from
a
beauty and truth seem like
more innocent
frail
guideposts
past. In the delicate negotiation
with the present
which Zagajewski conducts on behalf of the endangered
would count
talgia
as a deficit of
and license
certainties
to perorate,
argument.
he
is
Still,
pledged to defending the idea
of "sublime" or "noble" achievement in literature does, that
we
still
need the
virtually unsayable
fense
is
Dutch
still
he
by such now
which posed the pseudo-nai've question:
at a
Is
lit-
possible?
belief in literary greatness implies that the capacity for adis
still
intact.
When
admiration
is
corrupted, that
cynical, the question as to whether greatness ishes.
as
words. Zagajewski 's most eloquent, summative de-
university in 1998
miration
— assuming,
qualities in art that are praised
"The Shabby and the Sublime," an address he delivered
erary greatness
The
verities, nos-
even absent the old
is
is,
made
possible simply van-
Nihilism and admiration compete with each other, sabotage
each other, struggle to diminish each other's power. (Like irony and ecstasy.)
Disheartened though he
pean
literature,"
is
by "the mutation downward of Euro-
Zagajewski declines to speculate about what has given
the advantage to subjectivism and the revolt against "greatness." Per-
haps those brought up on the fierceness of state-administered mediocrity find
it
hard to be
as indignant as they
might be about the extent to
which mercantilist values (often sporting the mask of "democratic" or populist values) have sapped the foundations of the sublime. "Soviet civilization," a.k.a.
cultural policies of
communism, was
a great conservative force.
communist regimes embalmed the
The
old, hierarchical
notions of achievement, seeking to confer a noble pedigree on propagandistic banalities. In contrast, capitalism has a truly radical relation to culture, dismantling the very notion of greatness in the arts,
now most
successfully dismissed
cultural progressives
which
is
by the ecumenical philistinism of both
and cultural reactionaries
as
an
"elitist"
presump-
tion.
Zagajewski's protest against the collapse of standards has nothing
The Wisdom Project about
analytical
it.
Yet surely he understands the
Orphaned
of simply denouncing the collapse.
some-
pieties overheat
passages assert a familiar dismay, especially
rhetorically,
would "the
in
our flawed and tawdry world"? Don't
demon had know about
and Apollinaire
(d. 191 8) in-
Giotto or van Eyck; but Proust nocent?
I
to
What, he inquires
great, innocent artists of the past, Giotto or
van Eyck, Proust or Apollinaire, have done
them down
And
when he succumbs
the temptation to see our era as uniquely degraded.
set
(and indignity)
"Without poetry, we'd hardly be better than the mammals."
times:
many
futility
61
1922)
(d.
if
should have thought the Europe
senseless slaughter called
World War
I
some
in
spiteful
which
took place was,
that colossal,
anything, a
if
good deal worse than "flawed and tawdry."
The
idea of art as the beleaguered vehicle of spiritual value in a sec-
ular age should not have ski's utter
his
been
left
unexamined. Nevertheless, Zagajew-
absence of rancor and vindictiveness, his generosity of
spirit,
awareness of the vulgarity of unremitting complaint and of the
own
righteous assumption of one's
cultural superiority,
mark
self-
off his
stance from that of the usual professional mourners of the Death of
High Culture, such while he
slips into facile assertions
the present, but even then he call
it
portentous George Steiner. (Once in a
as the ever
is
human
Steinerism with a
of the superiority of the past over
never grandiose or self-aggrandizing:
face.)
Inveterately prescriptive, occasionally sententious, Zagajewski
common
too shrewd, too respectful of
or ordinary wisdom, not to see
the limits of each of the positions that surround and
One
his abiding passions.
works of
art.
one of
own enemies
its
be dissolved
make
it
loses sight of the solid
world that cannot
is
notational, juxtapositional,
it is
gajewski to entertain quite contradictory assessments.
how
tions
divided Zagajewski
and the
stories in
mind divided between solidarity
become
in art."
Because the book
is
sense out of
can be elevated, deepened, improved by
But, Zagajewski cautions, the imagination can "if
is
and
solitude;
is,
as
possible for Za-
What
is
valuable
he himself acknowledges. The
Another Beauty show us
the public world and the claims of
between the
original
"two
reflec-
a subtle, important
cities":
art,
the
between
Human
62
SUSAN SONTAG
City and the City of
God. Divided, but not overthrown. There There
guish, but then serenity keeps breaking through.
and, as well, so ers. is,
many
There was scorn,
fortifying pleasures supplied until caritas
just as inexorably, consolation.
chimed
in.
is
is
an-
desolation
by the genius of oth-
There
is
despair, but there
Writing
On The
best poetry will be rhetorical criticism
— Wallace Stevens
(in a
.
Itself:
Roland Barthes
.
journal of 1899)
lose sight of myself.
I rarely
— Paul Valery, Monsieur TEACHER, MAN
Teste
OF
LETTERS,
moralist, philosopher of
culture, connoisseur of strong ideas, protean autobiographer
... of
War
all
II in
the intellectual notables
France, Roland Barthes
tain will endure. Barthes
had been
was
is
who
have emerged since World
the one
whose work
I
am most
cer-
in full flow, incessantly productive, as
for over three decades,
when he was
started across a street in Paris in early 1980
—
he
struck by a van as he
a death felt
by friends and
admirers to be excruciatingly untimely. But along with the backward
look of grief comes the awareness that confers upon his large, chronically
mutating body of writing, as on
completeness.
more than subject
—
The development
that, exhaustive. It
that
celebrates the
As
it
major work,
of Barthes's
happens, the
its
retroactive
work now seems
even begins and
exemplary instrument
writer's journal.
all
falls silent
logical;
on the same
in the career of consciousness, the first
essay Barthes ever published
model consciousness he found
in the Journal of
Andre
63
SUSAN SONTAG
64
Gide. and what turned out to be the died offers Barthes 's musings on his
however adventitious,
try,
writing, with
its
subject: writing
essay published before he
last
own
The symme-
journal-keeping.
an utterly appropriate one, for Barthes's
is
prodigious variety of subjects, has finally one great
itself.
His early themes were those of the freelance partisan of
letters,
on
the occasions afforded by cultural journalism, literary debate, theatre
and book reviews. To these were added topics
that originated
and were
recycled in seminars and from the lecture platform, for Barthes ary career
and
was run concurrently with
academic one,
a (very successful)
an academic one. But the voice was always singular, and
in part as
the achievement
self- referring:
had even by
s liter-
of another, larger order than can be
is
most
practicing, with thrilling virtuosity, the
many-tracked of academic
disciplines.
would-be science of
and
signs
For
all
and
his contributions to the
structures. Barthes
s
endeavor was the
under
a series of
own mind. And when
the current
quintessentially literary one: the writer organizing,
doctrinal auspices, the theory of his
lively
enclosure of his reputation by the labels of semiology and structuralism
crumbles, as
promeneur mirers
H
E
it
must, Barthes will appear,
solitaire,
now
and
Barthes
s
full out.
is
vehement
like
in 1953,
brilliance at the is
was always concentrated, keen, inde-
extraordinary powers as a mind, as a writer.
be. "Literature
erature
think, as a rather traditional
This dazzling inventiveness seems not just a function of
almost the status of a position
came out
I
than even his more fervent ad-
claim.
always wrote
fatigable.
a greater writer
as if this
Writing Degree Zero:
brilliance that
Its brilliance aside,
what
is
"it
affair.
be having,
sociated with the style of a late
discourse must
in his first
shines with
His work affirms
indeed one ideal of
Barthes's
seems to have
It
critical
book, which
maximum
its
attempts to die." In Barthes's view,
it
posthumous
itself to
is
phosphorous." he says
moment when
already a
which believes
—
moment itself,
in culture
that
lit-
standard of
cultural
in several senses, the last
work has some of
an endless discourse anterior to
a
a
moment
word.
the specific traits as-
—one
presumes
that
presumes
intellectual so-
Writing phistication:
it is
work
compact
ous, favors
Itself:
On
Roland Barthes
65
be boring or obvi-
that, strenuously unwilling to
assertion, writing that rapidly covers a great deal
of ground. Barthes was an inspired, ingenious practitioner of the essay
and the
anti-essay
—he had
densely
worded entailments of
of a supple prose.
terials
It
ideas deployed as is
French, whose parent tradition cratic essays
long forms. Typically, his
a resistance to
comma-ridden and colon-prone, packed with
sentences are complex,
style
a is
these were the ma-
of exposition, recognizably
be found
to
if
in the tense, idiosyn-
published between the two world wars in the Nouvelle
Revue Frangaise
—
a perfected version of the
NRFs
house
style
can deliver more ideas per page while retaining the brio of that acuteness of timbre. His vocabulary darin.
Even
Barthes's less
them from the
1
960s
—
fleet,
is
which
style, its
man-
large, fastidious, fearlessly
more jargon-haunted
are full of flavor; he
writings
manages
—most of
make an exu-
to
berant use of neologisms. While exuding straight-ahead energy, his
prose constantly reaches for the summative formulation; ibly aphoristic. (Indeed,
ing superb bits
it is
irrepress-
one could go through Barthes's work
—epigrams,
maxims
—
to
make
book,
a small
been done with Wilde and Proust.) Barthes's strengths
extract-
as
as has
an aphorist
suggest a sensibility gifted, before any intervention of theory, for the
perception of structure.
A method of condensed
assertion
by means of
symmetrically counterposed terms, the aphorism displays the symmetries
and complementarities of
situations or ideas
—
their design, their
shape. Like a markedly greater feeling for drawings than for paintings, a talent for
aphorism
is
one of the signs of what could be called the
for-
malist temperament.
The
formalist
temperament
by many who speculate
and
its
just
one variant of
a sensibility shared
in an era of hypersaturated awareness.
characterizes such a sensibility terion of taste,
is
proud
more
generally
refusal to
is its
reliance
sists
that
its
assertions are taste.)
on the
cri-
propose anything that does not
bear the stamp of subjectivity. Confidently assertive,
would be ba3
What
no more than
it
nevertheless in-
provisional. (To
do otherwise
Indeed, adepts of this sensibility usually
make
point of claiming and reclaiming amateur status. "In linguistics
I
a
have
never been anything but an amateur," Barthes told an interviewer in 1975.
Throughout
his late writings Barthes repeatedly
disavows the, as
SUSAN SONTAG
66
it
were, vulgar roles of system-builder, authority, mentor, expert, in
order to reserve for himself the privileges and freedoms of delectation: the exercise of taste for Barthes means, usually, to praise.
the role a choice one
new and
is
is
commitment
something
to finding
unfamiliar to praise (which requires having the right disso-
nance with established
An
his unstated
What makes
early
example
is
taste);
his
or to praising a familiar
second book
—
it
work
appeared
differently.
in 1954
—which
on Michelet. Through an inventory of the recurrent metaphors and
themes
in
the great nineteenth-century historian's epic narratives,
Barthes discloses a more intimate narration: Michelet 's history of his
own body and after
the "lyric resurrection of past bodies." Barthes
another meaning, a more eccentric
What
pleased him was to
show
insipid
—often
Utopian
—
always
is
discourse.
and reactionary works
to
be
quirky and implicitly subversive; to display in the most extravagant projects of the imagination an opposite extreme a sexual ideal that
essay
on Fourier,
was
really
on
in his essay
on Sade,
an exercise in delirious rationality; in his
a rationalist ideal that
delirium. Barthes did take
—
was
really
an exercise in sensual
central figures of the literary
he had something polemical to
offer: in i960
he wrote
canon when
a short
book on
Racine, which scandalized academic critics (the ensuing controversy
ended with Barthes's complete triumph over
his detractors);
wrote on Proust and Flaubert. But more often, armed with tially
his essen-
adversary notion of the "text," he applied his ingenuity to the
marginal literary subject: an unimportant "work" sine,
he also
Chateaubriand's Life of Ranee
— could
be
—
say, Balzac's Sarra-
a
marvelous "text."
Considering something as a "text" means for Barthes precisely to sus-
pend conventional evaluations minor
(the
difference between major
and
literature), to subvert established classifications (the separation
of genres, the distinctions
Though work
among
the
arts).
of every form and worth qualifies for citizenship in
the great democracy of "texts," the critic will tend to avoid those that
everyone has handled, the meaning that everyone knows. The formalist turn in
modern
—from onward —
criticism
idea of defamiliarizing,
its
pristine phase, as in Shklovsky's
dictates just this. It charges the critic
with the task of discarding worn-out meanings for fresh ones.
mandate
to scout for
new meanings. Ltonne-moi.
It is
a
Writing
The same mandate These
"textuality."
On
Itself:
Roland Barthes
supplied by Barthes 's notions of "text" and
is
translate into criticism the modernist ideal of an
open-ended, polysemous
and thereby make the
literature;
like the creators of that literature, the inventor of
Barthes asserts,
literature,
"a meaning.")
is, finally,
a
is
exertions
criticism
meaning. (The aim of
is
subtracting, multiplying
to alter
it
—
is
and
to re-
in effect to
on an enterprise of avoidance, and thereby
had ever
(if it
critic, just
to put "meaning" into the world but not
that the point of criticism
—adding,
critic's
recommit
iar;
To decide
meaning
locate
base the
67
to the
left)
dominion of
taste.
to
For
it
the exercise of taste which identifies meanings that are famil-
judgment of
which discriminates against such meanings
taste
as
too familiar; an ideology of taste which makes of the familiar something vulgar and
facile.
that the critic
but only
its
Barthes 's formalism
called
is
"system"
on
—
at its
most
decisive, his ruling
work
to reconstitute not the "message" of a
its
form,
structure
its
—
is
perhaps best under-
stood thus, as the liberating avoidance of the obvious, as an immense gesture of
good
taste.
For the modernist
—
that
is,
formalist
The "message"
is
OF A VARIETY thing to say
power
critic,
Now, what
ceived valuations already exists.
canon of great books has been
—
fixed.
What
already understood, or
is
the
else
can
work with
can be said? The
we add
or restore to
obsolete. Let's ignore
or into two versions of
his aphorist's ability to conjure
itself;
he remarks,
is
theatricality
from the theatre"; the
The point
a
oppo-
of Voltairean travel,
"to manifest an immobility"; Baudelaire
—Barthes's writing
Eiffel is
"had to protect
Tower "makes the
city into a
seeded with such ostensibly par-
adoxical, epigrammatic formulas as these, It is
its
up
and one term then fielded against the
other to yield an unexpected relation.
thing up.
it.
an exceptionally fluent, ingenious generalizing
—the most elementary was
kind of Nature"
it?
of means Barthes possessed for giving himself some-
—he had
vivacious duality: anything could be split either into itself and site
its re-
whose point
is
to
sum some-
the nature of aphoristic thinking to be always in a state of
concluding; a bid to have the final
phrase-making.
word
is
inherent in
all
powerful
SUSAN SONTAG
68
Less elegant, indeed making a point of dogged explicitness, and far
more powerful
as
an instrument for giving himself something to
say,
are the classifications that Barthes lays out in order to topple himself into a piece of
argument
— dividing
into two, three, even four parts the
matter to be considered. Arguments are launched" by announcing that there are
ways
two main
which myth lends
in
two musics, two ways two forms of
his
and two subclasses of narrative
classes
own
two
itself to history,
to read
facets of
units,
Racinean eros,
La Rochefoucauld, two kinds of
interest in photographs.
two
writers,
That there are three
types of corrections a writer makes, three Mediterraneans and three tragic sites in Racine, three levels
on which
cyclopedia, three areas of spectacle
to read the plates of the En-
and three types of gesture
in Japa-
nese puppet theatre, three attitudes toward speech and writing, equivalent to three vocations: writer, intellectual, and teacher. That there are four kinds of readers, four reasons for keeping a journal
And
so on. This
is
accurately,
.
.
the codifying, frontal style of French intellectual
discourse, a branch of the rhetorical tactics that the French
quite
.
Cartesian.
Although
a
few of the
call,
not
classifications
Barthes employs are standard, such as semiology's canonical triad of signified, signifier,
and
many
sign,
are inventions devised
by Barthes
in
order to make an argument, such as his assertion in a late book, The Pleasure of the Text, that the
map
static.
do
seeks to destroy
categorizing
is
precisely for
one category
the two forms, which he calls
—
not
to subvert the his
keep matters
to reserve a place for the uncodified, the enchanted, the in-
tractable, the histrionic. sificatory
excess
He
of the quiver,
a sensual thrill,
classifications, of clas-
example), and his boldly physical
life stress
not topography but transformation.
to hyperbole, as
drama, often
was fond of bizarre for
(Fourier's,
metaphors for mental
Drawn
is
punctum and studium, of
interest in photographs. Barthes offers classifications to
open
art, "this ef-
the intellectual territory: Barthes 's taxonomies are never
Often the point
other, as
artist
The aim of this implacable
fort taking three forms." just to
modern
all
aphorists are, Barthes enlists ideas in a
melodrama or
a faintly
Gothic one.
He
speaks
or shudder of meaning, of meanings that them-
selves vibrate, gather, loosen, disperse, quicken, shine, fold, mutate, delay, slide, separate, that exert pressure, crack, rupture, fissure, are
Writing
On
Itself:
Roland Barthes
69
which
pulverized. Barthes offers something like a poetics of thinking,
meaning of subjects with the very mobility of meaning,
identifies the
with the kinetics of consciousness
The
artist.
liberates the critic as
uses that binary and triadic thinking had for Barthes
were always provisional, available
ination
and
itself;
s
imag-
to correction, destabilization,
condensation.
As
he preferred short forms, and had been planning to
a writer,
give a seminar
on them; he was
particularly
haiku and the quotation; and, like
like the
thralled
by "the
Even
an
as
detail" (his
essayist,
word)
drawn
to miniature ones,
true writers, he
all
—experience's
was en-
model short form.
Barthes mostly wrote short, and the books he did
write tend to be multiples of short forms rather than "real" books, eraries of topics rather than unified arguments. ple,
keys
its
His Michelet, for exam-
number
inventory of the historian's themes to a large
brief excerpts
from Michelet 's
ample of the argument
prolific writings.
The most
of
rigorous ex-
an itinerary by means of quotation
as
itin-
is
S/Z,
From
stag-
ing the texts of others, he passed inevitably to the staging of his
own
published in 1970, his model exegesis of Balzac's Sarrasine.
And,
ideas.
in the
same
on great writers ("Ecrivains de tou-
series
which he contributed the Michelet volume, he eventually
jours") to
did one on himself in 1975: that dazzling oddity in the
land Barthes by Roland Barthes.
The
series,
Ro-
high-velocity arrangements of
Barthes 's late books dramatize both his fecundity (insatiability and lightness)
and
An animus intellectual
his desire to subvert all tendencies to
against the systematizers has
good
taste for
sche, Wittgenstein are
perior
if
virtually
systems. In
its
more than
among
the
lodged
who
in the
many voices
modern form, scorn
the protest against Law, against
Power
a recurrent feature of
a century; Kierkegaard, Nietz-
unbearable burden of
strong
been
system-making.
that proclaim,
from a
su-
singularity, the absurdity of
for systems
itself.
An
is
one aspect of
older, milder refusal
is
French skeptic tradition from Montaigne to Gide: writers
are epicures of their
own
consciousness can be counted on to
decry "the sclerosis of systems," a phrase Barthes used in his
on Gide. And along with these
refusals a distinctive
first essay,
modern
stylistics
has evolved, the prototypes of which go back at least to Sterne and the
German Romantics
—the invention of
anti-linear
forms of narration: in
SUSAN SONTAG
70
fiction, the destruction
of linear argument.
ducing
of the "story"; in nonfiction, the
The presumed
impossibility (or irrelevance) of pro-
continuous systematic argument has led to a remodeling of
a
—the
the standard long forms
treatise,
the long
book
— and Of
of the genres of fiction, autobiography, and essay.
Barthes
abandonment
a recasting
this stylistics
a particularly inventive practitioner.
is
The Romantic and post-Romantic performance: to write
a first-person
One
matic elaboration.
strategy
sensibility discerns in every is
a dramatic act, subject to dra-
to use multiple
is
book
pseudonyms,
as
Kierkegaard did, concealing and multiplying the figure of the author.
When
autobiographical, the
tance to speak in the Barthes
is
himself,
of the conventions of Roland
sometimes
announces on the
"must be considered
first
spoken by
as if
fiction as well.
fiction
Barthes. Writing registers
kind: writing
self- referring
is
"Let the essay avow
as "I,"
page of
this
a character in
Under the meta-category of performance, not only
between autobiography and
Roland
One
person.
as "he." All this, Barthes
book about
and
invariably includes avowals of reluc-
for the autobiographer to refer to himself
sometimes
a novel."
first
work
the line
muted, but that between essay itself
almost a novel," he says in
new forms
of dramatic stress, of a
becomes the record of compulsions and of
resistances to write. (In the further extension of this view, writing itself
becomes the
writer's subject.)
For the purpose of achieving an intensity,
two
some or
all
strategies
ideal digressiveness
have been widely adopted.
One
and an is
ideal
to abolish
of the conventional demarcations or separations of dis-
course, such as chapters, paragraphing, even punctuation, whatever
is
regarded as impeding formally the continuous production of (the writer's) voice
fictions
egy
is
—the run-on method favored by
such as
Hermann
the opposite one: to multiply the ways in which discourse
mented, to invent further ways of breaking this
writers of philosophical
Broch, Joyce, Stein, Beckett. The other
method,
too; Viktor
Shklovsky
writes in one-sentence paragraphs.
it
polyphonous,
is
seg-
up. Joyce and Stein used
in his best
books, from the 1920s,
The multiple openings and
produced by the start-and-stop method permit discourse differentiated, as
strat-
as possible. Its
most
to
closures
become
common
shape
as in
Writing expository discourse
is
sometimes
Roland Barthes
..."
the usual literary
is
on Gide, and returns
Barthes uses in the essay
Much
On
71
that of short, one- or two-paragraph units sepa-
rated by spaces. "Notes on
work.
Itself:
title
—
form
a
to often in his later
of his writing proceeds by techniques of interruption,
in the
form of an excerpt alternating with
mentary, as in Michelet and S/Z.
To write
in
com-
a disjunctive
fragments or sequences or
"notes" entails new, serial (rather than linear) forms of arrangement.
These sequences may be staged they
in
some
arbitrary way.
For example,
—
may be numbered a method practiced with great refinement by Or they may be given headings, sometimes ironic or
Wittgenstein.
overemphatic
—Barthes
strategy in
s
Roland
Barthes.
Headings allow
an additional possibility: for the elements to be arranged alphabetically, to
emphasize further the arbitrary character of their sequence
method of
A
Lover's Discourse (1977),
tion of the fragment;
real title
—the
evokes the no-
Fragments d'un discours amoureux.
it is
Barthes 's late writing
ganized in a
whose
is
serial rather
his boldest formally: all
major work was
or-
than linear form. Straight essay writing was
reserved for the literary good deed (prefaces, for example, of which
Barthes wrote many) or journalistic whim. However, these strong
forms of the his
work
late writing
—Barthes
only bring forward a desire implicit in
relation that art has, of pleasure.
Such
a
conception of writing excludes
the fear of contradiction. (In Wilde's phrase: is
"A
truth in art
also true.") Barthes repeatedly
compared
ing to play, reading to eros, writing to seduction. His voice
more and more tual art
personal,
more openly
systematizers.
ister.
more
full
of grain, as he called
it;
is
that
teach-
became
his intellec-
a performance, like that of the other great anti-
But whereas Nietzsche addresses the reader
— complicity— Barthes
tones, mostly aggressive ing, inviting
of
wish to have a superior relation to assertion: the
's
whose contradiction
all
in
many
exulting, berating, coaxing, prodding, taunt-
invariably performs in an affable reg-
There are no rude or prophetic claims, no pleadings with the
reader,
and no
efforts not to
be understood. This
never violation. All of Barthes or ludic; in
many
s
work
is
is
seduction as play,
an exploration of the histrionic
ingenious modes, a plea for savor, for a festive (rather
than dogmatic or credulous) relation to ideas. For Barthes, as for
SUSAN SONTAG
72
Nietzsche, the point
point
to
is
make
The
not to teach us something in particular.
is
And
us bold, agile, subtle, intelligent, detached.
to
give pleasure.
WRITING
IS
BARTHES's
one since Flaubert
perennial subject
(in his letters)
has thought as
about what writing
ately as Barthes has
—indeed,
is.
Much
of his
work early
is
the writer as fraud, such as
is,
by others,
"The Writer on Holiday,"
ambitious essays on writers writing, that tyr,
is,
devoted
debunking
studies included in Mythologies (1957) of the writer as seen that
passion-
brilliantly, as
from the
to portraits of the vocation of the writer:
perhaps no
to
more
the writer as hero and mar-
such as "Flaubert and the Sentence," about the writer's "agony of
style." Barthes's
wonderful essays on writers must be considered
as dif-
For
ferent versions of his great apologia for the vocation of the writer. all
his admiration for the self-punishing standards of integrity set
by
Flaubert, he dares to conceive of writing as a kind of happiness: the
point of his essay on Voltaire ("The Last
Happy
unvexed by the sense of
portrait of Fourier,
speaks directly of his
own
evil.
Writer"), and of his
In his late
work he
practice, scruples, bliss.
Barthes construes writing as an ideally complex form of consciousness: a
way
and absent
of being both passive and active, social and asocial, present in one's
own
life.
His idea of the
writer's vocation excludes
the sequestration that Flaubert thought inevitable,
deny any
between the
conflict
pleasures of worldliness.
by Gide:
a
more
It is,
writer's necessary
would appear
inwardness and the
so to speak, Flaubert strongly
of the self as writer
virtually
journal.
who
is
complete
—
—the por-
that Barthes sketched throughout his
in the first essay,
work
on Gide's "work of egoism,"
Gide supplied Barthes with the
patrician
model
is
his
for the writer
supple, multiple; never strident or vulgarly indignant; generous
but also properly notes
amended
well bred, casual rigor, an avid, guileful relation to
ideas that excludes fanaticism. Indeed, the ideal self-portrait trait
to
how
little
recognitions"),
egotistical;
Gide was
how
incapable of being deeply influenced.
altered by his vast reading ("so
his "discoveries"
many
were never "denials."
He
self-
And he
praises the profusion of Gide's scruples, observing that Gide's "situa-
Writing
Itself:
On
Roland Barthes
73
tion at the intersection of great contradictory currents has nothing
about
facile
that
is
it
.
.
."
Barthes subscribes as well to Gide's idea of writing
elusive, willing to
be minor. His
relation to politics also recalls
Gide's: a willingness in times of ideological mobilization to take the right stands, to
be
political
—
but, finally, not:
the truth that hardly anybody else
tell
and thereby, perhaps,
is telling.
Barthes wrote after a trip to China in 1974.) Barthes had
with Gide, and self.
much
many
affinities
of what he says of Gide applies unaltered to him-
How remarkable
"perpetual
to
(See the short essay
to find
self- correction"
it all
laid out
—including the program of
—well before he embarked on
his career.
(Barthes was twenty-seven, a patient in a sanatorium for tubercular students,
when he wrote
this essay in 1942 for the
he did not enter the Paris
When
Barthes,
literary
sanatorium's magazine;
arena for another five years.)
who began under
the aegis of Gide's doctrine of
psychic and moral availability, started writing regularly, Gide's important
work was long
1951);
over, his influence already negligible (he died in
and Barthes put on the armor of postwar debate about the
sponsibility of literature, the terms of
demand
that the writer
be
which were
set
up by
in a militant relation to virtue,
Sartre
re-
—the
which Sartre
described by the tautological notion of "commitment." Gide and Sartre were, of course, the
century in France, and the culture suggests quite just this
two most
influential writer-moralists of this
work of these two sons of French Protestant
opposed moral and
aesthetic choices.
it
is
kind of polarization that Barthes, another Protestant in revolt
against Protestant moralism, seeks to avoid. Supple
Barthes
But
is
quarrel with Sartre's view of literature
Writing Degree Zero (Sartre
ment with
Gidean
that he
is,
eager to acknowledge the model of Sartre as well. While a
Sartre's
is
lies at
the heart of his
book,
never mentioned by name), an agree-
view of the imagination, and
surfaces in Barthes 's last book,
first
Camera Lucida
the early Sartre, the author of LImaginaire).
its
obsessional energies,
(written "in
Even
homage"
in the first
to
book,
Barthes concedes a good deal to Sartre's view of literature and lan-
guage
—
for example, putting poetry with the other "arts"
and
identify-
ing literature with prose, with argument. Barthes's view of literature in his
subsequent writing was more complex. Though he never wrote on
poetry, his standards for literature
approached those of the poet:
Ian-
— SUSAN SONTAG
74
guage that has undergone an upheaval, has been displaced, liberated
from ungrateful contexts;
on
that, so to speak, lives
its
own. Although
Barthes agrees with Sartre that the writers vocation has an ethical im-
he
perative,
on
insists
its
complexity and ambiguity. Sartre appeals to
the morality of ends. Barthes invokes "the morality of forrrT
makes
literature a
problem rather than
a solution;
—what
what makes
litera-
ture.
To conceive of
literature
position-taking, however,
conformist.
a
"communication"
successful
as
sentiment that must inevitably
The instrumental view expounded makes of
erature? (1948)
vain
is
—and misplaced—
erary purists, that
is,
literature
struggle
in Sartre's
and
become
What
Is Lit-
something perpetually obsolete,
between
ethical
good
soldiers
and
a
lit-
modernists. (Contrast the latent philistinism of
view of literature with the subtlety and acuity of what Sartre had to
this
say about visual images.) Riven
counted
tempt for
his love of literature (the love re-
one of the century's great
literature,
years of his
by
one perfect book, The Words) and an evangelical con-
in his
insulting literature
life
litterateurs spent the last
and himself with
that indigent idea,
"the neurosis of literature." His defense of the writer's project of com-
mitment
no more convincing. Accused of thereby reducing
is
protested that
(to politics), Sartre
him of overestimating single
it.
it
would be more
what
I
mean by 'commitment.'
ture to "everything"
correct to accuse
"If literature isn't everything,
hour of someone's trouble," he declared
"That's
"
But
in
literature
it's
not worth a
an interview in i960.
Sartre's inflation of litera-
another brand of depreciation.
is
Barthes, too, might be charged with overestimating literature treating literature as "everything" for doing so. is
of
first
Which
is
all,
—but
For Barthes understood last
of
to say that
all,
all
language.
of reality
is
at least
(as Sartre
It is
not)
(as Sartre,
what he
calls
a
is
everything.
presented in the form of language
And
Barthes takes for
with his notion of writing as communication, did the "radical exploration of writing" undertaken by
Mallarme, Joyce, Proust, and their successors. That no venture able unless
it
—with
good case
did not) that literature
language that
the poet's wisdom, and also the structuralist's.
granted
he made
is
valu-
can be conceived as a species of radicalism, radicalism
thereby unhinged from any distinctive content,
is
perhaps the essence
— Writing of what
we
call
modernism
Itself:
On
Roland Barthes
modernism. Barthes's work belongs to the
in the extent to
which
it
75
sensibility of
assumes the necessity of the ad-
versary stance: literature conceived by modernist standards but not necessarily a modernist literature. Rather, tion are available to
all
varieties of counterposi-
it.
Perhaps the most striking difference between Sartre and Barthes
is
the deep one, of temperament. Sartre has an intellectually brutal, bon
enfant view of the world, a view that wills simplicity, resolution, trans-
parence; Barthes's view irresolute. Sartre
was
irrevocably complex, self-conscious, refined,
is
tragedy of this great career, of the use he
was
lect,
made
of his stupendous intel-
Barthes preferred to
just his willingness to simplify himself.
avoid confrontation, to evade polarization. "the watcher
who
and the
eager, too eager, to seek confrontation,
He
stands at the crossroads of
defines the writer as
all
other discourses"
the opposite of an activist or a purveyor of doctrine. Barthes's Utopia of literature has an ethical character almost the op-
posite of Sartre's.
It
emerges
in the connections
and reading, desire and writing
sire
writing
is,
more than
—
his
ist
—Puritan
or
insistence that his
anything, the product of appetite.
"pleasure," "bliss," "happiness" recur in his
niscent of Gide, that
he makes between de-
is
work with
own
The words
a weight, remi-
both voluptuous and subversive. As a moral-
anti-Puritan
—might
solemnly
sex
distinguish
for
procreation from sex for pleasure, Barthes divides writers into those
who ers,
write something (what Sartre
who do
meant by
a writer)
and the
real writ-
not write something but, rather, write. This intransitive
sense of the verb "to write" Barthes endorses as not only the source of the writer's felicity but the
commitment cial
that writing
model of freedom. For Barthes,
makes
to
something outside of
it is
not the
itself (to a so-
or moral goal) that makes literature an instrument of opposition
and subversion but
a certain practice of writing itself: excessive, play-
ful, intricate, subtle,
sensuous
—language which can never be
that of
power. Barthes's praise of writing as a gratuitous, free activity sense, a political view.
He
Still,
in
one
conceives of literature as a perpetual renewal
of the right of individual assertion; and ones.
is,
all
rights are, finally, political
Barthes has an evasive relation to politics, and he
is
one of
— SUSAN SONTAG
76
the great
modern
and
refusers of history. Barthes started publishing
War
mattering in the aftermath of World
never mentions; indeed, in
all
his writings
which, astonishingly, he
II,
he never,
as far as
I recall,
mentions the word "war." Barthes's friendly way of understanding subjects
He
work of barbarism. The
ethical
burden
Benjamin was
for
martyrdom; he could not help connecting
it
with
gards politics as a kind of constriction of the subject
he
lacks anything like Wal-
Benjamin's tragic awareness that every work of civilization
ter
a
domesticates them, in the best sense.
which has
be outwitted;
to
in
ernists: to try to
is
central for Benjamin, as for
all
true
olutionary illusions, had a post-tragic sensibility.
who
writer
He
of gentle apocalypse."
— "the great adventure of sure Brillat-Savarin's Physiology
Barthes called the
is
wisdom
desire," as
he
calls
it
life
of the
mind
desire,
felicity
ample,
this
the
and was concerned
to
never monogamous. His
condition in which one does not have to
The
texts
and enterprises
which he could read is
from
itself to
or gay science offers the ideal of a free yet capacious,
choose between good and bad, true and sary to justify.
is
on
in the essay
of Taste. Collecting a model of
satisfied consciousness; of a
in
the
devoted to the repertoire of plea-
defend "the plurality of desire." Meaning
be those
rev-
Happy indeed
each thing he examines, he assimilates intellectual practice
joyful
its
refers to the pres-
can utter such a phrase.
MUCH OF BARTHES'S WORK
erotic.
mod-
who was
not tormented by the catastrophes of modernity or tempted by
moment
that
Hence, perhaps, he was never
fathom the nature of "the modern." Barthes,
ent literary era as "a
re-
(and intellectual)
Roland Barthes he declares
likes political positions "lightly held."
gripped by the project that
a kind of
Barthes
politics.
human
also
is
how
false, in
that
which
it is
not neces-
engaged Barthes tend to
a defiance of these antitheses.
For ex-
Barthes construes fashion: as a domain, like eros,
where contraries do not
exist ("Fashion seeks equivalences, validities
not verities"); where one can allow oneself to be gratified; where meaning
— and pleasure— To construe
is
profuse.
in this way, Barthes requires a
master category through
which everything can be refracted, which makes possible the
maximum
Writing
number
Itself:
On
Roland Barthes
of intellectual moves. That most inclusive category
the widest sense of language
Systeme de
la
mode
(1967)
—meaning form
is
itself.
is
he said
course on
it."
not fashion but the language of fashion.
less a
become
(myth
for the critic as artist. is
is
a language, fashion
disis
a
a leading, often reductive convention of con-
reductive one than
By
this sort
intellectual endeavor. In Barthes's
side of language
fashion;
is
an interview, "fashion exists only through the
Assumptions of
language) have
temporary
in
language,
Thus, the subject of
Barthes assumes, of course, that the language of fashion that, as
77
To
proliferative
it is
is
the assumption
—embarrassment of
stipulate that there
to assert that there
work
is
is
riches
no understanding
out-
meaning everywhere.
so extending the reach of meaning, Barthes takes the notion
over the top, to arrive
at
such triumphant paradoxes as the empty sub-
ject that contains everything, the
be attributed. With
empty
sign to
euphoric sense of
this
which
meaning can
all
how meaning
proliferates,
Barthes reads that "zero degree of the monument," the Eiffel Tower,
pure
as "this
—
virtually
to vindicate subjects
sign" that (his italics)
Tower
that
untrammeled by
makes
every-
a
utility: it is
is
what makes
in Japan; Japan,
signs. In place of moralistic antitheses
—Barthes
present,
is
the uselessness of the
it
morally useful.) Barthes
world of such liberating absences of meaning, both modernist
and simply non-Western,
bad
"means
infinitely useful as a sign, just as the useless-
it
ness of genuine literature
found
—
(The characteristic point of Barthes's arguments-by-paradox
thing.'"
Eiffel
empty
its
offers
full,"
is
really presence,
"Its
full
false,
form
of empty
good versus is
he writes about myth
Arguments about many
max: that absence
—true versus
complementary extremes.
meaning absent but
in the 1950s.
he noted, was
empty but in
an essay
subjects have this identical
cli-
emptiness repletion, impersonality
the highest achievement of the personal.
Like that euphoric register of religious understanding which
dis-
cerns treasures of meaning in the most banal and meaningless, which designates as the richest carrier of meaning one vacant of meaning, the brilliant descriptions in Barthes's
of understanding; and ecstasy ual
work bespeak an
—whether
ecstatic experience
religious, aesthetic, or sex-
—has perennially been described by the metaphors of being empty
and being
full,
the zero state and the state of maximal plenitude: their
SUSAN SONTAG
78
alternation, their equivalence.
discourse about them to
fill
them up
ecstasy, fosters
is
again. It
is
The very transposing of subjects
into the
same kind of move: emptying subjects out
the
method of understanding
a
detachment.
And
that,
presuming
language also sup-
his very idea of
ports both aspects of Barthes's sensibility: while endorsing a profusion
of meaning, the Saussurean theory
substance)
—
is
—
that language
is
form (rather than
wonderfully congruent with a taste for elegant, that
reticent, discourse. Creating
meaning through the
is,
intellectual equiva-
lent of negative space, Barthes's
method has one never
subjects in themselves: fashion
the language of fashion, a country
"the empire of signs" signs
conforms to
a
is
—the ultimate accolade.
maximum
For
idea of decorum:
talking about is
reality to exist as
meaning
all
is
de-
ferred, indirect, elegant.
Barthes's ideals of impersonality, of reticence, of elegance, are set
forth
most beautifully
book
called
in his appreciation of
Empire of Signs (1970) and
Japanese culture
in his essay
in the
on the Bunraku
puppets. This essay, "Lesson in Writing," recalls Kleist's
"On
the Pup-
pet Theatre," which similarly celebrates the tranquillity, lightness, and
grace of beings free of thinking, of meaning
—
free of "the disorders of
consciousness." Like the puppets in Kleist's essay, the Bunraku puppets are seen as incarnating an ideal "impassivity,
To be both impassive and
tlety."
inane and profound,
fantastic,
unselfconscious and supremely sensuous
sub-
clarity, agility,
—these
qualities that Barthes
discerned in various facets of Japanese civilization project an ideal of taste
and deportment, the
that has
been
ideal of the aesthete in
its
larger
meaning
in general circulation since the dandies of the late eigh-
teenth century. Barthes was hardly the
first
Western observer for
whom
Japan has been an aesthete's Utopia, the place where one finds aesthete views everywhere and exercises one's aesthete goals are central
—
own
at liberty.
The
culture
not, as in the West, eccentric
to elicit a strong response. (Japan
is
mentioned
in the
where
—was bound
Gide essay
writ-
ten in 1942.)
Of
the available models of the aesthetic
way of looking
at
the
world, perhaps the most eloquent are French and Japanese. In France it
has largely been a literary tradition, though with annexes in two pop-
ular arts,
gastronomy and fashion. Barthes did take up the subject of
Writing
food
and
On
Itself:
as ideology, as classification, as taste it
—he
79
talks often of savoring;
seems inevitable that he would find the subject of fashion con-
genial. Writers ously,
Roland Barthes
from Baudelaire
and one of the founding
to
Cocteau have taken fashion
figures of literary
seri-
modernism, Mallarme,
edited a fashion magazine. French culture, where aesthete ideals have
been more
explicit
and
influential than in
any other European culture,
ideas of vanguard art
allows a link between
and of fashion. (The
French have never shared the Anglo-American conviction that makes the fashionable the opposite of the serious.) In Japan, aesthete stan-
dards appear to imbue the whole culture, and long predate the modern ironies; they
were formulated
as early as the late tenth century, in Sei
Shonagon's Pillow Book, that breviary of consummate dandy attitudes, written in what appears to us an astonishingly modern, disjunctive
form
—
and
notes, anecdotes,
lists.
Barthes's interest in Japan expresses
more innocent, and
the attraction to a less defensive,
far
more
elabo-
rated version of the aesthete sensibility: emptier and prettier than the
French, more straightforward (no beauty in ugliness, as in Baudelaire); pre-apocalyptic, refined, serene.
In Western culture, where
it
remains marginal, the dandy attitude
has the character of an exaggeration. In one form, the older one, the aesthete it
is
a willful exclusionist of taste,
holding attitudes that
make
possible to like, to be comfortable with, to give one's assent to
the smallest
number
sion of them.
of things; reducing things to the smallest expres-
(When
taste
distributes
favors diminutive adjectives, such as
—
its
ing," "charming," "agreeable," "suitable.")
amount of
refusal.
As language,
plusses and minuses,
for praise
— "happy,"
it
"amus-
Elegance equals the largest
this attitude finds its
consummate
ex-
pression in the rueful quip, the disdainful one-liner. In the other form, the aesthete sustains standards that the largest
number
the
phony
list
The
possible to be pleased with
that juxtaposes things
facts, aesthetic objects.
illicit
literary device that best projects this attitude
(Roland Barthes has many)
—the whimsical
and experiences of
often incongruous nature, turning
The
it
of things; annexing new, unconventional, even
sources of pleasure. is
make
them
all,
by
a starkly different,
this technique, into arti-
Here elegance equals the
aesthete's posture alternates
aesthete poly-
wittiest acceptances.
between never being
satisfied
and
—
SUSAN SONTAG
80
always finding
way of being
a
being pleased with virtually
satisfied,
everything.*
Although both directions of dandy the exclusivist version tic,
is
The
cooler.
presuppose detachment,
taste
inclusivist version
can be enthusias-
even effusive; the adjectives used for praise tend to be over- rather
who had much
than understatements. Barthes, taste of the dandy,
was more inclined
form: aesthete leveling
—hence
that,
he
says,
many
make up
swarming with these
is
sures; they
committed
seem
Of
the
"little details"
the "whole of Fourier," Barthes writes: "I
carried away, dazzled, convinced by a sort of
Fourier
charm, amuse-
His account of Fourier,
things.
an aesthete's appraisal.
finally
is
modern, democratizing
its
his willingness to find
ment, happiness, pleasure in so for example,
to
of the high exclusivist
'true' to
...
felicities
I
charm of expressions cannot
pressive overcrowdedness of streets in
might experience
Tokyo
transformation of quality by quantity," a
new
.
.
resist these plea-
me." Similarly: what another flaneur,
to finding pleasure everywhere,
am .
signifies for
as the
less
op-
Barthes "the
relation that
is
"a source
of endless jubilation."
Many
of Barthes 's judgments and interests are implicitly affirma-
His early essays championing the
tions of the aesthete's standards.
tion of Robbe-Grillet,
fic-
which gave Barthes the misleading reputation
as
an advocate of literary modernism, were in effect aesthete polemics.
The
"objective," the "literal"
—these
austere, minimalist ideas of litera-
ture are in fact Barthes 's ingenious recycling of one of the aesthete's
principal theses: that surface
as telling as depth.
is
What
Barthes dis-
cerned in Robbe-Grillet in the 1950s was a new, high-tech version of the dandy writer; what he hailed in Robbe-Grillet was the desire "to establish the novel
back on
on the surface," thereby
a psychology."
gogic, that
The
frustrating our desire to "fall
idea that depths are obfuscating, dema-
no human essence
"'The version of the aesthete sensibility
I
stirs at
once
the
bottom of
tried to include
things,
titudes.
Camp
in contrast to
taste,
really
however,
still
the taste incarnated
the dandyism of leveling.
wants to
like)
and
as
pan
that
under the name "camp" can be
regarded as a technique of taste for making the aesthete appreciations
way of liking more than one
and
less
exclusionary
of the democratizing of dandy
(a at-
presupposes the older, high standards of discrimination
by
say.
Andy Warhol,
the franchiser and mass marketer of
Writing
freedom
lies in
circulates
—
on the
staying
this is the central
tion, in the various
is
it
Duchamp.
latent,
is
Roland Barthes
has taken over the
he declares
against depth, against the
submerged. Bunraku
"Myth Today"
in
hundred
last
Cage.)
the antinomy of matter and soul, inner and outer. ing''
81
on which desire
surface, the large glass
making an argument
constantly
idea that the most real
On
argument of the modern aesthete posi-
exemplary forms
years. (Baudelaire. Wilde.
Barthes
Itself:
(1956).
The
is
seen as refusing
"Myth hides noth-
aesthete position not
only regards the notion of depths, of hiddenness, as a mystification, a lie,
Of
but opposes the very idea of antitheses.
depths and surfaces
world
—
denies.
is
already to misrepresent the aesthetic view of the
to reiterate a duality, like that of
The
course, to speak of
form and content,
largest statement of this position
precisely
it
was made by Nietzsche,
whose work
constitutes a criticism of fixed antitheses (good versus evil,
right versus
wrong, true versus
false).
But while Nietzsche scorned "depths," he exalted "heights." In the post-Nietzschean tradition, there are neither depths nor heights; there are only various kinds of surface, of spectacle. Nietzsche said that every
profound nature needs intellectual ruse;
said that the
a
mask, and spoke
—profoundly—
in praise of
when he
but he was making the gloomiest prediction
coming
century, ours,
would be the age of the
ideal of seriousness, of sincerity, underlies
which makes the overlap of
his ideas
all
actor.
An
of Nietzsche's work,
and those of
a true aesthete (like
Wilde, like Barthes) so problematic. Nietzsche was a histrionic thinker
but not a lover of the histrionic. His ambivalence toward spectacle (after
all,
his criticism of
duction), his insistence teria
Wagner's music was
on the authenticity of
finally that
spectacle,
it
was
mean
a se-
that cri-
other than the histrionic are at work. In the aesthete's position,
the notions of reality and spectacle precisely reinforce and infuse each other,
and seduction
is
always something positive. In this respect,
Barthes's ideas have an exemplary coherence. Notions of the theatre in-
form, directly or indirectly, declares in
Roland Barthes
all
his
work. (Divulging the
that there
was no
did not treat of a certain theatre, and the spectacle
egory through whose forms the world
is
secret, late,
single text of his is
he
"which
the universal cat-
seen.") Barthes explains
Robbe-Grillet's empty, "anthological" description as a technique of
SUSAN SONTAG
82
theatrical distancing (presenting an object "as
Fashion
tacle").
is,
were
if it
in itself a spec-
of course, another casebook of the theatrical. So
which he
Barthes's interest in photography,
treats as a
haunted spectatorship. In the account of photography given Lucida there are hardly any photographers
—the subject
is
realm of pure
is
in
Camera
photographs
found objects) and those who are fascinated by
(treated virtually as
them: as objects of erotic reverie, as memento mori.
What he wrote about the Berliner
Ensemble
Courage) and helped atrical
his frequent use of
who
finally
many
in 1954
(when
production of Mother
in France, says less
about the the-
subjects as forms of the theatrical. In
Brecht in seminars of the 1970s, he cited the prose
which he took
maker of
the
he discovered
visited Paris with their
make known
than his treatment of
writings,
whom
Brecht,
as a
model of
critical acuity;
was not Brecht
it
didactic spectacles but Brecht the didactic intellectual
mattered to Barthes. In contrast, with Bunraku what
Barthes valued was the element of theatricality as such. In Barthes's early work, the theatrical tities
are only roles
itself
may be
tion
is
the
domain of liberty, the place where
and one can change
refused. (Barthes speaks of
from meaning.") Barthes's
gelism of pleasure,
is
a
theatrical, like his evan-
proselytizing for the attenuating,
lightening, baffling of the Logos, of
To
zone where meaning
Bunraku 's privileged "exemp-
about the
talk
way of
roles, a
iden-
meaning
affirm the notion of the spectacle
is
itself.
the triumph of the aesthete's
position: the promulgation of the ludic, the refusal of the tragic. All of
Barthes's intellectual tent," the tragic of
moves have the
its finality.
That
genuinely subversive, liberating great aesthete tradition,
—
effect of voiding is
work of its "con-
the sense in which his
playful. It
is
outlaw discourse
which often assumes the
theories
known
as
it
is
in the
liberty of rejecting the
"substance" of discourse in order better to appreciate
law discourse turned respectable,
work
its
"form": out-
were, with the help of various
as varieties of formalism. In
numerous accounts of
his
intellectual evolution, Barthes describes himself as the perpetual disci-
ple
—but the point
nally,
untouched.
that
He
he
really
spoke of
wants to make
his
is
that
fi-
having worked under the aegis of a
succession of theories and masters. In fact, Barthes's
gether
he remains,
more coherence, and ambivalence. For
all
his
work has
alto-
connection with
Writing
Itself:
On
Roland Barthes
tutelary doctrines, Barthes's submission to doctrine
the end, last is
it
was necessary
books are
the
power.
And
intellectual gadgetry
all
superficial. In
be discarded. His
kind of unraveling of his ideas. Roland Barthes, he
says,
his resistance to his ideas, the dismantling of his
own
a
book of
that
was
83
in the inaugural lecture that
sition of the highest
eminence
College de France in 1977
marked
acceding to a po-
his
—the Chair of Literary Semiology
—Barthes chooses,
to argue for a soft intellectual authority. missive, not a coercive, space
He
at the
enough,
characteristically
praises teaching as a per-
where one can be relaxed, disarmed,
floating.
Language
itself,
which Barthes
in the
euphoric
now comes under
attack, as
called a
formulation that ends Writing Degree Zero,
" Utopia"
another form of "power," and his very effort to convey his sensitivity to the ways in which language
is
"power" gives
rise to that instantly
rious hyperbole in his College de France lecture: the is
"quite simply fascist."
ideologies
To assume
that society
and repressive mystifications
is
is
noto-
power of language
ruled by monolithic
necessary to Barthes's advo-
cacy of egoism, post-revolutionary but nevertheless antinomian: his notion that the affirmation of the unremittingly personal act.
This
comes
is
is
a classic extension of the aesthete attitude, in
a subversive
which
a politics: a politics of radical individuality. Pleasure
identified with unauthorized pleasure,
tion with the sanctity of the asocial
of protest against
power
and the
self.
is
it
be-
largely
right of individual asser-
In the late writings, the theme
takes the form of an increasingly private defi-
nition of experience (as fetishized involvement)
and
a ludic definition
of thought. "The great problem," Barthes says in a late interview,
"is to
outplay the signified, to outplay law, to outplay the father, to outplay the repressed
—
thete's ideal of
do not say
I
to explode
it,
but to outplay
it."
The
aes-
detachment, of the selfishness of detachment, allows for
avowals of passionate, obsessed involvement: the selfishness of ardor, of fascination. (Wilde speaks of his "curious mixture of ardour and of indifference ... tic
I
would go
to the stake for a sensation
to the last.*) Barthes has to
ment, and undermining Like
all
it
—with
keep affirming the
and be
a scep-
aesthete's detach-
passions.
great aesthetes, Barthes
was an expert
at
having
it
both
ways. Thus, he identifies writing both with a generous relation to the
— SUSAN SONTAG
84
world (writing
production") and with
as "perpetual
a defiant relation
(writing as "a perpetual revolution of language," outside the
power).
He
and one
the world
ism a
is
wants
a politics
free of
and an
bounds of
anti-politics, a critical relation to
moral considerations. The aesthete's
radical-
the radicalism of a privileged, even a replete, consciousness
—but
genuine radicalism nonetheless. All genuine moral views are founded
and the
on
a notion of refusal,
ist,
does provide certain potentially powerful, not
aesthete's view,
which can be conformjust elegant,
grounds
be multiple, to make multiple
identifi-
for a great refusal.
The
aesthete's radicalism: to
cations; to
assume
fully the privilege of the personal. Barthes's
he avows that he writes by obsessions
—
work
consists of continuities
detours; the accumulation of points of view;
and
disburden-
finally, their
ment: a mixture of progress and caprice. For Barthes, liberty
is
a state
that consists in remaining plural, fluid, vibrating with doctrine;
whose
price
is
being indecisive, apprehensive, fearful of being taken for an
impostor.
The
The
writer
doctrine.
freedom
the deputy of his
is
before what
writer's
is
that Barthes describes
own ego
fixed by writing, as the
"Who
speaks
is" Barthes wants to
is
not
who
move on
—
—of
that
is
in part, flight.
that self in perpetual flight
mind
writes,
is,
is
from
in perpetual flight
and who writes
is
not
who
one of the imperatives of the
aesthete's sensibility.
THROUGHOUT subject. itics,
He
is
HIS
Fourier:
WORK
Barthes projects himself into his
unvexed by the sense of
"that necessary purge"; he "vomits
puppet: impersonal, subtle.
He
is
up."
it
aloof from pol-
evil,
He
is
(always young, always mature); the writer as egoist species of "simultaneous being" or plural desire.
the subjects that he praises. (That he must,
may be connected
He is
the Bunraku
who
Gide: the writer
—
a
is
ageless
triumphant
the subject of
all
characteristically, praise
with his project of defining, creating standards for
himself.) In this sense,
much
of what Barthes wrote
now
appears auto-
biographical. Eventually,
it
became autobiographical
meditation on the personal, on the
in the literal sense.
self, is at
A
brave
the center of his late writ-
Writing
and seminars.
ings
books with
Much
Itself:
their poignant
The books
is
Roland Barthes
of Barthes's work, especially the
themes of
loss, constitutes a
of his sensuality (as well as his sexuality) the world.
On
—
85
last
three
candid defense
way of tasting
his flavor, his
Camera Lucida
are also artfully anti-confessional.
meta-book: a meditation on the even more personal autobiograph-
a
book
ical
who
he planned to write about photographs of
that
his mother,
died in 1978, and then put aside. Barthes starts from the modernist
model of writing
that
pressiveness; a mask.
person
it
is
superior to any idea of intention or mere ex-
"The work," Valery
"should not give the
can be reduced to an idea of the author's
affects anything that
person and thinking."" But
insists,
commitment
this
not preclude the avowal of the
self; it is
to impersonality does
only another variation on the
project of self-examination: the noblest project of French literature.
Valery offers one ideal of self-absorption
Rousseau
another
offers
Many themes
of Barthes's
erary culture:
its
mal
ideal
work
—impersonal,
—passionate,
avowing
vulnerability.
in the classic discourse of
lie
French
lit-
taste for elegant abstraction, in particular for the for-
analysis of the sentiments;
its
disdain for
mere psychology; and
coquetry about the impersonal (Flaubert declaring c'est
disinterested.
"Madame
its
Bovary,
mot," but also insisting in letters on his novel's "impersonality,"
its
lack of connection with himself).
Barthes
is
the latest major participant in the great national literary
project, inaugurated
The
ing of the
self.
sibilities,
avid,
everything
by Montaigne: the
enterprise construes the self as the locus of
unafraid
may be
free.
The
gained),
distinctive
(nothing
of contradiction
becoming
conscious
fully
French Utopian tradition
is
all
need be
and the exercise of consciousness
highest aim, because only through
be
self as vocation, life as a read-
poslost,
as a life's
may one
this vision of reality
redeemed, recovered, transcended by consciousness; a vision of the of the
mind
as a life of desire, of full intelligence
"This modernist dictum that writing Barthes's
move
is,
ideally, a
to eliminate the "author"
when
and pleasure
critic is to
larity.
—
for
text.)
method of
One
his S/Z:
of the things
formulate the mandate for one kind of writer's modernism
(Flaubert, Valery, Eliot) as a general
date in practice
dif-
form of impersonality or absence underlies
considering a book. (The
an exemplary reading of a Balzac novella as virtually an authorless Barthes does as a
— so
life
program
for readers.
most of Barthes's writing
is
Another
precisely
is
to contravene that
man-
devoted to personal singu-
— SUSAN SONTAG
86
German
ferent from, say, the traditions of high moral seriousness of
and of Russian
literature.
work had
Barthes's
Inevitably,
must choose between being observed rorism
is
in a seminar.
in
Intellectual ter-
intellectual practice in
humored, rewarded: the "Jacobin"
he once
egoist,"
The options seem very French. form of
"One
autobiography.
and being an
a terrorist
a central, respectable
tolerated,
assertion
end
to
France
of ruthless
tradition
and shameless ideological about-faces; the mandate of
inces-
sant judgment, opinion, anathematizing, overpraising; the taste for ex-
treme positions, then casually reversed, and for deliberate provocation. Alongside
this,
how modest egoism
Barthes's voice
An
ward.
cipher")
body,
became
steadily
affirmation of his is
the main
own
is!
more
intimate, his subjects
more
theme of Roland
Barthes.
He
writes about the
taste, love; solitude; erotic desolation; finally, death,
or rather de-
and death: the twin subjects of the book on photography. As
sire
in-
idiosyncrasy (which he does not "de-
in the
Platonic dialogues, the thinker (writer, reader, teacher) and the lover
—are
the two main figures of the Barthesian self course, can. fairly
means
(The text
his erotics of literature enters,
Platonic after
all.
fills,
it
more
joined. Barthes, of
The monologue of A
Lover's Discourse, which
obviously draws on a story of disappointment in love, ends in a tual vision in the classic Platonic way, in
muted to
more
into higher,
unmask, no longer
which lower loves are
inclusive ones. Barthes
to interpret, but to
make
clarity, to
of consciousness
theories,
ernist standard of the intricate.
He
he gave
(of his mother), part meditation
on
The
the great
is
weight to the mod-
The
last
says, to place
book
eros, part treatise
graphic image, part invocation of death desire; a certain brilliance
less
does not want, he
obstacles between himself and the reader.
tion,
reality, to
itself a
prophetic love."
As he divested himself of
the simplest.
spiri-
trans-
avows that he "wants
drug, and thus accede to a vision of irreducible
drama of
he
literally, as literally as
grants euphoria.) But finally he seems
—
a
book of
is
part
any
memoir
on the photo-
piety, resignation,
being renounced, and the view
itself is
of
subject of photography provided the great exemp-
perhaps release, from the exactions of formalist
taste.
In choosing
to write about photography, Barthes takes the occasion to adopt the
Writing
warmest kind of
And
are about.
of the
realism:
wanted
Lucida, "I
sweetness and charm is
at certain
be
to
On
Roland Barthes
is
plaintive,
more
a sense of disaggregation of his ideas,
friendly
details,
would be
my
— repre-
a
few
"the detail." In
calls
"Were
a writer,
I
through the
life,
and detached biographer, were
few preferences,
a
if
desperate: writing
and of himself
the preface to Sade/Fourier/Loyola, Barthes writes: I
Socratic
an idea reaching out.
is
sented by his increasing fascination with what he
some
The
a primitive, without culture.")
become more
and dead, how pleased
divestment
a desire for a further
photographs," he writes in Camera
an embrace, a being embraced; every idea
There
87
photographs fascinate because of what they
may awaken
they
("Looking
self.
Itself:
efforts of
to reduce itself to a
inflections,
let
few
us say: to 'biog-
raphemes' whose distinction and mobility might travel beyond the limits
of any
and come
fate,
to touch, like Epicurean atoms,
body, destined to the same dispersion." perspective of his Barthes's late
of something
own
work
The need
future
to touch, even in the
mortality. is filled
with signals that he had
—the enterprise of the
critic as artist
become another kind of writer. (He announced novel.)
some
There were exalted avowals of
come
to the
end
— and was seeking
to
his intention to write a
vulnerability, of
being forlorn.
Barthes more and more entertained an idea of writing which resembles the mystical idea of kenosis, emptying out.
only systems to
—
his ideas
were
He
in a state of melt
—but the
"I" as well
had
be dismantled. (True knowledge, says Barthes, depends on the "un-
masking of the
empty
'L' ")
subject, the
The
aesthetics of absence
exemption from meaning
gesture of
good
taste.
Toward the
took on another inflection.
A
—the empty
—were
the great project of depersonalization which
is
acknowledged that not
is
all
sign, the
intimations of
the aesthete's highest
close of Barthes's work, this ideal
spiritual ideal of depersonalization
—
that
perhaps the characteristic terminus of every serious aesthete's posi-
tion.
(Think of Wilde, of Valery.)
view
self-destructs:
what follows
It is is
the point at which the aesthete's
either silence
—or transformation.
Barthes harbored spiritual strivings that could not be supported by his aesthete's position. It
did in his very
last
was inevitable
work and
the aesthetics of absence, and
teaching.
that
he pass beyond
it,
as
he
At the end, he had done with
now spoke
of literature as the embrace
— 88
SUSAN SONTAG
of subject and object. There was an emergence of a vision of "wisdom" of the Platonic sort
—tempered,
to
be
sure,
by wisdom of
a
worldly
kind: skeptical of dogmatisms, conscientious about gratification, wistfully attached to ity,
had run
Utopian ideals. Barthes's temperament,
their course.
And from
this
style, sensibil-
vantage point his work
now
appears to unfold, with more grace and poignancy and with far greater intellectual
power than
that of any of his contemporaries, the consider-
able truths vouchsafed to the aesthete's sensibility, to a intellectual adventure, to the talent for contradiction
commitment
to
and inversion
those "late" ways of experiencing, evaluating, reading the world; and surviving in
it,
drawing energy, finding consolation (but
finally not),
taking pleasure, expressing love. [1982]
Walser's Voice
walser
Robert
IS
one of the important German-language
writers of the twentieth century
—
four novels that have survived (my favorite
Jakob von
Gun ten) and
a is
for his short prose,
free fall of his writing are less
impeded by
major
writer,
both for
the third, written in 1908,
where the musicality and plot.
Anyone seeking
bring Walser to a public that has yet to discover him has
whole arsenal of glorious comparisons. cate, as sly, as
haunted.
A
cross
its
between
Kleist
was more
past, so
we
A Paul
hand
—
as deli-
Klee in prose
a
cannot help but see Walser as the missing link greatly. (At the time,
it
be Kafka who was seen through the prism of Walser.
Robert Musil, another admirer among Walser's contemporaries, first
a
as literature's present inevitably
and Kafka, who admired him
likely to
to
at
between Stevie Smith and Beckett:
good-humored, sweet Beckett. And, remakes
his
after
reading Kafka pronounced him "a peculiar case of the Walser
type.") I get a similar rush of pleasure
short prose as
I
from Walser's single-voiced
do from Leopardi's dialogues and
writer's
triumphant short prose form.
weather
in Walser's stories
and sketches,
And
me
abound
literature: pillow
says in idleness."
Japanese
the variety of mental
their elegance
predictable lengths remind in classical
playlets, that great
and
their un-
of the free, first-person forms that
book, poetic
But any true lover of Walser
will
want
diary, "es-
to disregard
the net of comparisons that one can throw over his work.
89
SUSAN SONTAG
90
In long as in short prose Walser
is
promulgating the
a miniaturist,
claims of the anti-heroic, the limited, the humble, the small
sponse to his acute feeling for the interminable. Walser's
—
as if in re-
life illustrates
the restlessness of one kind of depressive temperament; he had the de-
and with the way time distends,
pressive's fascination with stasis,
consumed, and spent much of space: his walks. His
of endlessness:
The important
on.
dom
kind of
as a
The moral
is
plays with the depressive 's appalled vision
voice
—musing, conversing, rambling, running
redeemed
who
—
that
is,
one "drowning
life.
to
felt
is
1),
unimportant, wis-
for success
the refusal of power, of domina-
—declares the
characteristic
don't want to do anything.
One knows
it is
man who wanted
In "Kienast" (1917), Walser describes "a
astonishing micro-script,
observes:
"We
was
a
his
nothing
proud, stupen-
much of it written in his What Walser says about
secreted work,
without pause.
inaction, renunciation of effort, effortlessness,
romantic one, of the
recurrent
that of some-
failure that
do with anything." This non-doer was, of course,
who
The
about the repugnance
—the prodigious spread of
dously productive writer
Walser
Walser evokes the race of "odd peo-
the opposite of the egotist's:
obedience."
in
is
nobody
who
lack character,"
"I" of Walser's prose
Walser
as a species of the
shy, valiant loquacity.
persona. In "Flower Days" (191 ple,
time into
his life obsessively turning
core of Walser's art
I'm ordinary
tion.
work
all
it is
is
artist's activity.
In
"A
is
Little
a
program, an
Ramble"
anti-
(1914),
he
We
al-
don't need to see anything out of the ordinary.
ready see so much."
Walser often writes, from the point of view of romantic visionary imagination. "Kleist portrait
in
Thun"
a casualty, of the (1913),
both
and authoritative tour of the mental landscape of
self-
suicide-
destined romantic genius, depicts the precipice on the edge of which
Walser
lived.
The
last
paragraph, with
its
excruciating modulations,
seals
an account of mental ruin as grand as anything
ture.
But most of
from the brink.
his stories
He
Walser can assure
is
just
us, in
I
know
in litera-
and sketches bring consciousness back
having his "gentle and courteous
"Nervous"
bit of fun,"
(1916), speaking in the first person.
"Grouches, grouches, one must have them, and one must have the courage to
live
with them. That's the nicest way to
live.
Nobody should
Walser's Voice little bit
of weirdness."
The
(1917), identifies
walking with a
lyrical
be afraid of his
Walk"
91
longest of the stories,
"The
mobility and detachment
of temperament, with the "raptures of freedom"; darkness arrives only the end. Walser's art assumes depression and terror, in order
at
(mostly) to accept
it
—ironize over
it,
lighten
These are
it.
gleeful as
well as somber soliloquies about the relation to gravity, in both senses, physical and characterological: anti-gravity writing, in praise of
ment and sloughing
off,
move-
weightlessness; portraits of consciousness
walking about in the world, enjoying
its
"morsel of
life,"
radiant with
despair.
In Walser's fictions one
is (as
side a head, but this universe sistic. It is
of?" Walser's voice asks in
of
— and
our theatrical
all
much
of
this despair
modern
—
is
art)
always
anything but solip-
little
"A
"What kind
am
of people
Sort of Speech" (1925).
I
thinking
"Of me, of you,
dominations, of the freedoms that are none, of
the un-freedoms that are not taken seriously, of these destroyers
never pass up a chance for a joke, of the people
That question mark tesy.
He
at
the end of the answer
is
who
who
are desolate?"
a typical
Walser cour-
Walser's virtues are those of the most mature, most civilized
is
in-
charged with compassion: awareness of the creatureliness of
of the fellowship of sadness.
life,
in so
a truly wonderful, heartbreaking writer.
[1982]
art.
Danilo
THE
DEATH OF
Danilo Kis on October
1 5
,
Kis
1989, at the age
of fifty-four, wrenchingly cut short one of the most important
journeys in literature
made by any
writer during the second half of the
twentieth century. Born on the rim of the Yugoslav cauldron tica,
near the frontier with Hungary) a few years before World
to a
Hungarian Jewish father (Kis
in
Auschwitz and
raised mostly in
a
is
a
II
Serb Orthodox mother from rural Montenegro,
Hungary and
in
Montenegro,
eventually a part-time expatriate, doing
a life
War
Hungarian name) who perished
made
of the university in Belgrade, where he
finally a full-time
Subo-
(in
a
graduate in literature his
debut
some teaching
as a writer,
in France,
and
one, in Paris, where he lived his last ten years, Kis had
span that matched, from
start to finish,
what might have been
thought the worst the century had to offer his part of Europe: Nazi
conquest and the genocide of the Jews, followed by Soviet takeover.
Nineteen eighty-nine, the year Kis died of cancer, was, of course, the annus mirabilis in which Soviet-style totalitarian rule ended in Central
Europe. By mid-October, the collapse of what had seemed im-
mutable was torn down.
clearly It is
under way; three weeks
the Berlin Wall was
comforting to think that he died knowing only the
good news. Happily
—
it is
the only thing about his premature death
which gives some consolation
—he didn't
multi-confessional, multi-ethnic state of
92
later,
live to see the collapse
which he was
of the
a citizen (his
Danilo Kis
"mixed" origin made Kis very much
European cide.
An
on
return,
camps and geno-
country, of concentration
ardent foe of nationalist vanities, he would have loathed Serb
ethnic fascism even
more than he loathed
Second Yugoslavia
culture of the
he were
that, if
own
soil, in his
and the
a Yugoslav),
93
still
it
the neo-Bolshevik official
has replaced.
It is
hard to imagine
he could have borne the destruction of
alive,
Bosnia.
The amount not
make him
there was
no
of history, or horror, a writer
retreating
most
legislators.
is
from an exalted sense of the
a small country
portant, with the litical,
obliged to endure does
or her a great writer. But geography
of the writer's responsibility that,
was from
is
literally,
where writers are
gifted
writer's place
came with the for better
For Kis
destiny.
and
territory.
for
and Kis
worse im-
becoming moral, and sometimes even po-
Perhaps more often for worse:
who provided genocidal project known
was eminent
it
Belgrade writers
the ideological underpinning of the
Serbian
as ethnic cleansing.
most Serb writers and
artists
The complicity
of
not in exile in the current triumph of
Greater Serbian imperialism suggests that the anti-nationalist voices, of which Kis was the bravest and most eloquent, have always been in the minority.
Much
as
by temperament and exquisitely cosmopolitan
literary culture
he would have preferred a
which
was kept separate from
attack
literature
and therefore,
necessarily,
less
embattled course, in
politics,
Kis was always under
on the
attack.
The
first
fight
was
was the provincialism not so much of
against provincialism. This
small literature (for the former Yugoslavia produced at least
a
two
world-class prose writers, Ivo Andric and Miroslav Krleza) as of a state-supported, state-rewarded literature. his
being the utterly independent,
It
could be fought simply by
artistically
ambitious writer he was,
almost from the beginning. But worse attacks were to come.
One
who
of those writers
are
first
of
all
who
readers,
prefer
dawdling and grazing and blissing out in the Great Library and surrender to their vocation only Kis was not what
when
would be
the urge to write
becomes unbearable,
called prolific. In his lifetime
he published
nine books, seven of them in the fourteen years between 1962,
was twenty-seven, and
1976,
when he was
forty-one. First
when he
came
a pair
of short novels, The Attic and Psalm 44 (published in 1962; not yet
SUSAN SONTAG
94
The second book, Garden, Ashes
translated into English).
The
novel.
Sorrows (1968), was a book of
third, Early
was
fourth, Hourglass (1972),
a novel.
lections of essays, Po-etika (1972)
A Tomb for
The
and Po-etika
sixth
was
a
stories.
The
were two
col-
The
II (1974).
seventh,
Boris Davidovich (1976), was a collection of thematically
linked stories that his publishers chose to
while an instructor in Serbo-Croatian
he'd written Garden, Ashes
By
and
fifth
(1965),
this time, Kis
when he
He
wrote
it
the University of Bordeaux, as
at
taught
at
Strasbourg.
was spending more and more time abroad, though
he did not consider himself to be
in exile,
have said he was a "dissident writer": ing worthy of the
call a novel.
name
any more than he would
was too
it
him
clear to
that writ-
of literature had to be unofficial. With this sev-
enth book, a suite of fictional case histories of the Stalinist Terror, Kiss
work
finally attracted the international attention
for Boris Davidovich
also
of negative attention back
attracted
home
a
it
web
The campaign, which
—
that the
Anatomy Lesson
The
to respond.
(1978).
result
A Tomb
Defending
against these scurrilous charges, Kis his literary genealogy (that
was
mounted
—
book was
to
which Kis
his eighth
book, The
of plagiarisms from an arcane bibliography
had no choice but
A Tomb
seven-month-long campaign
in Belgrade.
reeked of anti-Semitism, centered on an accusation a
deserved.
for Boris Davidovich
a full-scale exposition of
his literary tastes), a post- or proto-
is,
modernist poetics of the novel, and a portrait of what
a writer's
honor
could be. During the next ten years, he published only one more book,
The Encyclopedia of the Dead
unlinked
(1984), a collection of
stories.
The Western European, and eventually North American, acclaim for
A
Tomb for Boris Davidovich
—
typically confining
ature of dissidence from "the other translations of the earlier
Europe"
it
within the
—had
liter-
brought about
books into the major foreign languages, and
Kis started to be invited to first-rank literary conferences, to win prizes,
and
to
seem
a plausible
Nobel candidate. Becoming an
famous writer meant becoming
pronounce on
a
much
internationally
interviewed writer. Asked to
literary matters and, invariably, to
comment on
the in-
famies back home, he did so with grave, always incisive combative ness
—he gave splendidly substantive
interviews.
He
was
contribute short pieces to newspapers and magazines
—
also asked to
treating
no
lit-
Danilo
95
Kis
erary solicitation as ever less than an occasion for intensity. Recalling that Kis published only
one book of fiction
poet in prose as well as a prince of
in-
he gave
says
and prefaces,
did.
he
No
as
interviews, wrote as
was not best employed
great writer of fiction
Bernhard,
A
who were
And
is.
in these discursive forms.
also lost to literature in the late 1980s, Kis
the novels and stories he did write
somewhat
to say that Kis
is
Thomas
unlike Italo Calvino and
probably not yet done the best of what he was capable in
these two
more
older, far
life,
es-
can't but regret that
dignation, Kis surely
decade of his
many
one
as
many
in the last
assure
still
prolific
him
fiction.
had But
a place alongside
contemporaries
—which
is
one of the handful of incontestably major writers of
the second half of the century.
Kis had a complicated literary genealogy, which he was undoubtedly simplifying
when he
declared himself, as he often did, a child of
Borges and of Bruno Schulz. But to marry the cosmopolitan Argentine to the
immured small-town
viously,
Polish
he was claiming foreign
Jew sounds
relatives
the right note.
Most ob-
over his descendance from his
by yoking together
native Serbo-Croatian literary family. Specifically,
the serenely, speculatively erudite Borges and the inward-looking, hy-
perdescriptive Schulz, he was pointing to the principal double strand in his
own work. Odd
"mixed" fiction)
literary
and
mixtures were very
methods
—most
much
fully realized in
A Tomb for Boris Davidovich
to Kis's taste.
(fictional history)
—gave him
exactly the right freedoms to advance the cause of both truth Finally:
one can,
choose one's
in literature,
own
and
parents. But
obliges a writer to declare his or her parentage. Kis, however,
proclaim
his.
Like every writer
ate enthusiast
is
a great reader,
art.
nobody had
to
he was an inveter-
about the work of others. His talent for admiration also
made him an extremely numerous
who
His
Hourglass (historical
collegial writer,
translations of
which he expressed best
in his
contemporary writers he undertook from
French, Hungarian, Russian, and English into Serbo-Croatian. In expatriation he
work
—
was
still
really
back home,
despite'his lived estrangement
tive country.
He had
in his
from the
head and
literary
in all his
world of his na-
never forsaken them, though they had betrayed
him.
When
Kis died in Paris in 1989, the Belgrade press went into
SUSAN SONTAG
96
The renegade
national mourning.
star of
Yugoslav literature had been
extinguished. Safely dead, he could be eulogized by the mediocrities
who had
always envied him and had engineered his literary
nication,
and who would then proceed
become
official writers
order. Kis
about
is,
American 1993,
as
Yugoslavia
who
Belgrade as elsewhere. The place
where he was and
jevo. Literary
—
is
when
I
apart
went
—
to
genuinely cares
in the
former Yu-
perhaps most ardently admired
people there did not exactly ply
literature
fell
post- communist, national chauvinist
of course, admired by everyone
literature, in
goslavia
new
of the
excommu-
me with
is
Sara-
questions about
to Sarajevo for the first time in April
but they were extremely impressed that I'd had the privilege of
being a friend of Danilo Kis. In besieged Sarajevo people think a
about
Kis.
His fervent screed against nationalism, incorporated into
The Anatomy Lesson,
is
one of the two prophetic
As
multi-ethnic Bosnia
secular,
crushed under the
more present than struggle to survive
texts
— —Yugoslavia's
story by Andric, "A Letter from 1920" cited.
lot
that
—the other
is
a
one hears most often Yugoslavia
new
imperative of one ethnicity /one
ever.
He
state,
deserves to be a hero in Sarajevo,
—
Kis
is is
whose
embodies the honor of Europe.
Unfortunately, the honor of Europe has been lost at Sarajevo. Kis
and like-minded writers who spoke up against nationalism and fomented-from-the-top ethnic hatreds could not save Europe's honor, Europe's better idea. But great writer does not
which
is
the end of
it
is
not true that, to paraphrase Auden, a
make anything happen. At
many
things, literature, too,
of Danilo Kis preserves the honor
the end of the century, is
besieged.
The work
of literature. [i994]
Gombrowicz's Ferdydurke
START WITH
the
Which means
title.
.
.
nothing. There
.
character in the novel called Ferdydurke. foretaste of insolence to
Published in is
And
this is
is
no
only a
come.
when
late 1937,
author was thirty-three, Ferdydurke
its
The
the great Polish writer's second book.
title
of his
first,
Memoirs
of a Time of Immaturity (1933), would have served beautifully for the novel. Perhaps this
That ers as if
was
first
is
why Gombrowicz opted
book, whose
title
was pounced on by the Warsaw review-
Gombrowicz had made
a collection of stories (he'd
since 1926); over the next pair ("The Child Filibert") that
voke.
seemed
—
He would
his
in
magazines
stories appeared, including a
and "The Child Runs Deep
agreeable worcl!
word
—
Had
the
his
life:
it
is
as inter-
of his volume of fanciful
Now
—what
"Immaturity
—became my war
in
Princess Ivona; then, in early
title
"ill-chosen"?
"Immaturity" (not "youth")
on because
first play,
he would
write an epic in defense of immaturity.
toward the end of
sists
been publishing them
he would use, with chapter-long mock prefaces,
he embarked on a novel.
1935,
shaming confession inadvertently,
in Filidor"
ludes in Ferdydurke, as well as a
stories
a
two years more
Runs Deep
for jabberwocky.
a
really pro-
As he declared
compromising,
dis-
cry."
the
word Gombrowicz
insists on, in-
represents something unattractive, something, to use
97
SUSAN SONTAG
98
another of his key words, endorses,
inferior.
thirty-year-old
who, waking up one morning
the conviction of the futility of his a teacher
iation, a
his novel describes,
not, Faust-like, to relive the glory days of youth.
is
happens to the
by
The longing
and returned
to the
and
life
his projects,
all
is
world of callow-schoolboys
and
What
roiled in
abducted
is
a humil-
fall.
From
the
start,
Gombrowicz was
To
Gombrowicz might have
irritate,
think, therefore
I
he had chosen to adopt
and bizarre tone" bordering on "mania,
"fantastic, eccentric,
absurdity."
to write,
A young
contradict.
said,
is
madcap grimaces and
folly,
to conquer.
poses.
On
in the writers'
the page, he sought an
equally vehement relation to the reader. Grandiose and goofy, this
work of unrelenting Still, it
going
seems
I
aspirant to glory in 1930s literary
Warsaw, Gombrowicz had already become legendary cafes for his
a
is
a
address.
likely that
when he began
Gombrowicz did not know where he was
the novel. "I can well remember,"
Gombrowicz
declared in 1968, a year before he died (did he remember? or was he
massaging
that,
his legend?),
when
I
started Ferdydurke,
ing satire that
my words were
But bit
would put me
between
it
I
wanted
soon whirled away
their teeth
such speed that give
I
had
to write
my
in a violent dance, they
and galloped towards
a
a bit-
enemies.
took the
grotesque lunacy with
to rewrite the first part of the
book
in
order to
the same grotesque intensity.
But the problem was
less (I suspect) that the first
further infusion of lunatic energies than that ticipate the freight of
argument
Ferdydurke
starts
chapters needed a
Gombrowicz did not
— about the nature of — about
ture (particularly Polish culture),
in
no more than
in a superior position over
ideals
eros,
his tale
about
would
ancul-
carry.
with a dream-like abduction to an absurd world
which the big become small and the small monstrously
big: those
great buttocks in the sky. In contrast to the landscape Lewis Carroll
conjured up for a prepubescent shape-shiftings
and
girl,
Gombrowicz's wonderland of
resizings seethes with lust:
Gombrowicz's Ferdydurke
99
Everything was expanding in blackness. Inflating and widening, yet
at
the same time shrinking and straining, evading something, and some
kind of winnowing, general and particular,
and
a coagulating tension
a
tensing coagulation, a dangling by a fine thread, as well as transforma-
and furthermore
tion into something, transmutation,
some cumulative, towering system, and
on
as if
a
—
a falling into
narrow
raised six stories up, together with the excitement of
all
little
plank
organs.
And
tickling.
In Alice's story, a child
into an asexual
falls
new, fantastic but implacable
owning up
grownup who
a is
of-
to disreputable desire.
Starts with an abduction;
fessor
Ferdydurke, the
schoolboy discovers new, puerile freedoms for giving
turned into a fense and
logic. In
underworld governed by
ends with an abduction. The
Pimko) returns the protagonist
first
(by Pro-
to the scene of true, that
is,
un-
manageable, feeling and desire. The second abduction shows the protagonist making a provisional flight back into so-called maturity:
If I
someone were
to spot
explain this escapade?
me
in the hallway, in the darkness,
How
do we
and abnormal roads? Normality of abnormality.
How much
everyday order of things
is
find ourselves
a tightrope-walker
potential
madness
is
how would
on these tortuous above the abyss
contained in the
—you never know when and how the course
of events will lead you to kidnap a farmhand and take to the
Zosia that
I
should be kidnapping.
napping Zosia from thing to do,
hand
.
.
if
a country
anyone
it
If
anyone,
manor would be
was Zosia, and not
it
fields. It's
should be Zosia, kid-
the normal and correct
this stupid, idiotic
farm-
.
Ferdydurke
is
one of the most bracing, direct books ever written
about sexual desire
—
this
without a single scene of sexual union. To be
sure, the cards are stacked
from the
start in favor
of eros.
Who
would
not concur in the silencing of this social babble by the clamor of
rumps, thighs, calves? The head commands, or wishes reign.
to.
The buttocks
SUSAN SONTAG
100
Gombrowicz
Later,
called
it
a
parody of
Gombrowicz contradict,
is
manner of
He
even on
matters," he declared, "is the
little
— and Ferdydurke
"To
supreme neces-
a dazzling novel of ideas.
These
and wings.
ideas give the novel both weight
Gombrowicz
is
also
Voltaire.
one of the super-arguers of the twentieth century
of art today"
sity
referred to his novel as a pamphlet.
a philosophical tale in the
capers and thunders, hectors and mocks, but he
also entirely serious
is
about his project of transvaluation, his critique of
high "ideals." Ferdydurke
is
one of the few novels
called Nietzschean; certainly
it is
I
know
that could be
the only comic novel that could be so
described. (The affecting fantasia of Hesse's Steppenwolf seems, in
comparison,
riddled
with
Nietzsche deplored the
sentimentality.)
ascendancy of slave values sponsored by Christianity, and called for the overthrowing of corrupt ideals and for ness.
new forms
Gombrowicz, affirming the "human" need
completeness,
youth,
for imperfection, in-
proclaims himself a specialist in
may seem a drastic what Gombrowicz has
Swinish adolescence
antidote to
but
in
this
came my
is
exactly
of masterful-
ideal forever. I
worshipped the
inferiority.
smug
maturity,
mind. "Degradation be-
slave." It
is still
a Nietzschean
project of unmasking, of exposing, with a merry satyr-dance of dualisms:
mature versus immature, wholes versus
parts, clothed versus
naked, heterosexuality versus homosexuality, complete versus incomplete.
Gombrowicz modernism, tional
gaily deploys
lately relabeled
decorums of novel
narrator awash in his
ing,
he
is
of the devices of high literary
"post-modern," which tweak the
tradi-
writing: notably, that of a garrulous, intrusive
own
When
slides into pathos.
many
contradictory emotional states. Burlesque
not preening, he
is
abject;
when not clown-
vulnerable and self-pitying.
An immature who flaunts what tor, sincerity
narrator is
is
some
sort of candid narrator; even
being one of those
of candor and provocation. "In literature sincerity leads nowhere the
more
artificial
we
are, the closer
we come
Gombrowicz
says:
.
.
.
to frankness. Artificiality
allows the artist to approach shameful truths." Diary,
one
What he is not is a "sincere" narraideals that make no sense in the world
usually hidden.
As
for his celebrated
Gombrowicz's Ferdydurke Have you
ever read a "sincere" diary?
mendacious diary is
.
.
And,
.
The
"sincere" diary
in the long run,
what
is
101
the most
bore sincerity
a
is! It
ineffectual.
My diary had to be sincere, but
Then what?
How
could
solve the
I
problem? The word, the
has this consoling particularity: confesses but in what
So
I
had
my
a certain way, in
Still,
is
how
I
my
is
my
could not be sincere. loose,
spoken word,
close to sincerity, not in
what
it
pursues.
it
diary into a confession.
intention of imposing myself
had
I
to
show
on the reader
in
desire to create myself with everyone looking on.
would
however
it
claims to be and in what
to avoid turning
myself "in action," in
"This
it
it
like to
be for you," and not "This
fanciful the plot of Ferdydurke,
is
how
no reader
I
am."
will regard
the protagonist and his longings as anything other than a transposition
of the author's
own personality and pathology. By making Joey Kowalname of the protagonist-narrator is rendered in Enand the author of an unsuccessful, much derided book
ski (as the Polish glish) a writer
—
of stories entitled, yes, Memoirs of a Time of Immaturity dares the reader not to think about the
A
WRITER
and
WHO
REVELS
A
privileges.
its
writer
man who wrote
in the fantasy of
who
imagines a
—Gombrowicz the novel.
renouncing his identity
flight into
youth, repre-
sented as a kidnapping; a discarding of the destiny expected of an adult, represented as a subtraction
from the world
in
which one
is
known.
And
then the fantasy came true. (Few writers'
lives
have so clearly
taken the shape of a destiny.) At the age of thirty-five, a few days short of the fateful date of September into
unexpected
World.
It
was
far
exile,
as brutal a
of a thirty-year-old
man
i,
1939,
Gombrowicz was dropped
from Europe,
change
in
in his real life as the
known about him, he was
means
him because nothing was
offered the divine opportunity to lose him-
In Poland, he was well-born Witold
"vanguard" writer
New
imagined turning
into a schoolboy. Stranded, without any
of support, wnere nothing was expected of
self.
the "immature"
who had
written a
Gombrowicz,
book many
a
prominent
(including his friend,
— SUSAN SONTAG
102
the other great Polish writer of the same period,
Bruno Schulz) consid-
ered a masterpiece. In Argentina, he writes, "I was nothing, so
I
could
do anything." impossible to imagine
It is
Gombrowicz without
(much of which was spent
years in Argentina
own
he made to
suit his
a relatively
young man; he returned
when he was
nearing
in
his twenty-four
penury), an Argentina
He
fantasies, his daring, his pride.
Europe (but never
to
and died
sixty,
man who
south of
Gombrowicz
published Ferdydurke two years earlier was
ready fully formed as a literary tial
Poland
to Poland)
six years later in the
France. Separation from Europe was not the making of as a writer: the
left
artist. It
al-
was, rather, the most providen-
confirmation of everything his novel knows, and gave direction and
bite to the
The
marvelous writings
ordeal of emigration
sharpened
still
— and
to
come.
for
Gombrowicz
in
in
as a
lettre; that
is,
animated by
program of
the Diary.
The
anything but a "personal"
post-modern avant
fiction,
a
was an ordeal
we know from
his cultural combativeness, as
— three volumes English, and kind of free-form diary— can be read
Diary
it
violating
decorum
that of Ferdydurke. Claims for the staggering genius
and
la
similar to
intellectual
acuity of the author vie with a running account of his insecurities, imperfections,
and embarrassments, and
a defiant
avowal of barbaric,
yokel prejudices. Considering himself slighted by, and therefore eager to reject, the lively literary milieu of late-i93os that
it
harbored one indisputably great
writer,
himself "at opposite poles" from Borges. ature, I in
As
if
life.
To
tell
the truth
I
am
Buenos
"He
Aires,
Gombrowicz declared
is
deeply rooted in
liter-
anti-literature."
in agreement, shallow agreement, with Gombrowicz's entirely
self-serving quarrel with the idea of literature,
many now
Diary instead of Ferdydurke as his greatest work.
No
and aware
one can forget the notorious opening of the Diary:
Monday Me. Tuesday
Me.
regard the
Gombrowicz's Ferdydurke
103
Wednesday Me. Thursday
Me.
Having got
that straight,
Gombrowicz devoted
Friday's entry to a sub-
on some material he had been reading
tle reflection
Gombrowicz expected must continually defend
in the Polish press.
to offend with his egocentricity: a writer
his borders.
But
a writer
is
also
someone who
must abandon borders, and egotism, so Gombrowicz argued, precondition of spiritual and intellectual freedom. In the .
.
me
.
...
we
.
.
...
.
me" one
we
culture, with ticism)
.. its
.
the
is
.
.
.
me
hears the solitary emigre thumbing his nose at "we
we."
Gombrowicz never stopped arguing with
the national identity.
The
cultural
its
writers with the national martyrdom,
relentless intelligence
and
Polish
roman-
intractable collectivism of spirit (usually called
and the obsession of
servations on
"me
artistic matters,
and energy of
his ob-
the pertinence of his chal-
lenge to Polish pieties, his bravura contentiousness, ended by making
him the most
influential prose writer of the past half century in his na-
tive country.
The
Polish sense of being marginal to
European
culture,
and to
Western European concern while enduring generations of foreign occupation, had prepared the hapless emigre better than he might have
wished to endure being sentenced to many years of near-total isolation as a writer.
Courageously, he embarked on the enterprise of making
deep, liberating sense out of the unprotectedness of his situation in Argentina. Exile tested his vocation disaffection
him
a
from
consummate
citizen of
MORE THAN SIXTY mains of the
and expanded
nationalist pieties
Y
E
A
world
R
S
it.
Strengthening his
self- congratulation, it
made
literature.
after
Ferdydurke was written,
specifically Polish targets of
have vanished along with the Poland of age
and
in
little re-
Gombrowicz's scorn. These
which he was reared and came
—destroyed by the multiple blows of war, Nazi occupation, So-
SUSAN SONTAG
104
dominance (which prevented him from ever
viet
post- 989 ethos of consumerism. 1
that adults always claim to
Almost
we
we want
to
be
Goodness, Truth
reality,
we
feel
assumption
his
is
.
.
.
cultivated, superior,
we
use the language of maturity and
stance, Beauty,
intimate
dated
as
and the
be mature:
In our relations with other people
mature, so
returning),
talk about, for in-
But, within our
own
confidential,
nothing but inadequacy, immaturity
The
declaration seems from another world.
now
for
How
.
.
unlikely
whatever embarrassing inadequacies people
.
it
feel to
would be
be covered
over with hifalutin absolutes such as Beauty, Goodness, Truth. The
European-style ideals of maturity, cultivation, wisdom have given way steadily to American-style celebrations of the Forever
crediting of literature
or anti-life
and other expressions of "high" culture
a staple of the
is
Young. The
new
now who would all;
claim to love "the inferior"
that actually
opinions against which
it is
superior.
now
a rou-
would argue
still
offend?
Still
that
it is
are
still
cherished.
seem outrageous? Exception
for the novel's acidic misogyny, probably not.
extravagant, brilliant, disturbing, brave, funny
.
.
.
Does
it still
own legend, Gombrowicz was both when he claimed to have successfully
and not
telling the truth
forms of greatness. But whatever he thought, or wanted us
avoided
all
to think
he thought, there are certain unavoidable consequences
has produced a masterpiece, and
edged
as
such. In the late
it
eventually
1950s Ferdydurke
comes was
(under auspicious sponsorship) into French, and "discovered."
triumph over writer
who
He had wanted
his adversaries
above
real
all,
all
their beliefs,
and
if
one
be acknowl-
finally translated
nothing more than
and detractors,
to
Gombrowicz
was,
at
this success; this
and imagined. But the
counseled his readers to try to avoid
themselves, to guard against ings,
seem
wonderful? Yes.
zealous administrator of his
telling
last,
not
Hardly any of the cherished
Gombrowicz contended
Then can Ferdydurke
A
is
not mandatory, contribution to public entertainment. Anyone
inferior at
made
as elitist
culture ruled by entertainment values.
Indiscretion about one's unconventional sexual feelings tine, if
dis-
all
expressions of
to mistrust their feel-
to stop identifying themselves with
what defines them,
Gombrowicz's Ferdydurke could hardly
fail
to insist that he,
deed, he has to be inferior to
hovered
in the sky, while I
that hovers high ity at
ary
it.
Gombrowicz, was not
normalize desire
.
.
.
into culture,
remained below." Like the great backside
the end of the novel, Ferdydurke has floated live
that book. In-
"The work, transformed
above the protagonist's halfhearted
empyrean. Long
105
its
flight into
upward
sublime mockery of
and the reach of great
all
normal-
to the liter-
attempts to
literature.
[2000]
Pedro Paramo
"
I I
told
CAME TO COMALA because I had been told that my father, a man named Pedro Paramo, lived there. It was my mother who me. And I had promised her that after she died I would go see
him.
and
I
I
squeezed her hands as a sign I would do it. She was near death, would have promised her anything ..." With the opening sen-
tences of Juan Rulfo's Pedro Paramo, as with the beginnings of Kleist's novella Michael Kohlhaas and Joseph Roth's novel
March,
we know we
are in the
hands of
tences, of a bewitching concision
a
master
The Radetzky
storyteller.
and directness
These sen-
that pull the reader
into the book, have a burnished, already-told quality, like the begin-
ning of a fairy
tale.
But the limpid opening of the book Pedro Paramo gests.
The
is
a far
more complex
novel's premise
—
a
hell.
The
only
its first
—mutates
narrative takes place in
move. In
fact,
beginning sug-
into a multi-voiced so-
two worlds: the Comala of
the present, to which Juan Preciado, the "I" of the journeying; and the
its
dead mother sending her son out into
the world, a son's quest for his father
journ in
is
narrative than
Comala of the
first
sentences,
is
past, the village of his mother's
memories and of Pedro Paramo's youth. The narrative switches back and forth between
first
person and third person, present and past. (The
great stories are not only told in the past tense, they are about the past.)
The Comala
106
of the past
is
a village of the living.
The Comala
of the
Pedro Paramo present
ado in
107
inhabited by the dead, and the encounters that Juan Preci-
is
have when he reaches Comala are with ghosts. Paramo means
will
Spanish barren plain, wasteland. Not only
dead, but so
everyone else in the
is
is
the father he seeks
Being dead, they have noth-
village.
ing to express except their essence.
my
"In
life
many
there are
silences," Rulfo
once
said. "In
my
writ-
ing, too."
many
Rulfo has said that he carried Pedro Paramo inside him for
knew how
years before he
to write
of pages, then discarding them
"and made
said,
me
freedom to
acters the
see the
made
me,"
my
char-
is
a legendary
too, in his lifetime. Rulfo
ries
to
book by
was born
in
magazines
in 1953. It
translated into English
it is
a
a
was
called
under the
a legend,
studied law
at
the
in the late 1930s.
His
and
a collection of sto-
El llano en llamas, which has been
The Burning Plain and Other Sto-
title
Pedro Paramo appeared two years
him
as a voice of
unprecedented
a no-time."
who became
fifteen,
in the 1940s,
ries.
terly
would seem,
in 191 8 in a village in the state of
Mexico City when he was
appeared
came out
literature.
is
a writer
and began writing, but not publishing,
university, first stories
it
of silences, of hanging threads, of cut scenes, where
Pedro Paramo
went
to leave
Pedro Paramo, but
everything occurs in a simultaneous time which
Jalisco,
and
to disappear
a structure in
is
stories disciplined
which provoked,
talk at will,
lack of structure. Yes, there structure
need
was writing hundreds
called the novel an exercise in
"The practice of writing the short
elimination.
he
Rather, he
it.
—he once
later.
The two books
originality
and authority
established in
Mexican
Quiet (or taciturn), courteous, fastidious, learned, and
without pretensions, Rulfo was a kind of invisible
ut-
man who
earned his living in ways entirely unconnected with literature (for years
he was a
tire
salesman),
most nights of music.
He
also
edged
his life reading ("I travel in
writer to publish his
even rarer for
as masterpieces.
another book.
married and had children, and
A
And
first
rarer
first
books
still
spent
his fellow writ-
books when he
to
who
books") and listening to
was extremely famous, and revered by
ers. It is rare for a
his mid-forties,
who
is
already in
be immediately acknowl-
for such a writer never to publish
novel called La Cordillera was announced as forth-
coming by Rulfo 's publisher
for
many
years, starting in the late 1960s
SUSAN SONTAG
108
and announced by the author
as destroyed, a
few years before
his
death
in 1986.
Everyone asked Rulfo why he did not publish another book, the point of a writer's
life
the point of a writer's
which once
will last
if it is
that after
— and
were
life is
this is
to
to
go on writing and publishing. In
produce
what Rulfo
not worth reading
as
many
book
a great
—
No book
did.
times. Garcia
is
that
is,
a
if
fact,
book
worth reading
Marquez has
said
he discovered Pedro Paramo (with Kafka's Metamorphosis,
the most important reading of his early writing years), he could recite
from memory long passages and eventually knew the whole book by heart, so
much
did he admire
Rulfo 's novel
is
it
and want
to
be saturated by
it.
not only one of the masterpieces of twentieth-
century world literature but one of the most influential of the century's
books; indeed, in
sense. is
it
Spanish in the
a
It is a
book
would be hard
to overestimate
last forty years.
book
Pedro Paramo
that seems, in retrospect, as
that has profoundly affected the
continues to resonate in other books.
The
made
its is
if it
translation
Buenos Aires
shortly before his death that Pedro
in
to
an accurate and uncut English version,
is
to
be written.
literature
by Margaret
It
and Jill
Juan Rulfo when we met
fulfills
I
had
making of
Costa, which
the promise
impact on literature
a classic in the truest
in
Paramo would appear
an important literary event. [
J
994]
DQ
HE
"SO BURIED HIMSELF
books
in his
nights reading from twilight to daybreak
dawn
dark; and so from
till
up and he
dried
Don
lost his
Quixote, like
But Flaubert's novel
and much reading,
Bovary,
is
much
a piece of realism:
With Don Quixote,
that the
a
books are bad;
Emma's imagination
thinks the world
everything
is
Don Quixote
Not only
his imagination;
The
first
has kidnapped
it.
thought, saw, or imagined followed the pat-
makes him,
The
narrator of
It
in contrast to
Emma
makes him mad;
Don Quixote
even torn papers lying in the
Don^Quixote's excessive reading is
not so
it
Bo-
makes
heroic, genuinely noble.
taste for reading
narrator's
it
the hero of the novel but also the narrator
sotted by reading.
result of
satis-
the sheer quantity of his reading.
beyond compromise or corruption.
him profound,
of romantic is
cor-
is
the inside of a book. (According to Cervantes,
tern of his reading.) Bookishness vary,
tales
hero of excess, the problem it is
Reading has not merely deformed
He
his brain
about the tragedy of reading.
rupted by the kind of books she reads, vulgar faction.
he spent the
mind."
Madame is
sleep
little
that
and the days from
is
is
someone be-
reports that he has a
streets.
But whereas the
madness, the result of the
authorship.
and
greatest epic about addiction,
Don Quixote
is
denunciation of the establishment of literature and a rhapsodic
both a call to
109
I
SUSAN SONTAG
10
literature.
Don Quixote
an inexhaustible book, whose subject
is
is
everything (the whole world) and nothing (the inside of someone's
head
—
that
is,
madness). Relentless, verbose, self-cannibalizing, reflex-
ive, playful, irresponsible, accretive, self- replicating is
— Cervantes
the very image of that glorious mise-en-abime which
of that fragile delirium which
A
writer
is
first
oi
all
when
authorship,
reader
a
reader; an impertinent reader justly,
is
who
—
its
a reader
is
book
literature,
and
manic expansiveness.
gone berserk;
claims to be able to do
the greatest living author
s
composed
it
a
rogue
better. Yet.
his definitive fable
about the writer's vocation, he invented an early-twentieth-century
who had chosen as Don Quixote. Once again.
writer
his
most ambitious work
Exactly as
than any book ever written,
is
is
(was).
to write (parts oi)
For Don Quixote, more
literature.
[1985]
A
Letter to Borges
June
13,
1996
New York Dear Borges, Since your literature was always placed under the sign of eternity, doesn't seem too years!) If ever a it
odd
to
be addressing
a letter to you. (Borges,
contemporary seemed destined for
you knew how to transcend your time, your
yet
that
seem quite magical. This had something
and generosity of your
attention.
most transparent of writers,
You were
as well as the
thing to do with a natural purity of for a rather long time,
spirit.
to
ten
literary immortality,
was you. You were very much the product of your time, your
and
it's
culture,
culture, in
ways
do with the openness
the least egocentric, the
most
artful. It also
Though you
lived
had some-
among
You had
The ordinary
a sense of
ideas of past, present,
future, quoting (as
something
as
time that was different from other people's.
your gaze. You liked to say that every
and the
us
you perfected practices of fastidiousness and of
detachment that made you an expert mental traveler to other eras well.
it
I
like "the present
and future seemed banal under
moment
of time contains the past
remember) the poet Browning, who wrote is
into the past." That, of course,
the instant in which the future crumbles
was part of your modesty: your
finding your ideas in the ideas of other writers.
taste for
SUSAN SONTAG
12
I
Your modesty was part of the sureness of your presence. You were a discoverer of
new
joys.
A
pessimism
did not need to be indignant. were, above
all,
to
me
terrible everything
you added:
cately
him or her
is
all
ple
would
who
said that a writer
that whatever
is
—
deli-
happens
a great resource, for other writers. In 1982
—
I
more
matters
say he
self
not neces-
it is
and undeluded about
clear-eyed
—must think
that
to
(You were speaking of your blindness.)
four years before you died
today
is
— and you
and the transcendence of
You showed
Somewhere you
is.
persons
a resource.
You have been
living
serenity
exemplary.
yours
as serene, as
had, rather, to be inventive
be unhappy, even while one
sary to
how
The
inventive.
you found are
that
It
profound,
as
"There
said in an interview,
is
.
.
.
that
is,
no writer
Many
to other writers than Borges.
the greatest living writer
—
peo-
Very few writers of
today have not learned from him or imitated him." That
is still
true.
We are still learning from you. We are still imitating you. You gave people
new ways
of imagining, while proclaiming over and over our in-
debtedness to the past, above
all,
we
literature almost everything
to literature.
are
am
Books
sure you are right.
human
we owe
said that
and what we have been.
disappear, history will disappear, and I
You
If
books
beings will also disappear.
are not only the arbitrary
sum
of our
dreams, and our memory. They also give us the model of transcendence.
Some people
self-
think of reading only as a kind of escape:
an escape from the "real" everyday world to an imaginary world, the
world of books. Books are much more. They are
a
way
of being fully
human. I'm sorry to have to
tell
you that books are now considered an en-
dangered species. By books,
I
make
its
call
possible literature and
up on "bookscreens" any
change
its
also
mean
the conditions of reading that
soul effects. Soon, "text"
we
are told,
on demand, and
appearance, ask questions of
it,
will
utility,
the written
word
will
and promised
course,
book.
it
means nothing
to us, as less
it.
When
to criteria of
have become simply another aspect of our
advertising- driven televisual reality. This
created,
will
be able to
"interact" with
books become "texts" that we "interact" with according
we
is
the glorious future being
something more "democratic."
than the death of inwardness
Of
— and of the
A
Letter to Borges
I
13
This time around, there will be no need for a great conflagration.
The barbarians
don't have to burn the books.
Dear Borges, please understand plain.
But
reading
make
whom
itself
years!) All
to
to
I
—be
mean
it
gives
tiger
me no
is
in the library.
satisfaction to
com-
could such complaints about the fate of books better addressed than to you?
to say
a difference.
is
that
The
era
century, will test the soul in
are not going to
that
The
we we
(Borges,
miss you. / miss you.
it's
—of ten
You continue
are entering now, this twenty-first
new ways.
abandon the Great
But, you can be sure,
Library.
And you
some of us
will continue to
be our patron and our hero.
Susan
SFFING
A
Century of Cinema
inema's hundred years appear life cycle:
ries,
and the onset
cline.
This doesn't
to have the shape of a
an inevitable birth, the steady accumulation of gloin the last
mean
decade of an ignominious, irreversible de-
that there won't
be any more new
can admire. But such films will not simply be exceptions; great achievement in any
the
norms and
practices
in the capitalist
And
where. is,
art.
They
will
that's true
have to be heroic violations of
capitalist
ordinary films, films
made
world
—which
is
to say, every-
purely for entertainment (that
commercial) purposes, will continue to be astonishingly witless; fail
resoundingly to appeal to their cynically
geted audiences. While the point of a great film
be
a one-of-a-kind achievement, the
is
now, more than
commercial cinema has
for a policy of bloated, derivative filmmaking, a brazen
re-combinatory film that
art, in
the
hope of reproducing past
some kind of remake. Cinema, once heralded
al-
tar-
ever,
settled
combinatory or
successes. Every
hopes to reach the largest possible audience
is
designed as
as the art of the twentieth
century, seems now, as the century closes numerically, to art.
of
which now govern moviemaking everywhere
and would-be
ready the vast majority
to
one
films
be
a
decadent
,
Perhaps
name
it is
not cinema which has ended but only cinephilia
—the
of the distinctive kind of love that cinema inspired. Each art
breeds
its
fanatics.
The
love movies aroused was
more
imperial.
It
I
was
17
SUSAN SONTAG
18
I
born of the conviction that cinema was an
art unlike
any other: quin-
tessential modern; distinctively accessible; poetic and mysterious and
and moral
erotic
—
Cinema was
like religion).
Cinema had
the same time.
all at
a crusade.
Cinema was
of poetry or opera or dance don't think there
is
a
apostles
(it
was
world view. Lovers
only poetry or opera or
dance. But lovers of cinema could think there was only cinema. That the movies encapsulated everything
book of
and the book of
art
As many have noted, the was, conveniently, a double
they did.
was both the
It
life.
of moviemaking a hundred years ago
start start.
In that
first year,
1895,
two kinds of
were made, proposing two modes of what cinema could
films
ema
— and
as the transcription of real,
and cinema
unstaged
(the
life
as invention, artifice, illusion, fantasy (Melies).
never a true opposition. For those
first
be: cin-
Lumiere brothers) But
this
was
audiences watching the Lu-
miere brothers' The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station, the camera's transmission of a banal sight was a fantastic experience.
wonder, the wonder that
in
cal
reality
immediacy. All of cinema
Cinema began
can be transcribed with such magi-
an attempt to perpetuate and to rein-
is
vent that sense of wonder.
Everything begins with that moment, one hundred years ago,
when
the train pulled into the station. People took movies into themselves, just as the
public cried out with excitement, actually ducked, as the
seemed
train
tied the
movie
you learned to grieve. it
to
move toward them. theatres,
it
was from
(or tried to learn)
Movies gave you
Until the advent of television
tips
how
a
home from
visit to
to strut, to
about
looks good to wear a raincoat even
ever you took
weekly
how
the cinema that
smoke, to
be
to
when
kiss, to fight,
attractive,
such as
isn't raining.
it
the
The by,
more
inclusive
.
.
the movies was only a part of the larger ex-
form of desire embodied
strongest experience
.
But what-
perience of losing yourself in faces, in lives that were not yours is
emp-
was simply
movie experience.
to surrender to, to
what was on the screen. You wanted
to
The
was
prerequisite of being kidnapped
physical presence of the image.
in the
And
—which
be transported
be kidnapped by the movie. to
be overwhelmed by the
the conditions of "going to the
movies" secured that experience. To see a great film only on television isn't to
have
really seen that film. (This
is
equally true of those
made
for
A Century TV,
Reitz.)
home. The conditions of paying attention
at
home
you are
screens can be as big as living in a living
still
among anonymous
be
to
—of the
saultive images,
and
room
darkened
in a
movie
revive the vanished rituals
The reduction
theatre.
—
dark
erotic, ru-
of cinema to as-
now
(faster
be more attention-grabbing, have produced
appear
a screen in a theatre,
hand or
But
walls.
theatre, seated in the
incarnated, lightweight cinema that doesn't
Images
a standard
bedroom
and the unprincipled manipulation of images
faster cutting) to
tention.
or
strangers.
No amount of mourning will minative
domestic space
in a
or a bedroom, alone or with familiars. To
room
be kidnapped, you have
image on the
little
no longer has
are radically disrespectful of film. Since film size,
19
not only the difference of dimensions: the superiority
It's
of the larger-than-you image in the theatre to the
box
I
Alexanderplatz and the two Heimat films of
like Fassbinder's Berlin
Edgar
Cinema
of
in
any
size
and on
on home screens
as big as a wall,
demand
anyone's
a dis-
full at-
a variety of surfaces:
on
palm of your
as small as the
on disco walls and mega-screens hanging
above sports arenas and the outsides of tall public buildings. The sheer ubiquity of moving images has steadily undermined the standards people once as
had both
for
cinema
as art at its
most serious and
for
cinema
popular entertainment. In the
ema era
first
as art
no difference between
years there was, essentially,
and cinema
And
as entertainment.
all films
—from the masterpieces of Feuillade, D. W.
Pabst,
Murnau, King Vidor
and comedies
—
to the
movies
Dziga Vertov,
most formula-ridden melodramas
look, are, better than
most of what was
the coming of sound, the image-making lost poetry,
Griffith,
cin-
of the silent
much
of
to follow.
its
With
brilliance
and
and commercial standards tightened. This way of making
—the
Hollywood system
— dominated
twenty-five years (roughly from 1930 to 1955). tors, like
filmmaking for about
The most
original direc-
Erich von Stroheim and Orson Welles, were defeated by the
system and eventually went into
artistic exile in
Europe
—where more
or less the same quality- defeating system was in place with lower budgets; only in
throughout
France were
this period.
a large
Then,
number
of superb films produced
in the mid-1950s,
hold again, rooted in the idea of cinema
vanguard ideas took
as a craft
pioneered by the
— SUSAN SONTAG
120
postwar
Italian films of the early
era.
A
dazzling
tiny crews,
went
movie
festival prizes, into
around the world. This golden age actually lasted
atres
actors
which there were more and
to film festivals (of
more), and from there, garlanded with
of original,
made with new
passionate films of the highest seriousness got
and
number
the-
long as
as
twenty years.
was
It
ema
moment
at this specific
in the
hundred-year history of
cin-
that going to movies, thinking about movies, talking about movies
became
a passion
You
fell in
had
first
among
and other young people.
university students
love not just with actors but with cinema
become
visible in the 1950s in France:
its
itself.
Cinephilia
forum was the
leg-
endary film magazine Cahiers du Cinema (followed by similarly fervent
magazines in Germany, Canada). cas,
temples, as
Its
Great
Italy, it
Sweden, the United
Britain,
States,
spread throughout Europe and the Ameri-
were the cinematheques and
from
film clubs specializing in films
the past and directors' retrospectives.
The
1960s and early 1970s were
the age of feverish moviegoing, with the full-time cinephile always hoping to find a seat as close as possible to the big screen, ideally the third
row
"One
center.
can't live without Rossellini," declares a character in
Bertolucci's Before the Revolution (1964)
Cinephilia faut
and the
—
source of exultation in the films of
Nanni Moretti
it.
Godard and
morose lament
and Syberberg;
a
—was mostly
Western European
early Bertolucci
cent films of
The
a
—and means
great directors of "the other
a
Europe" (Zanussi
Truf-
in the reaffair.
in Poland,
An-
gelopoulos in Greece, Tarkovsky and Sokurov in Russia, Jancso and Tarr in Hungary) and the great Japanese directors (Ozu, Mizoguchi,
Kurosawa,
Naruse,
saw or Athens there wasn't
The
distinctive thing
"art" films
Douglas
up.
It
seemed
tended
films.
or
not
to
be
Tokyo or War-
chance to get a cinematheque education.
Thus, European
Godard
it
embraced both
cinephilia
Hollywood
had at
a
roman-
the apogee
Howard Hawks, Fassbinder for moment when cinephilia emerged for
—
Of course, this moment when the Hollywood
Sirk.
also the
have
Moscow
the films of certain directors in
of the studio system:
was
a
Budapest or
about cinephile taste was that
and popular
tic relation to
Imamura)
Oshima,
cinephiles, perhaps because in
that
studio system was breaking
moviemaking had re-won the
right to experiment;
A Century cinephiles could afford to
Hollywood genre
be passionate
A
films.
of
Cinema
(or sentimental)
new people came
host of
cluding a generation of young film
121
about the old
into cinema, in-
from Cahiers du Cinema; the
critics
towering figure of that generation, indeed of several decades of film-
A
making anywhere, was Jean-Luc Godard.
few writers turned out to
be wildly talented filmmakers: Alexander Kluge Paolo Pasolini in
making
actually
and Cocteau seemed,
Italy.
emerged
in the
at least in
For some
(The model for the writer
was not
it
fifteen years there
was always
was
a conflict
cinema
cinema
as
conflict
was not such
an
art,
until the
1960s that this
Europe, normal.) Cinema appeared to be reborn.
one allowed oneself to imagine that sure, there
turns to film-
France, with Pagnol in the 1930s
earlier, in
1940s; but
Germany, Pier
in
who
this
would go on
between cinema
as routine
as to
a profusion of masterpieces,
and cinema
make impossible
as
as
forever.
and
To be
an industry and
experiment. But the
the making of wonderful
films,
sometimes within and sometimes outside of mainstream cinema.
Now
the balance has tipped decisively in favor of cinema as an indus-
try.
The
great cinema of the 1960s
and 1970s has been thoroughly repu-
diated. Already in the 1970s
Hollywood was
the innovations in narrative
method and
plagiarizing
and banalizing
editing of successful
ropean and ever-marginal independent American
films.
new Eu-
Then came
the
catastrophic rise in production costs in the 1980s, which secured the
worldwide reimposition of industry standards of making and ing films on a far
more
coercive, this time truly global, scale.
distribut-
The
result
can be seen in the melancholy fate of some of the greatest directors of
What place is there today for a maverick like Hans Jurgen Syberberg, who has stopped making films altogether, or for the great Godard, who now makes films about the history of film on video? the last decades.
Consider some other therefore of casts
was
cases.
The
internationalizing of financing
a disaster for
Andrei Tarkovsky
films of his stupendous, tragically abbreviated career.
tions for
making
films
have proved to be
two of the most valuable directors
still
(The Structure of Crystals, Illumination, gelopoulos (Reconstruction, Days of
what
will
happen now
as
much
an
And
two
these condi-
artistic disaster for
working: Krzysztof Zanussi
Spiral, Contract)
'36,
in the last
and
The
and Theo An-
And And how
Travelling Players).
to Bela Tarr (Damnation, Satantango)?
SUSAN SONTAG
122
will
Aleksandr Sokurov (Save and Protect, Days of Eclipse, The Second
Circle, Stone,
sublime
his
Whispering Pages) find the money to go on making
under the rude conditions of Russian capitalism?
films,
Predictably, the love of cinema has waned. People
some people
the movies, and
films,
special, necessary
from
still
a film.
still
like
going to
care about and expect something
And wonderful
films are
made: Mike Leigh's Saked, Gianni Amelio's Lamerica,
being
still
Hou
Hsiao-
hsiens Goodbye South, Goodbye, and Abbas Kiarostami's Close-Up and
Koker
trilogy.
But one hardly finds anymore,
at least
the distinctive cinephilic love of movies, which a certain taste in films
seeing as
has
much
come under
(grounded
is
among
the young,
not simply love of but
in a vast appetite for seeing
and
re-
as possible of cinema's glorious past). Cinephilia itself
attack, as
something quaint, outmoded, snobbish. For
cinephilia implies that films are unique, unrepeatable,
ences. Cinephilia
tells
Breathless cannot be as
us that the
good
magic experi-
Hollywood remake of Godard's
as the original. Cinephilia has
no
role in
the era oi hyperindustrial films. For by the very range and eclecticism
of
its
passions, cinephilia cannot help but sponsor the idea of the film
as, first
of
all,
a poetic object;
and cannot help but
incite those outside
the movie industry, like painters and writers, to want to too. It
is
precisely this that
If cinephilia is
it
will only
films,
must be defeated. That has been defeated.
dead, then movies are dead ... no matter
movies, even very good ones, go on being made. urrected,
make
be through the birth of
a
If
how many
cinema can be
new kind
res-
of cine-love. [!995]
—
Novel
into Film:
Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz
WE
TAKE
IT for granted that film directors are,
wish, in the
game
if
of recycling. Adapting novels
the most respectable of movie projects, while a book that
is
they so
one of
calls itself
the
novelization of a film seems, rightly, barbarous. Being a hybrid art as well as a late one, film has always been in a dialogue with other narrative genres.
Movies were
first
seen as an exceptionally potent kind of
illusionist theatre, the rectangle of the screen
proscenium of
a stage,
silent period, plays
—
on which appear
As
a
actors. Starting in the early
were regularly "turned into"
plays did not encourage the evolution of
about
corresponding to the
what
movie: the intervention of the camera
a source of plot, character,
truly
—
its
suitable.
Many
But filming
was
distinctive
mobility of vision.
and dialogue, the novel, being
narrative art that (like movies) ranges freely in time
more
films.
early successes of
The
form of
and space, seemed
cinema (The Birth of a Nation,
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Ramona, adaptations of popular novels.
a
1930s
and
Stella Dallas, It)
1940s,
were
when movies
tained their largest audience and had an unprecedented
at-
monopoly on
entertainment, were probably the heyday of novel-into-film projects the sleek
Hollywood classic-comics of the novels by the Bronte
ters or Tolstoy
being no more or
less
sis-
ambitious, as films, than those
123
SUSAN SONTAG
124
adapted from such bestsellers Rebecca, The
was
that
Good
was the destiny of
it
Since the film that
is
on the reputation and
And now Oblomov
the Wind, Lost Horizon,
The presumption
novel to "become" a film.
a
a transcription of a
novel
Who
risen.
monopoly of
if
entertain-
made from
can see the films
or The Trial without asking
riding piggyback
is
comparisons are inevitable.
interest of the novel,
that movies have ceased to have a
ment, standards have
novel
Gone With
as
Earth, Gentleman's Agreement.
the film
is
Lolita or
adequate to the
—the making of invariably invidious comparisons depending on
whether or not the novel belongs to
Klaus Mann's Mephisto, turns out to be
seems almost
in the nature of film
abridge, dilute, and simplify any
Even
literature.
good novel
that
novels
— despite the view
like
film. It
film's quality
—
to
adapts. In fact, far
it
plays than
that such films tend to is
minor novel, than the
far richer
— regardless of the
more good movies have been made from good go against the grain of what
a
be
static
from good
and thereby
distinctly cinematic.
Directors of the 1930s and 1940s like Wyler, Stevens, Lean, and
Autant-Lara were particularly drawn to good-novel-into-movie projects
—
as
But the
have been, more
failure rate has
recently, Visconti, Losey,
been so spectacular that since the 1960s the ven-
ture has been considered suspect in certain quarters.
and Truffaut declared
a
fiction. Classics
A
minor novel could serve
of themes with which the director is
is
the problem of being "faithful" to
— adapted from James M. Cain's nobler achievement than Twice— is
Stranger. Cain's
There
is
not just by
a
The Leopard or
stiff,
With
Visconti's
a
good novel
first film,
handsome, respectful
Os-
tran-
rather absent version of Camus's to
be "followed."
quality as literature. Until this past winter
film,
fiction
posed by the length of the work of fiction,
film adaptation of a literary
Russian
be-
as a pretext, a repertoire
it.
melodrama did not have
also the obstacle
its
his
it
The Postman Always Rings
his
a far
scription of
one
seemed cursed:
free to play.
sessione
The
— crime
dictum that cinema was better nourished by pulp
than by literature.
there
Godard, Resnais,
their preference for subliterary genres
and adventure novels, science
came
and Schlondorff.
work
I
had seen only
thought entirely admirable:
The Lady with the Dog, made from
Chekhov. The standard, and
I
a short story
arbitrary, length of feature films
is
by ap-
Novel into
Alexonderplatz
Film: Fassbinder's Berlin
125
proximately the time in which one can render a short story or a
But not
a novel
—whose nature
novel requires a film that
—one
expansiveness.
is
To do
that breaks with the conventions of length set
his legendary,
Stroheim,
who wanted
film of ten hours,
two hours and
justice to a
not just somewhat longer but radically long
is
by theatregoing.
This was surely the conviction of Erich von Stroheim
tempted
when he
to film
all
The
minutes (ten
films.
But movie lovers
Greed
for the loss of the ten-hour
all
will
faithful to, a great novel is
— although a
list
made
lowed to make
mourning
(i
—he has and
a great film of,
in
some Platonic heaven, or ten greatest novels of the title
on
878-1957). Stroheim
it
is
Berlin
was not
al-
a film of ten hours. Fassbinder, thanks to the possibility
of showing a film in parts, on television, was allowed to fifteen
one of the
say,
if
of the,
twentieth century, probably the least familiar
Alexanderplatz by Alfred Doblin
is
in
Stroheim was thwarted
of a novel. More: he has
haven, of judgments there
be forever
was de-
that Stroheim edited.
FASSBINDER SUCCEEDS WHERE one
a
out of Stroheim 's forty-
reels
version of Greed that survived this butchery
filmed virtually
made
of Frank Norris's novel, had
which the studio reedited and eventually reduced to
two); the negative of the thirty-two reels of discarded footage stroyed.
at-
aborted adaptation of McTeague, called Greed.
forty-five
most admired of
play.
make
a film of
hours and twenty-one minutes. Inordinate length could hardly
assure the successful transposition of a great novel into a great film.
But though not
a sufficient condition,
Berlin Alexanderplatz that Fassbinder
is
succeeded
it
is
probably a necessary one.
Fassbinder's Greed not only in the sense
in
novel, but also because of the
making the long
many
film, the great film
striking parallels
of Berlin Alexanderplatz and the plot of Greed. For, indeed, the ican novel, published in 1899, lated in the
much
German
tells a
of a
between the plot
Amer-
primitive version of the story re-
novel, published thirty years later,
which has
a
thicker texture and greater range. Writing in San Francisco at
the end of the last century, the youthful Frank Norris had Zola as a
model of
a dispassionate "naturalism."
The
Doblin, already in midcareer (he was fifty-one
far
more
when
sophisticated
Berlin Alexander-
SUSAN SONTAG
126
was published) and writing
platz
decade
in the arts,
in the century's single
had the inspiration
(it is
said) of Joyce's Ulysses, as
German
well as the expressive hypernaturalist tendencies in film, painting,
same year
the
most creative
and photography with which he was that Berlin Alexanderplatz appeared,
Doblin wrote an
work by
egant essay on photography as the preface to a volume of
A
the
man, both innocent and brute,
burly, sentimental, naive, violent
the protagonist of both novels. Franz Biberkopf
when
derer
Berlin Alexanderplatz starts
—he has
is
The protagonist
of McTeague eventually
Both novels are anatomies of
Trina.
shoddy Polk
Street in Norris's novel
already a mur-
just finished serving a
sentence of four years for killing the prostitute with Ida.
el-
August Sander.)
great
is
theatre,
familiar. (In 1929,
woman,
kills a
a city, or part of
and the Berlin
whom
it:
he
lived,
his wife,
San Francisco's of workers,
district
whores, and petty criminals in Doblin 's novel are far more than mere
background
to the hero's misfortunes.
tion of the
unmated hero
a depic-
—McTeague
afoot and alone in the city
Sunday routine of
following his
Both novels open with
solitary
walk,
and beer;
dinner,
Biberkopf, just discharged from prison, wandering in a daze about the Alexanderplatz. set
he
A former car boy in
a mine,
McTeague has managed
to
himself up in San Francisco as a dentist; by the middle of the novel
forbidden to practice. The ex-pimp Biberkopf
is
ing honestly in a series of menial jobs, but (he loses his right arm), the
woman
tries to
when he can no
he loves goes on the
earn his
longer
liv-
work
street to sup-
port them. In both novels, the downfall of the protagonist
or circumstantial, but in
is
McTeague, Reinhold
—
a
in Berlin Alexanderplatz.
budding
McTeague
political boss,
tionary populism. Biberkopf, to
go
and
straight,
is
is
not
just
engineered by his former best friend
friends are studies in contrasts.
hyperverbal
is
who
is
And
just as
Marcus
is
spouting the cliches of reac-
has vowed, on coming out of prison,
not inarticulate; Reinhold belongs to a gang of thieves
a stutterer.
permission
—Marcus
both pairs of
inarticulate;
The
gullible
hero
is
obtusely devoted to the secretly
malevolent friend. In Norris's novel, McTeague inherits cus's
bad luck
— the
girl
she wins a large
—with
Mar-
Marcus has been courting and marries her
sum
of
money
in a lottery;
Marcus vows
re-
Novel into
Film: Fassbinder's Berlin
Alexanderplatz
venge. In Berlin Alexanderplatz, Biberkopf inherits
urging
—
a
number
of Reinhold's
women, and
discard one ex-girl of Reinhold's as the next
him
that Reinhold turns treacherous. It
is
it is
—on
127
Reinhold's
when he
refuses to
ready to be passed on to
Marcus who has McTeague
is
deprived of his livelihood and fragile respectability: he reports him to the city authorities for practicing dentistry without having a diploma,
and the
result
is
not only destitution but the ruin of his relationship
with his already deranged, pathetic wife.
It is
Reinhold
atrocious end to Biberkopf's valiant efforts to stay honest,
him ing
into taking part in a burglary
him out of the van
amputation of
him
murders Mieze. Marcus
a
woman, Mieze, with whom he
is
When
toward Reinhold
a
kind of "pure," that
McTeague the
fatal
bond
calls
Biberkopf's forbearance
McTeague and Marcus
is
the
city's
accidentally handcuffed to
self-defense),
in
is
opposite.
The
last
in the
paragraph has
Marcus (whom he has
the middle of Death Valley,
just killed,
"stupidly looking
around him," doomed to await death beside the corpse of enemy/friend. The ending of McTeague wonderfully
so. Berlin
pain, death,
and
he die himself.
He goes mad
after the
grief
I
kill
Reinhold, nor does
in literature),
mental hospital, and when released, a burnt-out case,
respectable job, as night
watchman
eventually brought to
for Mieze's murder,
tify
trial
grief,
murder of his beloved Mieze
know
his
merely dramatic, though
Biberkopf does not
most lacerating description of a
is
Alexanderplatz ends as a series of arias on
survival.
de-
the end of the novel Norris removes
from San Francisco: the two men find each other
desert, the landscape that
ulti-
motiveless, love.)
is,
that unites
more summarily. Toward
his characters
falls in
motivated by envy; Reinhold by an
mately motiveless malignity. (Fassbinder
in
after the
unable to endure Biberkopf's happiness, seduces and
love, Reinhold,
McTeague
—but Biberkopf,
strangely without desire for revenge.
is
of his despair by finding
In
tricking
and former lover Eva brings the crippled Biberkopf out
his protector
picted
puts an
first
and then, during the getaway, push-
into the path of a car
his arm,
who
in a factory.
finally
When
(the
confined to
is
lands his
Reinhold
Biberkopf refuses to
is
tes-
against him.
Both McTeague and Biberkopf go on savage, character-altering alcoholic binges
—McTeague
because he
feels
too
little,
Biberkopf
— SUSAN SONTAG
128
because he
feels
much
too
(remorse, grief, dread).
Biberkopf, not stupid but oddly docile, generosity toward, as well as real love
McTeague can
a soul;
he
naive, virile
capable of tenderness and
for,
Mieze; in contrast to what
feel for Trina: abject fascination,
por of habit. Norris denies hulking,
The
is
succeeded by the
repeatedly described as animal-like or primitive. Doblin
is
does not condescend to his hero
Biberkopf has
—who
is
part Woyzeck, part Job.
a rich, convulsive inner life; indeed, in the course of the
novel he acquires more and more understanding, although
adequate to events, to the depth or the gruesome
Doblin
ing.
stu-
McTeague
pitiable, semi-retarded
novel
s
is
this
never
is
specificity of suffer-
an educational novel, and a modern Inferno.
In McTeague there
one point of view, one dispassionate voice
is
selective,
summarizing, compressive, photographic. Filming Greed,
Stroheim
is
graph
said to have followed Norris's novel paragraph
—one can
see how. Berlin Alexanderplatz
for the ear as for the eye.
It
has a complex
many
form, encyclopedic, with
is
as
much
method of
by para(or
more)
narration: free-
layers of narrative, anecdote,
and com-
mentary. Doblin cuts from one kind of material to another, often
within the same paragraph: documentary evidence, myths, moral literary allusions
—
same way
in the
The
stylized lyrical language.
author,
is
The
he
shifts
style
of Greed
is
an ti- artificial. Stroheim refused to shoot any-
making
a half century later,
all
of Greed in "natural" loca-
Fassbinder has no need to make a
point about realism or about veracity.
And
it
would hardly have been
possible to film in the Alexanderplatz, which
bombing of Berlin during World War if it
were shot
in a studio.
II.
was annihilated
neon
in mirrors.
sign
on the
The extreme
street;
of
in the
Most of Berlin Alexanderplatz
Fassbinder chooses a broad, familiar
stylization: illuminating the principal location, Biberkopf's
flashing
a
exalted, urgent, anything but dispassionate.
More than
looks as
tales,
between slang and
principal voice, that of the all-knowing
thing in the studio, insisting on tions.
that
room, by
a
shooting often through windows and
artificiality,
or theatricality,
is
reached in the
sequences in the circus-like street of whores, and in most of the two-
hour epilogue. Berlin Alexanderplatz has the distension of a novel, but
it
is
also
very theatrical, as are most of Fassbinder's best films. Fassbinder's ge-
Novel into
Alexonderplatz
Film: Fassbinder's Berlin
nius was in his eclecticism, his extraordinary freedom as an
was not looking from
theatre.
He
for the specifically cinematic,
began
he directed almost
many
as
and some of
plays as movies,
own The
group
Bitter Tears of Petra
Bremen Freedom, or take place mostly
in
one
in
he
artist:
and borrowed
as the director of a theatre
are filmed plays, like his
129
freely
Munich;
his best films
von Kant and
such as Chinese
interior,
Roulette and Satan's Brew. In a 1974 interview Fassbinder described his first
years of activity thus: "I
rected film as
if it
were
produced theatre and did
theatre,
abridge a scene because they might fear)
static,
were
it
film,
this quite stubbornly. "
other directors, adapting a novel to a film, it
as if
and
di-
Where
would have thought
to
went on too long, and thereby became
Fassbinder would
and
persist,
(as
The
insist.
him
stay close to
—an
all-forgiving
theatrical-looking style that Fassbinder devised helps
Doblin's book.
Apart from the invention of one new character
mother
landlady Frau Bast
figure, Biberkopf's
Fassbinder has
made
in the story simply
—most of the changes
render the action more com-
pact visually. In the novel Biberkopf does not always live in the same
one-room apartment,
as
he does
and Fassbinder
in the film,
sets events
there that in the novel take place elsewhere. For example, in the novel
Franz ing
kills
Ida
—which we
at
her
the film, the gruesome batter-
sister's place; in
see in repeated, hallucinatory flashback
—takes place
in
Biberkopf's room, witnessed by Frau Bast. In the novel, Biberkopf doesn't live with
all
the
women
with
whom
he takes up;
in the film
each of them, one by one, moves into his place, reinforcing the visual unity, but also
making the
union with Mieze perhaps
a bit too cozy.
The women seem more
whores-with-hearts-of-gold than they do in the book. tion:
it
is
a gift
is
just
mentioned, once,
which we see Biberkopf doting on, and that take place in Biberkopf's is
last
inven-
room,
is
is
in Doblin's novel),
often in the shot in scenes
a reincarnation of the canary
McTeague's most cherished possession, the only thing he
vages from his wrecked domestic tle gilt
One
hard not to suspect that the canary in a cage Mieze gives
Biberkopf (such
that
film's
relationships that precede Biberkopf's
prison"
when
his
Fassbinder's cinema
doom is
full
is
felicity,
and
still
by
his side "in its
sallit-
sealed in the desert.
of Biberkopfs
—victims
of false con-
SUSAN SONTAG
130
sciousness.
And
throughout his
the material of Berlin Alexanderplatz films,
marginal existences
—
whose recurrent
subject
prefigured
is
damaged
is
and
lives
petty criminals, prostitutes, transvestites, immi-
grant workers, depressed housewives, and overweight workers at the
end of
More
their tether.
specifically, the
harrowing slaughterhouse
scenes in Berlin Alexanderplatz are anticipated by the slaughterhouse
sequence
in Jail Bait
and In a Year of
compendium
platz
is
more than
ment
—
and the origin.
a
In an article he wrote in
months he had
it
13
Moons. But Berlin Alexander-
of his main themes.
March
1980,
It
was the
fulfill-
toward the end of the ten
took to film Berlin Alexanderplatz, Fassbinder declared that
first
read Doblin 's novel
had dreamed of making
it
when he was
into a film
fourteen or fifteen, and
from the beginning of
his career.
—he described how own had protagonist was Fassbinder's been impregnated by the novel — and It
was the novel of
his life
fantasies
his
its
elected alter ego. Several heroes of his films were called Franz;
name Franz Biberkopf
gave the
Friends, a role he played himself.
to the protagonist of It is
and he
Fox and His
said that Fassbinder
would have
He did not; but he did something equally apHe became Doblin: his is the voice of the narrator. Doblin is
liked to play Biberkopf.
propriate.
omnipresent
in his
book, commenting and lamenting.
a recurrent voiceover, the voice of the novel, so to
binder's.
Thus we hear many of the
parallel stories,
And
speak
the film has
— and
such as the
Fass-
sacrifice
of Isaac, related in the novel. Fassbinder preserves the novel's extrava-
gant ruminating energy without breaking the narrative stride.
ruminating voice
Godard's
make
films,
is
used not
as
an
anti-narrative
device,
The
as
in
but to intensify the narrative; not to distance us but to
us feel more.
The
story continues to evolve, in the
most
direct, af-
fecting way.
Berlin Alexanderplatz
is
not a meta-film, like
Hans Jurgen
Syber-
berg's Hitler, Fassbinder has nothing of Syberberg's aesthetic of the
grandiose, for
all
for high culture.
the length of Berlin Alexanderplatz, or his reverence It is a
narrative film, but
one
that
is
that long: a film
that tells a story, in decors of the period (the late 1920s), with
more
than a hundred actors (many roles are taken by actors from Fassbinder's regular troupe)
and thousands of
extras.
A
fifty-three-year-old
— Novel into theatre actor
who
Film: Fassbinder's Berlin
Alexanderplatz
13
has had minor roles in a few of Fassbinder's films,
Giinter Lamprecht, plays Franz Biberkopf. Splendid as are
Barbara Sukowa
actors, particularly
Lamprecht
as Eva,
1
the
Mieze and Hanna Schygulla
as
Biberkopf overshadows the others
s
moving, expressive,
all
—an
intensely
performance, as good as anything
brilliantly varied
done by Emil Jannings or by Raimu.
Though made
man and series
is
interval
it is
—one week being the convention,
not a
TV
serials
like the old
Ger-
A TV
series.
Saturday
at
an
after-
parts of Berlin Alexanderplatz are not really episodes, strictly
over fourteen weeks
is
(as I
diminished
saw
sentation in a movie theatre
hours each, over it.
Seeing
it
five
it
—
when
for the five
long novel with
seen in this way, spaced out
first
time,
on
Italian
TV). Pre-
segments of approximately three
consecutive weeks
—
is
certainly a better
way
to
over three or four days would be far better. The more
one can watch over the shortest time works
platz,
a co-production of
is
(Fantomas, The Perils of Pauline, Flash Gordon).
speaking, since the film
see
—
Berlin Alexanderplatz
constructed in "episodes," which are designed to be seen
noon movie
The
possible by television
TV
Italian
maximum
cinema, that hybrid
best, exactly as
one reads
a
pleasure and intensity. In Berlin Alexander-
art,
has at
last
achieved some of the dilatory,
open form and accumulative power of the novel by being longer than any film has dared to be
—and by being
theatrical.
[1983]
A Note Art
is
something which
between the yet
real
the slender margin
lies in
and the unreal
not unreal;
it is
it is
real,
on Bunraku
...
and
unreal,
it is
yet
it is
not
and
real.
— Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1725)
BUNRAKU THE
IN
object: a text.
And
P L
AY
the text
identified, first of
is is
sacred
—
that
as a physical
all,
generative.
is,
Hence,
the grave ceremony that opens each performance: the chief reader
holds out the text and
actor,
bows
to
before setting is
it
down on
the low
a theatre that transcends the
by multiplying and displacing the sources of dramatic pathos.
The
play
is
acted; that
is
to say, recited; that
claimed, sung, chanted, wailed)
produced by
is
is,
punctuated or
a string instrument, the shamisen. It
read.
The
italicized is
text (de-
by music
also, simultane-
enacted by piercingly expressive large puppets, half or two-
ously,
thirds life-size.
The enacting of the drama occupies
front of the audience: the
the music
dialogue
is
reciters
—the
a
and musicians who
sit
to the right
constitutes a parallel performance.
not "off," as in a certain kind of narrative film, but
— displaced, given
132
figures
—move. But the source of the words and
—the one or more on rostrum —
of the stage
the stage proper, in
wide rectangular space where
puppets and their handlers
center
it,
and beginning to read. Bunraku
lectern
its
own
The off-
expressive and corporeal autonomy.
A Note on Bunraku The drama has
a
double displacement of emotion, a double
double physical and emotional principle onists
is
a
On
gait.
kind of anti-hysteria. There
—
who, instead of being
who
is
Most of the
the stage proper the leading is
which
texts,
given the task of maximal expres-
is
acts, as
it
transcends, intensifies
The puppet The
is,
and the narration may mod-
and gasps. The
figure of the re-
were, by proxy, on behalf of the puppets,
one of the devices whereby Bunraku
son.
and commentary
consist of narrative
ulate into a lengthy crescendo of sobs
who
the
is
humans who make them move. To
as well as dialogue, are floridly emotional,
citer,
the muteness of the protag-
not only off-center (from the audience's point
of view) but physically immobile, siveness.
scale, a
living actors, are puppets; there
impassivity and omnipresence of the
the Jorurz reciter,
133
—what acting
in prototype, a
isolates
— decomposes,
is
just
illustrates,
is.
supple doll operated by a single per-
invention, in 1734, of a puppet to be operated by three per-
sons brought the puppet's emotional and gestural potency to a point
never equaled before or since. The Japanese puppet can raise its
eyebrows, smile, clench
run, convincingly take
its
own
its fists; it
life.
No
roll its eyes,
can languish, dress
string
itself,
puppet or hand puppet
can perform such complex and detailed actions; and the Bunraku puppets have an ability to in
move
audiences,
move them
to tears,
unmatched
any other puppet tradition.
But apart from widening the emotional range and expressiveness of the puppet (a gain
we may
or
may
not choose to identify with "real-
ism"), the fact of multiplying the operators
them onstage with the puppets
—
—and, of
decisively shapes
emotional register of puppet drama. The puppet bered, beleaguered, surrounded. dlers
The presence of
endows the puppet's movements and
pathos.
The puppets seem
seem sovereign, imperious,
necessity, putting
and transforms the is literally
outnum-
three outsized han-
efforts
with a sheen of
helpless, childlike, vulnerable. Yet they also in their very smallness
and precision and
el-
egance.
Bunraku works on two elaborate decor
is
scales of relatedness in space.
The
constructed to the puppets' measurements.
erators are giants, interlopers. Alongside each delicate
the three large heads of the operators.
often
The op-
puppet head are
The operators look
at
the pup-
SUSAN SONTAG
134
pet as they manipulate
it.
The audience watches
drama they animate. The three
ing the puppet, primal spectators to the
sum up
operators
the essence of what
impassive: one has his face bared.
wear black hoods. The puppet as
it is
And
gestures.
one giant body, animating the
a perfected division of labor.
the operators observ-
to
to
be
The operators move
What
veiled
fate.
seen,
the audience sees
That one operator's face
is
together,
is
that to act
enacted
is
is
is
in
to
the
exposed and two are
another device making Bunraku's characteristic double
is
and
puppet body,
different parts of the
be moved. (And, simultaneously, observed.) What submission to a
To be
a god.
be hidden: the other two
state-
ment: hyperbole and discretion, presence and absence of the dramatic substance.
This relation between the operators and the puppet efficient relation;
it is
the cruel mystery which
Bunraku drama. Handing the puppet
doom at
a
moments
its
captors.
at
not simply an
the center of the
comb, rushing the puppet
— some moments the operators seem
other
is
is
to
its
like the puppet's servants,
Sometimes the puppet seems
to
be repos-
ing solidly on the operators or to be borne placidly aloft by them; other
times to be in perpetual, hapless scale, to delight the senses
flight.
There are constant
Then
the operators
of
and wring the emotions. Sometimes the
shadowy manipulators shrink and the puppets scale.
shifts
normal
swell into a
loom once more and the puppets re-become
persecuted Lilliputians.
fragile,
The
situation
we
call art characteristically
requires us both to look
very attentively and to look "beyond" (or "through") what
is
under-
stood as an impediment, distraction, irrelevance. At an opera perfor-
mance, we look past or over the orchestra to concentrate on the But
in
Bunraku we
are not
supposed to look past the shadowy, black-
garbed puppeteers. The presence of the operators raku
its
elevated,
is
what
gives
mythic impersonality and heightened,
emotionality. In order to
stage.
make
Bun-
purified
the art of the puppets competitive with
the art of living actors, says Chikamatsu, the text must be "charged
with feeling." But, he adds, "I take pathos to be entirely a matter of straint."
Compare
Balanchine,
cal ballet tradition to its
who brought
re-
the naively emotive classi-
apex by developing the sense
in
which dancers
are co-sharers, with ideal puppets, in the sublimity of the impersonal:
"
A Note on "Silence, placidity, forces.
They
Bunraku
135
and immobility are perhaps the most powerful
are as impressive, even
more
so,
than rage, delirium, or
ecstasy.
In the most profound Western meditation on puppet theatre (and,
by extension, on the dance),
Kleist
wrote that the very inanimateness of
the puppet was the precondition for expressing an ideal state of the spirit. Kleist's
puppets
—
is
speculative fantasy
—he was writing
in 1810,
about string
incarnated and fulfilled in Bunraku. [1983]
A
GARDEN
HISTORY
Place for Fantasy
an enthralling branch of
IS
art history,
opening onto the history of outdoor spectacles (the masque, fireworks, pageants), of architecture, of urban planning
ary history as well.
Once mainly
French, English, German), center of activity ton, D.C.,
The
is
the
which possesses superb materials on garden
principal tradition of Western garden art
brick, tufa, stucco,
wood
—among the
and
none
is
more
fascinating or
ations than the grotto.
human-made
It
is
complex
a space that
is,
in
Washing-
history.
—of
marble,
And
plants.
its
usually, a space already
same kind of space grotto in the garden
tamed. Other,
are "cave," is
history
literally,
recess or subterranean space that
is
vault,"
names
echo them. This curiosity
136
is
I
is,
for the
"crypt."
even repulsive, and yet exercises on some people, of
my way
follies,
associ-
called a grotto
the domesticated version of a space that
one, a very strong attraction.
and have gone out of
and
of the
profound. The
less reassuring
"underground
One
inclusive rather
constructions
trees
in
constructions that recur in gardens (statuary, fountains,
bridges),
scary,
human-made
is
liter-
scholars were
(its
flourishes in this country, too.
Dumbarton Oaks Research Library
than exclusionary, putting
many
European subject
a
now
it
—and of
is
The often
whom I am
have always been fascinated by grottoes
to look at
them and
at
constructions that
perhaps no more than dread mastered
— A but then the grotto seems no more, or
morbid
Place for Fantasy
than a playfulness with
less,
feelings.
For grottoes
to enter the garden, a place conceived as a
miniaturized. Grottoes, mostly real grottoes, were places.
we
The
sibyl's
or oracle's
lair,
a
are never
far,
grave.
men and
our imaginations, from being reminded of the
in
And
grottoes that
were
the garden
program
of the
century
Roman
in the late
patricians.
common
From
and rooms
in
the latter part
out to
fitted
and
their mysteries,
re-
and entertainments conducted
backdrop of
for example, as the
were partly
satyr plays
and
for ban-
quets.
Perhaps the most famous and grandiose, though hardly
of the
villas
villa in Tivoli
built as
These caverns, ornamented spaces that alluded
practical constructions for pleasures
whose
se-
features of the gardens of the villas
gracefully to the old sacred spaces
—
Romans
appear as an element
Republic.
B.C., artificial grottoes,
semble grottoes, became
outdoors
first
cell
had, to begin with,
artificial
part of hydraulic projects. Artificial caves
Roman
sacred
all
revered ancestors
verely practical purposes: like the marvelous vaults the
first
of
first
the hermit's retreat, the sect's sanctu-
the resting place of the bones of holy
and the
of
haven and
of recreation, their original functions had to be secularized or
site
ary,
137
ruins survive
from the ancient world was Hadrian's
near Rome, which had a
Christianity gave the grotto
nopolizing grotto imagery for
typical,
new
number
of grottoes.
associations
more than
and succeeded
thousand
a
years.
in
mo-
Supposedly
natural but in fact thoroughly stylized grottoes figure in paintings of
the Christian narratives
Entombment
— and
—the cave of the
Nativity, the sepulchre of the
in the lives of saints like
Jerome and Anthony, who
are often depicted as praying or being assailed at the
hermit's grotto.
The
revival of the
garden grotto
necting of the grotto with the garden
when tions
—had
the grotto could be divested of
and infused with new,
eclectic
its
that
is,
of their
the recon-
to wait for the Renaissance,
principally Christian associa-
symbolism (Neo-Platonist, human-
Although the gardens and grottoes of the
ist).
—
mouth
classical villas
had long
— example, by Ovid and —had been preserved, and were admired. The elaboration of the
since
been
them
for
a principal feature of the
new
leveled, descriptions of
Livy
garden grotto,
heights attained by the
SUSAN SONTAG
138
the Renaissance, produced such triumphs as the Grotta
garden
in
Grande
in the Medici's
many
Boboli Gardens in Florence and the
grot-
and hydraulic marvels of Pratolino, so admired by Montaigne and
toes
The use of
other foreign visitors. sites
their
employment
The
the grottoes of ancient villas as ban-
protected from the sun was replaced" in the Renaissance by
quet
backdrops for
as
theatrical spectacles.
complex idea of the garden
distinctive,
has been most prevalent in Western culture
work of
as a
—the garden
as
which
art,
an "ideal"
landscape, including an anthology of architectural elements, and featuring waterworks of various spectacular contrivance
Though only one element
the Renaissance.
which
in the
an intensification,
is
it
garden-world.
It is
den
outdoors, open,
that
is
it is
The
defined in
of the garden program,
grotto
is
light,
The essence
of the gar-
spacious, natural, while the grotto
indoors, hidden, dim,
is
a
whole
in miniature, of the
also the garden's inversion.
the quintessence of what
rated.
is
West has mostly been heterogeneous, the grotto has
privileged place:
is
—
characteristically a space that
is
deco-
artificial,
adorned
—with
frescoes, painted stuccos, mosaics, or (the association with water re-
maining paramount)
shells.
In the garden history that starts in the Renaissance, the grotto reflected
all
the turns of taste,
artificial ruin.
ern,
The
all
the ideas of the theatre.
The
grotto as
this survives in the fairground's
Tunnel of Love.) The grotto
showcase. The grotto
as
is,
papier-mache as
it
were, the
innately decadent element of the garden ensemble, the one that
impure, and most ambiguous. mulative, dimly
lit,
It is a
bad
the most intensively "rustic" space
Pope
villas.
Eventually
The roof and
space.
at
space that
thickly ornamented.
likely site for the elaboration of
Roman
mod-
grotto as a place for foolery and escapades. (A
degraded form of
Twickenham
it
taste.)
became an
of mirror interspersed with
At
first it
to fantasy,
and
was thought
to
a cave, as in
some
built
be
by Alexander
and 1730s were studded with shards
shells.
(The grotto
many
as
camera obscura,
in
grottoes were built by
shell collectors principally as a setting to display their treasures. last private grottoes,
a
elaborately theatrical, encrusted
famous grotto
Pope's phrase.) In the eighteenth century,
of the
most
complex and accu-
(An appeal
—the imitation of
walls of the in the 1720s
is
is
the Venus Grotto built by
Ludwig
One II
of
A Bavaria
at
Linderhof
in
ting of several scenes
876—1 877, was
1
Place for Fantasy
itself a theatrical
139
space, the set-
from Wagner's Tannhauser. Le Palais Ideal du
Facteur Cheval, in a small village in central France, could be regarded
garden grotto of the beginning of
as the great
haps the
last
of the breed.
The
this
ground
crypt-like
century
— and per-
level of this astonish-
ing building has the characteristic encrustedness of the grotto interior,
the didacticism, and the reach for the sublime.
Its builder's
aim
is
noth-
ing less than to miniaturize, and thereby to possess, the sublime. There are inscriptions, labels, declarations, adages incised throughout
walls
—the whole structure being designed, with something
by the inspired autodidactic handedly between 1879
an
as
postman who
on the
like genius,
built
single-
it
an anthology of world spiritual
and
materials
Ferdinand
sensibility,
same family
Cheval's grotto-labyrinth belongs to the
as the grotto of
Pope. Grottoes are places of fantasy, but the greatest grotto buildings
and always have been, functional: from the villas
are,
Roman
cryptoportici of the
(underground passageways one could take from one building to
another to avoid the heat of the day), or that stupendous achievement of
Roman
one of
engineering, the emissarium of
Piranesi's
Lake Albano
most haunting books of engravings),
fantasy lands as the limestone caves, over six
(the subject of
hundred
feet long, that
house the operations of the Brunson Instrument Company City, Missouri; or the miles of
underground shopping
in
Kansas
streets in
Osaka;
or the vast caverns dug in the mountain behind the National in Taipei that store the
made
off with
Louvre Metro
way
when he
made
in 1949; or the
Stockholm sub-
war
—
all
fled
all,
the justly celebrated
Mayakovsky and Dynamo possible to build
it
art,
Chiang Kai-shek
from China to Taiwan
feasible: the great
Grottoes of
art treasures that
Museum
station in Paris, several stations of the
system, and, above
pecially the
has
innumerable
modern
to such
stations.
below ground on
subterranean installations are
Moscow Modern
subway,
es-
technology
a scale never before
bound
to multiply.
grottoes of industry, grottoes of shopkeeping, grottoes of
these are functional and yet
space. In grottoes the functional
compatible. Perhaps that
is
why
seem the epitome of the poetry of
and the the
fantastic are anything
museum
but
in-
for his art collection that
SUSAN SONTAG
140
Johnson put underground next
Philip
Canaan, Connecticut, seems
that
is
House
New
in
— house sunk beneath the ground — but
like the
demands one
with glass walls
to his Glass
famous house's twin
a
is
not convincing as an example of the grotto in the garden:
too
is
it
purely functional, stripped down.
Many
tourist-worn
Carlsbad Caverns
sites
can supply the grotto experience. The
New Mexico,
in
the Postojna Caves in Slovenia (near
Ljubljana), the Grotte d'Arcy near Vezelay, south of Paris, the Grotte di ral
Nettuno near Alghero on the western coast of Sardinia
— such natu-
caves admired by grotto-buffs like myself serve as well the function
For there
no natural cave open
of
artificial grottoes.
(if
only because of the requirements of safety) has not been turned into
a stage set, or
is
museum, with guides pointing out zoomorphic forms
and organ pipes
in stalagmites
the visitors lined
up on the
erses part of the caves
with
—generally grilles
inaccessible
railroad.)
grottoes.
do
(In Postojna,
The cemetery
is
one a
trav-
garden
mausoleums and aboveground
crypts
instead of doors, into which one can peer. Visits to the at
near
Cerveteri,
visits to
bones instead of
The garden
And
— such
— resemble
as
the
visits to grot-
mummies
or artful piles of
shells.
grotto it
Rome
the catacombs of Palermo and of Guanajuato,
walls are decorated with upright
anymore.
with their flashlights to
But some cemeteries, particu-
Bella, with its relief-encrusted walls
toes, as
whose
—
stalactites
and walkways.
by miniature
Etruscan tombs excavated
Tomba
and
stairs
Latin countries, have
larly in
with
to tourists that
is
is
not extinct, but
it is
not to be found in gardens
above ground more than below. While the domi-
nant architectural tradition for half a century was the machine phase of the Bauhaus
style,
much
of the building that contradicted, dissented
from, or simply ignored the hyperrational Bauhaus aesthetic precisely
tended to have face,
a "grotto" look: the
the underground
mood,
in
curving
line,
the encrusted wall sur-
buildings as different as Antoni
Gaudi's Casa Mila and Parque Giiell (indeed most of Gaudf's work),
Kurt Schwitters's Merzbau (with
its
Nibelungen and Goethe grottoes),
Frederick Kiesler's "Endless House" (he designed a "Grotto for Meditation"), the
Saarinen's
Rudolf Steiner Goetheanum
TWA
terminal at
Kennedy
in
Airport.
Switzerland, and Eero
One
of the
more
flam-
— A boyant recent versions
is
Place for Fantasy
the design developed by John
the Hyatt Hotels. In the
first
141
Portman
for
of the hotels, in Atlanta, one goes
through an oddly small, unprepossessing entrance to receive the shock of unexpected height
in
an enclosed space. The Portman atrium
overdecorated, cluttered, and centered on water, usually a waterfall a deliberately coarse transposition of
some garden-grotto
Grottoes affirm the element of fantasy, of tecture
and
feeling.
Garden
full
grottoes
may
—
motifs.
of excess in archi-
frivolity,
be, in the sense projected in
garden history writing, obsolete. But one can predict an interminable ture for this kind of space, for
A
grotto
is
both
it is
a hiding place
der between the scary and the also a
a
permanent part of our
reality.
a
kind of ruin;
it is
on the bor-
the sublime and the decrepit.
And added
apprehensions embodied in the grotto
is
a specific
in their gardens.
It is
to the archaic fears
In the 1950s there was considerable pressure on
owners to build grottoes
fu-
permanent part of our imagination.
and
safe,
is
modern
all
and
scariness.
American house
They were
called
bomb
shelters.
[1983]
The Pleasure of the Image
AS
ELATED asl become roaming among
SATISFYING LY
the transfiguring masterpieces in the Mauritshuis collection,
still
need
minor
succumb
to
paintings: those that depict the interiors of churches.
sociate particularly with
enced
by some indisputably
to the spell exercised
pleasures these images offer, there
is first
of
Dutch painting
all
(I
Among the
a generic pleasure I as-
first
consciously experi-
before a skating scene by Brueghel) of falling forward into
it
a world.
And
I
.
.
.
that flicker of an out-of-body, into-the-picture sensation
I'm granted in the course of scrutinizing the renderings of these
large,
impersonal spaces populated with very small figures has proved, over
decades of museum-going, to be addictive. So, demagnetizing myself with difficulty
the Vermeers, in the
might
Nieuwe Kerk
petit maitre
for
I
some
drift off to, say,
in Delft,
who was
Silent
painted in 1651 by Gerard Houckgeest, a
an almost exact contemporary of Rembrandt's,
less individualizing pleasures.
The public space chosen two notions of elevated tional feeling
(it
is
one consecrated by
(it is
a
church) and na-
houses the tomb of the martyred founder of the House
The Tomb of William the which only part
for depiction here
feeling: religious feeling
of Orange). But the painting's
142
from the Rembrandts and
The Tomb of William the
is
title
Silent
visible,
is
supplies the pretext, not the subject.
dominated not by the monument, of
but by the strong verticals of the columns
The Pleasure of the Image and by the happy
monument
has
its
The
light.
subject
is
an architecture
place) and, to our incorrigibly
which the
(in
modern
143
eyes, a
way
of
presenting space. All renderings of the large, populated
by the
small,
the meticulously precise, invite this imagined entry.
which disclose
Of course,
savoring
the miniaturizing of a public space both deep and wide in a painting a far
more complex pleasure
ums over
than, say, daydreaming in historical muse-
tabletop models of the scenography of the past. Transcription
through miniaturization
in three
dimensions gives us
that of an inventory, completeness,
is
unexpected
plete with
house
as of a
detail
The
diorama.
—
as perspective),
as true of a
model
To a
start with, the
of the interior of the
same
earlier
painting
site,
now
is
point
of The
—there
is
site,
is
by
as
Tomh of William
the
are. (like
portraits
a wider- angle picture of
Kunsthalle, and
than the Mauritshuis picture. But this
records the
much
Houckgeest made other
Hamburg least
excludes as
it
Nieuwe Kerk, including
is
presumed
surely his
because of the features
photographic way of seeing. For it
which
visually appropriate (such
not just the view of something but
as viewed.
in the
account of the space, not
that
by what
And much of the pleasure comes from how bold its exclusions
photograph) something
the
delights
re-
railroad or a doll's
painting's surface gives us a view,
selects.
it
Silent
and which
whose aim
a thing
and which enchants by being
shaped by preexisting formal notions of the
what
is
it
most
to
be
original
shares with a
in addition to its illusionist
method
with considerable accuracy, from a real view-
the unconventionally tight framing, which brings the
base of the column looming in the center almost to the picture's bot-
tom
edge.
And
while the
main sources of light a dull bit of
in the
ally
version shows three windows, the
Mauritshuis painting are "off."
which
strikes the
columns comes from
picture's right edge. In contrast to the
a
window
panoramic view usu-
sought by painters documenting an architecture (or a landscape),
which takes
norm
is
in fnore
than could be seen by a single viewer, and whose
a space that appears comprehensive,
unabridged
self-contained, wall-to-wall), the space depicted here lit
We see only
high window, just below the arched top border of the
panel; the potent light
beyond the
Hamburg
so as to refuse visual closure.
The
is
(if
indoors,
one framed and
very nearness of Houckgeest 's
— SUSAN SONTAG
144
viewpoint
much
is
a
way of
larger space that continues
borders of the picture. This
photography (both ible,
what
logically
lies just
making the viewer aware
referring to,
still
is
beyond the space depicted within the
the
method
photography and
outside the visual
—of what we
the
of,
central to the aesthetics of
film): to
field, a
make what
constituent
—
is
not
vis-
dramatically,
see.
THE CLOSE POINT OF
V
I
E
w, which
is
the most immediately en-
gaging feature of Houckgeest's painting, produces an allied impression: of an unusual fullness of the space. Traditionally, church interiors are
rendered vastness,
empty, the better to achieve the impression of
as relatively
which was thought
pect. Architecture
to
be the church's most eloquent visual
was depicted
as framing, rather
than
filling,
as-
this
deep space, and the lighting ensured that structures looked plausibly three-dimensional; without dramatic lighting, the architectural details
tended to view
flatten
—not the
out.
light,
In Houckgeest's painting, the foreshortened
which
is
benign rather than dramatic
the three-dimensionality of the architecture.
By being
making the architecture so palpable, Houckgeest has that
seems redolent of inwardness, aura, emotion,
found
in paintings
admired of
all
the
—brings out
so close, and
forfeited the look
spirituality, as
it is
his
contemporary Pieter Jansz Saenredam, most
Dutch
painters of church interiors, or by an almost
by
equally admired architectural painter of the succeeding generation,
Emanuel de
Witte.
By the standard
ness of such paintings as
Rhenen
(165 5)
associated with the "poetic" empti-
Saenredam 's
and de Witte's
Interior of the Cunerakerk,
Interior of an Imaginary Catholic
Church
may seem
under-
(1668), also in the Mauritshuis, Houckgeest's painting
evocative, perversely
literal.
Saenredam 's achievement was
to
combine
the atmospherics of remoteness with accuracy of depiction, depiction
of a real church from a real viewpoint, though never from a near one the eccentric choice Houckgeest has
made
in
The Tomb of William the
Silent.
Masking
a portion of the real or
nominal subject by architectural
bulk, or interposing a screen or lattice or other grid-like barrier be-
tween viewer and subject,
is
a perennial strategy of
photographic fram-
The Pleasure of the Image ing,
and
it is
145
worth noting that Houckgeest, who has chosen an angle
good part of the sepulchre behind the column
for his view that leaves a
made
could have
in the center foreground,
his
framing even more
proto-photographic. For the next column to the right, the column that
looms
largest in the
Hamburg
version, should
be partly
still
the cropped composition of the Mauritshuis picture
from the same angle
— and would,
if it
were
—both
visible in
are painted
there, further block
our
view of the monument. Houckgeest has preferred to be inaccurate, and leave the right side of the picture's space
To
this space,
more
fully
more open.
than usual inhabited by
its
architectural
elements, are added a few inhabitants in the normal sense: eight
chunky, bundled-up people with covered heads, two of
whom
are chil-
dren; one animal; and an allegorical statue on a pedestal, the farthest
forward element of the partially obscured monument.
We
contemplate
the space Houckgeest has rendered, which includes, inside the space, these diminutive figures, ing. In
coming
an architecture, looking
to see or already in position for see-
at
an architecture. Giving the measure
of an architecture.
Although the people closer)
in
Houckgeest's painting are larger (we are
and more detailed than the
tiny staffage figures that classical
landscape painters added to their panoramic views, they function in a
comparable way, establishing the architecture's heroic scale,
human
figures also, almost inadvertently, create
dwarfed by the spaces they inhabit and to three-dimensional tions
seem most
are, usually,
scale.
By
setting
mood: they look
but few. In contrast
model worlds, whose miniaturized representa-
satisfying
when
a large
number
of tiny figures are de-
ployed on the landscape, architectural space as a subject of painting characteristically, if unrealistically,
space thronged with people painter, it
who, by putting
is
now
underpopulated. Indeed, a public a signature subject of the "naive"
in lots of tiny figures, appears to
were, a genre mistake.
is
What seems
be making,
as
professional in the depiction of
the interior of grandiose buildings or of outdoor space enclosed by buildings
is
thafcthe space,
sparsely populated. This
is
which always looks somewhat the involuntary pathos of
architecture that are not laden with obvious affect, like
William the
Silent. All
church
interiors,
even
stage-like,
many
this one,
be
portraits of
The Tomb of
become "meta-
146
SUSAN SONTAG
physical" interiors in de Chirico's sense; that sary absence of the this sense of
is,
they speak of a neces-
human. They cannot help but suggest
this pathos,
enigma.
THE PRESENCE OF PEOPLE, if just one person, makes this not only a space but a moment of stopped time. Of course, tableaux in which people are depicted being busy project
in the throes of
a different feeling
ing or gazing or explaining.
As
some ceremony or way of
from those
which they're
in
befits a church, the
mood
is
calm
rest-
—but
perhaps more than calm: becalmed, indolent, though not suggestive of introspection.
We
from the visions of alienation relished by the
are far
mid-eighteenth century,
when
sublimity was identified with the decay
of the grandiose architecture of the past, and staffage was turned into a
among
population of spindly dejected figures stationed in reverie. tus,
The
not just a
the ruins, lost
full-bodied figures in Houckgeest's painting have a stasize:
Where
they are citizens, townspeople.
they are
is
where they belong. Public space, whether rendered in two dimensions or three, ally
shown being used
in a variety of representative or stereotypically
contrasting ways. In the
Dutch paintings of church
the church
it
is
often, as
Nieuwe Kerk we
are
is
shown
backs to
here, wholly secular.
us, the viewers,
but their
two men on the
seems to be
The people
the
left,
clear.
hand
they have
The
father in
head
raised, his
in a posture of explaining.
to speak to his
companion,
the child with the dog seem to be just loitering.
is
seen
full face)
The and
This most un-Hebraic
of Christianity does not require the continual re-performing of
the separateness of the sacred; space designed for devoutness
open
in the
far side of the barrier enclosing the sepulchre (one of
whom, having turned
mode
at
mood seems
the family group in the foreground with one partly turned to his wife,
interiors, the use of
are spectators, visitors, not worshippers.
Except for the pair of men entering the picture their
usu-
is
to the irreverent accents
Sacred space that mesticated,
made
is
tender
and mixtures of
daily
fully
life.
mildly profaned, grandiose space that
— children and dogs
is
is
do-
(often a child paired with
The Pleasure of the Image a dog) are characteristic presences in the teriors:
emblems of
Compare
the modest
Dutch paintings of church
in-
amid the marmoreal splendors.
creatureliness
number
147
emblems Houckgeest
of such
(one dog, two children), having chosen to treat the
settles for
close range,
site at
with the variety offered in a conventional wide-angle view, such as de Witte's Interior of the
dogs, one of children,
them urinating
one an infant
less regular
presence
of small children.
—
at
at its
As
if
he, too,
and two
left,
mother's breast. Graffiti are a related
would
invariably
on the warm, whitish column
human
which has four
the base of the pillar on the
worn by
all six
be read
were an
is
if
as the trace
Houck-
in the center
a stick
is
males in the painting), the
drawn by
figure as
scrawled in the same red chalk or ink, the date.
(1659),
legible of the drawings in red that
with a hat (the same hat
stereotype of the
Amsterdam
Kerk,
they, too,
The most
geest has recorded
man
Oude
a child.
the painter's
And
below,
monogram and
artless vandal.
Devising ingenious locations for the signature or
monogram
strong Northern tradition, of which Diirer was a master, and the
is
a
Dutch
painters of church interiors play a witty variant of the game.
In
Saenredam's Interior of the Cunerakerk, Rhenen, the painter's name, the
name
of the church, and the date of the painting are to be deci-
phered, foreground center, as the inscription incised on the tombstone set in the floor.
this
A
And
in several other
church interiors Saenredam inserts
information on a column on which there are some crude drawings.
brilliant
example
is
the Interior of the Mariakerk, Utrecht (1641), in
the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, where Saenredam's inscription (name
of church, date of painting, painter's name) appears on a pillar right in three colors, as
if
these were graffiti
hands, along with several drawings of
human
made by
at far
three different
figures in the
same three
inks or chalks. Saenredam's Interior of the Buurkerk, Utrecht (1644), in
the National Gallery in London, ing before the pillar
on the
is
notable because he shows us, stand-
far right
which has an amusing drawing
in
red of four figures astride a horse (below which, in another color,
is
who
is
Saenredam's
artfully printed signature), a child,
starting another drawing. (Beside
dog.)
One
him
is
arm
raised,
a seated child playing
with a
imagines him, far from being engaged in a surreptitious de-
— SUSAN SONTAG
148
embarking on
facing,
mood
a
happy exercise of immature prowess,
in the
of the grinning child displaying his stick-figure drawing in a
painting done around
1
520, Portrait
Francesco Caroto, in the the other rare,
Museo
of a Boy with Drawing by Giovanni
geest's graffiti-plus-signature in
then, original. But
it is
unusual because of
It is just a
—one of Houck-
The Tomb of William the
the picture, not on a pillar to the side fo rmativeness.
Verona
children's art.
del Castelvecchio in
premodern representations of
—
its
and
placement
its
Silent
not,
— the center of
simplicity,
its
monogram, barely
self-effacing
is
lack of in-
distinguish-
able from the child's drawings.
THE GRAFFITI HOUCKGEEST
has put on the central column
nify childishness but are pieces of visual wit.
Two
scribed.
notions of presence.
the column; the painter has
be depicted
that can only
A
Two spaces are being demade an inscription on
child has
drawn on the panel
as
one space,
—two
physically.
spaces, logically,
And two
temporal
relations of painter to church: as a vandalizing presence in the
anterior to the painting;
church who,
and
as
sig-
church
the faithful documentarist of the
after recording the architecture as
is,
signs the
document.
Hindsight instructs us that the ironic paralleling of the signature of a painter
with the scribbling of a child on a public surface
a very rich conceit,
which was
to
have
a
and has perhaps never been so generative could not begin to happen as long as tively
—
as
graffiti
word
this
were defined only priva-
1
reality.
Not
as
until the
discovered to be "interesting"
taste as Grandville
modern
taste
and Baudelaire.
—by such A
pio-
self-portrait
844 showing himself drawing alongside a small child
a graffiti-covered wall
paralleling of
graffiti
that signals the advent of
modern
Grandville did in
on
But
immature, embryonic, unskilled. Graffiti have to be seen
mid-nineteenth century were the key
potentially
as in recent decades.
an assertion of something, a criticism of public
neers of
is
long career in the visual arts
two kinds of
makes
a far bigger point than Houckgeest's
inscription,
which are here only
traces (their
perpetrators are absent).
Houckgeest's painting describes
a
world
in
which the abstract
The Pleasure of the Image order of the State, of collective
assumed, so successful, that
(represented by gigantic space)
life
creaturely.
so
ele-
Pub-
order can be relaxed, can even be mildly defaced. The sacred and
solemn can tolerate
Nieuwe Kerk
any more than the
less centrally
ruined by the dog's peeing on
are an element of
The imposing main column
a bit of profaning.
his portrait of the
is
is
can be played with, by miniature
it
ments that represent the incursion of the personal, the lic
149
charm
not really damaged by the
is
in
graffiti,
located column in de Witte's painting Reality
it.
sturdy, not fragile. Graffiti
is
environment, with not
in the majestic visual
even the slightest foretaste of the menace carried by the tide of indecipherable signatures of mutinous adolescents which has washed over
and bitten into the facades of monuments and the surfaces of public vehicles in the city yes,
but most of
too.
The
graffiti
all
where
I live
—
graffiti as
an assertion of disrespect,
simply an assertion: the powerless saying, I'm here,
recorded in the Dutch paintings of church interiors are
mute; they do not express anything, other than their endearing lack of
umn
skill
speak, intransitive.
Even
not directed
is
that red
"GH"
naivete, the
The drawing on
of their perpetrators.
Houckgeest's painting
in
own
at
anyone;
it
the colis,
seems barely directed
so to
at any-
one.
What
this painting
shows
cord, without aggression.
is
Church
church interior church was
a
interiors are the opposite of ruins,
says,
This
is
The
is
be most eloquently
ruin says, This
our present.
(It is
Now—whether
is
our
past.
lo-
The
because the beauty of the
the churches have survived in-
has the Nieuwe Kerk in Delft, or not
This
to
matter of local pride that these paintings were commis-
sioned, bought, hung.)
says,
before, innocent of, the inven-
where the sublimity of space was
cated in the following century.
tact, as
a friendly space, a space without dis-
The grandiose
tion of melancholy space.
which
is
our
past.
Still,
choly that are the great
—the church
interior also
even installed in those temples of melan-
museums
of
Old Master
paintings like the
Mauritshuis, they do not lend themselves to elegiac reverie. Attached as I
am
to the melancholy registers of space, as
tural portraits
Roman
ruins,
done and
in
found
in the architec-
in Italy in the eighteenth century, particularly of
images of great natural ruins (volcanoes) and of
150
SUSAN SONTAG
space as labyrinth (grottoes),
I
also crave the relief offered
by these
ro-
bust, unsoulful renderings in miniature of grandiose public space that
were painted
a century earlier in
Holland.
Who
sure in the thought of a world in which trespass tion
is
not an ideal, and nostalgia
is
could is
fail
to take plea-
not a threat, perfec-
not a compulsion? [1987]
About Hodgkin
DEVOLVING NOW, up
a
when pressed have
much
"program."
And,
to talk about their art. It appears unseemly, or naive, to
to say about the pictures or to attach to
No more
artists
theories
as statements wither
anything in the
a
the modernist tasks and liberties have stirred
canny diffidence among painters of the largest accomplishment
expounding an
ideal
them any
way
explicit
of painting.
and with them counterstatements, hardly
way of provocation,
either.
Decorum
sound somewhat trapped when being drawn
out,
suggests that
and venturing
few cagey glimpses of intention. Complementing that venerable
fortress of
modernist
taste,
doubt of modernism under the thoughtful
—
as distinct
son to be wary, anxious,
the white wall of the gallery, siege, the
from the
EARLIER IN THE CENTURY,
who might
to
words by paying
And
—may have good
rea-
words).
it
was the most responsive writers
begin their setting of the encounter with a
body of pictures
a final re-
white mind of the painter.
inarticulate
at a loss (for
is
much admired
tribute to painting as a
form of the
unsayable.
151
SUSAN SONTAG
152
As Paul Valery wrote
"One must
Corot"):
From enact,
1932
(it's
the
sentence of "About
first
always apologize for talking about painting."
summoning
the
in
of each art to what
means only could
its
follows that nothing can be paraphrased or transposed into
it
another medium. Painting, like music and dance, does not signify in the verbal sense; what you see
not leave us mute,
is
of
little
is
what you
"A work
get.
value" (Valery again).
of
art, if it
Of course, we
does don't
stay mute.
But there
is
be said now,
comes
a further incentive to
as the
aim and
be self-conscious about what can
justification of art after
precisely to generate talk
— about what
is
not
modernism
art.
A
be-
mighty
re-
pudiation of the idea of art pursued out of reverence for art has
overwhelmed art-making and
critical
discourse in the
last
decade.
It
has centered on the equating of aesthetic purposes, and their unforgivingly "high" standards, with illegitimate or indefensible forms of social privilege.
For those whose principal
interest
is
neither to
come
clean
about adventures in selfhood nor to speak on behalf of fervent communities but rather to perpetuate the old, semi-opaque continuities of admiring, emulating, and surpassing, prudence
may
suggest saying less
rather than more.
THE ATTACK ON ART
—
for being, just, art
abetted by modernism's peculiar, reductive
omy
of
erarchy
art,
discriminating
was inexorably
among
of
art.
been
affirming the auton-
Shorn of the support of received ways of
subjects
subjectivized;
and destinations, the nature of pictures
and archly plebeianized.
There are two leading assertions
plained."
to have
which derived much of its energy by denying the idea of hi-
among kinds
the painter.
way of
—has
The
The
in this
reduced
field
of saying for
painter asserts that the pictures don't need to be "ex-
painter explains that the pictures should, properly, be
regarded as "things."
About Hodgkin
there's one just ahead ...or nearby
And
perhaps not in the obvious place, such
room;
lector's living
it
may be on
153
... or over there
museum
as a
.
.
.
or the col-
the wall of a restaurant or a hotel
lobby.
But wherever we see which one. But
it,
we know what
we know, even from
it
is.
far across the
In contrast to the painting of earlier eras, this ing aspects of the experience
Each
style,
a pictorial
of which each
language of
that artist's language,
work
maximum is
—of
room, who did
one of the
A
regulat-
art in this century.
else's.
—
a sig-
style is equivalent to
what declares
distinctiveness:
it.
itself as
To use again and again the
it
might be
in a writer. Repetitiveness
Like purity. Like strength.
OBSERVATION
A FIRST
an example.
know
not deemed a failure of imagination in a
painter (or choreographer), as like intensity.
is
and nobody
same gestures and forms
seems
making
is
not
responsible for creating his or her unique "vision"
artist is
nature
—and
We may
about
Howard Hodgkin work: 's
the ex-
which everything by Hodgkin looks so unmistakably by him.
tent to
That the pictures are done on gularity
—and
dards, they
wood seems
their "thingness." Usually
to heighten their rectan-
modest
in size
by current
stan-
seem boxy, blunt, even heavy sometimes because of the
proportions of frame to interior of the picture, with something like the form,
which
if
not the scale, of a window, displaying a ballet of
either are enclosed within thickly
plump shapes
emphatic brush strokes that
frame (or shield) or are painted out to the edge of the raised frame.
The
pictures are
packed with cunning design and
(Hodgkin 's green blue.)
is
as excruciating as
Having renounced
Hodgkin has
fielded the
thick, luscious color.
de Kooning's pink and Tiepolo's
painting's other primary resource, drawing,
most inventive, sensuously
repertory of any contemporary painter
—
as
if,
in taking
affecting color
up the ancient
SUSAN SONTAG
154
quarrel between disegno and colore, he had wanted to give colore
most sumptuous exclusive
victory.
"my PICTURES TEND to hung too picture
make
ideally, a
its
case
to exclude
at
if,
maximum
seduction.
the distance from which
some adjacent
to solve the problem,
the picture's charms
sheer color-bliss
destroy each other
when
they are
Hodgkin has remarked. No wonder. Each
closely together,"
is,
its
solicitations.
Harder it is
for the picture to
best seen, one
is
unable
But the viewer may be tempted
abandoning the proper distance from which
may be
all
appreciated to zero in for immersion in
—what Hodgkin
's
on
pictures can always be counted
to provide.
TOO CLOSE
A
VIEW
of the picture will not only yield a
round of voluptuous sensation
(say,
the streaks of salmon-pink
beneath what reads ten feet away
ible
mind
the viewer of what
is
new
now vis-
as cobalt blue). It will also re-
written beside or below:
its title.
Leaves, Interior with Figures, After Dinner, The Terrace, Delhi,
Venice/Shadows, Clean Sheets,
man, After Corot
.
.
.
familiar subjects: the
Red Bermudas,
Mr. and Mrs. James Kirk-
titles like
these indicate a pleasingly large range of
still life,
the plein-air scene, the intimate interior,
the portrait, the art history homage.
Sometimes the
title
corresponds to something that can be
dis-
cerned.
More traits
—
often,
that
two names,
is,
it
doesn't. This
whose
most obviously true of the porare someone's
name; usually
(The names, those of friends and
collectors, will
the pictures
a couple.
is
titles
be unfamiliar to viewers.)
Some
We
titles
that are phrases, such as Like an
Open Book, Haven't
Met?, Counting the Days, seem to be drawn from the history of a
love titles
life.
In Central Park, Egypt,
evoke
a very specific
On
the Riviera, Venice Evening
world, the world
known through
—many
tours of
— About Hodgkin
(We hear about
seeing and savoring.
submerged
hint at a
—
hear
body on
a bed.
Hodgkin 's
But
signals,
much
there's as
some of the
has the
from
an impulse to play
pictures. Thus,
title
to
form of
down
one of the
a
as to re-
largest of
Snapshot. While offering a shrewd spread of
Coming Up from
the diaristically offhand, like
and Cafeteria
Grand Palais,
at the
and Love
Jealousy,
titles
recent pictures, and one of the most glorious and emotion-
ally affecting,
the Beach
to the bluntly plaintive, like Passion,
Letter, the majority of the titles are casually
nomina-
or slightly ironic, which makes them nicely at variance with the
proud exuberance of
pictures'
Of course, is
Some
quite a lot of meals.)
which we can be sure we're not going
like the glimpses, in several of the pictures, of the
veal the charge of
tive
story,
155
buoyant, ecstatic palette.
feeling, their
the fact that a person or place
is
named does not mean
it
depicted.
In the Bay of Naples, Still Life in a Restaurant, In a
Hot Country
—
the "in" in a fair
number of
that the artist has
been "in" these places, on these fortunate holidays.
(We
don't expect a
And
that,
itself is a
which
is
Hodgkin
titles carries a
title
that tells us
whether the space named kind of
interior.
One
is
titles
are "in" a dungeon.)
outdoors or indoors, the picture
looks into the picture, to something
near Venice
— confirm the suggestiveness of — Egyptian Night and House
Lovers, for instance
certain enlacing shapes.
—succeed
in
A
few
titles
like
making the pictures seem representational
the conventional sense. But, exception as Venetian Glass,
Hodgkin
world, an impression. (An emotion of
we
It signifies
both disclosed and hidden.
Some
mances
dual meaning.
Hodgkin 's
is
made
is
for such bravura perfor-
not offering the look of the
not an impression.) Hardly any
paintings harbor mimetically distinct shapes, and only a
few have shapes which would seem even clue supplied posite of the
in
by the
title.
The
allusively distinct
one associated with Impressionism:
freshness of the
first
fleeting
without the
subjectivism of these pictures
moment
that
it
the op-
to preserve the visual
something
aims to reinvent the sight of something after
is
is
seen.
Hodgkin
has been seen,
has acquired the heavy trappings of inner necessity.
when
it
SUSAN SONTAG
156
8
OPERATING ON
BORDER
A
much
very
own
of his
between figuration and abstraction, Hodgkin has made for regarding his
choreography of spots,
wavy bands
lozenges, arrows, and
devising
a sturdy case
stripes, discs, arcs, swaths,
as always representational.
am a representational painter, but not a painter of appearances" how he puts it. "I paint representational pictures of emotional situa"I
is
Note
tions/'
tions";
he
is
that
Hodgkin
"emotional situations," not "emo-
says
not licensing the attempt to read a specific emotion from a
given picture, as
if
that
Hodgkin 's formula
were what the picture was "about." is
as elegantly
withholding as
it
is
incisive
and
alert.
Whose
emotional situations? The
Obviously,
titles
David Hockney or Dinner
like After Visiting
Palazzo Alhrizzi or Indian Sky
would seem
has to assume that, in this sense,
graphical, though only
them
be deceptions
to
had never met David Hockney, had never
painter
One
artist's?
some of the
are self- referential in the
the emotional state of the earnest,
titles
narrow
artist.
all
the
visited Italy or India.
the pictures are autobio-
make
sense.
And
if
in
this explicit. Still,
What's on display
few of is
not
the pictures offer the most
emphatic tribute to the world outside,
its
treasurable objects
and beauties and opportunities. Indeed, the sublimity of the color
Hodgkin 's itude
—
Two
tents.
pictures can be thought of
for the
passions which
collecting, are is
world that
resists
we
as, first
of
all,
in
expressive of grat-
and survives the ego and
its
discon-
associate with this painter, traveling
and
both expressions of ardent, deferential feeling for what
not oneself.
SO called.
past,
MANY OF To
sites
the pictures refer to "abroad," as
it
used to be
of dalliance already consecrated by great painters of the
which one never
tires
of revisiting: India,
Egypt. Seasons in their foreign plumage:
fruit,
Italy,
palm
France, Morocco, trees, a searingly
About Hodgkm colored
And home
sky.
Bed in
Venice, not in
There
is
consumed on
pleasures
bed
in
London; the painter
lovemaking and dining and looking
gazing out over water.
The
sites
foreign premises. (In is
not traveling alone.)
and shopping and
at art
bespeak an avid
157
eye,
and
a taste for the
domesticated; gardens and terraces, not forests and mountains. evocation of sensuous, congenial tourism
promenades, cherished
art,
memorable
—dinner —boldly
The
parties, nocturnal
visits
affirms the idea
of pleasure.
But the
intimate another relation to pleasure, with their
titles also
naming of weather and seasons and times of weather cited,
is
it's
season
rain; the
usually sunset
is
—which,
story in the daily existence of
day.
invariably autumn;
The most common if
day
a time of
is
apart from being the biggest color
most people, has
a large place in the the-
saurus of melancholy. All those titles with
"goodbye
on
all
to
.
.
.
pleasures
,"
"sunset,"
"autumn," "rain," "after
"the last time ..." suggest the pensive
when
.
.
shadow
.
,"
cast
they are framed, theatricalized even, as acts of
memory.
Hodgkin may
often be en voyage, but not as a beholder (the Im-
pressionist project). In place of a beholder, there pursuits, that of the traveler
and
is
a
rememberer. Both
that of the collector, are steeped in
elegiac feeling.
10
AFTER THE SHOP HAD CLOSED, The
When Did We Go titles
to
Last Time I
Morocco?, Goodbye to the Bay of Naples
focus on time ("after"), on the awareness of
Art
made
Saw .
.
.
Paris,
many
finalities.
out of a sense of difference, a sense of triumph, a sense of
regret. If there are so
and sensations
many
pictures
which
that Venice inspires,
it is
offer
homage
because that
to the feelings
city is
now,
as
it
could never ha\fe been for Turner, a quintessential evoker of the senti-
ment of loss.
SUSAN SONTAG
158
11
NOT THAT
it's
the exotic, or the southern,
required to
is
re-
lease the impulse of this "northern" sensibility to paint.
But
A
it
may be
trip
is
You need home,
that this painter needs to travel.
an intensifies license to the avid eye (and other senses).
And
the separation from home.
to consider
then you need the return
what you have stored up.
In principle, the painter could
make
pictures out of everything he
has lived through and done and seen. This creates an unbearably acute pressure to paint, and an equally acute feeling of anxiety. Travel, the impression that
used
as a filter
and goad.
It
one has ventured outside
oneself, can
organizes the desire to paint.
It
gives
be
it
a
rhythm, and the right kind of delay. It is
important not to see too much. (And there
duce.) Hence,
doesn't
doesn't sketch, doesn't take photographs,
do anything obvious
terior or a
sight of
Hodgkin
view or
a face
nothing to repro-
is
to
commit
—instead
something has burrowed
memory
to
what
trusting
itself
the scene or an in-
happen when the
will
deep down
memory, when
in
it
has accumulated emotional and pictorial gravity.
A way of feeling is What
is
a
way of
worth painting
is
seeing.
what remains
memory. And what survives the
test
in,
and
is
transformed by,
of long-term deliberation and
countless acts of re-vision. Pictures result from the accretion of decisions (or layers, or brush strokes);
some
are
worked on
many
for years, to
find the exact thickness of a feeling.
12
LOOKING CLOSELY
at
what the swipes and plunges of Hodg-
kin 's brush have deposited on a surface
is
to feel, sometimes, that
has divined the brush's itinerary, starting from the
first,
one
generative
Hodgkin 's
pictures read like
a vocabulary of signals for the circulation, collision,
and rerouting of
surge of feelings.
desire.
The
distinctive shapes in
About Hodgkin Sometimes
it
feels as if the flooding or
onto the frame. Sometimes thickened, doubled, as
if
is
it
the frame that has
to contain
Love Letter
spilled over
moved
inward,
what cannot be contained. (The
verticals of Snapshot, like the sides of a
thick oval frame of
brimming has
159
proscenium stage or
fat
a gate; the
crowds the heart of what
that squeezes,
pulsing in the center.)
lies
Framing hems
And
keeps one from
in,
falling off the
edge of the world.
framing gives permission to emote.
makes possible the ambitiousness of Hodgkin 's work, and
It
its
cunningly judged compactness of statement. Hodgkin has under-
tight,
stood that
the pictures are dense enough, they can go in two direc-
if
doing justice to intimate textures as well
tions,
as to
emotions of
a large
expressiveness. (Vuillard an d opera, so to speak.)
13
VENICE: want
ONCE, AGAIN.
to see Venice again,
Imagining the imagined.
and you have seen
it
many times,
When
rising out of
the sea, in winter perhaps, semi-deserted, what you appreciate will
not have changed
Or you
is
that
it
all.
stand at the railing of the boat going up the Nile, a
day's journey
are
at
you
from Luxor, and
no words you
sunset. You're just looking.
are impelled to write
or take a photograph.
and you look
it's
again,
You
look,
and you
down; you don't make
and sometimes your eyes
feel saturated,
There
a sketch
feel tired,
and happy, and
terribly
anxious.
There
is
a price to
be paid for stubbornly continuing to make love
with one's eyes to these famous tourist- weary old places. For not letting go: of ruined grandeur, of the imperative of bliss.
work on behalf that this
is
of, in
praise of, beauty.
It's
For continuing to
not that one hasn't noticed
an activity which people rather condescend to now.
Indeed, one might spend a lifetime apologizing for having found so
many ways
of Seceding to ecstasy.
SUSAN SONTAG
160
M THE IDEA each picture. so
much
IS
It's
feeling.
to put as
much
as if the pictures
As
if
need
their
broad border to contain
they need to be painted on something hard,
wood, since they embody such
The
as possible, of color, of feeling, in
a large sense of vulnerability.
sense of vulnerability has not diminished.
Nor
has the sense of
gratitude: for the privilege of feeling, the privilege of voluptuousness,
the privilege of
knowing more
rather than
less.
vehemence and the lack of irony of Hodgkin's
them
as if painting
could
still
be
There
is
pictures.
heroism
He
in the
labors over
a vehicle of self-transcendence.
In such matters, with such purposes, the race
is
to the slow. x [
995]
A
AVAILABLE dancers
Lexicon for Available Light
1983. Fifty-five-minute work for eleven
LIGHT.
(five
women and
seum of Contemporary
Art,
large-scale productions.
six
men) commissioned by the Mu-
Los Angeles: the third of Lucinda Childs's
Music by John Adams,
set
by Frank Gehry,
costumes by Ronaldus Shamask, lighting by Beverly Emmons.
beauty. The its
visionary authority of Childs's
lack of rhetoric.
Her
strict
work
resides, in part, in
avoidance of cliche, and of anything that
The
would make the work
disjunctive, fragmented.
self-mockery, flirtation
with the audience, cult of personality. The
taste for the exhibitionistic:
able "effects." Beauty
choreography.
movement
as, first
of
all,
an
refusal of
humor, dis-
calling attention to itself, isolat-
of refusal.
art
Childs started by defining herself as a "modern"
choreographer; therefore, alienated from "tradition." (Two decades ago,
it
tithesis
could
still
seem plausible
and subversion of
graphing dances, in 1968,
movement vocabulary where
—
to regard
classical dance.) it
modern dance
When
she did start choreo-
was with the predilection
relatively
simple,
in the intricate design of spatial
as the an-
seeking
for keeping the
complexity
else-
forms and of timing. But in
the music-based works choreographed since 1979, which propose a
much more complex movement
vocabulary, Childs has broken radi-
16
SUSAN SONTAG
162
cally
with the anti-ballet aesthetic of the other ex- or neo-Duchampian
choreographers with
whom
Of
she has been grouped.
all
the adepts of
modern among contemporary choreographers, she has
the rigorously
the subtlest and most fastidious relation to classical dance. If her use of
portions of the ballet idiom
less easily
is
ningham's and Twyla Tharp's, letic
movements and
because Childs does not feed bal-
is
it
positions
recognizable than Merce Cun-
an
into
transforms and reinterprets them. In
mix but wholly
eclectic
this, as in
other matters, she
is
adamantly anti-collage. Thus the choreography of Available Light was not conceived
costumes but to these
—
first
and then
solicited,
illustrated
by the music, the
presupposed, and worked out in
to the two-level stage devised
and the
set,
strict relation
by Gehry, the multi-layered
music of Adams, the three-color constructivist scheme (black, red, white) of Shamask's costumes.
complexity. Cunningham dancing
what
is
it is.
delicate
in 1952:
"For me,
a spiritual exercise in physical form,
And
I
do not believe
rhythms and
it is
and
that
what
seen
is
is
is
The
"
possible to be 'too simple.'
intricate configurations
ham's work, the way attention
seems enough that
it
and tempi of Cunning-
commanded through
simple,
a
unadorned, unexplained, often decentered presence, offered
a
new
standard of the complex.
Cunningham, merce. tween 1959 and
1963,
Childs,
who
studied with
Cunningham
be-
assumes Cunningham's notion that dance should
not express something else (an emotion, a
story,
an interior landscape)
but not Cunningham's method, which
make
the elements of dance
self-contained,
autonomous, even
in their look). "I didn't like it,"
ment meant
is
to
aleatoric in their
mix (and sometimes
Cunningham once
said, "that a
something." This liberating stance has
move-
been associated
with a large element of parody in Cunningham's idiom: post-Graham
movements
Graham
(the
Cunningham curved back
is
an ironic
comment on
contraction) and laterally tilted ballet positions.
eclectic aesthetic,
much
irony.
Out
(Cunningham's choreography
is
the
of this
an
art
of
disjunction and therefore ultimately comic.) Childs by temperament unifies;
her aesthetic refuses the eclectic, the disjunctive
—
it
never
A
Lexicon for Available Light
quotes.
Though
work
virtually free of irony. Its tone
is
playfulness
Cunningham
bracing the
163
one of her chief standards of grace, her
is
austere but never cool.
is
Em-
position (the refusal of plot, of "meaning"),
Childs has drawn other consequences from
she has dropped the
it;
jokes, the kidding around, the wistful lyricism,
and reached for the
sublime.
dance.
1979.
The
of the large-scale productions, a hundred-
first
minute work, for the company of nine. Music by Philip Glass, lighting
by Beverly Emmons, and
a film
by Sol LeWitt of portions of three of
"Dance
the five sections ("Dance #1,"
#3,"
and "Dance
#4").
Choreog-
Cunningham and Pina Bausch have made works
raphers as different as
TV
with an accompanying, simultaneous image-record, displayed on a
monitor placed on the use, the projection of
of the stage,
stage; in contrast to this additive,
LeWitt 's
a true setting
is
The synchronized ongoing flat
(the scrim /screen)
vides a double jection),
reality,
a transparent scrim at the front
literal
transfiguration of the dance.
and three-dimensional
both dance and
its
(the stage)
split-screen
and
same
in close-up, LeWitt's film tracks the level,
and multiple images. Or
series of
still
shots)
it
which the
sometimes from above
solo,
when
live
dancer passes through.
"Dance
seem disembodied,
spectacle
becomes
Or
#4," Childs's
Childs appears both in large mask-like close-up on
a friendly, intermittent ghost that
scrim,
—using
immobilizes them, in a freeze-
the scrim and as a small immobile figure in white on the stage. is
pro-
shadow (documentation, pro-
waits with the dancer, as in the beginning of
second
— and
both intimacy and distance. Recording the dancers from
dancers, sometimes on the
it
and
on
of film and dance creates a double space
different angles, in long shot
frame (or
film,
fragmenting
too:
The
film
makes the dancers, seen behind the
each seems the ghost of the other. The
authentically polyvalent, though the film
subordinate to the dance. "Dance #2," Childs's
first solo,
is
finally
and the con-
cluding "Dance #5" proceed without the film ghost.
diagonal. A
signature element in Childs's choreography: a principle
of avidity, about space. Dancers often go into low plie arabesque, with the
arm continuing the diagonal
—the longest
line that the
body can
SUSAN SONTAG
164
make.
And
they often
move on
the diagonal
—the longest distance one
can traverse on a stage without changing direction. Childs's adventures with the diagonal have their apotheosis in Relative Calm, two of four sections being choreographed entirely on the diagonal. In the section, the
whole company dances back and forth on
from upstage
right
to
downstage
in phrases of different lengths,
opposite diagonal
.
.
.
And moving
tensification, as in the finale of
parallel paths
Childs dances for seventeen
punctuated by turns, on the
to the diagonal often
Or
in Available Light: Childs's arrival
slow progress downstage dancers, four
on each
doubling. A
left
means an
in-
"Dance #i" of Dance, when suddenly
four pairs of dancers dash again and again from upstage stage right.
first
for twenty-three increasingly
left
blissful minutes; in the third, solo section,
minutes
its
left
to
down-
upstage right and
through a corridor formed by eight
side.
recurrent structure in Childs
former into two versions, the action into two
s
work: splitting the per-
levels,
which proceed
si-
multaneously. For example, in an early piece, Street Dance (1964), Childs's voice, taped, loft,
while she was
tions that she
was with the audience assembled
down on
in a sixth-floor
the street, being seen performing the ac-
was heard describing. Doubling
in the sense of several
dancers performing the same movements on different paths became, starting with Untitled Trio (1968), the
extended subject of the works
she created for small ensembles in the 1970s. Transverse Exchanges and
Radial Courses (both 1976) elaborate, delicately and strenuously, on the counterpoint of dancers who, using the same steps or families of movements, go in and out of sync with each other through changes of direction,
and
Having
relation to the floor.
same rhythmic thing above the other
—
side
by
side,
one
gait,
several people doing the
in front of another, or
one
—has always been part of choreographing ensembles,
military, ceremonial,
principle of artifice
and
balletic.
—of form
Indeed, doubling
itself.
Childs's
is
the most basic
work concentrates on
the
implications of doubling as a formal principle and as the basis of
choreographic syntax: the geometrical, or diagrammatic, idealization of
movement. Her recent
large works, created since 1979, allow for a
A more complex decor ities
is
165
theme of doubling. The adding of
orchestration of the
never merely decorative but functions to create richer possibil-
made
of doubling. Thus, the film that LeWitt
Dance
creates a perfectly synchronized
ample, the film,
Lexicon for Available Light
split
never
less
double
set
decor for
as the
of dancers. For ex-
screen allows the audience to see the dancers in the
than
on
life-size,
top; the live dancers (behind the
scrim) on the bottom. What LeWitt supplied
for
Dance with
a film,
Frank Gehry supplies for Available Light with an architecture. In Available Light, the stage variations
itself
become
has
two-level, allowing other
on the theme of doubling. Instead of traveling ghosts, there
are live trackers:
one
to three dancers are upstairs echoing, playing off,
providing counterpoint to what the dancers are unfolding below.
einstein on the beach. 1976. The "opera," conceived and directed
by Robert Wilson, with music by Philip Glass; Childs was performer and collaborated on the
and touring
that
Her
opens Act
work and
a
former and to
music
The
year she spent preparing
on the Beach (Avignon, Venice, Belgrade, Brus-
New
Hamburg, Rotterdam, Amsterdam,
sels, Paris,
ing point.
in Einstein
text.
thirty-five-minute solo, constructed I,
Scene
a principal
I
was
a culmination of the
bridge to the third. as choreographer),
Her
it
longest
was the
work
first
York) was a turn-
on three diagonals, second phase of her so far (both as per-
time she choreographed
—and the experience encouraged her
to undertake the long
work, for which Glass agreed to furnish the score, eventually called Dance.
emotion. The
leading notion of the great
from Duncan
Graham and Horton, was
Though
to
dance-as-ritual looked
more
modern dance to return
pioneers,
dance to
abstract than ballet, actually such
dances were heavy with descriptive intentions based, above ideas about the primitive, the authentic, both in ing.
ritual.
movement and
all,
on
in feel-
Wigman created her "absolute" dances, performed in and with a minimum of theatrical support, the better to render
Thus, Mary
silence
extremely emotional "inner states." Childs's turn
(in
1968) to dance
without props or music or words was an absolute conception of dance,
SUSAN SONTAG
166
for
it
did not claim to express anything interior. For Childs, as for Cun-
ningham,
all
notions of dance as ritual are alien; she was drawn to
using game-like forms of ensemble movement, in which the idea of
wardness
is
The view
irrelevant.
that
in-
dance should not express emotion
does not, of course, mean to be against emotion. Valery defined the
poem
as a
machine made of words whose function
tinctively poetic feeling:
of creating
tions
—
to create a dis-
does not "express" emotion,
method
a
it is
it.
formations. metrically,
it
is
Childs tends to organize choreographic patterns sym-
movement
in twos,
and
contrapuntally.
more than
their multiples,
Though Childs most
The dancers move in trios
often deploys dancers in pairs, this
and is
forma-
in
quintets.
the smallest
formation and has nothing to do with partnering in the traditional sense: neither dancer
is
the consort of the other, one does not assist or
accompany or accommodate fore equal.
The two dancers
another.
They
are doing the
tence of a pair doubles the
and there-
are duplicates,
same movements: the
movement image. There
exis-
are "delicate
invasions" (Childs's phrase) of one group by another, each keeping
group contour,
as in the traveling
section of Relative Calm.
its
diamond formations of the fourth
Men and women
perform the same move-
ments (thus shaving off the gender-specific extremes of movement vocabulary, such as very high jumps),
wear the same or
virtually identical
costumes. All plugged into the same sound, the dancers
They
paths, inexorably, to a steady underlying pulse.
perilous off-balance positions, such as
vors asymmetrical formations.)
ningham dance has isolation
its
The
Cunningham
company every dancer
Childs's work, as each element of the spectacle
corps de ballet
is
(He
also fa-
Cun-
also applies to the
is,
is
can be, a
strictly
star.
In
coordinated
each dancer: she choreographs for the glorified
—they become the
in polyattentiveness;
favors.
up
can be apprehended in
from the other elements of the spectacle
with every other, so
rarely take
rule that each element in a
own autonomy and
dancers. In Cunningham's
move on
more
star.
Childs's dances are not exercises
generally, they are not
ceived as a tool for perception.
examples of
Her choreography demands
art
con-
a concen-
A trated all-over attention;
is
it
Lexicon for Available Light
cumulative;
it
aims
167
not
at transporting,
educating the audience.
geometrical.
Available Light
the second act of Giselle as revised
is
and corrected by Mondrian.
head. The look
—
positioning of the dancer's head in ballet always implies a
to a partner, or a central (noble) figure, or to the audience. In
Childs's choreography, the
such looking elsewhere. technique
expression. a support
humor
is
a simple,
is
head
One
is
not posed in
his dancers usually
milked from
this
no
of the basic conventions of Cunningham's
unmannered use of
Even while taking part
—
this sense; there is
the head and detached, cool
in cooperative tasks
—
seem unaware of each
incongruity.)
a
lift,
other.
a pull,
(Much
In Childs's choreography
dancers never engage in cooperative tasks, indeed never touch each
Hence,
other.
blank performance masks signify another,
their intensely
non-atomized detachment. The rather,
it
effect
is
never incongruous, or comic;
underscores the feeling of purity, the striving for an elevated
state of things that
ideal. Where space, here
is
the register of her work.
are these dancers dancing?
Not
and now, of Duchampian performance
anti-dramatic, democratized space of
in
the vernacular
pieces;
Cunningham's dances
nor
in the
—dance
as
pure, noncumulative activity with detachable parts and movable borders.
(Hence one of Cunningham's
characteristic notions:
dance
as a
sequence of open-ended "events.") Instead, Childs's choreography suggests
some
ideal space,
where
tions take place. (In this, she
Dance
is
ideal transactions
and transforma-
close to the ethos of traditional ballet.)
as the art of ideal precision; ideal spatial relationships; ideal,
undiluted intensity.
illustrating.
A
didactic) work, in
which she sometimes used words
procedure typical of Childs's early (conceptual or
structions or descriptions
could be
live
—
as in Street
in the
form of
in-
Dance. This linguistic decor
monologues or words on tape
that
were
illustrated
by her
SUSAN SONTAG
168
movements. Some of the the Surrealist
early pieces treat
movement
in the
manner of "found"
citing already existing positions,
obje't trouve:
through words. In Model (1964), Childs gives
awkward
ern dance and illustrates a few
a
mock
positions. In
lecture
on mod-
Geranium
(1965),
she provides a taped sportscast: as the announcer describes a football player falling, tumbling, Childs illustrates the actions in slow motion.
Museum
Piece (1965) has nineteen dots in three colors cut out of heavy
paper, each about ten inches in diameter, which are an enlargement of a tiny portion of Seurat's
Le
Cirque.
While delivering
pointillism, Childs sets out the dots like plates in a
the floor. Then, gazing into a a slow, circuitous
speaking of
why
hand
1966. Childs
in 1962
was invited
—her
in the
first
to join in 1963,
work presented
and did publicly
to present
a ten-
—
at
the
most of the
next three years, as well as to perform in pieces by
on the puppet theatre.
ideal state of the spirit; written in
the dance. Kleist exalts as the
1
810,
it is
Its
subject
summit of grace and profundity
modern oppositions
is
also the first great essay
of being without inwardness or psychology. Writing
characteristic
dis-
James Waring, and Robert Morris.
kleist's essay
way
by Yvonne Rainer
Cunningham's) and Steve Paxton;
minute piece called Pastime
Rainer, Paxton,
making
mirror, she walks backward,
Judson Memorial Church, where she went on
work she did
complex pattern on
she wants "to enter this body of material."
(then, like Childs, a student of in
mock lecture on
journey through the dots, without stepping on them,
judson dance theatre. Co-founded banded
a
an
on
in art a
when
the
of the heart versus the head, the or-
ganic versus the mechanical, were invented, Kleist ignores the obloquy already attached to the metaphor of the mechanical, and identifies the
mechanical movements of puppets with the sublimity of the impersonal.
The Romantic
ideal of the absence of affectation
with the free expression of personality but with
its
is
equated not
transcendence.
These Romantic oppositions (and evaluations) continued to dominate sensibility for
another century, mutating into what
we know
as
mod-
ernism, into "romantic" modernism, which was challenged by "neoclassical"
modernism
—various
ideals of the impersonal as different as
A Duchamp and
those of
Lexicon for Available Light
of Balanchine (who thought ballet should be
unconcerned with inner experience). The
ideals of the personally ex-
and the impersonal or impassive constitute
pressive
a central contrast
contemporary dance. Cunningham
in the evolution of
169
the most im-
is
portant champion of the anti-expressive and anti-subjective, and most of the choreographers phasis
on
who
studied with
him have extended
and impersonality. Yvonne Rainer's work
objectivity
period of the Judson Dance Theatre aimed
one
closer to the virtues extolled
assumes that dancing perturbable sivity is It is a if
in the
"submerging the person-
one
ideally,
is
a neutral doer." In Childs's choreography,
is
em-
not even
one
is
not
but a transpersonal doer. Her emphasis on impersonality
a neutral is
at
movements: "So,
ality" in impersonal, task-like
oneself,
his
—
is
a
by Balanchine than by Rainer,
noble
art.
The dancers move on
for she
paths, im-
comings and goings seem implacable. Their impas-
their
not detachment, the cool ironic tone of Cunningham dancers.
positive impassivity that recalls the
argument made by
Kleist
—
as
grace and inwardness were opposed.
lightness, art dance should be
of. Childs's conception of dance
lively, playful,
decorum, unaffected
intensity.
is
Apollonian:
joyous. Beauty equals power, delicacy,
What
ugly
is
is
timidity, anxiety,
goguery, heaviness. (Other exemplars of the Apollonian
demaSeurat,
style:
Mallarme, Morandi, Ozu, Wallace Stevens.)
measurable. of
some
Museum same
Seurat calculated exactly the place and the disposition
forty tiny figures in
—
Le Cirque
cited
by Childs
Piece. Childs prepares placing of dancers
spirit.
The
early pieces
Untitled Trio,
num-
started in 1968, with
Childs began choreographing in the normative
It
is
through counting that space
whether or not time
"silent"
in
choreograph means to give movement a rhythmic, countable
time structure. time,
when
work
were timed to the second, but not counted. The
method of working out choreography by counts
sense: to
in the
Seurat believed that the beautiful had an objective, mea-
surable basis; Childs needs to specify the structure of her bers.
in her early
and timing
is
is
connected with
further articulated by music. All the
works of the 1970s are precisely counted. (An example:
a
SUSAN SONTAG
170
dance from 1976, Transverse Exchanges, has 1,449 counts.) In works created since 1979, counts are coordinated to
For instance,
—supplied by—music.
Calm, Childs requested
in Relative
numerical phrase base, from the composer Jon Gibson
—
that the
first
and have eleven
section be constructed out of fifteen-count phrases
subsections; that the second section be
and
a specific pattern,
composed of seventeen-count
phrases and have nine subsections, each two to two and a half minutes long; et cetera.
stage space)
The
whole
intricate patterning (designed to activate the
and subtle variations
may seem
in timing
simple to dance
audiences habituated to recognizing only the complexities apparent in
movement
itself.
minimalist. Unlike some arts
dumb
other
marketing campaigns (Pop Art,
piece of linguistic chewing gum,
labels that
Op Art)
emerged
in the last
some
in visual
two decades,
this
painters
and sculp-
tors (Sol LeWitt,
Robert Morris, Carl Andre), has spread to
architects,
choreographers,
composers, even to couturiers
first
applied to
label-mongering invariably does, a specious unity
Muybridge, Mondrian,
artists.
Stein,
—imposing,
as
among widely
such
different
and Ozu had the good fortune
to
pursue careers as virtuosi of obsessive repetition and strong patterning without incurring
this label. Inevitably
succeeded by POST-MINIMALIST.
movements. Childs's movement ideal: clear, clean, deliberate, intense. And directional. The dancers are moving or are absolutely still. When moving, they move continuously, with relatively muted accents and
a softer
dynamic than
in classical
prescriptive idea of dance as
choreography, recalling Rainer's
"movement
series"
tween phrases and no observable accent fixed,
still
stantly
relationship
engaged
.
.
.
.
.
.
—with "no pauses be-
the limbs are never in a
creating the impression that the
in transitions." Childs has
Judson performers, designed
(in Rainer's
body
is
con-
brought the aesthetic of the words) to impart to dance
"factual quality," a deliberately matter-of-fact,
more "banal
a
quality of
physical being in performance," into confrontation with the high energies
and
lyrical
movements
solemnity of the classical dance ideal.
that she recasts are ballet
movements. In
Many
of the
ballet, positions
are reached, then held, allowed to shine. In Childs's choreography, the
A
Lexicon for Available Light
tendu plie) are taken, cleanly,
classical positions (arabesque, attitude,
but only for a
171
second. Childs doesn't use in-place movements
split
(like
penche, passe developpe, grands battements) that exhibit positions, that
modern-dance
display technique. Reacting against the fied
by Graham, of dance
and, in
of
more
as a succession of climaxes,
that has
From
exempli-
Cunningham
Judson choreographers proposed
radical form, the
movement
framed.
ideal,
no climaxes,
which nothing
in
is
a style
dramatically
that aesthetic Childs has retained the prohibition against
devising positions that can be framed; but the taboo on climactic passages
is
maxes.
weakening. Available Light has several clearly identifiable It
also has a looser
work
Relative Calm, the
score
is
a
is
weave
—
not divided into separate sections. Adams's
departure from the music Childs has previously used. Instead
of the sharp boundaries of earlier scores, sitions;
it
cli-
perhaps because, unlike Dance and
it
more obvious emotional
has a
evolves with soft-edge trantexture and consists, most
starkly in the last fifteen minutes, of a succession of climaxes.
neo-classical. in
dance or
It is
the hallmark of a neo-classical style, whether
in architecture, to
be accused of being merely mathemati-
cal. If
mathematical means quantifiably precise, insistently formal, ma-
jestic,
stripped
forms
—there
openings.
down
—
as in
some Platonic or Palladian kingdom of
truth in the accusation.
is
In Dance: an empty stage, and the propulsive joyousness
of the music
.
.
and then the dancers springing
.
in pairs
from the
wings, spinning, prancing, skimming across the stage. In Relative
Calm: the drone nal formation)
sound
.
on
.
.
and the dancers already
in place, sitting (in diago-
their carpets of light. In Available Light, the blast of
that fades into a drone-like
hum
.
.
.
and the dancers coming on
slowly to take their positions.
order. Beauty bility.
identified with order, liveliness, serenity, inevita-
is
*
politeness. The Ballet gestures are
classical tradition of
based on
a
dance
is
related to courtesy.
system of deference, of hierarchy, and
SUSAN SONTAG
172
descend from the gestures of themselves as egalitarian
members
courtesy.
real courts. Childs's
dancers comport
of an imaginary, cosmic court, behaving with
There are no angry or
erotic
emotions.
The
dancers are grave, imperturbable. They always leave each other enough space.
post-modern. The servers
aging of modernism was remarked by astute ob-
when modernism was
still
in
its
changed meaning," Cocteau observed safely
modern age
will
be
favorite vantage point)
a period
of modernism's perennial ventures,
first
applied to architects,
its
now
between
191 2
and pre-
and 1930."
demise, has recently been
new
celebrated with the most successful of
modern,"
word 'modern' has
in 1932, already situating himself
beyond the modern (everyone's
dicting that "the
One
prime. "The
labels
—the word
as well to visual artists
choreographers after Cunningham. Frequently a synonym for
"post-
and
to
eclectic.
But sometimes conflated with MINIMALIST.
presence /absence. used by Childs
was gap
first
—
acknowledged
as in the
Dance, most present, incarnate of
in the service of in a
Dadaist way, in the notion of the blank, the
unpainted painting that
absence, or the drawing that section of Geranium, a
it
is
is
illustrated
monologue
supposed to be the third
in
conjured up by discussing
by
might be best to refer to the third section
(It
dancer
is
as a
which
is
no
gap"
is
is
third section, so
—and goes on
to
a glass enclosure that
was constructed, and could skim about
the stage, in the last piece of Childs's in 1966 in the series
erasure. Thus, the third
its
section, but there really
a performer.
its
which Childs announces: "This
discuss ideas for the third section, one of
would contain
arts, is
an aesthetic of absence. This principle
first
period, Vehicle
—presented
"Nine Evenings: Theater and Engineering": the
inside a mobile Plexiglas box.)
ercises in absence. Street
Many
of the early solos are ex-
Dance begins with Childs disappearing
into
the elevator after pushing the button of the tape recorder. (She reap-
pears below on the street.) In Carnation (1964), Childs does a vanishing act
under
a white sheet. In her very first piece, Pastime, Childs
various poses inside a stretchable blue jersey bag.
Dadaist performance
is
What
assumes
starts as a
eventually raised to a positive principle: a mys-
A The dancers
ticism of space.
Lexicon for Available Light
173
are disembodied, dematerialized.
Duchampian whimsicality of non- or anti-appearance
is
The
replaced by
the Mallarmean idea of beauty as a tribute to the ineffable, to absence.
quartets.
Favorite formation in Childs's choreography, the
multiple of two.
Among
the short works choreographed for four
dancers are Calico Mingling (1973), for four Courses, for section
is
women, and Radial
two women and two men. In Relative Calm, the second
for a quartet formation restocked several times
eight dancers. Its sequel
is
from among
the fourth section, which consists of two
one of women and one of men.
quartets,
relative calm. tions.
first
The second
1981.
of Childs's evening-length produc-
Music by Jon Gibson, decor and
by Robert Wilson.
lighting
Ninety-five minutes, a prologue and four sections, for nine dancers.
Though not
so labeled, the sections
four-part sequences,
The Times
version of the subject
make up one
of Day. This
is
of the traditional
the Symbolic-Romantic
—Runge rather than Hogarth. Prologue:
backdrop and the moon swinging pendulum-like dancers sitting in diagonal formation in carpets of tion, "Rise," suits; at
is
dawn
early
—the dancers
light.
a star
front of the
The
first sec-
are in identical white
jump-
the end, the stage brightens and the stars blanch out. "Race"
day; the dancers are in beige;
the form of
it
contains an
homage
is
to the quotidian, in
some inane sentences projected on the cyclorama and the
brief appearance of a live dog. "Reach," the solo, start to
in
come out
— and both
stage
is
twilight
and cyclorama are cut
—the
stars
diagonally,
with half of the stage and half of the cyclorama in shadow, and Childs, in black,
dancing in a diagonal wedge of
dancers in royal blue,
is starry,
light.
"Return," with the
The
conceit of the times
electric night.
of day evolved in conversations between Childs and Wilson; Childs in-
vented the
titles
of the four sections,
vey and to obscure
whose function was both
a little the literalness
to con-
of the scenic underpinning
supplied by Wilson's set and lighting.
repetition. "silent"
Childs's early notion of repetition, in the sprightly
dances of the 1970s: dancers using the same steps or fami-
SUSAN SONTAG
174
lies
of movements, going in and out of sync with each other.
becomes more complex
tion
in
Childs's
solo
in
The noon the
Einstein
Beach: repetition as an accumulation of effects, as layering. (Versus the repetition-as-reinterpretation of Patio.) Strictly speaking, there
course no repetition in Childs's work, but rather a certain thematic materials, which are
first
stated
strict
of
is
use of
and then gradually modified
of change (more evenly, not expressionistically) than
at a different rate
audiences are accustomed
In contrast to Wilson's Judson- derived
to.
dynamics of slow movement, thin difference, low-contrast change, Childs's fast
work
since the late 1970s has a greater density of
movement,
rhythms and few tableaux. (Whereas Wilson's work tends naturally
work
to take long forms, Childs's
Though
usually presented as cool choice, repetition always suggests
perfectionist zeal. Rainer in 1966
movement appear "more
ciple
a
is
enhances
also a
makes
matter-of-fact, neutral,
method
for inducing bliss. Re-
legibility or intelligibility. (Rainer: "literally
idea of the minimal,
it
A way of ordering material
making the
associated with the
could more accurately be called the modern
maximalism: repetition possibilities.
is
it
—more
technique that seems to suggest simplicity, that in prin-
material easier to see.")
nous
defended repetition because
objectlike"
unemphatic. But repetition petition
only gradually assuming them.)
is
as exhaustive patterning;
the exhausting of
Far from making material neutral, repetition has
effect, as in
much
of Childs's recent
work
a vertigi-
— duplications, mirror-
ings, that are the kinetic equivalent of the static mise-en-ahime.
See
DOUBLING.
romantic. The classical
idiom
in
"classical" tradition in
dance
Romantic. (But even
above
all,
pelganger in Dance.
is
Romantic, so
a neo-
will inevitably be, in a restrained key, neo-
this
self-conscious
dance
restraint
and
is
critical.)
appropriate. Romantic art
The
The Pythagorean beauty
allegorical underpinning: the
son's allegorizing sensibility
is,
play of ghost, shadow, dop-
of Relative Calm, with
its
Times of Day. (The contact with Wiland
its
innate affinities with a certain
German Romanticism helped Childs move away from a dead-end puritanism in her own sensibility.) There are Romantic echoes in all the
— A work
Lexicon for Available Light
since 1979. In Dance, having
("Dance #2") and one
two solo
Queen
presented
—
in black
white ("Dance #4"), like Swan Lakes
in
Odile/ Odette. In Available Light, the like the
one
sections,
175
of the Wilis in Giselle.
arrival of Childs in the corridor,
When
Available Light was
first
Chateauvallon Dance Festival in an
in July 1983, at the
open-air version, with no set and with the dancers in the company's
purpose touring costumes, the white jumpsuits of the Relative
Calm
—one saw the choreography
white tutus but very
much
As
a soloist she gives herself a
dynamic changes, more evolution
functions is
more
separate
—
in
is
in the material (rather
in
wider range of than in space).
member of the ensemble, less as a soloist. Still, she white, when most of the dancers are in red or black. Alas a
the only dancer
company remains onstage
From
without
Dance, one in Relative Calm. In
as
such where she appears alone on-
who comes and
goes.
The
rest of the
for the entire fifty-five minutes (except for
one brief pause when the music downshifts and turn).
state:
not divided into separate sections, Childs
is
though she has no solo section stage, she
naked
for herself differently than she does for
There are two lengthy solos Available Light, which
its
all-
section of
a ballet blanc.
solos. Childs choreographs the rest of the company.
in
first
all
ten go off, then re-
her early solos, with their theme of the absent or disap-
pearing performer, to her privileged comings and goings in Available Light, Childs's solo presence
—grave,
hieratic,
not wholly expressive
invokes both presence and absence.
space. Dancers
up
are travelers, "space eaters" (Childs's words), using
a given space in a patterned,
which Childs covers the stage
solo, Particular Reel, 1973, in
from
right to left
and then
point where she started, using up space.) line;
and
comprehensive way. (An early didactic
in ten
is
a
left to right,
ending
model demonstration of the
The more space
their* relations are
rows from
in ten
rows
at
the
project of
the better. Dancers are pulled along a
conceived as parallel or perpendicular.
Dancers are always, indefatigably, going somewhere. In non-imploring urgency, they never stop; though they
a
state of
may go
into
SUSAN SONTAG
176
movement-absence, they do so dancers "drop out," others
in order to repopulate the space.
come
in.
titles. After the capers of the mid-1960s, ally
two words, adjective and noun; often
with a ing is
movement word,
as in
Checkered
titles
have been sober: usu-
a structure or pattern
an oxymoron
—one
word
Drift, Calico Mingling, Reclin-
Rondo, Transverse Exchanges, Radial Courses.
a contradiction,
When
A
favorite title
that, in recent
works, suggests
the paradoxes of self-control: Relative Calm, Formal Abandon. stylish appreciation
form
Or
a
of the possible: Available Light.
unavailable. Dance
is
about the absent or unavailable object of
desire.
volition. The more formal dance
is
shown
possible attributions of volition. Dancers in formations roring, duplicating,
weaker the
to be, the
—
all
this mir-
and inverting of movement removes the impression
of subjectivity. So does the neutral performance
mask
—the
fact that
the dancers don't look at each other, or at the audience. (The effect
comparable to the anti-acting
style
is
favored by Bresson.) Dancers stop
because they are being rearranged or repatterned, not because of any
emotion or
them
as
To
volition.
mechanisms
—
substitute rules or patterns
for subjectivity in
—
Kleist
imagined
demeanor and movement
is
the prerequisite of grace. But the dancers are anything but automata.
world.
Dance, since the Romantics, has been about
a
phantom
world. Childs's counts, like the tiny dots of color in the paintings of Seurat, are the building blocks of an art of
which both are and are absence; pleasure
—
not: the
as in
moment
phantom
is
an evocation of
shown
as rigidity, re-
of plenitude
—
La Grande
Jatte
is
presences. Things
straint.
yearning. The body longing
—
for space
in diagonal
itself.
However
is
a
pose of outreach,
large,
the stage
enough. Childs's choreography projects onto the nitely large space or territory.
Her
is
hailing; of
never large
finite stage
love of space produces
an
infi-
movements
A and structures
Lexicon for Available Light
—among them, the modalities of
repetition
—
177
that
seem
choreographic equivalents of Zeno's arguments (called paradoxes) on the subject of motion, according to which, since any line visible,
and
will
be made up of an
which has some magnitude, every great; and, despite appearances,
distance at
infinite
finite line
number or space
is
infinitely di-
of units, each of is
in fact infinitely
no moving object ever
traverses any
all.
zeno's territory. Childs's now known as Available Light.
early,
provisional
title
for the
work
[1983]
In
of Their Feelings
DANCERS ON A PLANE
1.
I
Memory
don't see them.
There.
The dancers
are there, invisible
— an
analogue to racing
thoughts.
Framed by
A meal
to
the utensils of eating.
be eaten?
An invisible meal. Two meals: one light, one
dark.
One
sprightly,
one stained with
sexual dread.
Dancers on
a plate?
No. They need more space than
EATING AND DANCING
2.
Recombinant
A
domain of
Rule-bound.
"In
Memory
arts.
pleasure.
Who
A
domain of
sets the rules?
a
Anthony d'Offay
on Jasper Johns's Dancers on a Plane sequence of applied knives, forks, and spoons.
tion centered
178
courtesy.
Behavior with standards.
of Their Feelings" was written for the exhibition catalogue of Dancers on a
Plane: Cage, Cunningham, Johns at the
is
that.
series.
Gallery,
London,
Framing the
1989.
The
exhibi-
sides of the paintings
Memory
In
An Then terval:
of Their Feelings
Then one
idea of order. First one thing, then another. finished
it is
—the
179
is full.
belly sated, the limbs heavy. After a decent in-
then again. All over again. All over, again.
They remind us we
body-house.
live in the
Living "in" the body. But where else could
Dancing
as the
realm of freedom,
we
that's less
live?
than half the
story.
What about
Eating as the realm of necessity. Not necessarily.
eating
idyllically (as in Paris)?
Everyone I
everyone can dance. Not everyone dances
eats,
watch dance, with pleasure.
one eating when hungry, hungry person full, I
may
is
wish
it
don't watch eating. If
were
always savory. If
You
for
me. (You do the dancing
can't eat for
You can dance
meal watched by
a
place,
much pleasure there. Salome. You can eat to please
to please:
mother or
said to have said that she
danced for
except to doting parents eating gusting unless you're doing
it
is
I'll
just
God
a
Suzanne
a nurse. (As
too: as a
Farrell
is
and for Mr. Balanchine.) But
poor spectator
sport. Mildly dis-
as well.
mouth.
to put metal in one's
is
my
in
me. Not
its
eat
A
eating.
(alas).
watch some-
watch someone eating when I'm
I
child might eat to please
To
I
I
turn away.
You can dance watch.)
I
I
Delicately.
It's
not supposed
to hurt.
The
eater
fills
A dancer eats Space
eat silence.
THE KNIFE
It cuts.
you
space.
eats time.
Sounds
3.
the hole.
Don't be
eat. See.
afraid.
Passing
it
to
This
you
is
—
not a weapon.
you asked for
handle, keeping the blade pointed at myself.
It's
it
—
just a tool to
I
proffer
The blade
is
it
help
by the
pointing at
me.
One
should not
move
the point of the knife toward
an attack.
You can
lay
it
down two
ways. Blade
in,
blade out.
someone
as in
SUSAN SONTAG
180
Don't be timorous.
It isn't
sharp.
It's
ordinary
just a plain,
.
.
.
knife.
Straight. Two-sided.
mermaid who has
In the fairy tale, a
human form
begs to be allowed to assume
and make her way
fallen in love
She
to the court. Yes.
But with each step she takes
it
with a prince
so she can leave the water
will
have
legs,
she will walk.
were walking on
will feel as if she
knives.
You can dance with der blades?)
The ers
Hard
(Between the teeth? Between the shoul-
a knife.
to imagine
dancing with a fork.
Or
with a spoon.
knife seems like the master utensil, the one from
Army
depend. (Swiss
You could
Knife.)
which
oth-
all
spear food with your knife,
eliminating the fork. (As everyone knows, you can eat the peas with
your knife. You're could do without
just
not supposed
that, too. Just
Only the knife
is
manners
grasp
is
a
—
well,
we
And
it is
the knife,
it.
more than any
most circumscribed. The evolution of
unobtrusively, elegantly.
against your
it
"There
spoon
mainly about what to do with knives. Use the knife
is
more and more
is
for the
up the bowl dish cup, and drink
really necessary.
other eating utensil, whose use table
lift
As
to.)
palm
With your
finger ends.
Don't
like a stick.
tendency that slowly permeates
civilized society,
from
the top to the bottom, to restrict the use of the knife (within the frame-
work of
the instrument at
all"
(Norbert
Elias).
least limit the contact of the knife
Not
restrictions are successful.
all
and wherever possible not to use
existing eating techniques)
For instance,
to eliminate or at
with round or egg-shaped objects.
The
prohibition on eating fish with a
knife was circumvented by the introduction of a special fish knife.
That oxymoron: the butter
To
eat
sight of
is
knife.
to put metal in one's
someone putting her
mouth. But not knives. The mere
knife in her
mouth produces an uneasy
feeling.
4.
THE SPOON
The spoon seems
The spoon It
is
to
belong
in the
mouth.
not quite grownup in the way the knife and fork
doesn't menace.
It isn't
a
tamed weapon.
are.
In
The spoon The spoon
is
accepts.
Yum-yum. Scoop me
hand cupped. Doesn't
a cradle, a shovel, a It
Round, curved. Can't
a knife or a fork,
of Their Feelings
181
the utensil of childhood, the friendliest utensil.
childlike.
is
Memory
how
but
up, pour
Don't
stick you.
me
in.
Like
cut or pierce or impale.
your child with
trust
can a spoon harm? The spoon
is itself
a
child.
The world
of pleasures.
is full
One
has only to be where one
is.
Here. Now.
me my
Give
spoon
my
spoon,
big spoon, and
an afterthought. While a
is
wooden spoon
of a spoon.
isn't less
I'll
wooden It's
eat the world.
knife
is
A
metal
of a knife, a
less
just fine.
"Spooning": embracing, kissing, petting. Lovers in bed
fit
together
in sleep like spoons.
To bring about ronment,
will take
a
music "that
them
be part of the noises of the envi-
will
into consideration.
I
think of
it
as
melodious,
softening the noises of the knives and forks, not dominating them, not
imposing
itself,"
wrote John Cage, quoting Erik
What happened
to the
Satie.
spoons? Don't spoons make noises, too?
Softer noises.
And two
music. Music
is
made with two spoons
(not with
two
forks,
knives).
Spoon music.
5.
THE FORK
There's a hesitation about the fork. the fork in your right.
put
Then
down
—
if
left
cut
it
with the knife held in your
the knife, then transfer the fork to your right
up
Grownups throw would throw
as one. It
may be
wouldn't
The weight
is
The
emblem
—you
hand and send
mouth.
to your
knives. Children
a fork. It
fork as
the food with
you're not only right-handed but also American
the speared morsel
be thrown
hand while you
You hold down
throw spoons. Nobody
(I
four- thirds of a toy trident, but
think)
it
can't
arrive, spear-like, tines first.
in the handle.
—emblem of the
real.
something about "my general development so
Jasper Johns, explaining far," said:
"That
is
to say,
SUSAN SONTAG
182
I
find
it
more
interesting to use a real fork as a painting than
it is
to use
a painting as a real fork."
What would The
fork
Supper was
wedding It
in the early seventeenth century: I
a set of
it
arrived
gold "Italian
by the Venetian ambassador were put
Westminster; she never used them.
at
The introduction effete,
forks either at the
thought a foppish pretension when
Italy,
forkes" presented to Elizabeth
as
No
appearance when the knife and spoon were well estab-
its
Invented in
on display
The Last
Cana.
feast in
England
look like?
with knives and spoons only.
set
made
lished.
in
a fork that isn't real
the youngest of the three great eating utensils.
is
of that vital implement, for a long time despised
enabled people to distance themselves from the eating
process by avoiding manual contact with the food.
The
principle of fastidiousness.
New
forms of distance, new forms
of delicacy.
New
rules of finicky behavior at table proliferated.
People were ex-
pected to manipulate an increasingly complicated battery of It
seemed hard,
Now we
6.
A
setting
up and keeping
utensils.
this distance.
take forks for granted.
KNIFE,
SPOON, FORK
—
secular trinity
knife, spoon, fork.
No hierarchy. The list
can only be varied, systematically. As in knife,
As
spoon, fork. As in fork, knife, spoon. As in
fork, spoon.
in knife,
fork, spoon, knife.
As
in spoon, fork, knife.
Seemingly immutable
They
lie
edge of the
A A
there,
flat.
As
in
spoon, knife, fork.
(after all that history).
On
a plain (plane) surface.
Perpendicular to the
table.
trialogue. stately relationship.
divides into
Not
all
on the same
two and one. Fork on the
left side.
side of the plate.
Three
Knife and spoon on the
right.
The
knife
is
scary by
itself.
But
as part of a setting,
something
else.
Memory
In
of Their Feelings
183
Lying beside the spoon, the knife becomes quite domestic. Knife and spoon: the odd couple. They don't go together, you don't use them to-
But they are together.
gether.
The
fork
is solitary.
could have next to That's
from
in
an ampler
setting, all
you
arranged
at
the start of the meal, one step
down
Escorting the plate on either side.
the plate.
No
Even
is.
another (smaller, larger) fork.
it is
how they're
Always
now
excuse
to eat with your hands. Civil eating (versus glut-
tony).
After finishing eating you arrange
Not
Not
alphabetically.
them
neatly
on the
order of importance,
in
plate.
there were
if
one.
A trinity but They seem
We
quite contingent.
to
complement each
have learned to use
all
other.
three.
But they can be used
separately,
of course.
7.
DANCERS ON A PLAIN
On On
An
a plane?
Low,
is
(borderless) as feasible.
Don't
try for
any of those old heights. Depths.
essential
about
a surface that
How
do we
register
level.
What
airplane?
As open
a plain.
other surface?
makes
smoothness
it
different
from an-
in a surface, a
move-
ment, a sound, an experience?
Smoothness? Yes. Something continues, plausibly. Pleasurably.
What does
With
it
parts.
mean
to
be one part of something
(a surface, a
move-
ment, a sound, an experience)?
The old
heights. Mirroring.
Look down. These
Be more modest;
elegant.
Sometimes
sometimes heavy
4ight,
—
it's all
times.
Makes
it
new. Yes.
And make
it
plain.
are
right to
my
genitals.
be heavy some-
SUSAN SONTAG
184
8.
SYMMETRIES
Dancers on
No
a plane.
Always
center.
off-side.
Any
place
is
the
center.
We ovaries
seem symmetrical. Two
—or
two hairy
eyes,
two
ears,
two arms, two
But we're not. Something
testicles.
legs; is
two
always
dominating.
A mirror image: left,
a fantasy of
symmetry. The right the reverse of the
or vice versa.
We seem They
symmetrical. But
cross-refer
(knife,
handedness means the
left
handedness means the brain's
How
to find out
we
are not.
spoon, fork). As in the brain. Rightside
of the brain
which side of your brain
is
answer to the ques-
while you're doing this you turn your head slightly to the right,
tion. If
means the
left
side dominates.
And
vice versa.
The
question-master.
An
dominant. Left-
dominant. Close your
eyes, think of a question, then slowly think of an
that
is
right side dominates.
art that asks questions.
How
do we understand how one part of
a surface, a
movement,
a
sound, an experience relates to another? Note: you have a choice of questions. But
if that's
the question you choose to ask, you can be sure
the answer will include a bias toward asymmetry.
"The non-relationship of the movement," Cunningham has clared, "is
extended into
a relationship
with music.
It is
de-
essentially a
non-relationship."
The dancer must be
You
eat with
place
A real
is
Food makes you
your hands, dance on your
handed or left-handed.
Any
light.
Is
heavy.
legs.
Eating can be right-
dancing left-legged or right-legged?
the center.
symmetry: chopsticks.
Memory
In
Lots of prattle. That, too, lence.)
The deaf hear
warm
there a
The
kind of
a
is
their deafness.
Controlling through silence.
The
silence. (Since there
Make
si-
blind see their blindness.
Whoever speaks
less is the stronger.
silence?
Cut up the words
to babble.
it
meals out of words.
What would
gether on a plane (plain).
know.
"Who
Mushrooms,
raw vegeta-
in strips, like
A culinary relation
to
Suppose Knife, Spoon, and Fork are three people.
As
no
to language.
it
No, take
I
is
noise of ideas.
Take
bles.
185
SILENCES
9.
Is
of Their Feelings
words
And
.
.
.
they get to-
they have to say to each other?
brought the marshmallows?"
surely
you mean mushrooms.
marshmallows.
I said,
That's not
Then they
what
I
had
in
mind. Then what?
get very particular about
how
the marshmallows are to
be cooked. All three of
them know
a lot
by gathering, preparing, cooking But these are
You can be
just
about food. (About eating. Preceded .
.
.)
marshmallows. American junk.
fastidious about anything.
botched, too; can disappoint. lation of inside to outside.
It's
The
not letting the outside catch
And marshmallows
a question of (yes,
inside has to
fire.
Stick?
it
off with your fingers
What happened
once again) the
be cooked very
re-
well, while
Ideally the outside will get crusty but
not burnt, while the inside melts. Then, right before
you pluck
can be
and pop
to the fork?
it
it
falls
off the stick,
whole into your mouth.
Don't you toast marshmallows
with a fork? All right, the fork.
But
this is better as a
gooey experience than
as a
refined one.
"Everywhere and
at all times,"
Levi-Strauss has observed, "the Eu-
ropean code of politeness rules out the possibility of eating
And you
don't always have to be polite.
noisily."
SUSAN SONTAG
186
MEMORY OF THEIR FEELINGS
10. IN In the that has
first
—buoyant,
allegro vivace
—painting,
this
is
been painted white. In the second painting, the
real flatware
artist
has cast
the utensils in bronze.
Repeating as a means of varying. Accepting as a way of discriminating. Indifference as a
Use
me
as
you
form of emotional
vitality.
will.
Savoring non-relatedness. Put the emphasis on savoring. "I
more
interested in the facts of
moving rather than
in
my
am
feelings about
them" (Merce Cunningham).
Would you
We
like to play chess?
were younger then.
were younger; then
We
—
that
it
meet. This could be
Who
Chess
would be at a
seriously.
would have thought then
—when we
like this?
dinner party (forks, knives, spoons,
et
cetera).
We so. I
say things like,
How
lovely to see you. I've
been busy.
I
think
don't know. That must have been very interesting. (Everything
interesting.
But some things are more interesting than others.) Proba-
bly not. I've heard. In Frankfurt, in Illinois, in London.
What
is
a pity.
Next
year.
He's gone away. He'll be back soon. They're organizing
something. You'll get an invitation.
We smile. We nod. We are indefatigable. I think We say we wish we saw more of each other. We eat, we savor.
I'm free next
week.
Meanwhile, each harbors
We
a secret idea of ascending, of descending.
go on. The plane's edge beckons. [1989]
Dancer and the Dance
LINCOLN its
tury
KlRSTElN,the
finest historian of
dance and one of
master ideologues, has observed that in the nineteenth cen-
what the prestige of
amounted
ballet really
of the dancer; and that even
when
to
there were great choreographers
(notably Petipa) and great dance scores (from
Tchaikovsky), dance was
still
in
dance
dance audiences which occurred to the authoritative intensity
Adam,
Delibes, and
almost entirely identified for the large
and
theatrical public with the personality
That triumphant mutation
was the reputation
just
taste
virtuosity of great dancers.
and
in the
before World
and exoticism of the
not challenge the old imbalance of attention
composition of
War
I,
in response
Ballets Russes, did
—not even with the subse-
quent invention by Diaghilev of dance as an ambitious collaboration, in
which major innovative
in to
enhance
artists
this theatre
Stravinsky, the decor
outside the dance world were brought
of astonishment.
The
score might be by
by Picasso, the costumes by Chanel, the
by Cocteau. But the blow of the sublime was delivered by a Karsavina
—by the dancer. According
to Kirstein,
advent of a choreographer so complete in his forever,
George Balanchine,
that the
before Balanchine
is,
more
was only with the
gifts as to
change dance
primacy of the choreographer
over the performer, of dance over the dancer, was Kirstein 's account of the
it
libretto
a Nijinsky or
finally
understood.
limited perspectives of dance publics
of course, not incorrect. But
I
would point out
187
SUSAN SONTAG
188
that the exaltation of the performer over
dance
need
that
—
pervaded not onlv
else
all
the arts
be performed. Recalling the effusive identification oi
to
dance with the dancer Elssler
all
nineteenth (and early twentieth) century but
in the
one should
—
say,
with Marie Taglioni and with Fanny
recall as well
other audiences, other raptures.
The
concert audiences ravished by Liszt and Paganini were also identifying
music with the virtuoso performer: the music was, sion.
Those who swooned over La Malibran
as
it
in the
were, the occa-
new
Rossini or
Donizetti thought of opera as the vehicle oi the singer. (As for the look
of opera, whether
it
was the
ous physique of the singer
And
—
staging, the decor, or the often incongruthis
hardly seemed worthy of discussion.)
the focus oi attention has been modified in these
Even
arts, too.
the most diva-besotted portion of the opera public of recent decades
is
prepared to segregate the work from the performance and, within the performance, vocal prowess and expressiveness from acting tions fused
by the
inflatedly partisan rhetoric of
(either ecstasy or the rudest
performance of a
in the
—
distinc-
extreme reactions
condemnation) that surrounded opera
nineteenth century, particularly early performances
new work. That
the
work
is
now
routinely seen as transcending the
come
performer, rather than the performer transcending the work, has to
be
felt
not just in dance, because of the advent of a supremely great
choreographer, but in
And
all
being
yet, this
the performing
said, there
arts.
seems to be something
dance that warrants the kind of reverential attention paid eration to a very few dancers different
Dance cannot is
whom we
arts to
in
each gen-
— something about what they do
from the achievements of surpassingly
formers in other
intrinsic to
gifted,
that
is
magnetic per-
pay homage.
without dance design: choreography. But dance
exist
the dancer.
The
relation oi
dancer to choreographer
—which,
tant to auteur
former,
is still
creative,
a subservient relation.
too. the
dancer
that has
no analogue
A
however
is
also
great dancer
Someone can be
is
more. There
in the other
is
not just that of execu-
however inspired the
Though a
is
a
performer
in this sense,
mystery oi incarnation
performing
not just performing
per-
in
dance
arts.
(a role)
but being
(a
dancer).
the greatest Odette/Odile, the greatest Albrecht one
— Dancer and the Dance has ever seen or Boris or the finest
—
as a singer
Carmen
can be the best
or Sieglinde or
Don
memory) Tosca
anyone's
(in
189
Giovanni, or an actor can be
Nora or Hamlet or Faust or Phaedra or Winnie. But beyond
the already grandiose aim of giving the definitive performance of a
work, a
role, a score, there is a further,
plies to dancers.
One
can be not
even higher standard which ap-
performer of certain roles
just the best
but the most complete exhibit of what
be
to
it is
a dancer.
Example:
Mikhail Baryshnikov. In any performing art which
largely repertory, interest naturally
is
The work
flows to the contribution of the executant.
What to
it
is
new, each time,
in the
How
they
way of new
make
to performer
is
it
is
what
this
energies, changes in emphasis, or interpretation.
different, or better.
some
is
worse.
The
theme and
the theme:
all
relation of
variations.
readings of
although the dancer does what
as well,
do, dance differs
from the other performing
all
that of the highest excellence
In
The standard
my
is
—
as
For the is
who
is
with actors and singers and musi-
artist is as self-critical
my
praise
received without
is
demurral, with evident pleasure (my purpose, of course,
and sometimes with
a friend or acquaintance I
a friend
an actor or a pianist or a singer on his or her su-
perlative performance; invariably
pleasure),
not simply
have gone backstage many times to congratulate
or acquaintance
stan-
perfection.
experience, no species of performing
as a dancer. I
and
will be,
executants of a
arts.
dard against which dancers measure their performances
cians.
it
work
A given
extent, variations.
But here
work
Or
a musical-structural one:
play or opera or sonata or ballet to
already exists.
performer, these performers, bring
who
include Baryshnikov
—
relief. is
a
I've
But each time
dancer on
heard
first
a
is
much
to give
I've congratulated
superb performance
a disconsolate litany of
mistakes that were made: a beat was missed, a foot not pointed in the right way, there
neuver. Never
was
mind
a near slippage in
some
observe these mistakes. They were made. the performance was not really good.
In
no other
world thinks of
art
intricate partnering
ma-
that perhaps not only I but everyone else failed to
The dancer knew. Therefore
Not good enough.
can one find a comparable gap between what the
a star
and what the
star thinks
about himself or
herself,
— SUSAN SONTAG
190
between the adulation that pours dissatisfaction that
It
is,
all
is
not simply a case of performers' raw
great performing artists are worriers, skilled at
of artistic conscience
self-criticism),
—
rather, integral to the dancer's
of being
a
dancer
shortcomings,
one's
observer, one
relentless
goads one from within. The degree and severity
of dancers' self-criticism
nerves (virtually
from outside and the
in
this
is
cruelly
a
deformation professionnelle.
formation professionnelle. Part
self-punishing objectivity about
viewed from the perspective of an ideal
as
more exacting than any
real spectator
could ever be: the
god Dance. Every serious dancer
is
driven by notions of perfection
pressiveness, perfect technique.
anyone
is
What
this
means
—perfect
in practice
is
ex-
not that
perfect but that performance standards are always being
raised.
The notion of progress
in the arts has
chine was the greatest choreographer
proposition firmly held by is
cause he was the
seem
to
many
came
surely not because he
last (or
be something
few defenders now.
who
ever lived (an
balletomanes, myself
after
If
Balan-
un verifiable
among
them),
it
Noverre and Petipa and Fokine, be-
the most recent) of the breed. But there does
like linear progress in
dance performance
unlike the other performing arts largely devoted to repertory, such as opera. (Was Callas greater than Rosa Ponselle or Claudia
question does not
make
sense.)
There
is
no doubt
Muzio? The
that the general level
of dancing in unison in companies like the Kirov and the
New
York
City Ballet (which have probably the two best corps de ballet in the
world) and the prowess and power and expressiveness of the leading dancers in today's great ballet companies (the two just mentioned, the Paris atre
Opera
— among
Ballet, the
All
past.
soloists apart, the
and the American
dancing
Ballet
The-
most admired few immortal
dance writers agree
that,
in Diaghilev's Ballets
Russes was technically
a
by today's standards.
Raising the level
number
Ballet,
others) are far higher than the level of the
dancing of the
quite limited
Royal
is
the function of the champion: a considerable
of people found they could run the four-minute mile once
Roger Bannister had done
it.
As
in sport or athletics, the
achievement
Dancer and the Dance by
dancer
a virtuoso
And
this
is
has done
raises the achievable
191
standard for everybody
else.
what Baryshnikov, more than any other dancer of our time,
—not only by what he can do with
other feats, jumped higher than anyone
but by what he can show,
his
else,
body
(he has,
and has landed lower),
and range of
in the maturity
among
his expressive-
ness.
Dance demands ing
degree of service greater than any other perform-
a
or sport. While the daily
art,
life
of every dancer
(which are inevitable), dance
injuries
ergy which must seem, in
moment
fully
mastered.
respects,
all
The
—
for there
is
reer).
is
effort visible
moved
herself nis
is
have
effortless, at
what he or she
is
is
not so
every
much
actually experienc-
often pain, in every major stint
an important difference between the dancer and
much
in
common
(ordeal, contest, brevity of ca-
In sport, the signs of effort are not concealed: on the contrary,
making and
who
the enactment of an en-
untrammeled,
some discomfort, and
of performing. This the athlete,
and those due to
dancer's performance smile
a smile as a categorical denial of
ing
itself is
a full-time strug-
is
gle against fatigue, strain, natural physical limitations
is
part of the display.
The public expects
by, the spectacle of the athlete visibly
beyond the
limits of
to see,
pushing himself or
endurance. The films of championship ten-
matches or of the Tour de France or any comprehensive documen-
tary about athletic competition (a splendid example: Ichikawa's
Olympiad) always reveal the tent to
athlete's strain
which Leni Riefenstahl,
is
really
about
politics
dered mass spectacle and about sport
as such.)
ter of general
public, while
—the
in
That
stress.
this light is
one of the signs that her
aestheticizing of politics in totally or-
imperturbable solo performance
is
why news
— and not
of an athlete's injuries
knowledge and legitimate
news of dancers'
Tokyo
(Indeed, the ex-
her film on the 1936 Olympic Games,
in
chose not to show the athletes in film
and
injuries
curiosity is
not,
is
a mat-
on the part of the
and tends
to
be sup-
pressed. It is
often said that dance
is
the creation of illusion: for example,
the illusion of a weightless body. (This might be thought of as the furthest extension of the
phantasm of
would be more accurate
to call
it
a
body without
fatigue.)
But
it
the staging of a transfiguration.
SUSAN SONTAG
192
Dance body.
enacts both being completely in the It
seems to be
a higher
body and transcending the
order of attention, where physical and
mental attention become the same.
Dancers of unrivaled
talents
dancers, Suzanne Farrell comes
which
focus, total concentration,
singer or a musician
performance.
like
first is
mind) project
not simply
—
an actor or a
—the necessary prerequisite of producing
Merce Cunningham and Lincoln
it.
No
art lends
dance does to metaphors borrowed from the r
a great
Kirstein have both offered as a
definition of dance: a spiritual activity in physical form. self so aptly as
a state of total
as for
the performance, the very center of
It is
woman
Baryshnikov (among
to
it-
spiritual
means, too, that
all
discussions of the
dance, and of great dancers, including this one,
fit
dance into some
(Grace, elevation
life.
larger rhetoric about
One
practice
ideal alternatives. tury.
is
.
.
.)
\X hich
human
possibility.
to pair off the greatest dancers as representing
The most
Theophile Gautier, so contrasted the reigning dancers of
Elssler
and
Taglioni. Elssler
transcendent.
And
critics a
was pagan,
was
earthy; Taglioni
decade ago, when absorbing the
second male Kirov refugee of genius
Nureyev and Baryshnikov
two
astute dance writer of the nineteenth cen-
in the
in
his era,
spiritual,
arrival of a
our midst, tended to compare
same way. Nureyev was Dionysian,
Baryshnikov was Apollonian. Such symmetries are inevitably misleading,
and
this particular
one does an
injustice to Nureyev,
supremely gifted and expressive dancer and
who was
in the early years
a
an ideal
partner (with Fonteyn), as well as to Baryshnikov. For although Barysh-
nikov has perhaps never in his career been an ideal partner, said
—without any disrespect the grandeur of Nureyev heroic — the younger dancer proved to
tenacities
to his
's
that
it
has to be
dancing and
to
be
a
genius
of another magnitude.
Of
a
magnitude without
tellectual curiosity,
and
his
parallel.
Guided by
his generosity, his in-
unprecedented malleability
as a dancer,
Baryshnikov has given himself to more different kinds of dancing than any other great dancer
in
history.
He
has danced Russian ballet,
Bournonville, the British recensions (Ashton, Tudor, MacMillan), Balanchine, Roland Petit, and a range of Americana from jazz dancing (a
Dancer and the Dance
duo with Judith Jamison, choreographed by Alvin Tharp, and Karole Armitage.
He
is
always
dancer.
more than
Which
is
the role.
what dance
Ailey) to Robbins,
may, on occasion, have been abused
or misused by his choreographers. But even
he
193
He
is,
strives to
when
almost
make
the role
literally, a
is
not
right,
transcendent
actual. [i
9 86]
Lincoln Kirstein
BORN as
1907, the "107th year of the nineteenth century," he once dubbed it, Lincoln Kirstein devoted his life to proIN
moting and exemplifying standards that were both confidently oldfashioned and recklessly visionary. His widest claim to fame
through his the cultural
initiative life
classical ballet
and unflagging
attentions,
both a great
art
of a great city were transformed. Lincoln Kirstein
an American
by giving America
art
and giving an American home twentieth century.
And
to
that artist,
its first
one of the supreme
that,
is
and
made
ballet school artists
George Balanchine, made
of the
New York
made anywhere,
the dance capital of the world: the best dances being
performed by consummately trained great dancers, created the most knowledgeable audience anywhere, one better prepared than audiences in any other metropolis to welcome and evaluate dance in
"modern"
varieties,
Kirstein 's actual Ballet
is
as well as ballet. titles
were: general director of the
and president of the School of American
tion with
often
dance was only one aspect of
(if
all
off as
194
when
New But
York City
his associa-
Like Diaghilev,
who
assessing Kirstein 's role
someone with
interesting, fiercely
the arts and literature, a connoisseur and prosely-
tizer of indefatigable appetite,
his focus to dance.
Ballet.
his genius.
not too accurately) invoked
and importance, he started partisan tastes in
all its
charm, social energies
Great tastemakers need
a
—who narrowed
capacious institution to
Lincoln Kirstein
bend
to their will, a vehicle. Diaghilev started, precociously,
ing a magazine (The World
thought
still
write for and to discover other talents,
at
Hound & Horn,
to
used museums and an
art gallery to celebrate
museum
magazine or
a
is
He
might
such as A. Everett ("Chick") Austin and Julien Levy,
disparate enthusiasms: a tion, as
forgotten.
not unlike other exceptionally prescient aesthetes of
a career
his generation,
who
new and
was
an undergraduate
Harvard, founded a magazine, a splendid magazine,
have had
by found-
of Art), well before the Ballets Russes
Kirstein in the late 1920s, while
of;
195
or a gallery
their
institu-
But Kirstein had the
a publishing house.
means, the daring, and the tenacity to put
and sponsor
an anthology
is
his avidity, all his piety,
all
a gallery or a
One genius only. And unlike museum or a magazine, institutions
that are invaluable in the soliciting
and disseminating of work but are
into an
institution exhibiting
house or
a publishing
not indispensable to
creation, a
was Kirstein 's
It
into being
dance company
and makes possible the work which
that inspires
public.
its
one genius.
and guaranteed the
who
a living
organism
vision, his stamina, his fidelity, that
survival of the greatest
of our time, without which most of the dances
imported,
is
then exhibits to the
it
brought
dance company
made by
the genius he
turned out to be the greatest choreographer of
all
time,
would not have been made. These
roles, of
magnificent cles)
to the idea of service.
The
Movement
&
Metaphor and many other books (and
arti-
about the history and ideology of dance
What made him something
author. writer,
ume
tastemaker and supreme enabler of another's genius,
and Kirstein was devoted
are service roles,
was the quality of
of
poems
—
how he happened
aghilev 's funeral in 1929;
War
made him an important an important, thrilling
exclude the early novel and vol-
interesting mainly because
Flesh Is Heir, relates
during World
his prose. (I
larger,
to
he wrote them. The novel, be present
Rhymes of a PFC, about
II, tells
how he
in
Venice
at
Di-
his military service
loved being in the army.) What's
more, when his work with the great institution he founded and kept alive for
decadts was virtually over ("Apres moi,
le
Board"
as
he quotes
Balanchine as saying), his work with English sentences was not. There is
more than
he got better
fifty all
years of writing, going back to
the time,
more
subtle,
Hound
& Horn,
more sonorous, more
and
intense. I
196
am
SUSAN SONTAG
thinking of the articles that appeared in the 1980s in The
Review of Books and, biographical writing static sensibility
in particular, of four
—triumphs of
—published
New
York
stupendous pieces of auto-
elliptical
prose and anguished, ec-
in the literary quarterly Raritan. In 1991 a
generous sampling of Kirstein's writing on
all
subjects (including pho-
tography, painting, film, and literature as well as dance) was published
under the
title
& From: A
By With To
Lincoln Kirstein Reader, and in
1994 Mosaic: Memoirs appeared, which incorporated some but not
And
of the material in Raritan.
there
much, much more,
is
all
be
to
still
collected or brought back into print.
A
votary of systems of ideal order, Kirstein
more than once
ex-
pressed his love of ballet as a commitment to certain spiritual values to an exalted abnegation of is
sometimes the good
self.
But
attraction to ideally regimented
life
does
discipline, service, devotion.
examined
impersonal
taste of a truly strong personality, so the militant
communities
of a truly eccentric temperament. Kirstein devoted his
as the attraction to the
closely, yields a
The
is,
illustrate the ideals
His
own
hallmark
usually, the
collective enterprise to
life,
like
he said
it
did: perfect
any individual
double meaning. Kirstein's
life
which
life
when
and accom-
plishments supply model lessons about the necessity of eccentricity
about being eccentric (including being spiritual value
We among
and
"difficult"
personally)
as
a
a precondition of real seriousness.
were fortunate to have had
this
noble and complicated
man
us. x [
997]
Wagner's
WATER,
BLOOD, HEALING
B
ALM
,
Fluids
magic potions
—
flu-
ids play a decisive role in this mythology.
Wagner's
launched from
stories are often
by water and
a
a water-world.
below the Rhine's surface
tan
und
fire).
(to
end, four operas
literally in
later,
Isolde, begins
who
fluidity, Tris-
and ends with journeys over water. Act
is
commanded by
Tristan that
is
affianced to Tristan's uncle,
wounded, had
set off
alone in a
I
takes
taking the Irish
King Marke, to
Cornwall. Preceding this journey was an earlier sea voyage, tan, grievously
the water,
with a cosmic duet
Wagner's most delirious exploration of
place on a noble vessel princess Isolde,
arrival
departure by water frame the plots of The Flying
Dutchman and Lohengrin. The Ring saga begins of water and
An
frail skiff
when
Tris-
for Ireland, in
hopes of being ministered to by Isolde, renowned for her healing
arts.
who wounded him and whom he killed was Isolde's fiance, he could not say who he was. (Solitary people with mysterious or disguised identities Lohengrin, the Dutchman, the wounded Tristan Since the foe
at
the Irish
— court — usually
rampart overlooking the the end of
Acf
II,
sea,
by
where
water.) Tristan,
Act
III takes
place on a
re-wounded mortally
waits for a boat to arrive bearing Isolde,
been summoned not as she
arrive
as his lover
who
at
has
but as his once successful healer. But
appears Tristan dies, and she follows him in death. Journeys over
water are associated in Wagner's mythology with a redemption that
197
SUSAN SONTAG
198
does not happen, as
in
Lohengrin, or happens in terms other than those
originally sought, as in Tristan
und
Isolde,
which has almost everybody
die, either senselessly or beatifically.
Parsifal, like Tristan
ever, in this last of
und Isolde,
very
is
—finding someone who king Amfortas — does take and demption
will heal, in the
place,
this
much
a story of fluids.
Wagner's thirteen operas, what
is
How-
defined as
re-
and succeed, the wounded hoped-for terms.
A
virgin,
time male, a holy fool, appears as foretold. Perhaps this fulfillment
of expectations makes
it
cluded from the opera.
A majestic outdoors,
inevitable that the water-world
indoors, the Grail Hall,
tified
are
its
is
largely ex-
the forest, and a vast sanc-
two
positive locations
(the
negative ones, Klingsor's domain, being a castle tower and a garden of
dangerous flowers). To be sure, Act
which the wounded king
is
has water just offstage: a lake to
brought for
where Kundry procures water announcing to him
I
his hydrotherapy,
and
a spring
to revive the fainting Parsifal after bru-
his mother's death;
and
Act
there
is
water for a consecration, for a baptism. But the main story of fluids
is
tally
about blood: the unstanchable hemorrhaging of the
blood that should stream
side, Christ's
in the chalice
charistic meal, has is
by
this
wound,
Jesus' side while
summarized
on
He hung
is
(Elsa,
to
is
for
him
to
perform
make
Christ's
—weakened
on the Cross. The plot of
as
he
Parsifal could
be
replacement for
having trouble making a fluid appear.
enter the
only one form does fluid leave
Women
Amfortas 's
by Klingsor with the very spear that pierced
SEVERAL KINDS OF FLUID in
which
as the search, eventually successful, for a
someone who
in
a regular basis, for the knights' eu-
become agony
inflicted
wound
III,
in the Grail chalice. Amfortas's
essential duty as king of the Grail knights,
blood appear
in
it,
body
in
Wagner's
stories,
but
blood, and this in male bodies only.
have bloodless deaths: usually they simply expire abruptly
Elisabeth, Isolde, Kundry), or they immolate themselves, in
water (Senta) or (Therefore,
it
in fire (Brunnhilde).
Only men bleed
doesn't seem too fanciful to regard
metaphorically, under blood.)
—bleed
semen
Though Wagner makes
as
to death.
subsumed,
the prostrate,
punctured, hemorrhaging male body the result of some epic combat,
Wagner's there
usually an erotic
is
wound behind
Fluids
199
the one inflicted by spear and
sword. Love as experienced by men, in both Tristan und Isolde and is
tantamount to
had
fallen in love
Parsifal,
Tristan
emotional necessity of a
a
wound. Isolde had healed
Tristan, but
way of
signaling the
with Isolde; Wagner's
new
virtually self-inflicted. (Tristan
and
wound
physical
is
make
to
drops his sword
at
it,
shockingly,
the end of Act II
the treacherous Melot run him through.) Amfortas had already
lets
been seduced by Kundry; Klingsor's spear
just
made
wound
that
literal.
woman, who
In Wagner's misogynistic logic, a
doubles as healer and seducer,
whom
Isolde
negativity flies in,
is
and the eroticism made Act
early in
stricken king
—
appears in Parsifal with both the
a positive version,
is
it
I,
characteristically
often the true slayer. This figure, of
more
far
explicit.
The person who
bearing a vial of precious medicinal balm for the
can relieve but not cure him
—
is
the same person
who
caused the King's wound. Wagner makes Kundry systematically dual: in her service role, a bringer of fluids; in her seducer's alter ego, a taker
of them.
Seduction
eloquence;
is
service
mute.
is
Kundry 's maximal eloquence, her attempt she
represented as having nothing
is
To
serve!
serve!) are the only
who
contrast, Isolde,
who
characterized
successfully administered
story), It is
is
and then
balm
as a focus of desire,
is
failure
of II,
"Dienen! Dienen!" (To
allowed in
first as
(the
the
to seduce Parsifal in Act
left to say.
words she
After
all
a healing
of Act
III.
In
woman, one
background of the opera's
becomes more and more eloquent.
with Isolde's rush of ecstatic words that
Wagner concludes
the
opera.
THE FLUID ADMINISTERED by past. In the story is
Wagner has chosen
what they both believe
inhibitor,
A
to
which makes them
be
—
to
tell,
in the
the fluid she offers Tristan
a lethal poison. Instead,
just as the
is
boat
is
is
a dis-
about to land
—con-
it
each other.
fess their love for
fluid-that-changes-everything
Tristan
Isolde in her role as healer
and Isolde
that has
is
essential to the Celtic legend of
been circulating through the veins of Euro-
SUSAN SONTAG
200
pean culture for more than seven centuries. In the
account, from
fullest
the thirteenth century, Gottfried von Strassburg's novel-length verse epic Tristan,
named
is
it
a love-philter
woman
and the healing
Isolde,
concocted by Isolde's mother
(also
in the original tale) for her
daughter and King Marke to drink on their wedding night which, during the voyage, an ignorant servant offers to Marke's
nephew and
the
bride-to-be as wine. Wagner's version turns accidental calamity into necessity.
"Der Liebestrank" the draught of love that Brangane,
make
servant, has deliberately substituted for the poison, does not
and Isolde
tan
being martyred by them.
on not acknowledging
The
own
feel their
love-potion
is
It
feelings
—they
simply makes
Isolde's Tris-
already feel them, are
impossible for them to go
it
their love.
treated in a comic register in another opera,
Donizetti's Lelisir d' amove (1832),
which opens with the well-to-do
heroine reading to a group of peasants a reduction of the Celtic legend to a tale of conventionally unrequited love with a
some
Tristan procures
from
a "saggio incantatore" (a
"certo elisir d'amor" (a certain elixir of love); ful
wise sorcerer) a
no sooner has the
but indifferent Isolde taken a sip than a matching love
instantly.
amante
I
'
"Cambiata visse
in
un
drink that makes someone tions, spells,
and charms
maids into princesses:
Mere
(Changed
fall
/
in love
by an
itinerant
is
and
is
belongs to the same family of po-
is
just
wine
and mer-
the instant metamorphosis of fairy
quack
no place
to the opera's hero to
—the
The
lived faithful to him.)
is
tales.
for magic: the
woo
the
woman
actually Bordeaux. Instead of
given as wine being really a magic potion, what
magic potion
created
an instant / that unkind
that transforms princes into frogs
it
he thinks (wrongly) doesn't love him
what
in
fairy tales. Donizetti's buffa realism has
fluid sold
is
beauti-
istante I quella belta crudele I fu di Tristano
Tristan fedel"
beauty / became Tristan's true love
a
happy ending. Hand-
inevitable,
is
fobbed off
comic deflation of the
as
fan-
tasy. Its tragic
dissolution
is
Wagner's, a quarter of a century
tion that, rather than
making something
loosening the
The
ity,
tie to life.
later: a
po-
possible, heightens impossibil-
fluid that
Brangane gives the hapless
pair does not just reveal (and therefore unleash) a feeling.
It
undoes
a
Wagner's world. Love subtracts them instantly,
normal
ties
from
totally,
and obligations, casting them into
Fluids
201
from
civil society,
a vertiginous solitariness
(rather than a romantic solitude a deux) that brings
Where are we? asks Where am I? she asks Tristan
on an inexorable
darkening of consciousness.
Isolde at the begin-
ning of the opera.
at
after they
king
is
have drunk the potion,
here,
someone
know where he
not
castle?
that
says.
what peasants? he
on the rampart of
in
Act
III.
asks, as his loyal retainer
home to own
his
Brittany, his castle.
I,
boat lands in Cornwall. The
And What
Tristan does
king? asks Tristan.
when he awakens
is
he has been brought
lying
What
as the
the end of Act
Love
herds? what
Kurwenal explains
own kingdom, is
that he
is
an anti-gnosis, a de-
knowing. Each act begins with a tormented, paralyzing, anguished waiting by one for the other, followed by the longed-for arrival
concluding with other, unanticipated
arrivals,
—and
which are not only
ruptive but, to the lovers, barely comprehensible.
What
duty?
dis-
What
shame? Passion means an exalted passivity. Act
I
opens with Isolde on
a
couch, her face buried in the cushions (Wagner's stage direction), and
Act
As
III
has Tristan in a
in Parsifal, there
coma
at
the beginning and supine throughout.
a great deal of lying
is
down and many
peals for the surcease of oblivion. If the opera acts,
one could regard
ended
fervent ap-
after its first
this pull of the horizontal in Tristan
und
two
Isolde,
the paeans to night, the dark, the equating of pleasure with oblivion
and of death with pleasure,
as a
most extravagant way of describing the
voluptuous loss of consciousness in orgasm. Whatever
is
being said
or being done on the stage, the music of the Act II encounter thrillingly
unequivocal rendering of an ideal copulation.
Mann was
not wrong
when he spoke
for bed.")
But Act
makes
III
it
is
a
(Thomas
of the opera's "lascivious desire
clear that the eroticism
is
more means
than end, a platform for the propaganda against lucidity; that the deepest subject
is
the surrender of consciousness as such.
Already the emotional logic of the words of the Act
quence of annihilating
do not simply
— and
nihilistic
II
duet
—mental operations. The
is
a se-
lovers
unite, generically, as in the unsurpassably elegant for-
mula of Gottfried von Strassburg's medieval German
Tristan:
SUSAN SONTAG
202
A
man,
a
woman;
a
woman,
man;
a
Tristan, Isolde; Isolde, Tristan.
Imbued with
the elaborate understanding of solitude and the explo-
seem the most
ration of extremes of feeling that
of the Romantic movements in the arts of the
much
able to go
Wagner
last century,
is
further:
tristan: Tristan du, ich isolde:
Du
isolde:
the world
is
You
I
mehr
Isolde, nicht
Isolde, Tristan ich, nicht
(tristan: Tristan you,
When
original achievements
Isolde,
Isolde, Tristan
I,
mehr
no more
no more
Tristan!
Isolde!
Tristan!
Isolde!
thought to be so easily negated by the pressure of
extreme feeling (the
still
regnant mythology of the
self
we owe
to the
nineteenth-century writers and composers), the feeling self expands to fill
the
empty
a
space:
dann bin
Selbst
ich die
Welt"
myself
(I
The
world), Tristan and Isolde had already sung in unison.
next
move
the elimination of the
is
self,
am
gender, individuality.
"Ohne
Nennen, ohne Trennen" (no names, no parting), they sing together "endlos, ewig,
one
self to
einhewussf
(ever,
the
inevitable
.
.
.
unendingly, one consciousness). For
seek to fuse with another
is,
in the
absence of the world, to
seek the annihilation of both.
When
lovers unite in opera,
what they do, mainly,
is
utter the
same
words; they speak together, as one. Their words unite, rhyme, to the
same music. Wagner's formal principle more
libretto for Tristan literally
and
lovers return to echo each other's
change, in the garden of Act
words back
to each other,
unite, to die,
and
exchange
— and
plex awareness.
And
bound yearning
in
any other opera: the
words throughout. Their
in their expressions of desire to
neither, for
two
all
and
day.
II,
Of
course their
their desire to merge, even
lovers. Tristan
is
having sung with Isolde of the
Act
fullest ex-
has them voluptuously repeating their
competing
identities, are the
Isolde carries out this
insistently than
their denunciations of light
texts are not identical
to
II,
und
given a bliss
more com-
of their death-
Tristan expresses another relation to death in
Wagner's
203
Fluids
the last act, in the form of a soliloquy in which he separates himself
from
Isolde, cursing love. It
had been Tristan alone
in
Act
who
II
dwelled ecstatically on the potion that flowed through him, that he
drank with endless bitter:
delight.
emotion
that
he invokes are
all
in his delirious unraveling of the story's deepest layer of
he himself brewed.
THE CHARACTERISTIC, is
III the fluids
"Liebestranen" (lovers' tears) and the accursed potion, which he
now proclaims
eras
Now in Act
plot-generating situation in Wagner's op-
one that has gone on too long, and
infused with the anguished
is
longing to terminate. ("Unending melody" distinctive musical line
—
is
—Wagner's phrase
one formal equivalent of
for his
this essential sub-
of prolongation, of excruciation.) Blood flows unceasingly from
ject
Amfortas's wound, but he can't die. Meanwhile, his father, Titurel, the
who already lies in his tomb, is And ageless Kundry, painfully
former Grail king,
the Grail ceremony.
wants nothing more than to go back to
sleep.
being kept alive by revived in each act,
Wagner
turns the legend
of Tristan and Isolde into an earlier, secular version of the longings ex-
—with Tristan taking the
pressed in Parsifal is
a proto-Amfortas: a suffering
finally,
Men
he can.
are given a
women. (Kundry, whose longing than Amfortas's,
when, with
is
lead.
man who wants
The
Tristan of Act III
to die but can't until,
more developed death wish than for extinction
seems even stronger
the exception.) Isolde tries to die only in Act
Tristan, she drinks the potion she believes to
while Tristan actively provokes his death in
all
I,
be poison,
three acts, succeeding at
wound when he is told that moment in Act II of doubt (or
the end by tearing the bandages from his Isolde
is
common little
approaching. Isolde even has a sense),
when
word: and),
them? she
asks.
she evokes "dies susse Wortlein: und"
and
as in Tristan
Isolde.
(this
sweet
But won't dying separate
No, he answers.
Viewed from the narrowing and even more excruciating perspective of the last act, the
Viewed more
opera
is
(or
becomes) mostly
inclusively, as the story of both,
old Celtic legend has an arbitrariness in
its
Tristan's story.
Wagner's version of the
denouement
that
closer in feeling to the traditional Japanese tragedy of the
makes
double
it
sui-
SUSAN SONTAG
204
—the voluntary hopeless — than cide
death of lovers whose situation
to, say,
is
not entirely
Romeo and Juliet. (And Wagner's
depiction of
love as tormentingly painful, consciousness-dissolving yearning recalls
sentiments in the love poetry of Heian Japan.) His Tristan and Isolde
von Strassburg's poem, star-crossed lovers
are not, as in Gottfried
thwarted by the standard obstacles: that the tive of the
woman's; that the
tive of the
man's to
whom
woman
loyalty
is
man
has slain a close
rela-
betrothed to an older male
rela-
owed. Wagner requires something
is
beyond these objective impediments, whose importance the lovers are
obstacle
of
its
is,
members
then, the very nature of love
object; insatiable.
The
signifies that
The world-transcending
of a society, a world.
— an emotion always
eroticism that
Wagner
exalts
in excess
one that
is
has to self-destruct.
When Marke
arrives at the end,
the claims of this passion and ulets
and Montagues do,
that
not to grasp for the
it is
now
to wish,
when
it's
too
first
time
Cap-
late, as
he had been more understanding. Hav-
ing learned from Brangane that the lovers were compelled by a love-philter to betray him,
and
in
some
Marke (who
early versions of the story
from her vow and
lease Isolde
let
functions as Tristan's father, his father) has
is
decided to
the lovers marry. But union
is
re-
not
what Tristan and Isolde want, what they ever wanted. They want the lights
turned
words
off. Isolde's last
—the
last
words of the opera
—
are
a description of losing consciousness: "ertrinken, versinken / unbewusst bliss!).
The
about being overcome, destroyed by
feel-
hochste Lust!" (drowning, sinking /unconscious supreme
music overflows. Consciousness drowns.
TRISTAN UND ISOLDE ing
is
— and not only about extreme experience but intended
That Wagner equates being
whelmed
is
a typically
satisfied
to be one.
or inspired with being over-
Romantic idea of
art, art
that not only
is
about
excess (Tristan and Isolde overwhelmed by their passion) but employs,
extravagant and outsized means, such
in
an almost homeopathic
as
unusual bulk or duration. The element of ordeal for the audience in
all this,
even of
risk,
spirit,
seemed only appropriate.
A
good performance of
Wagner's
und
Tristan
Isolde,
Wagner had predicted
while composing the
last act, is
"bound
Wagner's favorite notions about could immerse themselves in the tenor
nich in
1
865,
had been ties;
Ludwig Schnorr,
it
fell
laid
low by the
role's
Wagner was hardly
felt
the
would be
a
few weeks
had
that perhaps the opera first
Tristan,
first
in
composer
Mu-
said that
unprecedented exertions and
and when Schnorr unexpectedly died
(and not only Wagner)
the
performances
it
later,
had focused on the
singer.
To the
Wagner
killed him.
to associate the lethal, at least
librettist
A
musical drama must
lyri-
whom he was work-
with
ing on / Puritani, Bellini wrote, "Grave on your letters:
he
intensi-
metaphorically, with the lyrical. But previous notions of the lethal cal
of
that only the strong
When
after the first
both he and Wagner worried that
One
mad."
to drive people
with impunity. ill
Wesendonk
to Mathilde
work was
his
205
Fluids
mind
adamantine
in
make people weep, shudder, and
through the singing." The great singers were those
who
die
could provoke
audiences to an ecstasy bordering on delirium, a standard that was set
by
Farinelli, Pacchierotti,
and other celebrated
teenth and early nineteenth centuries, the sense,
whose
voices
first
castrati of the eigh-
divas in the
made people swoon and weep and
were being driven out of
their senses,
manner were
Napoleon declared,
in praise of his favorite singer, that
mad when he
one's
normal consciousness ravished by the
phenomenon
they
both sexes.
erotically captivating to
going
served in an irrepressible
feel that
and whose appearance and ex-
travagantly artificial
heard Crescentini
modern
sing. It is this
he
felt
he was
longing to have
singer's art that
is
pre-
usually dismissed as an oddity
or aberration of the opera world: diva worship.
The
distinctively high-
pitched adulation surrounding several sopranos (and a tenor or two) in every generation affirms this
much-prized experience
as
granted by
the voice, not merely the charms of celebrity and glamour.
Wagner opens beauty that
is
a
new
erotically troubling, soul-piercing
that the intensity has
fused.
chapter in this operatic tradition of creating
—the difference being
been heightened by becoming,
Though borne by
as
it
were,
dif-
the singer's voice, lyricism does not climax in
the experience of the voice. Rather than being specifically, corporeally, identified with the singer's voice as
it
floats
above the music,
it
has be-
SUSAN SONTAG
206
come
a
property of the music as a whole, in which the voice
ded. (This
is
what
is
embed-
is
sometimes called the symphonism of Wagner's op-
eras.)
Audiences have relished being excited, disturbed, troubled by the beauty of voices
music
—
as such.
What
the voice did seemed
play of virtuosity was, in castrati
But there was,
their sweetness, their velocity.
at least
considerable resistance to a dereglement du sens produced by
initially,
itself,
superhuman and
as a dis-
The sound produced by
admirable.
suggested something disembodied
the
—the words "seraphic" and
"heavenly" were often used to describe these voices, though the singers
themselves were clearly objects of erotic fantasy as well. Wagner's mad-
dening lyricism had nothing seraphic about
whatever the
it,
spiritual
messages and "higher" feelings being urged on us by the words; thing,
it
seemed
to
come from "below,"
if
any-
and, like the potion in the
opera, to invite repressed feelings to flow forth. Berlioz described the
Prelude to Tristan und Isolde, where no voices yet "groaning and moaning." Renouncing locity,
Wagner had chosen
to slow
all
sing, as
one long
the effects (and relief) of ve-
down sequences
of deep feeling that
then either became enthralling or seemed unbearably oppressive. The
Viennese music
and leader of the anti-Wagnerians, Eduard
critic
Hanslick, said that the Prelude to Tristan the Italian painting of a martyr
from are
his
body on
no longer any
whose
a reel." Parsifal,
real
he
und
Isolde "reminds
said,
made him
process of modulation so that the listener loses tonality.
We
feel as
ground under our
all
though we were on the high
feet." Yes.
The new emotional,
We
"There
seasick.
a perpetually
of
unwound
intestines are slowly
modulations but rather
me
undulating
sense of a definite seas,
with no firm
are.
as distinct
from
lyrical, intensity that
Wagner
brought into opera owes most to the way he both amplifies and makes excruciatingly intimate (despite the epic settings) the distinctive
of feelings depicted: weariness.
Wagner
lust,
tenderness, grief,
pity,
mix
euphoria, world-
utterly transforms feelings that are staples in opera's
long tradition of representing exalted sentiments, such as the association of love
and death. Hearts wounded by
love, death that
able to separation from the beloved or the loss of love
common
coin of lovers' plaints, of lovers' ecstasies
—
is
this
preferis
the
—long before Wag-
Wagner's ner,
we call Romanticism. Wagner, in Tristan und made these old hyperboles of opera, understood
long before what
Isolde to
207
Fluids
and elsewhere,
literal.
To speak nakedly
feeling, to
be overwhelmingly
be expressive exaggerations, shatteringly
and with unprecedented insistence about
—Wagner's sensualism, —was new
intimate with audiences
experienced as invasive
and
century,
it
his emotionalism,
were
territory for art in the mid-nineteenth
seems inevitable that such shamelessness
(as
was then
it
judged by many) be attached to the permissions given by opera's
unabashed commitment to heightened opera
I
treatment of time
is
ing of duration as a
he meant
"But for the
states of feeling.
Whitman
could never have written Leaves of Grass"
ciple late in life (though
told a dis-
not Wagner). The
Italian opera,
one of Wagner's principal innovations: the extend-
means of
But the depth and
intensifying emotion.
grandeur of feeling of which Wagner
is
capable are combined, in his
greatest work, with an extraordinary delicacy in the depiction of tion. It is this delicacy that
in the
rich,
may
finally
convince us that
presence of that rarest of achievements in
art,
we
emo-
are indeed
the reinvention of
sublimity.
Bruno Walter once
home
after
"That
isn't
said to
as they
were walking
Walter had conducted a performance of Tristan und Isolde, even music any longer." Meaning,
Wagner thought he was
offering
or idea that transcended mere
much more idea of
Thomas Mann,
it
is
more than music.
some kind of transforming experience
art.
(Of course, he considered
his
than mere operas.) But such claims seem mainly like an
art, a
peculiarly
modern
idea of
deal of expressed impatience with
art.
art, in
When
which there
a great
is
artists aren't trying to
subvert the art-status of what they do (saying, for instance, that ally life),
they often claim to be doing something
gion? Therapy?)
Wagner
is
an important part of
more than this
the inflation and coarsening of expectations about
duced so many great works of
IT
WAS OBSERVED
had an
works
effect similar to
art,
among them
Tristan
from the beginning that
consuming
modern
art,
re-
story of
which has pro-
und Isolde.
listening to
a psychotropic drug:
Baudelaire; alcohol, said Nietzsche. And, as with
it is
art. (Reli-
all
Wagner
opium, said disinhibiting
SUSAN SONTAG
208
drugs, sometimes there were violent side effects. In the early years of
und
Tristan
Isolde occasionally
someone had
be evacuated from the
to
theatre, fainting or vomiting, in the course of the performance.
perhaps
as
hard
now
to imagine the impact
ner, particularly of this opera,
that impact
tears
was immense,
as
it is
produced by the voice of
No
be more
artist
the
first
but positive. In the era of rock
and John Adams, be
it
to,
just
there have been others
'n' roll
now
rarely
viewed
and of Philip Glass
seems normal and desirable for music to aspire to
We live in
a narcotic.
— and
of the nineteenth cen-
the enchantments of addiction in art are
as anything
But the scandal
composer people boasted of not
admiring passionately but being addicted
And
Farinelli.
influential.
Though Wagner was
since.
issue
to imagine the fainting
was the passion with which he was defended
the incalculable influence of his work. to
It is
Wag-
mean, of course, aesthetic scandal, leaving aside the
(I
and spasms of
was
early audiences of
and the scandal which became part of
of Wagner's repugnant political views), as
tury
on
the time of the triumph of the "theatrocracy"
which we can find many descendants of
that Nietzsche deplored, in
Wagner's favorite dramatic form, the pseudo-spiritual pageant of
And
demption.
Wagner's characteristic means (the garrulous,
re-
soft-
focus libretto; the exacerbated length; the organized repetitiveness)
and themes
(the praise of mindlessness, the featuring of the pathos of
heroes and rulers) are those of some of the most enchanting spectacles of our
own
day.
Wagner's adaptations of the myths of the European and the
Germanic past (both Christian and pagan) do not involve
But they do involve a literary
way; he
Beach made
it
ideas.
knew
Wagner was
his sources.
clear that they
thought they didn't have
to.
mythologies of the past that only express an even for effect.
It is
The
creators of Einstein on the
knew nothing about
The emblems and
litter
the
more generic
edge,
is
—the
belief.
highly literate, and reflective in
work of
Einstein,
the
modern Wagnerians
pathos, and a generalized striving
firmly thought that neither the creator nor the audience historical
knowl-
considered to have a baleful effect on creativity and on last
and
bric-a-brac of heroic
need have any information (knowledge, particularly
ing
specifically
feel-
and most tenacious of the cliches of Romanticism). The
Wagner's
Gesamtkunstwerk becomes placidity
—
that have floated free
and for non-knowing literary,
as
from
such.
emotionally remote
confirmed
moods
—such
as paranoia,
specific emotional situations,
And
the
aptness
of these
anti-
modern redemption-pageants may have
troubled way of reacting to Wagner's highly
a less
fervent ones.
ary,
a vehicle for
209
Fluids
The smarmy, redeeming higher
values that
liter-
Wag-
ner thought his work expressed have been definitively discredited
much we owe the historic Nazism). Few puzzle anymore, (that
and Wagner is
just
fearers,
a
there anyone
taste." Nietzsche's acerbic
hundred years
left
after
it
then indeed
much
the optimal Tristan
remark about
was made, truer than
that Nietzsche and, to a lesser extent,
work
lovers
Now Wagner
ever.
But
even to be ambivalent about Wagner now, in the
has been
lost. I
mood
und Isolde
—you have
for experiencing really
is,
Thomas Mann were?
If not,
should think that feeling ambiva-
lence (the opposite of being indifferent still
Wagner
enjoyed ... as a drug.
Wagner seems, way
as did generations of
about what Wagner's operas mean.
"His pathos topples every
is
connection of Wagnerian ideology to
how
to
be seduced)
is
authentically sublime a
and how strange and troubling. [1987]
An
ALLAndART, all
opera
—
it
has been said, aspires to the condition of music.
arts
made with music
—but,
more than any
other,
aspire to the experience of ecstasy.
were provided by the
Originally, opera's ecstasies
well-known intrigues from naissance epic
classical
—were dignified
singers. Stories
mythology, ancient history, and Re-
pretexts.
The music,
often glorious, was
Whatever the pleasures afforded by the other elements
a platform.
(music, dance, poetry, scenography), opera was above
unique reach of the
human
voice. This
What was
musical occasion of opera was
a
trans-human
(in
all
a vehicle for a
was something much more po-
tent than "beautiful singing."
tually
Lament
Ecstasy of
released by the dramatic and
substance experienced as sublime,
part because
it
vir-
was often transgendered), and so
erotically affecting as to constitute a species of ravishment.
(Think of
the swoons and delirium that Farinelli and the other legendary castrati
among men
of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries provoked
and
women
both
—echoed,
in
diminuendo, by the adulation offered
the great bel canto singers of our
own
soaring, feminine; the gender line parts),
century.)
was
The model
arbitrary
register
was
(men sang women's
and opera aroused emotions, excesses of reaction
identified as
feminine.
A more
civically responsible idea of the ecstasies delivered
emerged when the devoted audience expanded from
210
its
by opera
aristocratic
An core to a
much
a ritual of
larger public,
urban bourgeois
Ecstasy of
and attendance
life.
at
Opera experienced
form of drama. Singing was
enterprise,
21
I
"opera houses" became preeminently a
as
vehicle for the voice declined in favor of opera as the resistible
Lament
most
inspiring,
a heroic rather than
ir-
an uncanny
which furthered the "progressive" idea that the work of the
work of music were
voice and the
opera began
teenth century.
about
at parity. It is
to reflect the nationalist projects
The enthusiasm produced
in
this
time that
of the European nine-
opera houses fed on some-
thing the audience brought to the occasion: tribal
self- congratulation.
Being construed as an achievement of a national culture resulted evitably in a certain normalization of opera ecstasies: sexual roles
in-
were
locked into place; stories chosen (historical or folkloric) were constructed around the contrasts of feminine
and masculine
traits,
vocal
and characterological. The model responses of audiences became
less
outrageously feminine: invigoration, inspiration, exaltation. It
was precisely the composer with the
largest ambition for opera,
Richard Wagner, who, in addition to bringing opera can be
—the
most solemn conclusion,
what opera can
also
be: an isolating, ecstatic
music.
second idea of what
The
—
to
human
greatest,
commotion of
feeling aroused
voice but by exhausting, relent-
voice rides the music; the music, rather than
an independent ideal of vocal virtuosity, makes ever more tially felt to
its
ushered in the third, or modern, idea of
not by the sublime feats of a lessly ecstatic
this
apotheosis of a collective spirit
difficult (ini-
be impossible) demands on the voice. Music, Wagner's
music, depicts the very condition of being flooded by feeling that the
uncanny voice once provoked
in audiences.
The consequence was
to
weaken the authority of sharply contrasting feminine and masculine styles of
emotional reaction
culinist pretensions of
opera public. But
how
—both on the opera
stage (for
Wagnerian ideology) and
in the
all
the mas-
minds of the
could reinstating the goal of providing an im-
moderate, ravishing experience not entail a re-feminizing
(in
terms of
the cultural stereotypes) of the most acute pleasure taken in opera?
FOR WAGNER, who perience
created the idea of opera as overwhelming ex-
—and whose supreme dramatic subject
is
the progression of
SUSAN SONTAG
212
consciousness through ecstasy into oblivion the story
drama
still
left
held.
—
certain strictures about
Wagner could not have accepted
Since Wagner, however, the stories that operas
end with
any
are
tell
more
likely to
collective dismay, with the defeat of understanding.
To be
sure,
some of the
greatest operas {Lincoronazione di Poppea,
Don
Cost fan tutte, Fidelio,
Moses und Aron) carry
Carlo,
ments, real debate. But more
which
as satisfying
unresolved by an epiphany oi acceptance, of understanding.
commonly favored
are, in effect, tragedies of cognition.
what we could properly
made by Wagner's
last
call
modern
This
real argu-
opera are stories
in
particularly true of
is
opera, the transition to which
opera, Parsifal,
whose protagonist
is
enters the
story as a child, a holy innocent, a fool. Subsequently, Parsifal does at-
enlightenment
tain
mains
someone
often
—
offstage. In later versions of this story the naif re-
unknowing. The central figure of modern opera
in a state of
is
in a state of deficient consciousness, of pathological in-
nocence. Pelleas et Melisande
Onto one she
is
in this evolution.
of the most traditional opera stories, that of a young
whose love
Isolde\
one of the masterpieces
is
for a
woman
his
own
age or younger
promised or already married
Don
Eugene Onegin,
Carlo,
is
thwarted because
to an older relative [Tristan
inter alia),
is
grafted the
story about not understanding, not knowing, being balked tery;
man und
modern
by
a
mys-
or creating a mystery, by being afflicted by an unexplained injury
or suffering.
Debussy's opera (following the Maeterlinck play used almost in entirety as the libretto) has
its
special inflections.
We
are in the
its
world
without clear borders and fixed dimensions of Symbolist enigma:
where appearances debility
are
known by
and inexplicable
their
affliction are
and the emblematic object of desire
Xouveau long
Art
In this nile,
ill
tale of
well,
a
reflections,
where
equated with voluptuousness,
woman
with
— ancient and
juve-
languid childlike
hair.
kingdom oi
and
is
shadows or
stretched, fairy-tale dualities
dark and
light,
wet and dry
—
is
set a
neo-Wagnerian
yearning and thwarting, of incurable vulnerability. Maeterlinck's
drama can be read
as
an idealization oi depression.
It
can also be seen
An as a representation, a literalizing, of
physical illness
Lament
Ecstasy of
213
once widely accepted ideas about
—which attributed many
illnesses, tautologically, to
The
illness-producing atmosphere ("miasma").
story
an
set in precisely
is
such a damp, sun-deprived environment, replete with water sources
and subterranean spaces. Debussy began with Melisande I'eau." (It
at a forest spring:
was surely not
"Une petite fille qui pleure au bord de
for lack of thematic aptness that
he cut the
scene of Maeterlinck's play: a chorus of castle servants calling for
first
water.)
The omnipresence
emotional
volatility
wounded
ther, Arkel)
(in
are
signifies a generalized unhealthiness.
(Pelleas's father, Pelleas's friend Marcellus)
ill
or physically
— and
—or
the course of the story, Golaud) or infirm (the grandfa-
of his inability to fragility
of water, which generally signifies purity
—here
Most characters or
the play's second scene,
at
lift
weak (Golaud's
little
son, Yniold,
a stone). Melisande, of course,
wound
dies of a
that, the
who
sings
the epitome of
is
doctor says, would not
kill a
bird. (In Maeterlinck's play, the doctor adds, "Elle est nee sans raison .
.
.
pour mourir;
et
meurt sans
elle
Every reference to
raison.")
u
Melisande emphasizes her smallness (her hands are always her petites mains"), her untouchability (her
me
touchez pas!").
like a giant
—
a rapist
woman
own
adult sexuality is
would
appears to her
vulnerability ("Je suis perdu
woman, he becomes,
is
who
—wins Melisande by promising not
his
his family
and begins to
despite himself, a brute.
consummated not
is
too
fragile, sexually
tiously chaste,
and
when he wishes
to
immature.
constitute an aggression against the heroine.
the story's one normally mature male character
to the ancient grandfather,
be-
married to an older relative of the young
man's, the usual story, but because she
Golaud
"Ne me touchezpas! Ne
love of Pelleas and Melisande cannot be
cause the young
Any
are
But when he brings Melisande back to
treat his child-bride as a
The
words
discoverer, Golaud,
and by avowing
to touch her, aussi").
Her benign
and possibly
first
whose request
to Golaud's
to kiss
—
Melisande
young half brother,
still
in contrast is
ostenta-
a boy,
who,
embrace and be embraced by Melisande, wraps
himself in the«part of her body that
not
not
her
hair.
Melisande seems endowed with a body only for others to marvel
at its
delicacy. It
is
startling to realize (I
is
solid,
have never seen
it
flesh:
depicted in any
SUSAN SONTAG
214
production of the opera) that Melisande would be nine months pregnant
when
she and Pelleas finally do confess their love to each other,
only immediately to be torn apart by the jealous Golaud. But her
body
tered, swollen
is
unmentionable, perhaps unstageable, and,
certain sense, unthinkable.
she
is
Melisande herself cannot
It is as if
pregnant (and therefore a woman), for the same reason
now
the story's close, she cannot take in that she
about to
al-
in a
realize that, at
has a daughter and
is
die.
Eventually the lovers do embrace, body to body, but this of shared immolation-in-feeling
is
moment
cut short, to be followed by amnesia
(Melisande) and excruciating mental confusion (Golaud). Melisande
remember
doesn't
that Pelleas has
been
by Golaud,
slain
que je
that she has just given birth ("Je ne sais pas ce
pas ce que je
sais
.
.
.
Je ne
capable of giving the frantically bereaved Golaud the that,
however much he
regrets
dis
que je veux"), and
dis plus ce
is
isn't .
.
.
aware
Je ne sais
genuinely
relief
in-
of knowing
what he has done, he was not wrong
in
suspecting that Melisande and Pelleas were in love.
The
Golaud has turned
well-intentioned
morseful, inadvertent murderers
he truly
For
loves.
everyone
Golaud
feels
is
who
one of opera's
re-
woman whom
an innocent
which not
in this story in
just a protagonist
inadequate, helpless, baffled by what she or he
is
but
feeling,
the only character physically capable of violence. Mental de-
ficiency or frustrated understanding lessness)
kills
into
indeed
is
(combined with
a recipe for violence.
Bluebeard's Castle, Pelleas et Melisande
is
feelings of help-
Like Wozzeck and Lulu, like with
a story of blind cruelty,
the difference that the cruelties perpetrated are not transactions be-
tween adult
men and women
Melisande
a lost child
is
but acts of adults against children.
whom Golaud
rescues and pledges to protect
but cannot help destroying; in the anguish of jealousy he also manhandles his a
victim
guilty
—
little
like
son. But
Wozzeck,
— and therefore
Pity
for
the
Melisande has
garded
like
this
does not make the ogre any
Peter Grimes, Golaud
proper object of the audience's
innocent lovers;
left;
pletes the process
a
all
and
pity for
pity
Golaud
for
No work
that
is
innocently
pity.
Yniold and the infant
Pelleas et Melisande
begun long ago whereby opera
as feminine.
is
now
less
com-
exalts the feelings re-
part of opera's standard
An repertory
is
such pleasure.
chamber music), opera has broadly legible is
Lament
—
emotions.
A
robust art (compared with,
specialized in
broad
—broadly contrasting,
on
a
more harrowing, more
But the great modern tragedies of deficient
consciousness propose their
own voluptuous
standards as they
an ecstasy of lament. Debussy's portrayal of lacrimae rerum
any other in opera.
It
only rival of Pelleas et Melisande in this respect
toute que
I'
is
rise to
unlike
must be the saddest opera ever composed. (The is
Wozzeck, which also
ends on the excruciating presence of a just-orphaned heartbroken Arkel
say,
The emotional stream of Debussy's master-
deliberately narrower: he wagers
finely calibrated intensity.
215
which opera,
so devoid of the triumphalist accents by
traditionally, gives
piece
Ecstasy of
sings:
"Mais
la tristesse,
child.)
Golaud, mais
As the
la tristesse
on voti!" I>997]
de
One Hundred Years of
/taly: one hundred double narrative:
a
Photography
Italian
years of photography announces
a
century of Italy as well as a century of pho-
tography.
The
photograph
earliest
in the
book, taken
in 1884, of the large
conservatory of the Italian Horticultural Society, shows us a place
quented by well-off people of
owned cameras and hobby; a picture
some of
a century ago,
like this
could have been taken by one of the Society's
an Italian
interior,
a picture
not so
much
in 1984,
shows us not
not even something in
portion of the world (Europe) of which Italy it's
probably
practiced photography at a very expert level as a
members. The most recent photograph, taken real place (not
whom
fre-
is
Italy)
a
but a
a part; an aerial view,
taken as arranged, by professionals, aided by
computers.
There
is
nothing distinctively Italian about either photograph,
though both photographs bespeak a lush halls,
one we see
new
exhibition
example of the glass-and-iron shape given
markets, and railway stations
nineteenth century. ject that
The
aerial
all
to
over Europe in the mid- and late
photograph
is
also an
example of
a sub-
could have been photographed elsewhere in the same way;
what dates
216
their period. In the first
it,
though,
is
not what
we
see but that
we
can see
it.
It is
an
One Hundred
Years of
Italian
example of something that can be seen only
Photography
in the
form of
217 a photo-
graph, and could only be photographed (thanks to the existence of
now.
other, allied technologies)
The
subjects of both photographs have an obtrusive geometry; nei-
ther includes people. But the conservatory
a site that
appears to be
temporarily vacated of people, to get this picture of the overbear-
just
ing architecture
and the
place, milling about in
of things beyond the absent.
human
—time—
is
very
much
human,
a
of the aerial photograph
a
is
world
from which people are necessarily
scale
no
place.
the unifying topic of this seemingly
random
striking, then, that the anthologist,
selected as the
histor-
imagines people reinserted in this
historical fact has
is
How
collection of subjects.
Colombo, has
easily
The world
it.
Here the human,
But history
tory
valiant plants. It
One
world.
ically specific
are
is
most recent photograph one
in
Cesare
which
his-
annihilated in favor of geography; in which the accents of time
is
made
irrelevant
by the
scale of this uniformly
marked
distribution
of space.
Are we
to read this as a history-minded
anthologist: an
comment on
greeds created by multi-national capitalism?
Or
device: the anthologist's perhaps overemphatic
sure for the collection? If only the
For
latter,
is it
demise
way
of photographs, which
is
simply a formal
of decreeing a clo-
the device
is,
defies the very nature of photography,
it
its
and absorption into the homogenizing system of
as a distinctive culture
bitrary.
the part of the
acknowledgment of the Euro-destiny of Italy,
of necessity,
and of
ar-
collections
that they are open-ended; that they cannot
conclude. There can be no definitive or summative or terminal photograph, or collection of photographs. Only collections
A
.
.
.
COLLECTION OF IMAGES
Alinari
—though most — reminds us
archives
more photographs. More
of the Italian past published by
of the photographs aren't from the Alinari
that a
photograph
is
rarely a
work of
individual
seeing but almost inevitably a (potential) unit in an archive.
The
archive can be that of the Alinari enterprise, which appears less as the
very successful business
it
was than
as a cultural operation, a vast col-
SUSAN SONTAG
218
endeavor for documenting
lective
many
Italian society that
extended over
decades, in which the names of individual photographers have
been suppressed,
More
cathedrals.
like those of the artisans
often, the archive
prolific professionals
is
who worked on
the Gothic
that of single photographers
with studios from the nineteenth and the
first
half
of the twentieth century, and also contemporary photographers whose
manipulations of their subjects, in the service of fashion and other kinds of advertising, produce results that are most unlike the innocently scrupulous documentation practiced
mercial photography.
Avowed proponents
of bad taste such as Carlo
Mollino and celebrants of celebrity such
museum -worthy, no and beautiful Bresson.
in
less
Luxardo
as Elio
are
now
than such illustrious proponents of the serious
photography
The most
by older forms of com-
Paul Strand and Henri Cartier-
as
eccentric, partial view could constitute an archive of
invaluable images of (from, about) the past.
Even the
soft-focus super-
impositions of the self-styled Futurist Anton Bragaglia which are located nowhere and the staged al fresco fantasies of the erotomane
Baron von Gloeden located
in turn-of-the-twentieth-century
Taormina
have their period charm, their status as documents.
(Though the destiny of in a
museum
—the extramural time effects
too,
1952 Jean
photographs
museum, they can
housed
here,
all
Cocteau
life
of a
droll
its
still
document being mutations.
all
a
in
In
a
crown of
roses. Surely
shops in town catering to
it
an archive
that of a souvenir;
journal entry of
fisherman in
relates the story of a forty-year-old
von Gloeden's photographs
naked with
end up
to
lead, singly, a life outside the
Taormina, furious because one of the shops hibiting
is
in the
main
street
was ex-
of his grandfather completely
was
tourists,
just a
few years
von Gloeden's
later that, in
daintily erotic
photographs of naked local youths of yesteryear were to be found
as
postcards.) Italian
photography
which have
a
is
exceptionally rich in superb photographs
primary status
as
documents.
One
thinks,
the best images from the Alinari holdings and of the
first
of
all,
of
work of Giuseppe
Primoli, the most fascinating figure in the history of Italian photography,
who was
himself something of a one-person Alinari enterprise. (A
photograph by Primoli
—of someone taking
a
photograph
—begins
this
One Hundred
Years of
Italian
Photography
219
book.) If the collective activities of the Alinari firm and the ultraindividual enterprise practiced by the dilettante aristocrat Primoli were
both supremely archive-creating ventures,
word
"archive," with
ceals
much
its
it
should be noted that the
implicit claim of disinterested curiosity, con-
of the complex ideological agenda behind this glorious
burst of picture-taking.
Consider the Alinari collection, more than a hundred thousand pic-
seems
tures. It
like a nineteenth-century
updating of the eighteenth-
century Wunderkammer, or cabinet of curiosities, which was less an
instrument of learning than an expression of collecting mania, the ap-
accumulation and
petite for
classification;
wonder, a favorite sentiment
of that era, and one unburdened by historical understanding, depends
on ignorance
as
much
as
on knowledge. But
it
also
seems an example
of a distinctively nineteenth-century ideological project, shared by
some of
the century's greatest novelists, which was to provide an ency-
clopedic understanding of social
decisively,
it
seems
art
of their native
travelers
on
their
Grand
city,
city.
mode
by specializing
in
the great
Florence. For a small, wealthy class of
and the
art in
Florence more than in any
Collectible photographic documentation played an
essential role in the democratizing of this construction of Italy
happy
few,
desired,
of
Tour, Italy had long been the country where
to look at the art,
other Italian
to the lowest
and perhaps most
and boosting consumption.
Alinari photographers started
works of
one came
from the highest
historically. Last,
like a proto-twentieth-century project: a
advertising, of creating needs
The
reality,
something that unfolds
levels, as
which has made the country into the world's
most prestigious
by the
single
most
target for the instant appreciations of
mass
tourism.
The dissemination of sion of
art in the
form of photographs
what Andre Malraux, who
jamin, described as the
museum
lifted the idea
without walls
—
a first ver-
from Walter Ben-
—was soon extended
to
the whole physical environment, which could be collected as pictures.
Exhaustive documentation meant, in contrasting: feats of
urban renewal
fact, a
(as that
century) juxtaposed with ancient sites and
preference for the strongly
was understood
monuments, the
in the last vitality
of
the swarthy poor as well as the glamour and remoteness of the rich and
SUSAN SONTAG
220
powerful. Photographs disseminated not just art (the art of the past)
but
all
of the past
the past (that as such:
we
is,
look
— and the present, inexorably on
art).
at
The notion
PHOTOGRAPHS ARE NOT view of the world evidence
of art
as
it is,
or
windows which supply
more
and existing
to
becoming
aesthetically.
it,
exactly, as
social arrangements.
a transparent
was. Photographs give
it
—often spurious, always incomplete—
ideologies
way
extended to include the past
is
the past, any part of
its
in
support of dominant
They
fabricate
and con-
firm these myths and arrangements.
How? By making should look
Photographs
at.
their subjects
statements about what
make
the run.
itself
we
what
on the
sites
construction of what
markers of
early twentieth centuries
We
status.
associate this with
took time: one couldn't take photographs on
With posing, whether
ple taken
world, what
things ought to look,
and
in the nineteenth
visible the
The process
posing.
how
in the
should reveal about themselves.
Photographs taken rarely fail to
us
tell
is
in a studio portrait or in pictures of peo-
of
work and
is
seemly, appropriate, attractive.
recreation, there can
be
a conscious
The way most
old photographs look expounds the value of uprightness, explicitness, informativeness, orderly spacing; but from the 1930s on, and this can-
not only be due to the evolution of camera technology, the look of
photographs confirms the value of movement, animation, asymmetry, enigma, informal social relations. in the old
to
be
photographs of building
kind of
a
Modern
cal exertion.
lie
We
—concealing,
sites
(if
and
factories
way workers
were
stiffly
posed
for instance, the reality of their physi-
prefer to see the sweat, in informal, unposed-looking
shots in which people are caught in a truthful
taste judges the
not always beautiful) to
us.
movement
We
feel
—
that
by
others), of
what looks
more comfortable with
what features exertion, awkwardness, and conceals the trol (self-control, control
is
power
—
realities
revelations
of con-
we now
judge, oddly enough, to be "artificial."
Two
On ily
contrasts, a century apart.
the front endpaper, a celebrated image.
signifying
It is
the ordered, heav-
decor and spaciousness of the bourgeois photography
One Hundred
Years of
studio (in fact, the Alinari salon).
Someone
remotely, discreetly
ure,
Deep
space: everyone
(seated, weighty)
tographed. People seem becalmed. Everyone
On
shoving, taking their images by force.
word
that the international their celebrity targets
decor
is
is
is
crowded
being pho-
A
—
this
is
a placeless space.
THE FUNCTION OF
together, straining,
Shallow space: everyone
And
room
the
everyone
an anthology
pack of
there any justice in the fact
(Is
Not enough of
close up, indiscreetly.
full fig-
taking his or her time.
is
for predatory photographers
Italian?)
221
seen
the endpaper at the back, a familiar kind of image.
journalists, paparazzi, standing, densely
tially,
Photography
Italian
is
who jump is
seen par-
to identify
it,
no
in a big hurry.
to represent a world. This an-
is
thology, this token chronicle of a century, represents a world as
sub-
it
mits to the imperatives of time.
Most of the is
pictures are records of a highly distinctive society that
profoundly used
by Pasolini
senses of the word), the Italy
(in several
in Uccellacci e uccellini, the Italy that
no longer
dying, in the throes of being replaced, since the 1950s,
consumer
Italian Italy of the Italys
is
enormous,
The
The
was
is
trans-
two
which the photographer's
was an incursion: the photographer could be only an observer.
new
Italy the
photograph and photographic
photography has participated
that
mercialization of reality but in
founded
in the early 1850s,
activities,
which
first
seems
unification.
its
Italy, as
had only Florence cities
a
The
could be regarded as
clude the countryside and other
new
activities
(TV,
version of the
com-
Alinari enterprise,
itself
an instrument of
the scope of the firm's
as its subject,
broadened
—the whole —photographic
country.
to in-
Now,
for
photography
endeavors by
—has participated mightily
in the project of unifying Italy
decades,
many hands
It
in the past not only in the
the subsequent political unification of
several
by the
difference between the
a society in
video, monitoring, playback) are central.
way
or
visceral, shocking.
distinctive Italy
practice
In the
society.
mourned
exists,
Italian
culturally (which also
means
politically)
with Europe, with the Atlantic
world. Photographic images play a large role in making Italy (be? or only look?)
more and more
like
.
.
.
everywhere
else.
SUSAN SONTAG
222
All of
Europe
is
in
mourning
for
its
Bookstores are stocked
past.
with albums of photographs offering up the vanished past for our delectation
and
reflex nostalgia.
But the past has deeper roots
than anywhere else in Europe, which makes
And
ing.
was the note of rancor
Italy, as
the past: the calls to burn the
make
a highway,
it
of, say,
its
destruction
the elegiac note was sounded earlier and
more
defin-
more plangently
museums,
fill
in the
Grand Canal and
and so on. Comparable anthologies of photographs
The depth possessed by past. It
is
in quite this way.
these images of an older Italy
is
not just the
the depth of a whole culture, a culture of in-
comparable dignity and flavor and bulk, that has been thinned out, faced, confiscated.
depth
is
air
.
.
To be replaced by
meaningless. That
becomes an
in
—think of the Futurist tantrums about
premodern France or Germany do not move
depth of the
in Italy
abstraction.
is
a culture in
ef-
which the notion of
not meant to be sauntered through. That
To be seen
as
an image. To be seen from the
.
[1987]
On
OF ALL,
FIRST
the pictures are unforgettable
ultimate standard of value.
And
New
Orleans in the early years of
most admired recoveries
why
the
this
century became one of the
in photography's widening, ever
incomplete
Eighty-nine glass plates in varying states of corrosion, shatter,
history.
Lee Friedlander came across
in
and eventually purchased. When,
in
and defacement were the treasure
New
—photography's
not hard to see
unknown photographer working
trove of glass negatives by a hitherto in
it's
Bellocq
Orleans in the
late 1950s
that
1970, a selection of the ingeniously
lander had
made was published by
book became,
deservedly, an instant
developed, superb prints Fried-
Museum of Modern Art, the classic. So much about these pic-
the
tures affirms current taste: the low-life material; the near-mythic prove-
nance virtual
(Storyville); the informal, anti-art look,
anonymity of the photographer and the
sitters; their status as objets trouves,
this
which accords with the
what
is
and
a gift
real
anonymity of
from the
past.
Add
his
to
decidedly unfashionable about the pictures: the plausibility
and friendliness of their version of the photographer's troubling, highly conventional subject.
And
photographer's* relaxed tive.
If there
and one day
a
because the subject
way of looking seems
is
that
so conventional, the
much more
had once been more than eighty-nine few others turned up, no one would
fail
distinc-
glass negatives
to recognize a
Bellocq.
223
SUSAN SONTAG
224
The
year
is
191
but
2,
we would not be surprised to be told that the when Theodore Dreiser began writing Jenwhen Kate Chopin published The Awakening,
pictures were taken in 1901, nie Gerhardt, or in 1899,
or in
1
889, the year Dreiser set the start of his first novel, Sister Carrie
the ballooning clothes and
from 1880
lenting that ticipating
Chopin
World War
it
second novel and Dreiser's
"fallen"
first
were so unre-
and Dreiser
faltered. (An-
attacks, Dreiser, after beginning his great
second
aside for a decade.) Bellocq's photographs belong
same world of anti-formulaic,
this
The charges of indecency
I.
retreated from literature
more such
novel in 1901, put to
plump bodies could be dated anywhere
to the beginning of
that greeted Chopin's
women, though
in his case
anti-salacious
sympathy for
we can only speculate about we knew nothing about the
the
origin of that sympathy. Until recently
thor of these pictures except what Friedlander: that he had
no other
"he always behaved polite"
he spoke with
was an (his
(this
some old
interests except
from one of
—hydrocephalic and
New
entirely normal-looking scion of the
who
It
New
—shades of
turns out that he
Orleans middle
also
—
for example, the
The Chinatown
Orleans's Chinatown.
class
photographed quite
conventional subjects as well as other low-life ones
opium dens of
photography; that
his Storyville sitters); that
dwarf-like.
grandparents were born in France),
au-
cronies of Bellocq's told
French accent; and that he was
a "terrific"
Toulouse-Lautrec
—
series, alas,
has never been recovered.
The
Storyville series includes
terest for Bellocq
and
a rolltop
surrounding
must have been
a central painting,
erotically naked.
portraits.
of two is
in
That
is,
all
The
there
above
one picture
a fireplace in
is
photographs with the same contrasts
are of
women, some dressed
rest of Bellocq's
as
to the nines,
photographs are individual
a single subject per picture, except for a shot
champagne drinkers on
a similar off-duty
trait
that,
in-
desk in the other, the walls are covered with photographs
the ones he was taking:
some
two pictures of parlor decor. The
moment
the floor absorbed in a card
in Bunuel's
game
(there
unconvincing, notional por-
of a brothel in Belle de Jour) and another of a
demure
girl
posing
her Sunday best, long white dress and jacket and hat, beside an iron
bed ture,
in
which someone
is
sleeping. Typically
— an exception
which shows only the sleeping woman's head and
right
is
this pic-
arm
—
Bel-
On locq photographs his subjects in figure will
reclining
be cut off
chosen to come
pictures
same
make on
setting
us
and
is
a seated
— naked woman —does one have the impression
the knees; in only one picture
at
225
though sometimes
full figure,
on some embroidered pillows
that Bellocq has
Bellocq
a
in close. Central to the
that there are a large
cast in a variety of poses,
number
impression the
of them, with the
from the most natural to
the most self-conscious, and degrees of dress /undress. That they are part of a series
what
is
gives the photographs their integrity, their
depth, their meaning. Each individual picture
is
informed by the mean-
ing that attaches to the whole group.
Most
obviously,
pictures that the
it
could not be detected from
women are inmates of a woman in a large
one picture
clothed: in
a brothel.
Some
something
like
one poses on
it:
Others are
a chair, her
tious bodies.
hands clasped behind
—with unpretentious candor about,
Some
just
stand there, as
they didn't
if
underwear or
in their
her head, wearing a comical-looking body stocking.
tographed naked
skirt sits in
beyond which frayed
the yard in front of a low black backdrop, just line.
are fully
feathered hat, long-sleeved
white blouse adorned with brooch and locket, and black
towels are drying on a laundry
of the
at least a third
Many
are pho-
mostly, unpreten-
know what Only
to
once they had taken off
their clothes for the camera.
voluptuous pose,
the long-tressed adolescent odalisque on
like
wicker divan
—
graphs show
women
probably Bellocq's best-known picture.
exceptionally pretty
wearing masks.
woman
One
The other
bellied, entirely
face as she
mask
(it
is
for her face.
mask she
woman whose mask
The
is
sits as
awkwardly posed on the edge of
appears to be a first
full
Two
offer a a
photo-
a come-hither picture: an
wearing only black
picture, the opposite of a pin-up,
naked
few
with a dazzling smile reclines on a chaise
longue; apart from her trim Zorro-style stockings.
is
a
do
mask minus
woman
its
a
is
of a large-
awkwardly on her
wooden
chair; the
lower half) seems too big
seems happy to pose
(as,
given her
charms, well she might); the second seems diminished, even foiled, by her nudity.
Income
sive look, the
pictures, in
emotion
doubt that posing
is
a
is
which the
sitters
adopt
a genteelly
harder to read. But in others there
game, and fun: the
woman
in the
pen-
is little
shawl and vivid
striped stockings sitting beside her bottle of "Raleigh Rye," apprecia-
SUSAN SONTAG
226
tively eyeing
her raised
glass; the
woman
in
ample undergarments and
black stockings stretched out on her stomach over an ironing board set
up
in the
backyard, beaming
at a tiny
dog. Clearly, no one was being
spied on, everyone was a willing subject. dictated to
them how they should pose might for
selves as they
a
customer
We
are
far, in
hijinks of the
Bellocq's company,
bound women
—whether
of them undoubtedly were.
offering themselves
stylish,
up
to the
male gaze
photographs of Nobuyoshi
unvaryingly intelligent lewdness of
Helmut Newton. The only
the images devised by
to exhibit them-
from the staged sadomasochistic
(or worse) in the disturbingly acclaimed
Araki or the cooler, more
Bellocq couldn't have
absent the customers, as the
or,
women most
wholesome-looking country
And
pictures that
do seem
—or convey something of the meanness and abjection of — those on which the have been scratched one, the vandal — could have been Bellocq himself? — missed the
salacious
a
are
prostitute's life
(In
face.)
faces
out.
it
These pictures are actually painful to look
viewer.
But then
I
am
a
woman
at,
at least for this
many men who look
and, unlike
at
these photographs, find nothing romantic about prostitution. That part
of the subject
ence of
many
that affirm
I
do take pleasure
of the
in
is
the beauty and forthright pres-
women, photographed
both sensuality and domestic
their vanished world.
How
in
ease,
homely circumstances
and the tangibleness of
touching and good-natured the pictures
are.
[1996]
Borland's Babies
The
title
ship, terie.
it
The
is
appears.
Babies.
More than
More than one such
one.
A group. A fellow-
fellowship or
band or
co-
A world.
A
cunningly sequenced album of pictures inducts us into this
world. It
three.
would convey To show
a
to have only
little
world
calls for
one photograph. Or two. Or
an abundance of photographs, and
the photographs have to be arranged. First things
first.
The
last for
the
last.
The sequence First
we
will
be
a tour of this world.
see bits of decor.
A
A journey. An initiation. A teddy bear. A
small pink satin dress.
colorful crib sheet printed with cuddly animals. Then, gradually, the
A
presence of the human.
pair of shoes.
Bunny
slippers.
A
foot.
A
knee. It will
be
a while before
Something doesn't
fit.
But the human presence
We expect babies. real babies,
is
we
see faces.
The accoutrements
is
too large, ugly
are those of the nursery.
—Brobdingnagian.
These seem to be adult men. The skin of babies,
perfect. This skin
is
rough, blotchy, hairy (with here and
there a tattoo), the bodies mostly flabby or scrawny land's
camera scrutinizes them very
—and Polly Bor-
closely.
227
228
SUSAN SONTAG
Close
is
And
ugly.
adult
is
ugly,
when compared with
the perfection
of the recently born.
As Gulliver observes over eighty feet
He
tions.
was
tall:
after reaching a
to see enlarged
recalls that in the
a giant, the
me from
on
him up first
in
a very
much
the ground, than
my hand and shocking
and
my
He my
as fair as
my
travels.
and smoother when he looked
did upon a nearer view
ies
where
complexion made up of several colors I
must beg leave
in exactly the
same way
A
—
good
that the Brobdingnagians are
any other people
at
my
alto-
to say for myself, that little
II
he's the tiny person, Gulliver finds these
perfections, Gulliver reminds himself
—
in
beard were ten times stronger than the
that
to the people of Lilliput. But, even while recoiling
become
took
I
which he confessed was
close,
most of my sex and country, and very
and faces repulsive
when
he could discover great holes
Stranded among the people of Brobdingnag, Part els,
friends
of them
fairer
said
gether disagreeable: although
am
One
brought him
sight.
stumps of
bristles of a boar,
it
new
world," while his tiny
fairest in the
face appeared
skin; that the
be taken aback by imperfec-
country from which he's come, where he
found him ugly beyond imagining.
my
to
complexion of the diminutive Lilliputians had ap-
peared to him "the
said that
is
country whose inhabitants are
sunburnt by
I
all
of Gulliver's Trav-
mountainous bod-
he was,
from
in close-up,
their gross im-
cultural relativist that he's
no doubt
just as
handsome
as
in the world.
world, according to Jonathan Swift, and as depicted by Polly
Borland, replete with disconcerting oddities.
By
the standard of the baby, any adult
is
ugly, coarse.
No
beauty of
skin can withstand the too intimate scrutiny of the camera.
Beauty, adorableness
— and
repulsiveness
favoring or disfavoring scale, and proximity. ity
—
is
what photographers deal with
all
—
are mainly a matter of
And
the time.
that
—
scale,
proxim-
Borland's Babies
OF COURSE, BEING
CLOSE "is
"
229
impact and
essential to the
the meaning of these photographs. Virtually
indoors.
all
some
of them were taken in
We may suppose Borland's subjects to be hiding in these drab,
wallpapered rooms which
we
never see most
They may only be
lying about. (Babies
coming and going.
We
also
seem
to
but which
a lot of rest.)
intimate, private space
a space
whose banal
a secret identity
activities
—here
character of weird rituals, because they're done by adult
and carrying on has to
It
come
well as
sleepover.
where
drooling, eating, sleeping, bathing, masturbating
as,
feel small.
As
be offered glimpses of the conven-
The photographer has penetrated
An
of,
need
A party of tots. A children's
ing of a boisterous clan.
unfolds.
meanly furnished
generic,
—yowling,
acquire the
men
dressed
like, babies.
when,
as a surprise
tograph of three of the babies in
late in the
full regalia
on
a
book, there
suburban
is
a
street.
pho(Aus-
England?) Surprise that some of Borland's subjects are willing
tralia?
to offer themselves to the gaze of casual passersby.
PROGRESS OF PHOTOGRAPHS. We
A
are introduced to this
oddly framed and cropped. The
world
in the guise of parts of bodies,
initial
withholding of faces, and the number of pictures taken from a
high angle, bolster the relation of superiority that we, the consumers of Borland's images, seem invited to have
(at first) to
these clandestine
shenanigans.
We
look
at
babies seeing;
them. They don't look
when we
are,
or a look of concentrated Properly, bies,
tfTe
it's
at us.
We
a baby-style gaze,
are rarely
wobbly focus and
back. At
last.
all,
self- absorption.
book ends with
a straight-on portrait of
looking adult, even handsome, gazing intently
us. Staring
shown the
at
one of the ba-
the camera, at
SUSAN SONTAG
230
FOR A LONG TIME zanies ity
and pariahs,
this
and
their quirks.
Making voyeurs out of
of the non-normal.
But
the camera has been bringing us
their miseries
common
or mere curiosity. There
of a Diane Arbus picture.
by these
vited
all.
particularly gifted, authoritative work. Borland's pictures
is
seem very knowing, compassionate; and too gest
us
news about
Showing the banal-
(I
is
close, loo familiar, to sug-
nothing of the ingenuous stare
don't doubt that Arbus
subjects, but surely she
would have
felt in-
would have photographed them
very differently.)
Zeal in colonizing new, especially transgressive, subject matter
one of the main traditions of photographic
Here
—
mate claim on our about
book
says this
human
—
interest
is
a
and
practice.
specimen of behavior that has attention.
is
The
a legiti-
pictures register a truth
nature which seems almost too obvious to spell out
temptation of regression? the pleasures of regression?
—the
—but which has
never received so keen, so direct a depiction. They invite our identification ("nothing
human
is
alien to
can imagine such feelings, even actually
me") if
—daring us
we
to admit that we, too,
are astonished that
some people
go to the trouble, and assume the shame, of acting them
out.
ARE THESE PICTURES shocking? Some people apparently find them so. Probably not the same people made indignant by the sex-pictures of Robert Mapplethorpe. Here the shock is produced by scenes from the intimate life of adult men
who I,
appear to have
Shock a
but completely renounced their sexuality.
for one, don't find these pictures shocking or even upsetting.
(What shocks me
me
all
is
cruelty,
—which then
somewhat
embraced the
not sadness.)
dilates into aggressive disapproval
pointless reaction to adults
role of being helpless.
who have
—seems
to
so dramatically
Borland's Babies
23
I
In most of the pictures, the subjects are sitting, lying down, crawl-
They
ing.
on beds or close
are often
to the floor.
They
are rarely
vertical.
They want
But of course they're not. So, instead, they
to look small.
look mortified.
There logical or
is
picture-taking assumes an anthropo-
ethnographic function, that the subjects
look the way they do
What
when
a presumption,
—don't
—
is
to
really see themselves.
these pictures suggest
about them
—who happen
that not only
—what
some may
do Borland's
subjects
find
is
want
disturbing
to look like
but they relish being seen.
this
MOST OF THE atre. It requires
sexual acting-out understood as deviant
dressing up.
It relies
by these adults must be counted
them being "baby
What
is
the-
on props. And the world created
as a sexual fantasy,
purists," they don't
even
if,
most of
have sex.
goes on in these depressing rooms
is
a kind of theatre. Play-
time.
But entirely unfeigned.
And
without manipulation by the camera. Nothing
Borland's project depends on the photographs being trace or imprint of the real.
who
ple
show
There
is
is
—
digitalized.
as of old
—
an implicit contract: these are peo-
really are (part of the time) like this; they aren't putting
for the photographer. Indeed, she
time with them, win their confidence,
had
to
become
on
a
spend long periods of
friends, in order to take
these pictures.
Imagine what we would
and
that the pictures
house rather than
The
(as
feel if
were taken
we
learned that the
in the course of
on our
pher that nothing was devised for the camera. is
are actors,
an afternoon
in
one
they were) over years and in several countries.
force of these pictures depends
That something
men
being revealed.
trusting the photogra-
232
SUSAN SONTAG
ARE THE BABIES
really unattractive
—
like, say,
the folk in Roger
Ballen's Platteland (1994)?
In Ballen's marvelous
album of
portraits of degenerate-looking
whites in rural South Africa, the unattractiveness of his subjects and the
rooms they inhabit
Here
delivers a moral, ultimately political, message.
ugliness seems to attest to an appalling impoverishment of spirit
album, the message
as well as of material circumstances. In Borland's
of her subjects' unattractiveness
mainly one of
scale: that
tasy of smallness
we might
is,
is
harder to read.
We might decide
it is
of the mismatch between the enacted fan-
and feebleness and these hefty grownup bodies. But
also suppose,
perhaps wrongly, that only adults
who
look as
they do would want to do "this" to themselves.
What
are the frontiers of attractiveness
— and of unattractiveness?
Images produced by cameras have more to question, than any other resource.
tell us, in
Maybe we
are
unpacking
this
no longer capable of
thinking about the attractiveness of bodies and faces except in the ways
we've learned through the camera's presumptuous seeing. Enlarging, miniaturizing
—the camera judges, the camera
world to which Borland has given us we're in Lilliput or in Brobdingnag. us realize that,
when we
entry,
Her
reveals.
we
don't
brilliant
Looking
at
the
know whether
achievement makes
see photographically, we're living in both.
r2ooil
Certain Mapplethorpes
ALTHOUGH
REASON TELLS M E gun barrel at my head, each
like a
graphic portrait exhibited in
I feel
many
apprehensive. This
I
do not imagine
way
the
register that
I
is
not aimed
pose for a photo-
not the well-known
fear,
a layer
that the photographer, in order
to bring the image-replica into the world, robs
do
I
robbed of one's soul or
cultures, of being
of one's personality.
is
the camera
time
me
of anything. But
ordinarily experience myself
is
I
turned
around. Ordinarily
command frontality)
I feel
coextensive with
station of the head,
— and
articulation
whose
—
is
my
my
body, in particular with the
orientation to the world (that face, in
which are
is,
set eyes that
it is my fantasy, and my privilege, permy professional bias, to feel that the world awaits my seeing. When I am photographed, this normally outgoing, fervent relation of
look out on, into, the world; and
haps
consciousness to the world station of consciousness, ate with the is
one
jammed.
I
yield to another
which "faces" me,
if I
photographer (and, customarily,
which
heel, is
my
threatened. But
I
do
photographic portrait
Stowed away, berthed,
consciousness has abdicated
to provide amplitude, to give feel
disarmed,
my
command
have agreed to cooper-
a
that requires the subject's cooperation).
brought to tion,
is
me
its
normal func-
mobility.
I
don't feel
consciousness reduced to an
233
SUSAN SONTAG
234
embarrassed knot of self-consciousness striving for composure. Immobilized for the camera's scrutiny, jut
and
my lips,
fleshiness of
my hair.
I
windows
I
the spread of
experience myself as behind of
my
weight of
feel the
my
my nostrils,
my face,
eyes, like the prisoner in the
facial
mask, the
the unruliness of
looking out through the
kon mask
Dumas's
in
novel.
Being photographed, by which
I
mean posing
a session usually lasting several hours, in
taken),
I
feel transfixed,
for a
photograph
(at
which many photographs are
trapped. In response to a look of desire
can
I
look back, with desire. The looking can, ideally should, be reciprocal.
But to the photographer's look lent, unless I
my own looking
were
camera.
me,
at
it
to decide to
I
cannot respond with anything equiva-
be photographed with
The photographer's look desires
what
I
am
not
many
in fact desire the subject. It
may seem worth photographing because
feels lust, or
romantic attachment, or admiration
of a myriad of positive feelings. But at the the look trained
upon
cerns form. At that I
become
behind state; in
is
of Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs record ob-
jects of his desire. Subjects
photographer
my head
looking in a pure
—my image.
(Of course, the photographer may obvious that
is
the subject
moment,
it
is
moment
the picture
sightless, generic: a
is
the
—any
taken,
look that
dis-
cannot be responded to in kind.)
the looked-at. Docilely, eagerly,
I
follow the photogra-
is willing to give any, as to how I may much as I am a professional see-er, I am a hopelessly amateurish see-ee. An eternal photographic virgin, I feel the same perplexity each time I'm photographed. I forget the makeup
pher's instructions,
if
she or he
"look" more attractive. For as
tricks I've
of
my
been taught, what color blouse photographs
face
know what
My
is
the "good" side.
to
do with my hands.
Considering that
I
chin
is
too low.
well,
Too
which side
high.
I
don't
have been browsing through the history of pho-
tography for decades, have been photographed professionally countless times,
and spent
five years writing six essays
and moral implications of photographic images,
which
I
about the aesthetic this
blankness with
face the camera can hardly be ascribed to inexperience or to
lack of reflectiveness.
Some deeper stubbornness on my own
part
is at
Certain Mapplethorpes fully to take in the fact that I
work: the refusal
good
look, look
As
I've never
been photographed without feeling apprehensive, so
it
that I'm too powerfully an observer myself to
be comfortable being observed? Is
my
it
Is
moral narcissism, which has erected a taboo
prone? All of these, perhaps. But what
I
mainly
some ninety percent of my consciousness thinks
am me, about
I
ten percent thinks
ways appalled whenever photograph
in
which
I
about pretend-
a puritan anxiety
it
which
against whatever narcissism of the usual kind to
that
I
the result of a photographic session without feel-
at
ing embarrassment. Is
posing?
not only look but have a
(or bad), look "like" that.
have never looked
ing,
235
look
The photograph comes
I
am
that
I
dismay. While
is
am
invisible.
in the world,
That part
is al-
photograph of myself. (Especially
see a
I
feel
might be
I
a
attractive.)
as a
kind of reproof to the grandiosity of
consciousness. Oh. So there "I" am.
my own
see
I
photograph differently from the others
plethorpes Certain People. longing,
can't
I
I
my own
can't look at
I feel is
photograph with
and
the difference between
me and
surface,
look.
It is a
suspended.
is
To me, the
the image.
pression in the photograph Mapplethorpe has taken of
"my"
me
admire (who
is
and
also a friend)
hinged to
is
my
trying to preserve
(When
anxiety.
I
look
bornness, balked vanity, panic, vulnerability.)
at
my
look exactly
this
way
At the same time that
how
I feel
ferent to
not really
is
I
the next time he takes I
I
intensely
my own
picture
doubt that
looked exactly the way Mapplethorpe has photographed will
read stub-
I I
me
dignity,
have ever
—or
that I
my picture.
recognize in this portrait another record of
being photographed, Mapplethorpe's photograph looks
me from
ated as best
I
ex-
look fabricated for the camera: an unstable compro-
mise between trying to be cooperative with a photographer
which
Map-
have a fantasy about the person in that photograph. The
eros of photography, which identifies subject
What
in
any other that has ever been taken of me.
could, and he
saw something
that
I
dif-
cooper-
no one had ever
seen.
Being photographed by Mapplethorpe was different from being pho-
tographed by anyone ently, is
else.
He
permissive differently
reassures differently, encourages differ.
.
.
— SUSAN SONTAG
236
Taking pictures
book
offers
is
an anthologizing impulse, and Mapplethorpe's
no exception. This mix of
non-famous and
subjects, the
the celebrated, the solemn and the lascivious, illustrates a characteristic
spread of photographic interests. Nothing
photographer is
is
saying.
By including
be
upon
me, the
alien to
is
rejecting the typical photographer's stance, in which,
distance, the photographer confers reality to
human
a sexy self-portrait,
Mapplethorpe from
a godlike
the world but declines
a subject himself.
Most photography comes with photograph conveys
be known were graphing
a
is
it
about the subject,
a truth
form of knowledge. Thus, some photographers have said
whom
they don't know, others that
photographs are of subjects they
know
best. All
however contradictory, are claims of power over the Mapplethorpe's claims are more modest. decisive
moment. His photographs do not
not trying to catch anyone off guard.
must be
Mapplethorpe plays lit.
it,
The
He
is
aspire to
He
not in a predatory relation to his subjects.
raphy, as
is
such claims,
subject.
not looking for the
be
revelatory.
not voyeuristic.
rules of the
are that the subject
game
He is He is
of photog-
must cooperate
In the eloquence and subtlety of cropping, rendering of
textures of clothing
and
skin,
and variations on the color black,
photographs clearly proclaim their relation to an
prefer to say they are a record of his
Mapplethorpe wants be made
artistic,
his
rather than
The photographer himself would probably
documentarist, impulse.
that can
would not
a truth that
not captured in a photograph. In short, that photo-
they photograph best someone their best
a built-in cognitive claim: that the
to
to pose.
own
avidity.
photograph everything, that
(However broad
is,
everything
his subject matter,
he could
never become a war photographer or a photographer of accidents in the street.)
What he
looks
for,
dity or wness of something.
strongest version of I
which could be
Not
called
Form,
is
the quid-
the truth about something, but the
it.
once asked Mapplethorpe what he does with himself when he
poses for the camera, and he replied that he himself that
is
tries to find that
part of
self-confident.
His answer suggests a double meaning
in the title
he has chosen for
Certain M.applethorpes his
book: there
is
certain in the sense of some,
and not
237
others,
and
cer-
tain in the sense of self-confident, sure, clear. Certain People depicts,
mostly, people found, coaxed, or arranged into a certainty about themselves.
That
is
what seduces,
that
is
what
is
disclosed in these bulletins
of a great photographer's observations and encounters. [1985]
A
Photograph
Is
Not
an Opinion.
Or
Is
It?
UNDERTAKE nothing
TO DO a book of photographs of people with more in common than that they are women (and liv-
ing in America at the all
—
end of the twentieth century),
.
.
—
well, almost
not the other kind of all-women picture
fully clothed, therefore
book
all
.
Start with
no more than
a
commanding notion
of the sheer interest-
ingness of the subject, especially in view of the unprecedented changes
consciousness of
in the
open
solve to stay
whim and
to
Sample, explore,
brought to the page
Even
so, a large
many women
revisit,
tinies
and
.
.
number
disabilities
women
.
.
of pictures of what
felt to
.
.
is,
be representative
and new
we
possibilities; a
book
nominally, a single
in
some
sense.
How
(Random House,
that invites the sym-
bring to the depiction of a minority (for that
is
are, by every criterion except the numerical), featuring
This essay was written to accompany a book of photographs.
238
a re-
so with this subject, with this book, an anthology of des-
pathetic responses
what
opportunity
and
choose, arrange, without claiming to have
a representative miscellany
subject will inevitably be
much more
in these last decades,
1999).
Women, by Annie
Leibovitz
A Photograph many
portraits of those
to feel instructive,
even
who
Is
Not
Or
an Opinion.
Such
are a credit to their sex.
if it tells
us what
we
think
Is
we
239
It?
a
book has
know
already
about the overcoming of perennial impediments and prejudices and cultural handicaps, the conquest of
course, such a
news
new zones
book would be misleading
continuing violence (domestic assault to
American women). Any
the ongoing story of
A
vited to think of themselves.
whether
it
demeaning stereotypes, the
the leading cause of injuries
is
large-scale picturing of
how women
are presented,
women
belongs to
and how they are
in-
book of photographs of women must,
intends to or not, raise the question of
women
Men, unlike women,
equivalent "question of men."
Of
did not touch on the bad
if it
as well: the continuing authority of
of achievement.
—there
is
work
are not a
no in
progress.
Each of these pictures must stand on says,
So
this is
what
women
are
women known in this
book
are like
will fail to
—
own. But the ensemble
as different, as varied, as heroic,
unconventional as
as forlorn, as conventional, as
nizing the
now
its
this.
Nobody
note the confirmation of stereotypes of what
and the challenge to those stereotypes. Whether well
or obscure, each of the nearly one hundred and seventy
album
scruti-
will
be looked
at (especially
by other women)
as
women models:
models of beauty, models of self-esteem, models of strength, models of transgressiveness, ness,
models of victimhood, models of
false conscious-
models of successful aging.
No book
of photographs of
men would be
interrogated in the same
way.
But then in the
man
same
a
book of photographs of men would not be undertaken
spirit.
How
could there be any interest in asserting that a
can be a stockbroker or a farmer or an astronaut or a miner?
book of photographs of men with sundry occupations, men only
A
(with-
out any additional label), would probably be a book about the beauty of men,
men
as objects of lustful imaginings to
women and
to other
men. But when identity.
ators
The
men
are viewed as sex objects, that
traditions of regarding
and curators of
their
emotions and fantasies
own
(lust,
men
destinies
is
not their primary
as, at least potentially,
and
tenderness,
women
fear,
the cre-
as objects of
male
condescension, scorn,
SUSAN SONTAG
240
dependence), of regarding an individual
mankind and an
individual
woman
man
an instance of hu-
as
an instance of
as
largely intact, deeply rooted in language, narrative,
women,
are
still
group arrange-
ments, and family customs. In no language does the pronoun "she"
human
stand for
beings of both sexes.
Women
and men are
differently
weighted, physically and culturally, with different contours of selfhood, all
presumptively favoring those born male. I
that,
do
this, I
endure
endure
that. I
want
this. I
want
that
.
.
.
this
.
.
.
because
even though I'm
women,
the
mandated
ity,
there continues to be a debate about what
inferiority of
should want to be. Freud
what do
women want?"
inquire. "Lord,
is
I
am
a
woman.
I
do
woman. Because
a
minor-
their condition as a cultural
women
of
can be,
are,
famously supposed to have asked, "Lord,
Imagine
a
world
which
in
seems normal to
it
what do men want?" But who can imagine such
a
world?
Xo
one thinks the Great Duality
is
symmetrical
—even
noted since the nineteenth century by foreign travelers
women. Feminine and masculine
uppity
America,
in
as a paradise for
are a tilted polarity.
Equal
men has never inspired a march or a hunger strike. In no men legal minors, as women were until well into the twentieth century in many European countries, and are still in many Muslim countries, from Morocco to Afghanistan. Xo country gave women the right to vote before giving it to men. Xobody ever thought of men as rights for
country are
the second sex.
AND
YET,
AND
YET: there
is
something new
in the world, starting
with the revoking of age-old legal shackles regarding suffrage, divorce,
property
rights. It
chisement of
women vote.
in
seems almost inconceivable
women happened
France and
Italy
had
as recently as
from women's
life
in
that the enfran-
—
that, for instance,
did
to wait until 194 s
There have been tremendous changes
transforming the inner
it
now
and 1946
to
be able to
women's consciousness,
of everyone: the sallying forth of
worlds into the world at large, the arrival of
ambitions. Ambition
is
what
women
have been schooled to
women
women's stifle in
A Photograph themselves, and what
Such also
a
celebrated in a
is
women's
phasizes the variety of
Not
Is
Or
Is
241
It?
book of photographs
em-
that
lives today.
much
book, however
an Opinion.
it
attends to
women's
activeness,
is
about women's attractiveness.
Nobody
looks through a
ing whether the
women
To be feminine, or to
do
one's best to
not possible for any
weakness fault in a
pearance
notic-
are attractive or not.
one commonly
in
being strong.) While
book of pictures of women without
be
it is
felt definition, is
be
to
attractive,
being masculine
attractive, to attract. (As
perfectly possible to defy this imperative,
woman
to
be unaware of
it.
As
is
it
is
it is
thought a
man to care a great deal about how he looks, it is a moral woman not to care enough. Women are judged by their apas men are not, and women punished more by the changes in a
brought about by aging. Ideals of appearance such
now
slimness are in large part
and
as youthfulness
created and enforced by photographic
images. And, of course, a primary interest in having photographs of
well-known beauties to look
at
over the years
is
seeing just
how well
or
badly they negotiate the shame of aging. In advanced consumer societies,
ues are
more and more
the concern of
never loosens the male lock on one's appearance
is
it is
said, these "narcissistic" val-
men
as well.
But male primping Indeed, glorying in
initiative taking.
an ancient warrior's pleasure, an expression of
power, an instrument of dominance. Anxiety about personal attractiveness could never be thought defining of a man: a
Women are looked at. We assume a world with
man
is, first
of
all,
seen.
people, era.
women and men,
But
it
is
worth
a
boundless appetite for images, in which
are eager to surrender themselves to the cam-
many
parts of the world
women.
In a few countries,
recalling that there are
where being photographed
is
off-limits to
where men have been mobilized
for a veritable
women
scarcely appear at
gaze
to record, to exhibit anyone, anything
at,
ture of modern*
granting of
life,
as
is
all.
The
rights
against
women,
imperial rights of the camera
the emancipation of
more and more
war
and choices
—
—
to
are an exemplary fea-
women. And to
women
is
just as the
a
measure
of a society's embrace of modernity, so the revolt against modernity
ini-
— SUSAN SONTAG
242
dates a rush to rescind the meager gains toward equal participation in
won by women, mostly urban, educated women, in previous decades. In many countries struggling with failed or discredited at-
society
tempts to modernize, there are more and more covered women.
THE TRADITIONAL UNITY is
some
of a
ideal of female essence:
women
charms,
book of photographs of women
women
gaily displaying their sexual
behind
veiling themselves
a
look of soulfulness or
primness. Portraits of
women
featured their beauty; portraits of
"character." Beauty (the province of (the province of
Women,
men) was rugged. Feminine was
Julia
didn't look wistful.
a vocation, she invariably
poets, sages,
and
photographed men
who
—somebody's
served mostly as models for
were used
as
differently than she pho-
included some of the most eminent
were posed
scientists of the Victorian era,
The women
middle-aged
Margaret Cameron took up the camera
tographed women. The men,
Women
yielding, placid, or
in the early 1860s a well-connected, exuberant,
Englishwoman named
their
character
look forceful.
ideally, didn't
When
portraits.
Men
masculine was forceful, piercing.
plaintive;
men
women) was smooth;
wife,
daughter,
sister,
(Cameron's
"fancy subjects"
to personify ideals of
for their
niece label).
womanliness drawn from
lit-
erature or mythology: the vulnerability and pathos of Ophelia; the ten-
derness of the relatives
carnated
Madonna
and friends several
with her Child. Almost
—or her parlor maid, who,
exalted icons
all
the sitters were
suitably reclothed, in-
of femininity.
Only
Julia Jackson,
Cameron's niece (and the future mother of the future Virginia Woolf ), was, in
homage
to her exceptional beauty, never
posed
anyone but
as
herself.
What
qualified the
fame and achievement
them
women
as sitters
qualified the
ideal subjects. (Notably, there
otic beauty, so that after
their beauty, as
men. The beauty of
was no
women made
role for picturesque or ex-
Cameron and her husband moved
she took very few pictures.) Indeed, a quest for the beautiful.
was precisely
And
quest
to Ceylon,
Cameron defined photography it
was:
"Why
as
does not Mrs. Smith
A Photograph come don
to
a friend
she had never met. "I hear she
shall
Or
an Opinion.
be photographed?" she wrote to
whom
and she
Not
Is
about
243
It?
Is
a lady in
Beautiful. Bid her
is
Lon-
come,
be made Immortal."
IMAGINE A BOOK of pictures of women in which none of the women could be identified as beautiful. Wouldn't we feel that the photographer had made some kind of mistake? Was being mean-spirited? Misogynistic? Was depriving us of something that we had a right to see?
No
one would say the equivalent thing of
a
book of
portraits of
men.
THERE WERE ALWAYS
several kinds of beauty: imperious beauty,
voluptuous beauty, beauty signifying the character
—
woman
for the confines of genteel domesticity
Beauty was not
ity.
thetic ideal. It also in
just loveliness
traits that fitted a
docility, pliancy, seren-
of feature and expression, an aes-
spoke to the eye about the virtues deemed essential
women. For
a
woman
to
larly appropriate. It
be
was not
intelligent
was
inscribed in her appearance. Such
The
Woman
novel,
Here
the voice of
I
its
not even particu-
is
and
likely to
how
is
in i860, just before this
woman
Cameron
started
making her
introduced, early in the book, in
is
young hero:
looked from the table to the window farthest from me, and saw a lady
standing rested
at
on
it,
with her back turned towards me.
her, I
was struck by the
unaffected grace of her attitude.
comely and well- developed,
The
instant
rare beauty of her form,
Her
figure
yet not fat; her
was head
tall,
set
my
eyes
and by the
yet not too
tall;
on her shoulders
with an easy'pliant firmness; her waist, perfection in the eyes of a man, for
it
ibly
occupied
and
be
the fate of a principal character in
White, Wilkie Collins's robustly, enthrallingly clever
in
which appeared
portraits.
essential,
in fact considered disabling,
its
natural place,
delightfully
it
rilled
undeformed by
trance into the room; and
I
out
stays.
its
natural circle,
it
She had not heard
was
vis-
my
en-
allowed myself the luxury of admiring her
SUSAN SONTAG
244
moved one
for a
few moments, before
least
embarrassing means of attracting her attention. She turned
wards
me
I
The
immediately.
of the chairs near me. as the
easy elegance of even-
movement
to-
oi her
limbs and body as soon as she began to advance from the far end of
room
the
me
set
in a flutter
— and forward few — and proached nearer— and the
left
window
I
steps
a
I
words
me
fail
oi expectation to see her face
said to myself. I
The
lady
The
said to myself.
is
lady
moved
young. She ap-
is
said to myself (with a sense of surprise
to express).
The
lady
is
She
clearly.
dark. She
which
ugly!
Reveling in the effrontery and delights of the appraising male gaze, the narrator has noted that, seen from behind and in long shot, the lady the criteria of female desirability.
satisfies all
when
she turns and comes toward him,
lowed
to
be
just plain
at
Hence
his acute surprise,
her "ugly" face
or homely), which, he explains,
is
a
(it is
not
al-
kind of par-
adox:
Never was the old conventional maxim, flatly
contradicted
strangely
The
and
mouth and
promise of
a moustache.
She had
jaw; prominent, piercing, resolute
coal-black hair, growing unusually low
expression silent, to
—
bright, frank,
and
and
woman
alive
pliability, is
more it.
in Collins s novel,
Moved is,
in those
brown
eyes;
masculine
and
thick,
her forehead.
—appeared,
Her
while she was
feminine attractions oi gen-
without which the beauty of the handsomest
beauty incomplete.
Marian Halcombe
angelic, that
a lovely figure
a large, firm,
down on
intelligent
be altogether wanting
tleness
desire.
more
by the face and head that crowned
startlingly belied
was almost
lip
fair
err,
Nature cannot
complexion was almost swarthy, and the dark down on her
lady's
upper
—never was the
that
will turn
out to be the most admirable character
awarded even-
virtue except the capacity to inspire
only by generous, noble sentiments, she has a neararchetypally feminine, temperament
troubling matter of her
uncommon
—except
for the
intelligence, her frankness, her
oi "pliability" Marian Halcombe's body, so ideally feminine that
judged ripe for appropriation by
a
presumptively male
artist,
want it
is
conveys
A Photograph
Is
Not
"modest graces of action." Her head, her concentrated, exacting face another.
And
face, signifies
—unfeminine. The body body—
face trumps
on shoulders
see such a face as this set
—
longed to model
to
gives
Is
It?
The
245
something more
one message, the
as intelligence, to the
of female sexual attractiveness, trumps beauty.
To
Or
an Opinion.
detriment
narrator concludes:
that a sculptor
would have
be charmed by the modest graces of action
through which the symmetrical limbs betrayed their beauty when they
moved, and then
be almost repelled by the masculine form and
to
masculine look of the features in which the perfectly shaped figure
ended
—was
to feel a sensation oddly akin to the helpless discomfort
familiar to us
all
in sleep,
when we
recognise yet cannot reconcile the
anomalies and contradictions of a dream.
Collins's
male narrator
and
cally arouses anxieties
touching a gender fault
is
feelings of discomfort.
the order of sexual stereotypes
may seem
line,
The
which
typi-
contradiction in
dream-like to a well-adjusted
inhabitant of an era in which action, enterprise, artistic creativity, and
understood to be masculine, fraternal or-
intellectual innovation are
ders.
For
a long time the
beauty of a
greater novelist,
Henry James,
speaks of the challenge of
no
incompatible, or
oddly matched, with intelligence and assertiveness. (A
at least
nist
woman seemed
with
all
in the preface to
filling
The
Portrait of a Lady,
the "frail vessel" of a female protago-
the richness of an independent consciousness.)
novelist today
would
find
it
far
To be
sure,
implausible to award good looks to a
woman who is both cerebral and self-assertive. But common to begrudge a woman who has beauty as
in real
life, it's still
well as intellectual
—one would never say there was something odd or ing or "unfair" about man who was so fortunate — beauty, the
intimidat-
brilliance
a
as if
ul-
timate enabler of feminine charm, should by rights have barred other
kinds of excellence.
IN
A
WOMAN
woman,
BEAUTY
for character.
is
something
It is also,
willed, designed, obtained.
total. It is
what
stands, in a
of course, a performance; something
Looking through an old family photograph
SUSAN SONTAG
246
album, the Russian-born French writer Andrei' Makine
used to get the particular glow of beauty he saw
women's
recalls a trick
some of the
in
faces:
These
women knew
be beautiful, what they must do
that in order to
several seconds before the flash blinded
lowing mysterious syllables
extended
round
a gracious
oval of the cheeks
by magic, the mouth, instead of being
.
.
.
The eyebrows arched
.
.
was elongated. You
a distant
your features
A woman
if
counterfeit bliss, or contracting into an anxious grin,
in
would form
shadow of
to articulate the fol-
French, of which few understood the
in
meaning: "pe-tite-pomme." As
them was
said "petite
slightly,
pomme"
and dreamy sweetness veiled your
the
and the
gaze, refined
.
being photographed aspired to a standardized look that
nified an ideal refinement of "feminine" traits, as
sig-
conveyed through
beauty; and beauty was understood to be a distancing from the ordinary.
As photographed,
what make
a
photographic portrait interesting.
And
are
refinement
is
and seems pretentious or sham.
Beauty
—
as
photographed
vailed until recently
in the
mainstream tradition that pre-
—blurred women's
graphs that were frankly
erotic, the
the face another: a naked tion,
projected something enigmatic, dreamy, in-
Today idiosyncrasy and forthrightness of expression
accessible.
passe,
it
woman
sexuality.
body might be
And
even in photo-
telling
one story and
lying in a strenuously indecent posi-
spread-eagled or presenting her rump, with the face turned to-
ward the viewer wearing the vapidly amiable expression of respectable photographic portraiture. Newer ways of photographing less
women
are
concealing of women's sexuality, though the display of once for-
bidden female
flesh or carnal posturing
fraught as a subject, so
is still
inveterate are responses that reassert male condescensions to
the guise of lecherous appreciation.
Women's
women
libidinousness
is
in
always
being repressed or held against them.
The
identification of
women. While
women
with beauty was a way of immobilizing
character evolves, reveals, beauty
is static,
net for projection. In the legendary final shot of
Queen
a
mask, a magChristina, the
A Photograph queen
Not
Is
an Opinion.
Or
—Greta Garbo—having abdicated the Swedish throne, renounc-
ing the masculinizing prerogatives of a
monarch
woman's happiness, and boarded the ship
for the
vengeful rejected suitor from her court, stands
wind
the shot lian,
monument
in her face, a
was being prepared, Garbo asked the
Don't think of anything.
Go
in
and holds on
and
wounded by
the ship's
a
prow with
director,
take.
Rouben Mamou-
Nothing, he famously
blank. His instruction produced
one of the most emotion -charged images
moves
at
a
of heartbreak. While the lighting for
what she should be thinking during the
replied.
modesty of
to join her foreign lover
depart with him into exile only to find him mortally
the
247
It?
Is
in
movie
camera
history: as the
a long close-up, the spectator has
no choice but
to
read mounting despair on that incomparably beautiful, dry-eyed, vacant face.
sired
The
face that
the
is
The
a
is
mask on which one can
project whatever
de-
consummate perfection of the looked-at-ness of women.
identification of beauty as the ideal condition of a
anything,
is
more powerful than
woman
is, if
although today's hugely complex
ever,
fashion-and-photography system sponsors norms of beauty that are far less provincial,
more
diverse,
and favor brazen rather than demure
ways of facing the camera. The downcast gaze, tion of
women
to the camera, should
a staple of the presenta-
have a touch of sullenness
if it is
not to seem insipid. Ideas of beauty are less immobilizing now. But
beauty
ment
itself is
an ideal of a stable, unchanging appearance, a commit-
to staving off or disguising the
ual attractiveness for
ages into his powers.
marks of time. The norms of
women are an index of their vulnerability. A man A woman ages into being no longer desired.
Forever young, forever good-looking, forever sexy construction, a transformation, a masquerade.
prised
—though of course we
decked out
are
—
We
that in real
life,
—beauty
is still
a
shouldn't be sur-
when
she
is
not
as a cliche of desirability, the flamboyant,
bespangled, semi-
woman
of unremarkable
nude Las Vegas showgirl can be features
sex-
a
mature
and sober presence. The eternal feminine project of
self-
embellishment has always been able to pull off such triumphs.
SINCE TO BE FEMININE site,
is
to have qualities
which are the oppo-
or negation, of ideal masculine qualities, for a long time
it
was
SUSAN SONTAG
248
woman in other than woman was an allegorical fan-
hard to elaborate the attractiveness of the strong mythic or allegorical guise. The heroic
and sculpture: Liberty leading the
tasy in nineteenth-century painting
People.
The
large-gestured, imperiously draped, convulsively powerful
woman danced by Martha Graham in the works she created for her allwomen troupe in the 1930s a turning point in the history of how
—
women's
women's anger have been represented
strength,
mythic archetype ing over a
—was
mourning daimon, quester)
(priestess, rebel,
community of women, not
a real
a
presid-
woman compromising and
cohabiting with and working alongside men. Dentist, orchestra conductor, commercial pilot, rabbi, lawyer, astro-
naut, film director, professional boxer, law-school dean, three-star gen-
... no doubt about
eral
well, ior,
And what women mind has
have changed.
from the caddish
still
is
protest indignantly
if
to
women
much
occupations are
women
work outside
and three-fourths of what still
themselves and
a
is
man
their
that a
the
It is
front of
most job
assumption
and
frivolity
reali-
women
with
homes. The measure of
how
(including most
woman
earns between one-half
earns in the same job.
And
nearly
all
gender-labeled: with the exception of a few occu-
if
titles
will always
Any woman
To be
new economic
pations (prostitute, nurse, secretary) where the reverse
needs to be specified
ac-
who would
as feminists.
change the stereotypes of
oblige most American
things have not changed
was
many women
are not the labors of the various femi-
nisms, indispensable as these have been.
small children) to
it
someone described them
what has done most
fecklessness afflicting
ties that
changed. Male behav-
seen today as outrageous by
not so long ago were putting up with
sure,
can do, and do
to the outright violent, that until recently
cepted without demurral
who
women
what
ideas about
it,
man, one has
the person
is
when
woman
it's
a
be that one
a
is
is
to put
true
and
"woman"
it
in
holding them; otherwise the
referring to a
of accomplishment becomes
man.
more acceptable
if
she
can be seen as pursuing her ambitions, exercising her competence, in a feminine
(wily,
nonconfrontational) way.
"No
harsh feminist, Ms.
woman in a equals of men
attained ..." begins the reassuring accolade to a
executive responsibilities. That
women
are the
X has
job with
—the new
A Photograph idea
— continues
Not an Opinion. Or
Is
to collide with the age-old
feriority
and
sentially
dependent or
serviceability: that
presumption of female
normal for
it is
249
It?
Is
a
woman
be
to
in-
in an es-
self-sacrificingly supportive relation to at least
one man. So ingrained richer,
more
is
the expectation that the
successful than the
exceptions, of which there are
worthy.
eminence.
feels
No
if
he
—
feels
"threatened" by his
threatened by her husband's eminence.
if
the non-
woman
is
And
is
still
to efface her
own
it
a loving wife in a two-career marriage having every cause
("Hello, everybody. This
women, except
Norman
Mrs.
is
and surpass her husband's. Maine.") Accomplished
for those in the performing professions, continue to
regarded as an anomaly.
have anthologies of it
seem note-
to
industrialist, surgeon, writer, politician,
for anguish should her success overtake
phers;
taller, older,
mates that the
one would dream of wondering
thought that the ultimate act of love for a identity
be
woman with whom he now many, never fail
than himself
famous wife of an important actor,
will
seems normal for a journalist to ask the husband of a
It
woman more famous wife's
man
It
appears to
women
be
many
reasons, to
women
photogra-
sense, for
writers or exhibits of
would seem very odd
exhibit of photographers
make
to propose an anthology of writers or an
who had
nothing in
common
except that they
were men.
WE WANT PHOTOGRAPHY to be unmythic, full of concrete information. We are more comfortable with photographs that are ironic, unidealizing. Decorum is now understood as concealment. We expect the photographer to be bold, even insolent. We hope that subjects will be candid, or naively
Of
revealing.
course, subjects
achievement,
women
who
are accustomed to posing
of notoriety
—
will offer
—women
of
something more guarded,
or defiant.
And appear)
the is
way women and men
not identical with
the camera.
What
how
really
it is
look (or allow themselves to
thought appropriate to appear to
looks right, or attractive, in a photograph
is
often
no
— SUSAN SONTAG
250
more than what
illustrates the felt "naturalness" of the
bution of powers conventionally accorded
done so much
Just as photography has it
unequal
distri-
women and men. to confirm these stereotypes,
can engage in complicating and undermining them. In Annie Lei-
bovitz's
Women, we
at-ness.
We
see
women
see
women
catering to the imperatives of looked-
whom, because
for
of age or because they're
preoccupied with the duties and pleasures of raising children, the rules
many
of ostentatiously feminine performance are irrelevant. There are portraits of
women
defined by the
new
now open
kinds of work
to
them. There are strong women, some of them doing "men's jobs,"
some of them dancers and
athletes with the
only recently began to be visible
powerful musculature that
when such champion female bodies
were photographed.
ONE OF THE TASKS
of photography
sense of, the variety of the world.
It is
is
to disclose,
and shape our
not to present ideals. There
is
no
agenda except diversity and interestingness. There are no judgments,
which of course
And
every this there
a
is itself
that variety
a that.
is
Photography
is
judgment.
is itself
an
ideal.
We
We want to have
in the service of the
want now
to
know
that for
a plurality of models.
post-judgmental ethos gaining
ascendancy in societies whose norms are drawn from the practices of
consumerism. The camera shows us many worlds, and the point all
the images are valid.
celebrated in today's America. There
modern life,
after
faith in the possibility of all, is
that
A woman may be a cop or a beauty queen or an
architect or a housewife or a physicist. Diversity
much
is
commonly
is
is
an end in
itself
the very American, very
continuous self-transformation.
referred to as a
lifestyle. Styles
A
change. This
celebration of variety, of individuality, of individuality as style, saps the
authority of gender stereotypes, and has terforce to the bigotry that to
many occupations and That women,
in the
their individuality
is,
still
denies
become an inexorable coun-
women more
than token access
experiences.
same measure
as
men, should be able
of course, a radical idea.
It is in this
to
fulfill
form, for
A Photograph better
and for worse,
women
A
has
come
to
Is
Not
an Opinion.
Or
plausible.
a
book about women;
ican project: generous, ardent, inventive, open-ended.
opinion.
Or
make
251
It?
that the traditional feminist call for justice for
seem most
BOOK OF PHOTOGRAPHS;
cide what to
Is
of these pictures. After
all,
a
It's
a very
Amer-
for us to de-
photograph
is
not an
is it? J [
999l
THFRF AND HFRF
Homage
THERE WAS
BEFORE
Books
travel books.
travel
—
in
my
to Halliburton
least
life, at
—there were
you the world was very large but
that told
quite encompassable. Full of destinations.
The
first
books of
travel
my
life,
year was 1940,
books
I
read,
and surely among the most important
were by Richard Halliburton.
when
I
I
was seven, and the
read his Book of Marvels. Halliburton, the hand-
some, genteel American youth, born in Brownsville, Tennessee,
had devised
was
my
first
lives, that
less
for himself a
vision of
what
of a writer: a
enthusiasms.
life
life
To be
I
who
of being forever young and on the move,
thought had to be the most privileged of
of endless curiosity and energy and count-
be
a traveler, to
a writer
—
in
my
child
mind
they started off as the same thing.
To be
me
sure, there
a
good deal
in that child
mind
to fall in love with the idea of insatiable travel.
lived
abroad most of my
northern China in the States. a
was
first six
—while my
As
far
back
sister
as I
years
and
—my father had
I
remained
can remember,
I
that the
parents had
a fur business in
in the care of relatives
my
parents' unimag-
on the opposite side of the globe had inspired
precise, hopeless set of travel longings. Halliburton's
me
My
was already conducting
potent dream-life of travel to exotic places. But
inable existence
that prepared
a too
books informed
world contained many wonderful things. Not
just the
Great Wall of China.
255
— SUSAN SONTAG
256
Yes, he
had walked on the Great Wall, and he'd
also
climbed the
Matterhorn and Etna and Popocatepetl and Fujiyama and Olympus;
Grand Canyon and
he'd visited the
when
the
book was published,
Panama
length of the
Golden Gate Bridge
(in 1938,
the bridge counted as the newest of the
rowed
world's marvels); he'd
the
and swum the
into the Blue Grotto
Canal; he'd
made
it
to
Carcassonne and Baalbek
and Petra and Lhasa and Chartres and Delphi and the Alhambra and
Timbuktu and the
Taj
Mahal and Pompeii and
Bay of Rio and Chichen
wasn't this
my
and the Blue Mosque
Itza
Angkor Wat and, and, and
.
.
.
too,
my own The
full
of amazing
that
I realize
sites
and
stories attached to
Book of Marvels was
a
and
edifices,
them. Look-
prime awakener of
ardor and appetite. year before
under
trip
The
introduction to the notion of "the masterpiece"?
might one day see and learn the
ing back now,
and
in Isfahan
Halliburton called them "marvels," and
point was: the faraway world was I,
and the
Victoria Falls
Hong Kong
I
read Book of Marvels, Halliburton had ventured a
in that quintessentially
sail
to
I
He
was
was reading
his
which
I
a sad
book? Probably
end couldn't
first,
tually read
them
taint the lessons of
— described
of successful volition.
You prepare
for
it.
know he
But then,
I'd not
thirty-three-year-old father in
pluck and avidity
my
for
me
no disappointment; indeed,
it
last; I
to
it.
in
Ro-
even-
an idea of pure happiness.
You have something
You voyage toward
drew
I
—from The Royal Road
published in 1925, to Book of Marvels, his all
I
for good.
from reading Halliburton. Those books mance, his
not.
Did
learned about in 1939, several months after
mother returned from China
And
thirty-nine years old.
my own
entirely taken in the death of
Tientsin,
from
vessel, a junk,
San Francisco, and had vanished somewhere mid-
Pacific without a trace.
had died when
Chinese
And
mind. You imagine
Then you
may be even more
see
it.
And
there
it.
is
captivating than you
imagined. Halliburton's books convey in the most candid and ingenuous
which
asm
is
to say, unfashionable
for travel
may
—way the "romance" of
travel.
Enthusi-
not be expressed so giddily today, but I'm sure that
the seeking out of what
is
strange or beautiful, or both, remains just as
Homage pleasurable and addictive.
to Halliburton
257
And bemy more
has certainly proved so for me.
It
cause of the impact of those books read
grownup
enviable sightings throughout
when life,
I
was so young,
mostly by-products of op-
portunity or obligation rather than pilgrimages undertaken, continue
When
to bear Halliburton's imprint.
Wall, and
was rowed
did walk on the Great
I finally
into the Blue Grotto,
and was shat on by mon-
Angkor Wat, and
keys in the Taj Mahal, and wandered in the ruins of
wangled permission to spend
bag on the rosy
a night in a sleeping
rocks of Petra, and surreptitiously climbed the Great Pyramid at Giza
before daybreak,
thought: I've done
I
although San Francisco I
is
it.
They were on
his
Truth
list.
is,
anything but an unusual destination for me,
never drive across the Golden Gate Bridge without recalling where
Even
figures in Halliburton's book.
teresting
and haven't
visited,
Fujiyama comes to mind, cult of
I
my
isn't
interior
very in-
map
be-
Picchu or Palmyra or Lhasa or
think, I haven't
done
that. Yet.
youth that animates Halliburton's books could hardly
have meant something to a seven-year-old. But travel
assumed
Andorra, remains on
And when Machu
cause he went there.
The
a place I've
it
it is
the association of
with youth, beautiful youth, that seems most dated now. As an
undergraduate
at
Princeton just after World
War
I,
he succumbed to
the spell of The Picture of Dorian Gray, and throughout his brief life his
beau ideal remained Rupert Brooke, whose biography he hoped one
day to write. Even more remote than these references assumption that he
and seduce are
his
is
is
Halliburton's
bringing news to his readers, that what will entice
words
—not the photographs
in the books,
most no
better than snapshots: the author standing in front of the Taj Mahal,
and so
forth. Today,
images,
still
miliar, to
when
lust for travel
and moving, we expect the
is
awakened primarily through
sights,
many
of them
all
too
fa-
speak for themselves. Indeed, we've seen the famous sights
unrolling in color long before
we
actually travel to see them.
Halliburton's travel narratives are stocked with people: guides, facilitators,
scam
artists,
and other
locals.
The busy world
that
he en-
t
counters
fills
traveling, to
The Body
his
mind. Today
vacancy
Artist logs
itself.
on
The
to her
it
is
possible to travel solo, without
distraught heroine of
computer
at
odd hours
Don
to
DeLillo's
watch
a live-
SUSAN SONTAG
258
streaming video feed from the edge of a two-lane road outside Kotka, Finland, where a
webcam
mind and made her To me.
beyond the write
when
travel
I
am
feel the
is filling
self, it
always trained on asphalt.
is
emptied her
deep silence of other places."
the mind. But that means, by launching
also empties
traveling.
"It
my
mind:
To write
petes with mental traveling.
(What
I
I
find
it
me
"almost impossible to
have to stay put. Real travel com-
is
a writer
but
a
mental traveler?)
WTien I recall now how much Halliburton's books meant to me at the beginning of my reading life, I see how the notion oi "traveler" infiltrated, perfumed, abetted my nascent dream of becoming a writer.
When am
I
I
acknowledge to myself
saying but that
I
want
that
Fm
interested in everything,
what
to travel everywhere. Fike Richard Hal-
liburton.
[2001]
Singleness
Who's
your favorite writer?
me many easy.
—Oh,
—For heaven's
say Shakespeare!
—Just
years ago.
Shakespeare, of course.
one?
an interviewer asked
—Uh-huh. —Then
it's
would never have thought you'd
I
sake,
—Well, you've never
why?
writ-
ten anything about Shakespeare.
Oh. So I'm supposed to be what writer I
knows
write?
No more? No
less?
But every
this isn't so.
write what
writing,
I
by me.
I
can: that
is,
what's given to
care passionately about
I
me and what
many
seems worth
things that don't get
my fiction and essays. They don't because what's in my head seems me to lack originality (I never thought I had anything compelling to
into to
say about Shakespeare), or because
inner freedom to write about them.
And
in
ligent, is
some ways
more
trivial
am
and
—
sense to say
I
am; anyway,
a specializing
loyalties
—of the
literature;
The me through whom ings too, other duties.
books
aren't
me
—
different.
The
"I"
all
who
and upgrading, according
who What
"I"
make my books.
made, through me, by
My
of me.
than them. The better ones are more
less
talented, than I
a transformation
literary goals
I
haven't yet found the necessary
I
and I'm
the books
For instance:
lives. It feels I really feel is
writes
to certain
true only in a that they are
their (literature's) servant.
make as
intel-
me,
their I
way has other
yearn-
believe in right action.
259
SUSAN SONTAG
260
But, for the writer,
it's
doing the right thing a
far
more complicated.
—though
it is
Literature
not about
is
about expressiveness (language)
at
noble level and wisdom (inclusiveness, empathy, truthfulness, moral
And my books
seriousness).
ing
who
am,
I
either; I've
means of discovering or express-
are not a
never fancied the ideology of writing as ther-
apy or self-expression.
There
a
is
deeper reason
ways
felt like a
They
liberate
learner. I've
why
becoming, and
me
My
the books are not me.
on.
Sometimes
I'm in
I feel
flight
— I'm
I
enjoy beginning again.
the beginner's
It's
mind
I
The
mind
beginner's
a fierce
from the books,
and the twaddle they generate. Sometimes the momentum pleasurable.
al-
does. But the books are finished.
still
to do, be, feel, aspire to something else
moved
has
life
more
is
best.
is
embrace and permit myself now, when
I'm very far from being a beginning writer.
When
I
began publishing
thirty years ago, I entertained a simpler version of the figment that
there were two people around here:
Admiration
—no, veneration—
my vocation,
on
my
knees. So, naturally,
How
ented enough, worthy enough.
my
launch
frail
and
I
vessel into literature's
my own
In fact,
I
then did
I,
was
my
her going, though
Going on long time; isfied.)
In
it
I
didn't think
who
work but
all
that
much
I"
I
tal-
a sense of
in
my
"the" work.
made
think
work.
By
ex-
a writer.
sacrifices to
keep
of what she wrote.
as a writer didn't allay this dissatisfaction,
"Sontag and
wasn't
to
awareness of the gap be-
happily
only upped the ante. (And
my
I
one who had dared to become
the one with the standards,
me
find the courage to
wished to honor
I
did "my"
I
that one, the
I
that
wide waters? Through
and the standards
never called what
tension, there
And
gifts
same name.
books had brought
was scared
I
two-ness that expressed, and enforced,
tween
a writer of the
for a host of
I
was
not for a very
right to
be
game, the disavowals were for
dissat-
real.
Op-
pressed by as well as reluctantly proud of this lengthening mini-shelf of
work signed by Susan Sontag, pained seeker)
from her (she had merely found),
ten about her, the praise as
of
self-flattery: I
body
is
to distinguish myself
know
as severe a
Every writer
—
much
I
better than anyone
after a certain point,
I
was
a
flinched at everything writ-
as the pans.
judge of her work as
(I
My
one perennial form
what she
am
when
is
about, and no-
myself.
one's labors have resulted
Singleness in a
body of work
enstein
—experiences himself or
herself as both Dr. Frank-
and the monster. For while harboring
a secret sharer
bly not often the fantasy of a beginning writer, the conceit
appeal to a writer
and
who
has gone on.
And
is
A persona now:
on.
trying to ignore, the nibblings of alienation
from the
which time, and more work, are bound to worsen. firms the dismaying disparity
261
between the inside
proba-
is
bound
to
enduring,
earlier
work
also playfully af-
It
(the ecstasy
and ardu-
ousness of writing) and the outside (that congeries of misunderstandings
and stereotypes image
(in
make up
that
the minds of other people),
poignancy: don't punish
onerous charge,
this
the same
one's reputation or fame). I'm not that
name
it
me for being what you
this
as I do.
And, with more
declares.
call successful. I've
work-obsessed, ambitious writer
I'm
just
who
got
bears
me, accompanying, administering,
tending to that one, so she can get some work done.
Then, more
specifically, this
sheen on the abandonment of
doubling of the
self
required to
self
make
invariably incurs the stigma of selfishness in "real"
Kafka
said,
You have
appease them
—
solitary, to
to fend off the others to get your
that issue
Don't be mad, or
is
keen
especially
jealous. I can't help
You
it.
Yeats said one must choose between the
One
yes.
result of lavishing a
your books I
life.
To
which
write, as
you can never be alone enough. But the people you love
tend not to appreciate your need to be them.
winsome
puts a
literature,
is
that
if
work done. And
the writer
see,
life
turn your back on
is
a
woman.
she writes.
and the work. No. And
good part of your one and only
you come to
feel that, as a person,
remember my merriment when, many
to
years ago,
life
you are faking
I first
came
on it.
across
Borges's elegy to himself, the most delicate account ever given of a writer's
unease about the reconciling of
Writers' humility.
Rereading that
balm
it
(I
life
and work. Writers' pathos.
envied him the slyness of his humility.)
now,
I still
grin.
But I'm not so prone to make use of
to writers' self-consciousness
which Borges's fable so charm-
ingly evokes. «
Far from needing the consolation of a certain ironic distance from myself (the earlier distance wasn't ironic the opposite direction and at last
my
come
at all), I've
slowly evolved in
to feel that the writer
double, or familiar, or shadow playmate, or creation.
(It's
is
me: not
because
I
262
SUSAN SONTAG
got to that point write a
book
I
—
it
took almost thirty years
really like:
—
The Volcano Lover.)
that
I
Now
was I
finally able to
think there's no
escaping the burden of singleness. There's a difference between
and
my
lier.
Liberating.
books. But there's only one person here. That
is
scarier.
me
Lone-
h995]
Writing As Readin
READING
NOVELS SEEMS
while writing them think until
mored
I
remind myself
because to write
is
how
and see
it
—once,
twice, as
can bear to reread. write
is
one of But
to
sit
in
many You
firmly the
two are
—
Hard
You
times as
are your
it
takes to get
own
first,
it it
maybe
never
is
Surely, sure.
much
all right.
in general read
that
is
ment of
to rewrite
severest, reader.
"To
flyleaf
of
And
that only suggests, to this
still.
as
—
that
is,
an-
I'm not saying that the novelist
"What
is
written
without pleasure," said Dr. Johnson,
remote from contemporary
taste as its author.
written without effort gives a great deal of plea-
No, the question
prefer a writer's
is,
straight off never all right? Yes, sure:
might be better
and the maxim seems
and
to be something you
has to fret and sweat to produce something good.
without effort
ar-
write in order to read what you've
writer at any rate, that with a closer look, or voicing aloud it
(No
related.
I
to imagine writing without rereading.
sometimes even better than
—
so
few remarks.)
and, since of course
what you've written
other reading
activity,
at least
judgment on oneself," Ibsen inscribed on the
his books. is
OK
if it's
such a normal
to practice, with particular intensity
attentiveness, the art of reading.
written,
me
such an odd thing to do
is
generalities here. Just a
First,
to
is
—who may well elaborated work —but
not the judgment of readers
more spontaneous,
less
writers, those professionals of dissatisfaction.
a senti-
You
think, If
263
I
SUSAN SONTAG
264
can get
to this point the
it
couldn't
it
be better
And though fort,
it is
first
go-around, without too
the rewriting
this,
— and the rereading—sounds
most pleasurable part of
only pleasurable part. Setting out to write, erature" in your head,
warm
Then comes
work
with, upgrade, edit.
be
clearer.
try to
be true
to
authoritative. to
the
deeper.
part,
when you
But you have
a mess.
Or
if
writing.
Or more
to a world.
You want
You want
to
A
plunge
chance to
a
book
fix
try to get this
wretched
your book should be
You
be.
is
eccentric.
spacious,
to
on the page
—what you know,
in
read the sentences over and over.
more
in
try to liberate
it.
is
what you think
your spasms of the
You
entombed
closer to
Is this
try
You want
yourself.
You
inside your head.
stuff
You
it.
be more
winch yourself up from
the block of marble, the novel
"lit-
an icy
in
Or more
winch the book out of your balky mind. As the statue
You
Sometimes the
already have something to
eloquent. the
like ef-
you- have the idea of
formidable, intimidating.
is
lake.
it's
struggle,
still?
actually the
Let's say
much
elation,
book I'm
it
can
writing?
Is this all?
Or didn't,
let's
say
it's
going well, for
it
you'd go crazy). There you
does go well, some of the time are,
and even
of scribes and the worst of touch typists, a
down, and you want
to
trail
if
(if it
you are the slowest
of words
keep going. Then you reread
it.
is
being laid
Perhaps you
don't dare be satisfied, but at the same time you like what you've writ-
You
ten.
find yourself taking pleasure
—
a reader's pleasure
—
in what's
there on the page.
Writing
is, finally,
a series of
pressive in certain ways.
own own
characteristic
way
inner freedom.
To
permissions you give yourself to be ex-
invent.
To
leap.
To
fly.
fall.
of narrating and insisting; that
To be
strict
is,
To
find your
to find
your
without being too self-excoriating. Not
stopping too often to reread. Allowing yourself, it's
To
when you
dare think
going well (or not too badly), simply to keep rowing along.
No
waiting for inspiration's shove.
Of
course, blind writers can never reread
haps
this
their
head before
ear
matters less for poets,
much more
setting
down
who
often
what they
do most of
dictate. Per-
their writing in
anything on paper. (Poets
than prose writers do.)
And
live
by the
being unable to see doesn't
Writing As Reading
mean
one
that
make
can't
Don't
revisions.
we imagine
265
that Milton's
daughters, at the end of each day of the dictation of Paradise Lost, read all
it
back to
their father
prose writers
—who work
their heads.
They need
and then took down
in a
lumberyard of words
to see
what they've
forthcoming, prolific writers must feel
when he went
composing The Golden Bowl aloud
at all,
1900,
this.
blind, that his writing days
venerable Henry James pacing up and
difficulty of
how James's
imagining
his corrections?
—
can't hold
written.
But
it all
in
Even the most
(Hence, Sartre announced,
were
down
over.)
in a
room
Think of in
portly,
Lamb House
Leaving aside the
to a secretary.
prose could have been dictated
late
much less to the racket made by a Remington typewriter circa don't we assume that James reread what had been typed, and was
lavish with his corrections?
When
became, again,
I
a
cancer patient two years ago and had to
break off work on the nearly finished In America, a friend in Los Angeles,
to
my despair and fear that now I'd never finish it, offered New York and stay with me to take down my dictation of
knowing
come
to
the rest of the novel. True, the rewritten ter,
first
eight chapters
and reread many times) and
with the arc of the
last
I'd
two chapters
were done
begun the
(that
is,
next-to-last chap-
clearly in view.
And
to refuse his touching, generous offer. It wasn't just that I
yet I
had
was probably
too befuddled by drastic chemotherapy and morphine to
remember
what
wrote, not
just
I
was planning
hear
I
it.
had
to
had
to write. I
to
READING USUALLY PRECEDES is
I
writing.
And
the impulse to write
almost always fired by reading. Reading, the love of reading,
makes you dream of becoming a writer, reading
of the past
—
Not
all
thing to V.
a writer.
books others write
And, long
after you've
Torment. And,
what
become
from
writing. Dis-
yes, inspiration.
writers will admit to this. S.
is
— and rereading the beloved books
constitutes an irresistible distraction
traction. Consolation.
I
remember once
saying some-
Naipaul about a nineteenth-century English novel
loved, a very well I
be able to see what
be able to reread.
knew who cared
known
novel,
for literature,
which
I
admired
I
assumed
that he, like everyone
as I did.
But no, he'd not read
— SUSAN SONTAG
266
it.
he
sternly,
shadow of
and, seeing the
said,
my
surprise on
added
face,
"Susan, I'm a writer, not a reader."
Many
who
writers
to read very
little,
are
no longer young
indeed, to find reading and writing in
compatible. Perhaps, for
some
about being influenced, then the reason
is
claim, for various reasons,
lack of time
some sense
writers, they are. If the reason
— there
me
seems to
this
are only so
is
in-
anxiety
a vain, shallow worry. If
many hours
in the day,
and
those spent reading are evidently subtracted from those in which one
could be writing
—then
Losing yourself
in a
an addictive, model
"Sometimes
I
this
is
an asceticism to which
book, the old phrase,
reality.
state of reading consists in the
we
fortunately,
our
own
enough
that
is
—
Woolfs words
again,
never do lose the ego, any more than
make
—
— "the
complete elimination of the ego." Un-
we can is
step over
trance-like
us feel egoless.
Like reading, rapturous reading, writing fiction selves
said, in a letter,
But that disembodied rapture, reading,
feet.
to
don't aspire.
think heaven must be one continuous unexhausted read-
Surely the heavenly part
ing/'
Woolf famously
Virginia
I
not an idle fantasy but
is
—inhabiting other
feels like losing yourself, too.
Most people seem
to think
now
regard. Also called: self-expression.
be capable of authentically
that writing
As we
are
altruistic feelings,
is
just a
form of
self-
no longer supposed
we
are not
supposed
to to
be capable of writing about anyone but ourselves. But
that's
not true. William Trevor speaks of the boldness of the
/76>/7-autobiographical imagination.
yourself as
much
as
Why
you might write
wouldn't you write to escape
to express yourself?
It's
far
more
interesting to write about others.
Needless to In America,
my
lend bits of myself to
say, I
and succumb
was drawing on
my
characters.
When,
in
immigrants from Poland reach southern California
they're just outside the village of desert,
all
Anaheim
—
in 18-76, stroll
out into the
to a terrifying, transforming vision of emptiness,
my own memory
I
of childhood walks into the desert of
southern Arizona
—outside what was then
the 1940s. In the
first
a small
draft of that chapter, there
southern California desert. By the third draft
I
town, Tucson
were saguaros
—
in
in the
had taken the saguaros
Writing As Reading
267
out, reluctantly. (Alas, in 1876, there weren't any saguaros west of the
Colorado
What I
River.) I
write about
am. Because
Here is
easier, is
other than me. As what
can rewrite
I
fully, intermittently.
seem any
is
And
it.
many
and
smarter than
—
once knew
I
fit-
On
the contrary.
the great difference between reading and writing. Reading
expert.
What you accumulate
you are bound to become
as a writer
mostly uncertainties
is
anxieties.
All these feelings of inadequacy
anyway
writer, ters.
—
"Matters"
are predicated
is
you'll reread.
on the conviction
is,
Maybe more than
that literature mat-
That there are books which
once.
Is
there a greater privilege than
by, filled with,
pointed to literature?
recorder of a real world (not just the commotion inside
one head), servant of
—
this
of wisdom, exemplar of mental playfulness, dilator of sympa-
thies, faithful
tions
—
books which, while reading them, you know
have a consciousness expanded
Book
on the part of the writer
surely too pale a word.
are necessary, that
to
is
words on the page does not
years of writing.
a vocation, a skill at which, with practice,
more
write
My books know what
getting the best
even after so
I
history,
advocate of contrary and defiant emo-
a novel that feels necessary can be, should be,
most of these
things.
As
for
whether there
high notion of
Duke
will
fiction, well,
Ellington replied
morning programs
at
continue to be readers
"There's
no future
when asked why he was
who
share this
to that question," as to
be found playing
the Apollo. Best just to keep rowing along. [2000]
Thirty Years Later
TO a
LOOK BACK wholesome
forward, to feel
makes was
still
exercise.
that
hard to curb
it
on writings of thirty or more years ago
am
I
is
.
.
not
My energy as a writer impels me to look beginning, really beginning, now, which
my impatience
with that beginning writer
I
once
in the literal sense.
Against Interpretation,
some
essays in
tor. I
had come
work
the writer
My idea
my
second book, was published
date from 1961,
it
New
to I
many
York
at
someone
kinds, so
The only
surprise
And
was
in a great
that there weren't
now mythic the
life,
Thirty Years Later
.
.
."
tion the following year in
268
—eager
for
me
to put to
era
known
life
in
fer-
metropolis than in any variant
more people is
regarded
as the Sixties. I
I
had attended.
like
me.
as a quintessential
evoke the label with
on the omnipresent convention of pack-
of one's time, in decades.
was written
had
to conceive of the vo-
including the excellent universities
reluctance, since I'm not keen
aging one's
but
writing The Benefac-
reasonable to suppose that such
I'm aware that Against Interpretation text of that
still
the start of the 1960s
was natural
it
vency would find more scope life,
was
I
interested in "everything." I'd always
cation of a writer in this way.
of provincial
when
in 1966,
had. since adolescence, pledged myself to become.
of a writer:
interests of
"
.
the
summer
Madrid of the Spanish
And
it
wasn't the Six-
of 199s as the preface to the republica-
translation of Against Interpretation.
Thirty Years Later
For
ties then.
me
it
was
when
chiefly the time
I
wrote
.
269
.
.
my
and
first
second novels, and began to discharge some of the cargo of ideas about
and culture and the proper business of consciousness which
art
had distracted
me from
writing fiction.
I
was
filled
life,
a
with evangelical
zeal.
The
radical
change
I'd
made
my own
in
change embedded
in
my moving to New York, was that I was not going to settle for being an academic: I would pitch my tent outside the seductive, stony safety of the university world. No doubt, there were new permissions in the air, and old hierarchies had become ripe
was
for toppling, but not that I
aware, at least not until after the time (1961 to 1965) these essays were written. to
The freedoms
—
me
seem
still
minted warrior
to
I
espoused, the ardors
me
— quite
was advocating, seemed
I
saw myself
traditional. I
newly
as a
in a very old battle: against philistinism, against ethical
and aesthetic shallowness and indifference. And imagined that both
New
York, where
I
had come
I
could never have
to live after
my
academic apprenticeship (Berkeley, Chicago, Harvard), and
where
had
I
started spending the
Cinematheque, were judged
as exceptionally creative.
actly as I'd
imagined them to be
sense of possibility.
summers,
They were,
—
thought
—above
all
it
in the
was riding
to
seemed, well, the way
and
and improvised
I
down
I
thought
I
was
flying, getting
I
was
ergy
I
prised
had
particularly well fitted to see
me
at
my
to admire.
what
I
my bookishness, my
its
people found what
was thought
to
be
in the
I
said
I
looked
due. Per-
saw, to understand
what
Europhilia, and the en-
disposal in the search for aesthetic bliss.
at first that
to me), that I
an
to get close.
had so many admirations: there was so much
understood, oy virtue of
art spaces,
other, less easily classifiable writers
around and saw importance to which no one was giving haps
was
form of movies and dance events, but
a wave.
overview, sometimes swooping I
Paris, ex-
normal that there be new masterpieces
in the writings of certain poets I
York and
of discoveries, inspirations, the
full
also in the fringe theatre world, in galleries
Maybe
New
it
be.
of prose.
the
at
of venality
supposed to
month
attendance
period that would be
me
whose work mattered
every
Paris,
The dedication and daring and absence
of the artists
I
in daily
in the early throes of a
long
"new"
(it
vanguard of
Still, it
sur-
wasn't so
new
sensibility and,
SUSAN SONTAG
270
my
from the appearance of
Of
course,
was elated
I
some of the matters good fortune I
I
view
aesthete's point of
phy and
I
to
first
pay attention to
couldn't believe
I
to describe them.
my
hadn't written something like
I
had embraced,
some new
to
was
a
(How
many
Art"),
"Notes on
Wilde, Ortega
and James Joyce.
my
manifestos, but
my
odd,
material the
pugnacious aesthete and a barely closeted moralist.
out to write so
my
young student of philoso-
as a
literature, in the writings of Nietzsche, Pater,
aphoristic statement conspired with in
me
Ortega of "The Dehumanization of
(the
set
for
was merely extending
I
it,
regarded as a tastemaker.
essays,
be apparently the
to
had waited
Auden
saw
first
wrote about; sometimes
I
that they
thought, that
Camp.") As
very
I
didn't
irrepressible taste for
staunchly adversarial purposes
ways that sometimes surprised me. In the writings collected
Against Interpretation ness
suppose
(I
positions
what
the tenacity, the succinct-
I like best:
should say here that
I
agree with most of the
I still
and certain psychological and moral judgments
took),
I
this is
the essays on Simone Weil, Camus, Pavese, and Michel Leiris.
don't like are those passages in which
way
my
of
prose.
Those
The
me
new work
understanding of the
programmatic commitment
new work,
especially
judged, seemed
about what
work
more
to the
that
was discovering,
I
seemed altogether
impulse got in the I
suppose they
I
(form /content,
polarities
intel-
that inhibited the proper
admired. Although
I
had no
"modern," taking up the cause of
had been
I
slighted or ignored or mis-
strength of the old taboos.
assumed the preeminence of the
The
salutary, given
transgressions
what
I
my
from the
I
I
praised (and used
ideas about art-making glories of
was applauding
took to be the unimpaired
The contemporary work
platform to relaunch
ness) didn't detract
I
useful than defending old favorites. In writing
canonical treasures of the past.
as a
and
was challenging were those
lect/feeling) I
in
What
now.
(high/low)
hierarchies
my pedagogic
those recommendations!
lists,
annoy
are useful, but they
in
what
I
and conscious-
admired
far
more. En-
joying the impertinent energy and wit of a species of performance called
Happenings did not make me care
Shakespeare.
No
I
was
—
I
am
—
less
for a pluralistic,
about Aristotle and
polymorphous
hierarchy, then? Certainly there's hierarchy. If
I
had
to
culture.
choose be-
Thirty Years Later ...
tween the Doors and Dostoyevsky, then
do
toyevsky. But
The
to
but because
me
level.
One
literature, I
of
my
been the cinema: Bresson.
not because
loved more
no other
that
me had
Godard and
films of
ema than about
without
my
new movies
new
than
silent era
happiest achievements in the years is
new
and the
films,
1930s) I
saw again and
clear
was doing
I
no day passed
Most of them
favorites
my
grati-
from the
were
again, so exalting
their
and
their sensuality
and beauty.
gravity
Cinema was the exemplary
art activity
during the time these essays
were written, but there were astonishments
rise
was
It
such a high
at
when
that
my
which (along with
freedom and inventiveness of narrative method,
Artists
novels.
absorption in cinema history only reinforced
tude for certain
cin-
loved movies more than nov-
I
was being so widely practiced
art
particularly
I felt
seeing one, sometimes two or three movies.
My
choose Dos-
wrote more about
I
the writing collected in Against Interpretation
were "old."
I'd
have to choose?
great revelation for
marked by the
els
I
—of course—
271
were insolent
of fascism.
again, as they'd
The modern was
the capitulations
embodied
nascent
movement
consume
were
against the
still
its
tinctively
my
disdain for
little
the
And
life
from I
commerce had
I
mean
the to
through the early 1970s
1965
suppose).
How marvelous
some of its boldness,
survived.
are nostalgia
I
which took shape
American war on Vietnam, which was
interesting characteristic of the time
there was so
"post-modern.")
political struggles
How one wishes
modern sentiment
I until
was before
a vibrant idea. (This
still
the Sixties, too,
does seem, in retrospect. timism,
World War
of these essays were being written:
last
a large part of
(those years
in the other arts as well.
after
in the idea of the
have said nothing here about the
around the time the
been
The two
it all
its
op-
poles of dis-
and Utopia. Perhaps the most
now
labeled the Sixties was that
nostalgia. In that sense,
it
was indeed
a
Utopian
moment.
The world
in
which these essays were written no longer
Instead oPa Utopian the end
—more
exactly, just past the
fore of culture: there
An
moment, the time we
is
illusion of the end,
no
end
live in is
—of every
possibility of true culture
perhaps
— and not more
exists.
experienced as
ideal.
(And
there-
without altruism.)
illusory than the con-
SUSAN SONTAG
272
on the threshold of
viction of thirty years ago of being
a great positive
transformation of culture and society. No, not an illusion, It is
think.
not simply that the Sixties have been repudiated, and the dis-
and made the object of intense
sident spirit quashed,
more triumphant
ever
I
indeed, impose pleasure that
mendations
—the
of consumer
values
promote
and insolence and defense of
cultural mixes
was advocating
I
The
nostalgia.
capitalism
for quite different reasons.
No
recom-
The recommendations and
exist outside a certain setting.
enthusiasms expressed in the essays collected in Against Interpretation
have become the possession of many people now. Something was operating to
which
I
make by
time
(call
more
cautious.
a sea
change
it
more
these marginal views
had no inkling its
— and, had
decade-name
Something that
whole
in the
it
acceptable, something of
my
understood better
I
time, that
me
you want), would have made
if
would not be an exaggeration
to call
culture, a transvaluation of values
which there are many names. Barbarism
is
one name for what was
we had
ing over. Let's use Nietzsche's term:
—
for
tak-
entered, really entered, the
age of nihilism.
So
I
can't help viewing the writings collected in Against Interpreta-
tion with a certain irony. I
such as "Notes on
still
Camp" and "On
only one thing in the collection cles,
most of the essays
like
I
don't like at
would not be pleased
more than
I
few of them,
two theatre chroni-
all:
had accepted,
magazine with which
literary
a
Style," quite a lot. (Indeed, there's
the brief result of a commission
judgment, from a
—
was
I
my
better
allied.)
Who
against
that a collection of contentious writings
three decades ago continues to matter to
readers in English and in
many
—
reader not to lose sight of
it
new
foreign languages.
may
take
some
from
generations of
Still,
I
urge the
effort of imagination
To
the larger context of admirations in which these essays were written. call for
an "erotics of art" did not
critical intellect.
ture did not
in the
name
I
denounced
and on Lukacs) of a
didn't understand
to then as "popular" cul-
to conspire in the repudiation of high culture
When
ence-fiction films
was
to disparage the role of the
To laud work condescended
mean
complexities.
mean
(I
more
(for instance, in the essays
and
on
its
sci-
certain kinds of facile moralism,
alert, less
was surely not the
complacent seriousness. What right
person to understand
it
I
this)
Thirty Years Later ...
was
that seriousness itself
the culture
at large,
was
273
in the early stages of losing credibility in
and that some of the more transgressive
art I
was
enjoying would reinforce frivolous, merely consumerist transgressions. Thirty years
later,
the undermining of standards of seriousness
most complete, with the ascendancy of ble, persuasive values are
Now the
I
drawn from the entertainment
most people, and when allowed
temperament
suppose
it's
—probably unhealthy,
is
not
how I
to
be read.
of
new
My
—
as
intelligi-
industries.
an arbitrary deci-
too.
not wrong that Against Interpretation
reread, as an influential, pioneering that
whose most
al-
very idea of the serious (and of the honorable) seems quaint,
unrealistic, to
sion of
a culture
is
read
hope
or
it,
is
document from
—lurching from
that
its
a
is
read now, or
bygone
nostalgia to Utopia
age.
—wish
it
republication now, and the acquisition
readers, could contribute to the quixotic task of shoring
values out of which these essays and reviews were written.
ments of taste expressed
But
in these essays
may have
prevailed.
up the
The The
judg-
values
underlying those judgments did not. [1996]
Questions of Travel
ABOUT TRAVEL
BOOKS
posed an "us"
to a
"them"
riety of appraisals. Classical
the "us good,
them bad"
be foreign was
to
—
have always op-
a relation that yields a limited va-
and medieval
travel literature
good, them horrid"
typically, "us
be abnormal, often represented
mostly of
is
—
sort.
as physical
"men whose heads tale),
/
Do grow beneath
their shoulders" (Othello's win-
of anthropophagi, Cyclopes, and the like illustrates to us the
astonishing gullibility of past ages. But even this gullibility had its.
A Christian
culture could
more
its
lim-
easily believe in the existence of the
monstrous than of the perfect or near
doms
To
abnor-
and the persistence of those accounts of monstrous peoples, of
mality;
ning
—
to exotic places
perfect. Thus, while the king-
of freaks appear century after century on maps, exemplary races
figure mostly in
Not
books of
travel to Utopia; that
until the eighteenth century are there
is,
nowhere.
many examples
of a
more
daring geography: literature about model societies which describes
purportedly real places. Documentary literature and fiction were, of course, closely related in the eighteenth century, with nonfiction narratives in the first
day of
And
person an important model for the novel.
travel hoaxes, as well as of fiction in
the form of
It is
the hey-
travel books.
the greatest of the imaginary voyages, Gulliver's Travels, mixes the
two main series of
274
fantasies of the wholly alien. Consisting mostly of visits to a
monstrous
races,
it
ends with
its
burnt-out hero settled
among
Questions of Travel an ideal race: a high
them good"
The
moment
275
in the soon-to-be-flourishing "us bad,
tradition.
travel literature that can
be understood
premodern takes
as
for
granted the contrast between the traveler's society and those societies defined as anomalous, barbaric, backward, odd. To speak in the per-
sona of the
speak for
traveler, a professional (or
civilization;
Modern
the barbarians.
comes
no premodern
travelers thought of themselves as
travel literature starts
a critical as well as a self-evident
longer so clear Travel
is
who
is
civilized
and who
notion
when
—
that
civilization beis,
when
it is
no
not.
is
a didactic fantasy in the discourse of the philosophes (the
first intellectuals in
the
modern
sense),
societies,
tional," in
order to illuminate the
anomaly attested to by voyagers late eighteenth
who
often invoke distant non-
described as either more "natural" or more "ra-
European
ample
even amateur) observer, was to
century
—the
evils
remote lands
to
still
circulate in the
nine-foot- tall giants of Patagonia, for ex-
—but the sense of anomaly
"we" become the moral
of their own. Tales of physical
is
defectives.
increasingly the moral one.
There
is
And
a large literature of jour-
neys to exotic places whose fanciful virtues are recounted to point an instructive contrast with Europe.
the present
—
to
something
The journey was out
better: the past or the future.
America was the beneficiary of many this kind.
of civilization
"In the beginning," said
trips, real
John Locke,
and fabricated, of
"all
the world was
America." Crevecoeur and Chateaubriand found in the
something better than, unspoiled integrity, a refreshing naivete
and
New World
by, civilization: health, vigor,
moral
directness. After such fantasies
came
the inevitable counter-literature, that of acerbic British travelers of the
mid-nineteenth century like Fanny Trollope and Dickens,
who found
us simply not very civilized, in a word, vulgar; Harriet Martineau in the 1
830s, sensing abolitionism
rather better.
modern judgments about
of
exotic places
is
reac-
Turks were one of the model races in the eighteenth century; in
tive.
the
Much
and feminism on the march, had liked us
1
850s the Intrepid
Martineau actually visited two examples of the
"Turkish" harem and described pressed, and corrupted
Although these
human
travel
its
inmates as the most injured, de-
beings she had ever seen.
judgments
—the
idealizing of an exotic soci-
— SUSAN SONTAG
276
ety,
and the report on
its
—seem
barbarity
to alternate in cycles of
hope
and disillusionment, certain countries (following the mysterious laws of stereotyping) have proved
China has been
a fantasy
eighteenth century son, there
spread
it
more
susceptible to idealizing than others.
kingdom
since
Marco
was widely believed
America, too, for
all its
visit;
and
superstition, or wide-
denigrators, keeps recurring as
an object of idealization. In contrast, Russia
is
a
land whose customs
and energies have been perennially deplored. Since Ivan the the
first
in the
that in China, a land of rea-
was no war, debauchery, ignorance,
illness.
Polo's
Terrible,
Muscovite monarch to capture the imagination of Europe,
re-
ports on the infamy of Russian society have constituted a flourishing
branch of reports
travel literature in the West.
—those made by some foreign
The only memorable visitors
from the 1930s
1950s, precisely the period of the Greatest Terror,
dented heights of freedom and have strengthened
One
counterto the
about the unprece-
justice attained in the Soviet
Union
this tradition.
cannot imagine anyone being exactly disillusioned by the Mar-
quis de Custine's account of the barbarism
when he went
to Russia in 1839, as
m ^ny
and despotism he found
people were sharply
disillu-
sioned by Simon Leys's account, in the mid-1970s, of the barbarism of China's Cultural Revolution.
And
this centuries-old
propensity to think
the best of China and the worst of Russian society today,
when, though by many
more
repressive,
more
the Chinese version
criteria
has
Chinese communism
(literally) totalitarian
still
still
is
its
echo
infinitely
than Soviet communism,
enjoys a far better press than the Soviet one.
(Indeed, most self-righteous anti-communists at the highest reaches of the American foreign policy establishment behave as
supposed
if
they are not
to notice the tragically Stalinist character of current
political life.)
Some
countries are perennial objects of fantasy.
THE PHILOSOPHES HAD ATTRIBUTED
—the Hurons old Tahitian —but noble savage
Chinese
ideal virtues not only to a
of Voltaire and Rousseau, Diderot's wise
also to existing
non-European ("Eastern") peoples
such as Turks, Persians, and Chinese. The fantasies of succeeding generations of writers
were not so
easily disconfirmed.
The only
"ideal"
Questions of Travel
277
allowed by the Romantic poets was a thoroughly dead one:
civilization
the Greek.
Once
travel
was
itself
an anomalous
strue the self as essentially a traveler
true citizenship
is
—
The Romantics con-
activity.
a questing,
homeless
of a place that does not exist at
self
whose
or yet, or no
all,
longer exists; one consciously understood as an ideal, opposed to
something
real. It is
understood that the journey
To
destination, therefore, negotiable.
of
modern
consciousness, of a
On
out of longing or dismay.
travel
modern view of
this
is
unending, and the
becomes the very condition the world
view everyone
is,
—the acting
potentially, a trav-
eler.
The
new genre of travel writing: which from now on will rival the lit-
generalizing of travel results in a
the literature of disappointment,
erature of idealization. Europeans visited America, prospecting the possibilities of a
Europe
new, simpler
to appraise the
letters
cultivated
Americans journeyed to
Old World sources of civilizations
profess to be disappointed.
ropean
life;
From
the early nineteenth century on, Eu-
resound with the sentiment of being Europamiide, tired
make
of Europe. Travelers continue, in ever larger numbers, to exotic,
trips to
non- Western lands, which seem to answer to some of the old
where
stereotypes: that simpler society,
discontent (and lost.
—both often
One
its
civilization)
faith
is
of the recurrent themes of
modern
the idyllic
The nineteenth-century
life in,
say,
economy, for travelers generally
still
want the natives
always being
—the report on
is
the
a soci-
travelers are noting the inroads in
the South Seas
who would
is
travel narratives
depredations of the modern, the loss of the past ety's decline.
pure, nature pristine,
unknown. But paradise
made by
the
modern money-
never dream of living like the natives
to stay
wholesome,
rustic, sexy,
and
uncomfortable.
Another
characteristic
modern incitement
country worth seeing, and describing, place in
it.
is
to travel,
what makes
a
that a revolution has taken
That most unromantic and profound of
travel writers,
Alexis de Tocqueville, saw in America the vanguard of a radical
process soon to transform Europe as well, irrevocably destroying the past;
it
was
to
examine
that revolution, democracy, that Tocqueville
traveled about the United States. Trips to countries to see
how
they
SUSAN SONTAG
278
have been transformed by about the enactment of
modern
a revolution, a revolution
ideals,
Much
to
be
travel literature. In the twentieth century these are trips to spe-
homeland, revolution-in-general.
revolutions, seeking that ideal
cific
which claims
have been one of the great subjects of
of the literature of travel from the "West". to communist coun-
reads as a late variant of the old genre, in which visitors from cor-
tries
rupt, oversophisticated
world"
—now
Europe
a self- designated
"new
hail the healthy energies of a
"new man."
In this version of the ideal destination, "revolutionary" has replaced "primitive" but
still
retains
many
of the attributes of what was once un-
derstood as primitive. "I have seen the future and ously declared Lincoln Steffens after his early 1930s
—
visit to
works," notori-
it
the Soviet
Union
in the
perhaps the high point of identifying communism with
modernization. But as the Soviet model was discredited, and revolu-
became the
tion
siege,
it
past and
fate of struggling agrarian societies
seemed it is
.
.
what the
that .
more or
travelers really felt was: I
less
under
have seen the
moving.
Trips to those grievously poor countries are perceived as journeys
backward
in time: leaving affluent, doubt-stricken civilization for the
simplicities, pieties,
and materially spartan
ing of her visit to China in 1973, Barbara
coming from plications
a
it is
life
of an earlier age. Writ-
Wooten avowed: "To anyone
world which threatens to strangle
itself in its
the apparent simplicity of Chinese
irresistible appeal."
This reaction
is
life
own com-
which makes an
not just fantasy. Communist revo-
lutions tend not only to occur in peasant societies but, for
all
the en-
ergy devoted to bringing about a certain modernization, to preserve tenaciously
family least
omy
life
slow
much
that
is
and the central
down
—
in part
premodern
values,
and
its
countries of Central
them, such as old-fashioned
role of a literary culture;
due
and
to abort or at
to the intractable failures of the econ-
—the onset of the consumer
sive"
in
society,
with
its
affluence,
its
"permis-
degraded mass culture. Even the unfortunate
Europe (now paradigmatically relocated
"East"), though hardly
backward
societies
when
they
fell
in the
under Rus-
sian hegemony, are not exceptions to the rule of delayed advance into
the
modern which communism
of Europe before
World War
enforces;
II
and
still
visibly preserve
more
than do the countries of Western Eu-
Questions of Travel rope.
A good
279
deal of the favorable reaction of foreign visitors has been
precisely to this.
In almost
all
accounts of modern reflective
The
ject is alienation itself.
trip
may support
ous, or speculative view of the world.
overcoming alienation ties
—found
in
which
from bourgeois
become common with
One
to
Egypt
in
1
liber-
own. In an-
the enlarging possibilities of
affluent traveler,
on vacation advantage
celebrated nineteenth-century
the trip that Flaubert, in the
Camp, made
—or
restraints, explores the "picturesque," takes
of unlimited sexual opportunities. is
an exercise in
is
travelers celebrate virtues
non-European countries, the
example
a skeptical, acutely sensu-
the trip
in a distant society that are lacking in their
other trip that has travel to
Or
master sub-
travel, the
company of Maxime Du homo-
850-1 851. (In the twentieth century,
sexual writers have been specialists in this kind of libertine travel to colonies
and ex-colonies.) In the
picturesque
is
countries as old-fashioned sexuality
The
is
now
is
what
perceived in communist
is
the sexual decorousness.
itself as a
kingdom of
tors accepted the theft,
Though fying trip
solemn assurances of
virtue,
debauch
made
their
who
visi-
Chinese hosts that there in China.
the opposite of the high-minded, edi-
poor country
to a
latter trip often inspires similar
pathetic visitors
is
visitors
many Western
no homosexuality, and no premarital sex
travel for
and
a revolutionary society re-
has been thus transformed. In the early 1970s
was no
Untrammeled
associated not with the primitive but with decadence.
revolution represents
have been ready to believe that behavior in ally
another kind of
trip to the revolution,
in evidence. Part of
in the throes of a revolution, the
condescensions and detachments. Sym-
cannot even imagine the local hardships often
have a high standard of revolutionary consciousness, and when, for example, the ghastly rigors and lethal zealotry of Chinese the time of the Cultural Revolution were the mid-1970s, first-time visitors were
communism
somewhat abated,
known
in
starting in
to commiserate with each
other that they had missed the really good period,
when
the natives
were pure, pious, uncorrupted by consumerism.
Many as in
of the earlier travelers to the capitals of the revolution were,
an old-fashioned literary journey, going to an exotic land in order
to return
home and
write about
it.
Travelers to these countries were
SUSAN SONTAG
280
conscious of traversing a formidable barrier. (Beyond the Great Wall.
Behind the Iron Curtain.) They came
what they
actually
gram
is
that
laid
to write about an exotic country;
wrote about was their
out for privileged
itinerary, the
visitors.
of these books was the record of the
strenuous pro-
Indeed, the
common form
China Day by Day, the
trip, as in
notably ingenuous account Simone de Beauvoir wrote of her trip to
China
in 195
5.
By the
early 1970s, with an increasing
volume of travel
to
China, travelers were reporting not only similar trips but identical
same tea-growing commune near Hangchow, the same
ones: the
cle factory in
borhood
bicy-
Shanghai, the same "lane committee" in a Peking neigh-
—the sameness of the
trip
having not deterred a large number
of them from coming back and writing virtually the same book. Isolated, secretive, besieged
—
communist countries have elabo-
all
procedures for receiving foreign
rate
putting
pampering them while
visitors,
them through some well-chosen
paces, then dispatching
them
back, laden with trinkets and books, to the outside world. Like the
most modern which the
tourist venture in
any remote land, the experience
traveler to the revolution
nies enigma. Mystery, risk
is
enrolled eliminates
and unpleasantness,
ingredients of travel to remote lands.
all risk,
in
de-
isolation are traditional
Even the most independent lone
observer needs help in deciphering an exotic country. Such an observer
may
take on a native cicerone,
terlocutor for part of the trip
about his travels
ers,
observer friend.
is
in
—
will
be the
traveler's principal in-
as in V. S. Naipaul's
Among
Group
travel to a
communist revolution
These are
trips
the country seem intelligible.
have been
easily
is
designed to produce
organized by travel
And many
visitors to
officials to
persuaded to consider the aspirations and needs
when
they
too similar, and institutions and practices to be comparable to
all
our own, which are
The voyage ardous travel
make
communist coun-
of their inhabitants to be fundamentally different from ours, are
the Believ-
revolution-convulsed Islam. But the lone
unlikely to take at face value the attitudes of this native
a different result.
tries
who
to
in fact radically different.
be made to new worlds used to be arduous, haz-
— so arduous
books were
That eventually
that travelers often skipped
it.
Many
authors of
fireside travelers, plagiarizing earlier travel accounts.
travel to exotic places
became
altogether
common, and
Questions of Travel
more and more organized, has made the old kind of ally obsolete:
people do take the
period there are probably
tend to deceive,
hoax
trips they write about. In the
many fewer
many more
travel
travel
virtu-
modern
books that consciously
which the author
in
281
deceived.
is
in-
The
No
chances of being caught out, of course, have also mounted.
Natchez squaw arrived
in Paris at the
end of the eighteenth century
to
explain what Chateaubriand hadn't seen or had misinterpreted in the
course of his enthusiastic (and, in part, faked) travels to America in 1
79 1. But
someone
years in the
Gulag and was
Siberia that both early 1940s
—her name
a
few years
oners
felt
—who served eleven
a prisoner in that slave labor
Henry Wallace and Owen Lattimore
and pronounced
Hudson Bay Company and up
Eleanor Lipper
is
a
model workplace
(a
visited in the
cross
between the
and wrote about the rage and contempt the
later,
in
the Tennessee Valley Authority) did turn pris-
for their visitors.
THE ACCOUNTS OF TRAVEL
to exotic countries in the nineteenth
century suppressed the servants, often a whole retinue,
nied the venturesome traveler.
The modern
who
accomplished. The sort of person
communist country
And
this usually
(that
is,
is,
more
traveler touring the revo-
writes a
member
a
a trip
book about
often than not, the sort
means being
who accompa-
group with which such
lution tended to suppress the
being
camp
of a tour
was
travel to a
who
gets invited.
— an
educational
propaganda) tour sponsored and often paid for by the country
visited.
As
in all tours,
one may not know some or even any of
whom one is packaged. The group may be my first trip to North Vietnam, in April 1968)
the other people with small as three (as
on
five (as
when
group
joined to go to China in 1979).
I
I
as
or
went to Poland, in April 1980) or eight (the size of the
Groups of forty
students; the eminent rarely travel in groups of
in general
more than
five
mean
or
six;
those considered top-drawer celebrities will be invited to travel with a
spouse or companion. And,
one
will
ad hoc
be surprised to learn that
—
resents
if it is
is
called a "delegation."
nobody back home,
a first trip to a
this
group
communist country,
—however
small,
however
You may protest that your group repmember speaks only for herself
that each
SUSAN SONTAG
282
or himself, but your smiling hosts will keep on referring to "your delegation."
The custom
for
is
hotel mid-journey to
be instructed
those taking part in the trip to rendezvous in a
all
on the way
ground
in the
"chairman" (sometimes duty
it
will
be
to
table at banquets
rules of delegation travel,
a vice
respond to
day before entering the country,
"in," the
chairman
and lead off the
to elect a
as well) for the trip,
speeches and to
official
and
sit
whose
the head
at
(Some delegations choose
toasts.
to
rotate the chairmanship for different segments of the trip, to share the
Wherever you go
—
pompousness and the
fun.)
where they meet your
train; in factories; in schools; at the Writers'
Union
—your delegation
is
at
railway stations,
meeting the representatives of their organi-
zation.
No
invitation without an inviting
without a program. Led from
—host—organization;
museums
to
no
travel
model kindergartens
to the
birthplace of the country's most famous composer or poet,
and given
tea
and phony
statistics
by
dignitaries in factories
welcomed and com-
munes, shepherded from oversized meal to oversized meal, with time off for will
shopping sprees
complete the
in stores reserved for foreigners, the travelers
tightly
scheduled
trip
having talked with hardly any-
one except each other and the only natives they spend time with, upon
whom
they will base
many
guides assigned to the delegation. These
from
a
companions
thrilling job that puts
contact with foreigners), and scared (they
an indiscretion) charges.
One
—hover
is
— apart
and
fuss,
at
know
late at night, they will
and the
tourist's role
the price of a misstep,
is,
visitors' reactions,
characteristically, a
to arrange tickets
The
visitor has only to express a
cursion or entertainment, and
and
be writing reports on the
planning
activities to
come.
greedy one. But a delegation
tour of a communist country tenders an explicit invitation to be greedy.
in
the constant disposal of their
During an after-lunch break, they have
day's activities
them
always busy, accompanied by them. They are even
accommodations; up
The
official
few head hacks, they are often young, warmhearted, eager (they
have worked hard to get the coveted,
busier.
amiable
a generalization: the inveterately
selfish,
wish for some unscheduled ex-
more phone
calls are
made
to the
people
— Questions of Travel
working behind the scenes
on the
to conjure
up the necessary
283
guide
tickets, a
spot, another limousine.
Educational travel
by definition privileged
is
One model
round-trip ticket.
travel
—
travel
on
a
of travel to foreign countries for the sake
of education was the eighteenth-century
Grand
Tour, in which a young
gentleman, accompanied by his often ill-born and usually underpaid tutor,
his
to a variety of customs, places, treasures adjacent to
own. Although these
often
be
was exposed
no more than
a rake's progress, their educational point
The graduate of
altogether nullified.
home contaminated
in
some sense by
experienced that there are
one beginning of true
travel
designed to
is
contaminating.
and
and cultural distance,
traveler will see has for
—which
communist
its
revolution's benefits, as illustrated
is
tours or field trips, the
reinforced by the mandarevolution
theme the country's progress, the
by an array of elementary perforvisitors are
taken in order to
many who
admire. But few visitors from very rich countries, including left,
is
countries,
The Disneyland of
mances, economic and cultural, to which
their first trip to a
had
sure the visitor does not encounter anything
tory luxuriousness of delegation travel.
identify with the
return
civility.
offered to visitors to
make
could not
Grand Tour did
for being civilized
The precondition of such
visitor's intellectual
which the
the
the foreign. At the least he
many models
civilization,
Grand Tour
In the
through the Continent were
leisurely travels
are able to evaluate these performances. If
communist country,
it is
probably the
first
on
time most
of them will have been in a truck factory, on a breeding ranch, in a
paper
mill.
Most
visitors will
know
nothing about communism, about
the country they are visiting (often they have not even taken the time to
study a
map and seem unaware
about peasant
life
and major
of the most salient facts of
its
history),
industrial procedures.
So-called fellow travelers, whether informed or ignorant, are not
the best participants in a delegation
communist countries have learned this
is
clearest
in
trip.
Indeed, travel
to distrust
Western
leftists
and
Richard Nixon's favorite foreign vacation spot,
Ronald Reagan's "so-called communist China" travelers
officials in
untouched by
—prefer
radical sentiments: better a
to entertain
chairman of the
284
SUSAN SONTAG
board than
a leftist assistant professor of history.
depart with a
much more
they had before their contains
many
Such
travelers tend to
favorable impression of the country than
trip, partly
on the
basis of their discovery that
friendly, attractive people, that the exotic streets
human beings "just like us." What had they imagined before
it
swarm
with
they came? [1984]
The
Idea of Europe
(One More
Europe? What dollars
—
it
What Europe means doesn't mean: the
the so-called, would-be
to
Elegy)
me?
Europe of Euro-business, Euro-
European "community"
posed to help the individual countries of
capitalist
that
is
sup-
Western Europe "to
stand up to the bracing economic challenges of the late 20th century" (I
quote from today's Herald Tribune, America's world newspaper);
the Euro-kitsch acclaimed as art and literature in these countries;
and Euro-exhibitions and Euro-journalism and Euro-
Euro-festivals television.
But that Europe
is
the polyphonic culture within
and
whose
and think and grow
feel
standards
I
America far
inexorably reshaping the Europe
align is
my
restless,
and to whose
not, of course, totally disjunct
And
best,
I
I love,
create
humbling
own.
more unlike Europe (more
to think.
some of them,
traditions,
from Europe, though
it is
many Europeans
like
"barbaric") than
although, like the majority of
smaller majority than before,
I
am
my
compatriots,
of European descent
—
if
a
specifically
of European-Jewish descent (my great-grandparents immigrated to the northeastern part of the United States a century ago from what are
now Poland and
Lithuania)
—
I
don't often think of what
Europe
285
— SUSAN SONTAG
286
means
me
to
as
an American.
as a citizen of literature If I
would
I
think of what
—which
is
it
means
to
me
as a writer,
an international citizenship.
must describe what Europe means
to
me
as
an American,
with liberation. Liberation from what passes in America
start
for a culture.
The
move
Euro-
diversity, seriousness, fastidiousness, density of
pean culture constitute an Archimedean point from which mentally,
I
the world.
I
I
can,
cannot do that from America, from what
American culture
gives me, as a collection of standards, as a legacy.
Hence Europe
essential to
though
To be sity,
my
all
that
sure,
me, more essential than America,
Europe means
a
reality,
make me an
good deal more than
stupendous nourishment
Both an old nial,
is
sojourns in Europe do not
.
.
.
al-
expatriate.
that ideal diver-
those pleasures, those standards.
since at least the Latin
Middle Ages, and
often hypocritical, aspiration, "Europe" as a
for political unification has invariably
modern
a peren-
rallying cry
promoted the suppression and
erasure of cultural differences, and the concentration and augmentation of state power.
It is
chastening to recall that not only Napoleon
but also Hitler proclaimed a pan-European
aganda
ideal.
Much
of Nazi prop-
France during the Occupation was devoted to portraying
in
Hitler as Europe's savior from Bolshevism, from the Russian or "Asiatic" hordes.
The
idea of
Europe has often been associated with the
defense of "civilization" against alien populations. Usually, to defend civilization
meant
to
extend the military power and business interests
of a single European country which was competing for
power and
wealth with other European countries. Besides meaning something that could indeed ther),
be called
civilization (for this
must not be denied,
ei-
"Europe" meant an idea of the moral Tightness of the hegemony
of certain European countries over large parts of what
is
not Europe.
Seeking to convince non-Jews of the desirability of a Jewish state in Palestine,
Theodor Herzl declared
fortified wall against Asia,
ing the barbarians."
and
I cite this
that
fulfill
"we
shall
form part of Europe's
the role of cultural vanguard fac-
sentence from Herzl's ]udenstaat not to
inveigh (along with everyone else these days) against Israel in particular
but to underline the fact that virtually every act of colonization in the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries by a European people was justified as
an extension of the moral boundaries of "civilization"
The Idea of Europe (One More considered identical with European civilization
—and
Elegy)
a rolling
287
back of
the tides of barbarism.
For tions,
a
long time the very idea of "universal" values, of world institu-
was
itself
Eurocentric. There
once, Eurocentric. That the a
title
Zweig gave
that Stefan
memoir,
his last
Europe
preeminent good European was forced to that
was (need
it
how many The ity is in
this
flee a tri-
entirely generated
from
think that the notion of Eufirst
by imperialism and
and then by the imperatives of multi-national capitalism. In has not. (Nor
it
is
form of
ago after
Europe, to
flee
rope would have been thoroughly discredited,
fact,
in the
a century
be said?)
One might
within, in the heart of Europe.
racism,
Europe
to his lament for
book, written almost half
umphant barbarism
which the world was,
a sense in
is
"the world of yesterday," which
is
is
the idea of civilization unusable
colonialist atrocities are
place where the idea of
committed
in
Europe has the
its
—no matter
name.)
greatest cultural vivac-
the central and eastern parts of the continent, where citizens of
countries in the other empire struggle for
Adam
ifestos
by
Danilo
Kis.
For
some
I refer,
of
Europe opened by Milan Kundera's
course, to the debate over Central influential essay of
some autonomy.
and continued with essays and man-
years ago,
Zagajewski, Vaclav Havel, Georgy Konrad, and
a Pole, a
Czech, a Hungarian, a Yugoslav (even, for
other reasons, for an Austrian or a German), the idea of Europe has an
The
obvious, subversive authority.
ultimate value of the cultural, and
eventually political, counter-hypothesis of the existence of Central Eu-
rope
— and, by extension, of Europe—
tlement, a settlement that that holds as they
And
I
all
meet
mean
our in
is
to urge a
would erode the
lives hostage.
I
set-
superpowers
To have the edges of the two empires,
Europe, be porous would be
everyone, which
European peace
rivalry of the
in everyone's interest.
shall define arbitrarily as all those
who
think that their great-grandchildren should be allowed to have great-
grandchildren. "As long as
Budapest for an evening
it is
impossible to go over to Vienna from
at the
opera without special permission,"
Konrad has observed, "we cannot be
Do we
said to live in a state of peace."
have anything comparable to the Central Europeans'
ro-
mantic project of a Europe of small nations, able to communicate freely
with one another and pool their experience, their immense civic
SUSAN SONTAG
288
maturity and cultural depth, which have been acquired
much
suffering
and privation? For
who
us,
at
the cost of so
can hop from continent to
continent without securing permission from anyone for a night opera, could
Europe mean anything of
that value?
rope rendered obsolete by our prosperity, our
And
the idea
itself,
beyond
for us, spoiled
In one respect, our two experiences to the very real loss of
empire.
The new
Europe
is
stifling
power and
Russian occupiers.
the ideal Eu-
our selfishness?
repair?
seem comparable, perhaps due sides of the divide of
rest of the
world but of Europe.
Poles and Hungarians and Czechs, "Europe"
slogan for limiting the
the
not of extension but of retrench-
ment: the Europeanization not of the
Among
is
liberty,
European power on both
idea of
Or
at
Make Europe
where we cannot complain of being cut
.
.
a not-so-subtle
is
hegemony of
cultural .
off
the cloddish,
European. In rich Europe,
from one another, there
is
another anguish. Not about making Europe European but about keeping
it
European.
Clearly, a losing battle.
While the highly educated
populations of central Europe are suffering from preposterous tion
and rationing of
flicted
Europe
cultural contacts, those of western
isola-
are af-
with incessant and isolating admixtures of cultural practice.
There are Sikh
taxi drivers in Frankfurt
ian doctors in hospitals in Naples,
and mosques
Rome, and Turin
in Marseille. Ital-
are performing
oridectomies on the pubescent daughters of African immigrants, request of their parents.
Europe
are going to
the Central
The only
be the poor ones,
European countries
years of Moscow-directed
like
that have
homogeneous
at
the
countries in
Portugal and Greece, plus
been impoverished by
forty
economic planning. The unremitting
fluxes of foreigners into the rich ity
relatively
clit-
European countries have the
in-
possibil-
of turning the slogan "Europe" nasty once more.
Europe, an exercise to write
in nostalgia? Loyalty to
by hand when everyone
is
It
like
continuing
using a typewriter? (More aptly: like
continuing to write on a typewriter processor?)
Europe
when everyone
is
using a
word
seems worth noting that the countries where an idea of
Europe one can take
seriously does flourish are those
whose
inflexible,
fearful, militarized systems of governance and dismal economies
them considerably
less
modern,
homogeneous than the western
less
make
prosperous, and more ethnically
part of the continent.
A modern
Eu-
The Idea of Europe (One More rope a
—often mistakenly
good deal
less
Europe
—
certainly
is
European. Some experience of Japan over the
decade has shown can.
called an "Americanized"
289
Elegy)
me
"modern"
that the
is
last
not equivalent to Ameri-
(Equating modernization with Americanization and vice versa
may be
liberating
logic,
States,
The modern has
the ultimate Eurocentric prejudice.)
no
and immensely
destructive,
by which the United
than Japan and the rich European countries,
less
own
its
being
is
transformed. Meanwhile, the center has shifted. (But the center
is al-
ways being destroyed or modified by the periphery.) Los Angeles has
become
the eastern capital of Asia, and a Japanese industrialist,
recently describing his plans to put
cultural
and
political
geography, and
ingly destructive of the past.
land, nation-sized
natives will
a factory in the
long been obsolete art
The
it
be
will
United States
—everyone
is
and
Europe
is
a tourist).
Europe the
What
a
in
new
increasis
as instant playback,
as avidly as tourists (in
and
syncretistic,
future of mainstream
theme parks, Europe
consume
rope of high
up
meant not Massachusetts but Oregon. There
the "northeast,"
when
Euro-
which
distinction has
remains of the Eu-
ethical seriousness, of the values of privacy
and
inwardness and an unamplified, non-machine-made discourse: the Eu-
rope that makes possible the films of Krzysztof Zanussi and the prose of
Thomas Bernhard and
the poetry of
of Arvo Part? That Europe time.
But
izens
and adherents
it
will
occupy
still
less territory.
will
Seamus Heaney and the music
exists, will
And
continue to exist for some
increasing
numbers of its
understand themselves as emigres,
exiles,
cit-
and
foreigners.
What
then will happen to one's European roots, the real ones and
the spiritual ones?
I
can think of no more consoling response to that
question than one given by an American expatriate writer
once asked
if,
who was
having spent forty years living in France, she was not
worried about losing her American roots. Said Gertrude Stein, her an-
swer perhaps even more Jewish than American: "But what good are roots
if
you
can't take
them with you?" [1988]
The Very Comical Lament of Pyramus andThisbe
(an interlude)
Wall: Thus have
And
I,
Wall,
my
part discharged so;
being done, thus Wall away doth go.
—A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act
Thisbe:
Thisbe:
I
Pyramus:
It
separated us.
We
We
apart.
it.
there
How
kiss.)
But I'm talking about what
I
often have
didn't say.
I
reassured you.
With every sentence
Pyramus: "And the wall ..." Thisbe: Example: What's playing
Pyramus: "And
It's
the Arsenal tonight?
terrible for the
Pyramus: "And the wall ..." Thisbe: Exactly.
at
the wall ..."
Thisbe: Example:
I
was another, unspoken half sentence, "And the
wall ..." Example: I'm going to the Paris Bar.
290
grew
thought you were thinking about me.
Thisbe: Ninny! (Gives him a
uttered,
i
yearned for each other.
was always thinking about I
Scene
not here anymore.
It's
Pyramus:
V,
Turks
in
Kreuzberg.
The Very Comical Lament of Pyramus and Thisbe Pyramus: Thisbe:
It
was
a tragedy. Will
be
it
a
291
comedy now?
We won't become normal, will we?
mean we can do whatever we want? Thisbe: I'm starting to feel a little nostalgic. Oh, the human Pyramus: Does
this
heart
is
a
always be yours.
I
fickle thing.
Pyramus: Thisbe! Thisbe: Not about you, beloved! You
mean;
you'll
be mine. But of course
thinking about
.
.
you know.
.
I
know
I'll
that's the
miss
it
a
same,
No, I'm
isn't it?
little.
Pyramus: Thisbe! Thisbe: Just a
(Sees
little.
Pyramus frowning.) Smile,
darling.
Oh, you
people are so serious!
Pyramus:
I've suffered.
Thisbe: So have
in
I,
ways easy here,
Pyramus: Thisbe:
my way. Not
like you, of course.
But
it
wasn't
al-
either.
Let's not quarrel.
We
What an
quarrel? Never! [Sound of wall-peckers) Listen!
amazing sound!
Pyramus:
I
wish I'd brought
my
tape recorder.
a Sony.
It's
Thisbe: I'm glad you can buy whatever you want now.
didn't realize
I
you were so poor.
Pyramus:
It
was awful. But, you know,
Thisbe: You see? Even you can
me
it
feel regret.
was good
my
for
An American
last year, You'll miss this wall. (She spies
character.
artist
warned
some wall-peckers
spraying their hoard of pieces of the wall with paint.) They're im-
proving
Pyramus:
it.
Let's not
be
nostalgic.
Thisbe: But you agree there's something to be said for
it.
It
made
us
different.
Pyramus: We'll Thisbe:
I
still
be
different.
don't know. So
Pedestrians don't wait
many at
cars.
So much
trash.
corners for the green
light.
The
beggars.
Cars parked
on the sidewalk. Enter the Spirit of Spirit:
O
city,
independent
I
New York.
recognize you. Your leather bars, your festivals of films,
your teeming dark-skinned foreigners, your
—
—
——
SUSAN SONTAG
292
Deco
predators, your Art
real-estate
Mediterranean restaurants, your
shops, your racism, your
littered streets,
your rude mechan-
icals
Thisbe: No! Begone! This
is
the Berkeley of Central Europe.
Your Berkeley: an
Spirit: Central Europe: a dream.
be the
will
New York
postponed for Spirit of
this city
still
sure,
of Europe
—
it
let's
shabby
stays
it
be
so.
Only
New
York
isn't
as well as full of
unwel-
be too hopeful.
be hopeful. We'll be
rich. It's
only money.
to like that.
Thisbe: We're not getting anything
we
don't deserve. We're together.
free.
Pyramus: Everything Thisbe:
to
won't be
provided
Pyramus: And power. I'm going
We're
was ever meant
won't be too bad. Since
foreigners. (Sighs.) Let's not
Thisbe: Oh,
it
sixty years.
vanishes.
suppose
I
Pyramus: Sure,
come
mere
New York
Thisbe: Well, America,
a
interlude. This
No
is
going too
fast.
And
costing too
one can make us do what we don't want
much.
as long as we're
together.
Pyramus: I'm having
we
are.
Thisbe:
I
a
hard time thinking of those
But sometimes we'll remember, won't we.
want
to forget these old stories.
Pyramus: History
is
homesickness.
Thisbe: Cheer up, darling. The world
And
fortunate than
less
we'll always
Pyramus: Goethe
be on the good
is
side.
divided into
From now
Old and New.
on.
said
Thisbe: Oh, not Goethe.
Pyramus: You're
right.
Thisbe: In Walter Benjamin's
last
Pyramus: Not Benjamin,
either!
Thisbe: Right. (They fall
silent for a while.) Let's stroll.
They see a procession of vendors, including some Russian coming across an empty field.
Pyramus: And Thisbe:
What
to think that
was no-man's-land.
are they selling?
Pyk \mus: Everything. Everything
is
for sale.
soldiers,
The Very Comical Lament of Pyramus and Thisbe Thisbe:
Do
say
it's
better. Please!
Pyramus: Of course Thisbe: Then
293
it's
better.
We
don't have to die.
go on celebrating. Have some champagne. Have
let's
a
River Cola.
They
drink.
Pyramus: Freedom
at last.
Thisbe: But don't toss your can on the ground.
Pyramus: What do you take Thisbe: Sorry.
It's
just that
me
—I'm
for? sorry. Yes,
freedom.
Curtain. [
I
99 I 1
.
Answers to
MAY 1997
IN
a Questionnaire
the French literary magazine La Regie du
edited by Philippe Sollers, conducted
Jeu,
survey about intellectuals and their role."
on the
list
of respondents to
whom
I
"an international
was the
sole
American
they sent the following six ques-
tions:
1
What
does the word intellectual
see yourself as an intellectual or
2.
Who
are the intellectual figures
profound way and 3.
do you
What
is
still
mean
to
you today?
reject this
who have
Do
you
term? inspired you in a
have influence over your thoughts?
the role of intellectuals at the end of the
tury? Is their mission completed or
do you think
XXth
that they
still
cen-
have
an important task in the world? 4.
Much
has been said about the mistakes of intellectuals, their
blindness and their irresponsibility. accusations?
think about these
you agree or would you challenge the criticism?
in
your view, are the major obstacles for intellectuals
your country
—the indifference of the media, the chaos of opin-
j.
in
What,
Do
What do you
ions, political repression, or
294
what?
Answers to
What do you
6.
Questionnaire
a
295
consider the most urgent tasks, the most dan-
gerous prejudices, the most important causes, the biggest
and the greatest
perils,
intellectual joys of today?
This provoked nine answers to some of the questions asked and
(I
thought) implied.
WHAT THE WORD
intellectual
means
to
me
today
is, first
of
all,
conferences and roundtable discussions and symposia in magazines
about the role of intellectuals
in
which well-known
intellectuals
have
agreed to pronounce on the inadequacy, credulity, disgrace, treason, relevance, obsolescence,
ir-
and imminent or already perfected disappear-
ance of the caste to which, as their participation in these events testifies,
they belong.
WHETHER
SEE myself
I
self as possible) is
one
as
beside the point.
BEING A CITIZEN
I
(I
try to
answer
of a country
tuals (reread Tocqueville), the
anti-intellectual tradition
my-
so called.
political
and
and contempt
ethical cul-
for intellec-
country which has the most developed planet, I incline to a less jaded view of
my
colleagues in Europe. No, their "mis-
sion" (as your question has it's
as little seeing of
on the
the role of intellectuals than
Of course,
if
whose
ture promotes and reinforces distrust, fear,
do
speaking
it) is
not completed.
much
too well of intellectuals to expect the
majority to have a taste for protesting against injustice, defending victims, challenging the reigning authoritarian pieties.
are as conformist
wars
—
as
—
as willing, say, to
Most
intellectuals
support the prosecution of unjust
most other people exercising educated professions. The num-
SUSAN SONTAG
296
who have
ber of people
given intellectuals a good name, as trouble-
makers, voices of conscience, has always been small. Intellectuals
re-
sponsibly taking sides, and putting themselves on the line for what they believe in (as
mon
opposed
to signing petitions), are a
good deal
less
com-
than intellectuals taking public positions either in conscious bad
faith or in
shameless ignorance of what they are pronouncing on: for
every Andre Gide or George Orwell or Norberto Bobbio or Andrei
Sakharov or
Adam
Michnik, ten of Romain Rolland or Ilya Ehrenburg
or Jean Baudrillard or Peter Handke, et cetera, et cetera.
But could
it
be otherwise?
4
ALTHOUGH INTELLECTUALS COME ing the nationalist and the religious, secular,
tual"
his or
me
all
flavors, includ-
confess to being partial to the
cosmopolitan, anti-tribal variety.
seems to
By
I
in
The "deracinated
intellec-
an exemplary formula.
mean
intellectual I
the "free" intellectual,
her professional or technical or
someone who, beyond
artistic expertise, is
exercising (and thereby, implicitly, defending) the
life
committed
to
mind
as
of the
such.
A
specialist
just a specialist.
may
One
also is
be an
intellectual.
and
responsibility in discourse.
one indispensable contribution of is
intellectual
is
never
an intellectual because one has (or should have)
certain standards of probity
that
But an
That
is
the
notion of discourse
intellectuals: the
not merely instrumental, conformist.
5
HOW many
TIMES
has one heard in the
lectuals are obsolete, or that so-and-so
is
last
decides that
intel-
"the last intellectual"?
THERE ARE TWO TASKS for intellectuals, today as yesterday. One task, educational, is to promote dialogue, support the right
Answers to
a
Questionnaire
297
of a multiplicity of voices to be heard, strengthen skepticism about re-
ceived opinion. This tion
and culture
means standing up
to those
whose idea of educa-
the imprinting of ideas ("ideals") such as the love of
is
the nation or tribe.
The other
task
moral attitudes Its
hallmark
is
tion
is
to
is
adversarial.
There has been
two decades
the discrediting of
high standards of
Thatcherism
is
in the last
all
all
a
advanced
in
daunting
of
shift
capitalist countries.
idealisms, of altruism
kinds, cultural as well as moral.
itself;
of
The ideology
of
gaining everywhere, and the mass media,
whose func-
promote consumption, disseminate the narratives and ideas
of value and disvalue by which people everywhere understand them-
have the Sisyphean task of continuing to embody
selves. Intellectuals
(and defend) a standard of mental nihilistic
life,
and of discourse, other than the
one promoted by the mass media. By nihilism
the relativism, the privatization of interest, which the educated classes everywhere, but also the pernicious, nihilism
embodied
is
more
I
mean not only
ascendant recent,
among
and more
in the ideology of so-called cultural
democracy; the hatred of excellence, achievement
as "elitist," exclu-
sionary.
THE MORAL DUTY because there
is
of the intellectual will always be complex
more than one
circumstances in which not
honored
—
"highest" value, and there are concrete
all
that
is
unconditionally good can be
two of these values may prove incom-
in which, indeed,
patible.
For instance, understanding the truth does not always struggle for justice.
And
in
order to bring about
justice,
facilitate
the
may seem
it
right to suppress the truth.
One hopes truth
and
not to have to choose. But
justice) is necessary
that an intellectual
This
is
not,
intellectuals,
causes,
it is
—
as, alas, it
sometimes
ought to decide for the
by and
large,
what
when
a choice is
—
it
(between
seems to
me
truth.
intellectuals, the best-intentioned
have done. Invariably, when intellectuals subscribe to
the truth, in
all its
complexity, which gets short
shrift.
298
SUSAN SONTAG
8
A
GOOD
RULE BEFORE one
goes marching or signing anything:
Whatever your tug of sympathy, you have no
right to a public opin-
ion unless you've been there, experienced firsthand and on the ground
and for some considerable time the country, war,
injustice, whatever,
you are talking about. In the absence of such firsthand
ON THE SUBJECT of so
many
intellectuals
tive actions that
nobody
said
it
knowledge and experience:
of the presumption
who
—
it's
silence.
worse than naivete
take public positions and endorse collec-
concern countries they
better than one of the
know
virtually
nothing about,
most compromised
of the twentieth century, Bertolt Brecht (who surely
intellectuals
knew whereof he
spoke):
\\
nen
it
comes
to
That their enemy
The Is
marching many do not know is
marching
head.
voice which gives them their orders
the enemy's voice and
The man who speaks Is
at their
the
enemy
of the
enemy
himself.
[*99l]
Waiting for Godot Sarajevo
in
Nothing to be done.
/ Nista
— opening
WENT TO I
ne moze da se
line of
uradi.
Waiting for Godot
Sarajevo in mid-July 1993 to stage a production of
Waiting for Godot not so
rect Beckett's play (although
I
much because
in April,
tered city and what
But
friends.
I
tremble with versations,
would be
No
it
it
month
reason to return to Sarajevo and stay for a
two weeks there
I'd always
had) as because
gave
or more.
stands for;
some of
I
its
citizens is,
had become
meet and
lose weight. If I
lies
it
and do something.
the news to the outside world.
reporting the
visit,
went back,
longer can a writer consider that the imperative task
journalists (most of
had spent
brave, feel depressed, have heartbreaking con-
grow ever more indignant,
to pitch in
to di-
a practical
and had come to care intensely about the bat-
couldn't again be just a witness: that fear, feel
wanted
me
them
The news
is
out.
Many
is
to bring
excellent foreign
in favor of intervention, as I
am) have been
and the slaughter since the beginning of the
siege,
while the decision of the western European powers and the United States not to intervene remains firm, thereby giving the victory to Serb
fascism.
I
was not under the
illusion that
going to Sarajevo to direct a
299
SUSAN SONTAG
300
play a
would make me
useful in the
water systems engineer.
would be
It
the only one of the three things the theatre that
—which
way
I
do
met
who had
Pasovic,
left
a
if I
make
write,
war
doctor or
a
But
and
films,
there.
young Sarajevo-born theatre
director, Haris
made
the city after he finished school and
When
went abroad, but
1992, Pasovic
in April
was
it
direct in
exist only in Sarajevo,
considerable reputation working mainly in Serbia. started the
were
a small contribution.
—
something that would
yields
would be made and consumed
In April I'd
could be
I
his
the Serbs in the fall,
while working on a spectacle called Sarajevo in Antwerp, he decided that
he could no longer remain
managed
to crawl
back past
the freezing, besieged
city.
UN
tors;
he'd put
it
me
at
coming back
More than Before
I
Grad
(City), a
drawn from
texts
by Con-
interested,
in a I
One
me
flect:
in
I
let
me
people find
it
of
me
me
was
if I
And bravado
A
S
K
E
D since
actors, I've
I
ss
suggested
taken longer to
re-
and about, Sarajevo.
my
come on
return from Sarajevo to
if I
understand that many
at all in
the besieged
In fact, of the five theatres in Sarajevo before the war, two are
Chamber Theatre
I
to direct. Beckett's play, writ-
surprising that theatre goes
radically, in use:
Drama)
think for a while about what
ten over forty years ago, seems written for,
worked with professional
Academy
might not have seen had
there was one obvious play for
having OFTEN BEEN
far
his
told him.
could add, "But
an instant what
ac-
to direct a play.
might want to do," he went on, "What play?" to
dozen
which one of
day Pasovic asked
few months
a
he was preparing a
Alcestis, after
the still-functioning
directing Sophocles' Ajax.
into
to see his
Now
together in eight days.
students (Pasovic teaches
interested in
the end of the year
Zbigniew Herbert, and Sylvia Plath, using
more ambitious production, Euripides' would be
at
and under Serb gunfire
patrols
Pasovic invited
collage, with music, of declamations, partly
stantine Cavafy,
and
in safe exile,
(Kamerni Teater
55),
still,
city.
spo-
where
in
April I'd seen a charmless production of Hair as well as Pasovics
Grad, and the Youth Theatre (Pozoriste Mladih), where stage Godot. These are both small houses.
The
I
decided to
large house, closed
Waiting for Godot since the beginning of the war,
Sarajevo
in
301
the National Theatre, which pre-
is
sented opera and the Sarajevo Ballet as well as plays. In front of the
handsome ochre building a poster
still
from
announcing
early April 1992
soon
ballet dancers left the city
them
damaged by
shelling), there
new production
a
is
of
which never opened. Most of the singers and musicians and
Rigoletto,
for
(only lightly
to find
after the Serbs attacked,
work abroad, while many of
it
being easier
the actors stayed, and
want nothing more than to work. Another question I'm often asked of Waiting for Godot?
Who
indeed
go to see Waiting for Godot today's shattered city
once an extremely tural life
if
and
who would
it
hard to grasp that Sarajevo was
attractive provincial capital, with a cul-
comparable to that of other middle-sized old European
that includes an audience for theatre.
theatre in Sarajevo
was
As elsewhere
live in Sarajevo, so
difference
maimed by
is
in Central
largely repertory: masterpieces
and the most admired twentieth -century still
goes to see a production
not the same people
there were not a siege on? Images of
must make
lively
who
is:
if
do members of
that actors
the theatre; but then, that can
mortar
happen
Europe,
from the past
plays. Just as talented actors this cultivated
and spectators
a sniper's bullet or a
cities;
The
can be murdered or
alike
shell
audience.
on
their
way
to
and from
to people in Sarajevo in their
ing rooms, while they sleep in their bedrooms,
when
liv-
they fetch some-
thing from their kitchens, as they go out their front doors.
BUT isn't this play ing, wasn't
it
rather pessimistic? I've been asked.
pretentious or insensitive to stage Godot there? tion of despair
were redundant when people
what people want Couple.
those
to see in such a situation
The condescending,
who
ask
it
really care
what everyone wants
from
their
own
reality.
than a few people
who
is
all
what
—
as if the representa-
would
be, say,
makes me
it's
The Odd
realize that
like in Sarajevo
about literature and theatre.
It's
now,
not true
entertainment that offers them an escape
In Sarajevo, as anywhere else, there are feel
it
really are in despair; as if
philistine question
don't understand at
any more than they that
Mean-
depressing for an audience in Sarajevo; meaning, wasn't
more
strengthened and consoled by having their
SUSAN SONTAG
302
sense of reality affirmed and transfigured by
people
in Sarajevo don't
National Theatre, the
first
before
art.
miss being entertained.
This
not to say that
The dramaturge
of the
who began sitting in on the rehearsals of Godot after who had studied at Columbia University, asked me
week, and
I left
few copies of Vogue and Vanity Fair when
to bring a
turn later this month: she longed to be reminded of
had gone out of her
would
is
Certainly there are
life.
all
the things that
more Sarajevans who
Ford movie or attend
rather see a Harrison
I re-
a
Guns
N
Roses
concert than watch Waiting for Godot. That was true before the war, too. It
is, if
And
if
anything, a
true now.
one considers what plays were produced
the siege began
big
little less
—
as
opposed
Hollywood successes
closing just before the
in Sarajevo before
to the
movies shown, almost entirely the
(the small
cinematheque was on the verge of
war
for lack of an audience,
was nothing odd or gloomy
I
was
told)
—there
for the public in the choice of Waiting for
Godot. The other productions currently in rehearsal or performance
and the meaning of
are Alcestis (about the inevitability of death fice),
Ajax (about
a warrior's
madness and
play by the Croatian Miroslav Krleza,
who
suicide),
is,
the century from the former Yugoslavia (the play's self).
Compared with
title
first
half of
speaks for
it-
Godot may have been the
these, Waiting for
"lightest" entertainment of
a
with the Bosnian Ivo An-
one of the two internationally celebrated writers of the
dric,
sacri-
and In Agony,
all.
INDEED, THE QUESTION IS not why there is any cultural activity in Sarajevo now after seventeen months of siege, but why there isn't more. Outside a boarded-up movie theatre next to the Chamber Theatre
is
a sun-bleached poster for
nal strip across
it
The Silence of the Lambs with
that says danas (today),
which was April
day moviegoing stopped. Since the war began, in Sarajevo
aged by
have remained shut, even
shelling.
A
not
all
all
1992, the
of the movie theatres
have been severely dam-
building in which people gather so predictably
would be too tempting electricity to
if
6,
a diago-
a target for the
Serb guns; anyway, there
is
no
run a projector. There are no concerts, except for those
given by a lone string quartet that rehearses every morning and per-
Waiting for Godot
Sarajevo
in
forms occasionally in a small room that also doubles seating forty.
in the
(It's
and photography, the Obala
one
Street that
whose
Gallery, a
exhibits sometimes stay
week.
talked with in Sarajevo disputes the sparseness of cultural
I
where, after
life in this city still live.
art gallery,
only one active space for paint-
is
up only one day and never more than
No
an
same building on Marshal Tito
houses the Chamber Theatre.) There ing
as
303
The
between 300,000 and 400,000 inhabitants
all,
majority of the
city's intellectuals
and creative people,
in-
cluding most of the faculty of the University of Sarajevo, fled at the be-
ginning of the war, before the city was completely encircled. Besides,
many is
Sarajevans are reluctant to leave their apartments except
when
it
absolutely necessary, to collect water and the rations distributed by
the United Nations
High Commissioner
though no one
anywhere, they have more to fear
is
safe
And beyond
in the street.
are very depressed
fear,
there
—which produces
depression
is
(UNHCR); when they are
Refugees
for
—most Sarajevans
lethargy, exhaustion, apathy.
Moreover, Belgrade was the cultural capital of the former Yugoslavia,
and
I
have the impression that in Sarajevo the visual
derivative; that ballet, opera,
and musical
and theatre were distinguished, so tinue under siege.
A
documentary and
fiction
it is
film production films,
life
arts
were
were routine. Only
film
not surprising that these con-
company,
SAGA, makes both
and there are the two functioning
theatres.
IN
FACT,
THE AUDIENCE
Waiting for Godot.
for theatre expects to see a play like
What my production
apart from the fact that an eccentric rector volunteered to
with the
and shame,
their attachment to else,
it
is
by the
local press
nobody but
that they are
members
American popular
the high culture of
their ideal, their passport to a
di-
an expression of solidarity
world "does care," when
that I represented
European play and
American writer and part-time
in the theatre as
city (a fact inflated
that the rest of the
where
work
of Godot signifies to them,
I
and radio
knew, to
myself),
is
my
as
evidence
indignation
that this
is
a great
of European culture. For
all
culture, as intense here as any-
Europe
European
that represents for
identity.
them
People had told
me
SUSAN SONTAG
304
again and again on
my
earlier visit in April:
ues
— secularism,
rest of
Europe
and
religious tolerance,
happen
let this
and always has been lization, they didn't
as
much
want
to us?
We
who
are the people in the former Yugoslavia
How
multi-ethnicity.
W hen rr
I
replied that
can the
Europe
a place of barbarism as a place of
to hear.
Now
We
are part of Europe.
stand for European val-
is
civi-
no one would dispute such
a
statement.
CULTURE, SERIOUS CULTURE, nity
—which
is
what people
in Sarajevo feel they
know themselves to be brave, or stoical, or know themselves to be terminally weak: waiting, they
knowing
to hope,
human dighave lost, even when
an expression of
is
For they also
angry.
hoping, not wanting
be saved. They are humili-
that they aren't going to
ated by their disappointment, by their fear, and by the indignities of daily life
ing to
—
it
for instance,
by having
to
spend
a
that their toilets flush, so that their
cesspools. That
public spaces,
may be even
is
at
how
see-
bathrooms don't become
they use most of the water they queue for in
great risk to their lives. Their sense of humiliation
greater than their fear.
Putting on a play means so
because
in Sarajevo
good part of each day
it
allows
much
them
to the local theatre professionals
to
be normal, that
to
is,
do what
they did before the war; to be not just haulers of water or passive
re-
cipients of humanitarian aid. Indeed, the lucky people in Sarajevo are
who
those
tion of
money, since Sarajevo has only
currency ings,
can carry on with their professional work.
in
professional
—
say, a
surgeon
city's
I,
on
at the city's
main hospital or
earns three deutsche marks a
month, while
marks
just
a skilled
a television
cigarettes, a
a pack.)
of course, were not on salary. Other theatre people
on rehearsals not
their sav-
economy, consider that
local version of Marlboros, cost ten deutsche
and
are living
deutsche marks, or on remittances from
abroad. (To get an idea of the
—
black-market economy, whose
German marks, and many people
is
which were always
journalist
a
not a ques-
It is
The
actors
would
sit
in
because they wanted to watch our work but be-
cause they were glad to have, once again, a theatre to go to every day.
Far from
it
being frivolous to put on
a play
—
this play
or any
Waiting for Godot other
—
it is
a
like fiddling
welcome expression of normality.
while
Rome
Sarajevo
in
"Isn't putting
305
on
a play
burns?" a journalist asked one of the actors.
"Just asking a provocative question," the journalist explained to
me
when
of-
I
fended.
reproached
her,
He was
He
not.
worried that the actor might have been didn't
know what
she was talking about.
STARTED AUDITIONING actors the day after I arrived, one role already cast in my head. At a meeting with theatre people in April, I couldn't have failed to notice a stout older woman wearing a large broad-brimmed black hat who sat silently, imperiously, in a corner of I
A few days later when
the room.
decided to direct Godot
I
Pasovic concluded that
I
I
would
all-woman Godot had been done wasn't
my intention. I wanted
that this
is
in Pasovic's
Grad,
pronoun "he") being told
I
it
even allegorical
whom
I'd
and
me
that an
makes
sense, since the charac-
figures. If
woman
to
—
Everyman
as
women
be played by
a
(like the
are always
man.
can also be a tyrant
I
was
—which
in the role
can play the role of a tyrant. In contrast,
Admir ("Atko") Glamocak, of thirty
(he told
meant by casting Ines Fancovic
woman
theatre,
Belgrade some years ago). But that
in
—then Everyman doesn't have
Pasovic then decided
learned
the casting to be gender-blind, confident
not making the statement that a
but rather that a
women
does stand for everybody
really
I
immediately thought of her as Pozzo. cast only
one of the few plays where
ters are representative,
man
saw her
was the senior actor of the pre-siege Sarajevo
that she
when
I
the actor
admired
as
I
cast as Lucky, a gaunt, lithe
Death
in Alcestis,
fit
perfectly the
traditional conception of Pozzo's slave.
Three other
roles
were
left:
Vladimir and Estragon, the pair of
for-
was troubling
that
lorn tramps, and Godot's messenger, a small boy. there were
much
meant
it
seemed
actors available than parts, since
to the actors
I
I
knew how
auditioned to be in the play. Three
particularly gifted: Velibor Topic,
Alcestis;
Nada
more good
It
Izudin ("Izo") Bajrovic,
who was
who was
playing Death in
Alcestis's Hercules;
who had the lead in the Krleza play. occurred to me I could have three pairs of Vladimir and
and
Djurevska,
Then
it
Es-
SUSAN SONTAG
306
tragon and put them
make
likely to
on the stage
all
once. Velibor and Izo seemed
at
the most powerful, rluent couple: there was no reason
not to use what Beckett envisaged, two men.
would be flanked on the right
by
a
woman and
side oi the stage
left
man
a
—
the center: but they
at
women and on
by two
three variations* on the
the
theme of the
couple.
Since child actors were not available and fessional.
I
glish oi
anyone
English
at
a talented actor
It
all.
Of
in the cast.
was
a great
who happened
THE SECOND DAY
apportion the
text, like
Vladimir and Estragon.
when
I
nonpro-
a I
I
to speak the best
same
the
at
of rehearsal.
knew no
among
to divide
knew some
Italian,
Desire
while
in a foreign lan-
Me at
my
call
"Thank you." and "Not now."
the Teatro Sta-
Serbo-Croatian (or the words "Serbo-
it.
Croatian" being hard to utter nowi was limited
up and
the three pairs of
had once before worked
As You
I
time.
had begun
I
musical score,
"the mother tongue." as people in Sarajevo
"Please." "Hello."
En-
help to have Mirza as interpreter, so
directed Pirandello's
But
bile in Turin.
me
a
the other eight actors, three
could communicate with even-body
guage,
dreaded using
decided to make the messenger an adult: the boyish -looking
Mirza Halilovic,
BY
I
when I
I
arrived to
had brought with
an English-Serbo-Croatian phrase book, paperback copies of the
play in English and French, and an enlarged photocopy oi the text into
which
I
copied in pencil the "Bosnian" translation, line by
as I received
it.
I
also copied the English
the Bosnian script. In about ten days
I
and French
had managed
it.
DID
av E
so.
I
H
was there
one here
in
a multi-ethnic cast?
conflict or tension
New
But of course termarriage
is
so
York put I
did
it
to
by
line into
by heart
line
that
my
actors
were
many people have asked me. And
among
if
the actors, or did they, as some-
me. "get along with each other"?
—the population oi Sarajevo
common,
soon
to learn
the words oi Beckett's play in the language in which
speaking
line, as
it
would be hard
is
so mixed, and in-
to assemble any kind
Waiting for Godot of group in which
Eventually
I
mother and
Sarajevo
in
three ethnic identities were not represented.
all
learned that Velibor Topic (Estragon
Croat father, though he has a Serb
a
307
up
she was born and grew
in the coastal
name, while Ines
first
Fancovic (Pozzo) had to be Croatian, since Ines
is
town of
has a Muslim
I)
name and
Croat
a
and came
Split
to
Sarajevo thirty years ago. Both parents of Milijana Zirojevic (Estragon II)
are Serb, while Irena
Muslim
least a
father. I
Mulamuhic (Estragon
They knew them and took them
tors.
leagues
—they've acted
III)
must have had
never learned the ethnic origins of
many
in
all
at
the ac-
for granted because they are col-
plays together
— and
friends.
Yes, of course they got along.
WHAT SUCH into the
QU
E S
T
l
O N S show
is
that the questioner has
propaganda of the aggressors:
old hatreds; that
it is
a civil
war or
a
that this
war of
war
is
secession, with Milosevic
whom
trying to save the union; that in crushing the Bosnians,
propaganda often
refers to as the Turks, the Serbs are saving
from Muslim fundamentalism. Perhaps prised to be asked
who wear
if I
saw many
women
I
bought
caused by age-
Serb
Europe
should not have been sur-
in Sarajevo
who
are veiled, or
the chador; one can't underestimate the extent to which the
prevailing stereotypes about
Muslims have shaped "Western" reactions
to the Serb aggression in Bosnia.
To invoke these stereotypes tion I'm often asked
is
also to explain
—why other foreign
artists
—
this
is
another ques-
and writers who regard
themselves as politically engaged haven't volunteered to do something for Sarajevo.
The danger
most people say as
is
can't
be the only reason, though
their reason for not considering a visit; surely
dangerous to go to Barcelona I
1993.
that's
in 1937 as
suspect that the ultimate reason
is
it
is
to
what it
was
go to Sarajevo
in
a failure of identification
enforced by the buzzword "Muslim." Even quite well informed people in the
United States and
mention
more to a
Europe seem genuinely surprised when
mosque.
I
make
this
I
began, a middle-class Sarajevan was far
go to Vienna to the opera than to go down the
likely to
religious
in
that, ifhtil the siege
street
point not to suggest that the lives of non-
urban Europeans are
intrinsically
more valuable than
the lives
SUSAN SONTAG
308
oi the devout of Tehran or
has an absolute value that
it
is
ideal that
Baghdad or Damascus
—but because
wish
I
it
—every human
life
were better understood
precisely because Sarajevo represents the secular, anti-tribal it
has been targeted for destruction.
In fact, the proportion of religiously observant people in Sarajevo
about the same
as
it
is
among
the native-born in
Berlin or Venice. In the prewar
city, it
London
was no odder
lim to marry a Serb or a Croat than for
for a secular
New
someone from
is
or Paris or
Mus-
York
to
marry someone from Massachusetts or California. In the year before the Serb attack, sixty percent of the marriages in Sarajevo took place
between people from different
backgrounds
religious
—the
surest
index of secularism.
Zdravko Grebo, Haris Pasovic, Mirsad Purivatra,
Amela
Izeta Gradevic,
Hasan Gluhic, Ademir Kenovic, Zehra Kreho, Ferida
Simic,
Durakovic, and other friends of mine there of Muslim origin are as
much Muslim would be
as I
am Jewish
—which
correct to say that I'm
is
to say, hardly at
more Jewish than they
all.
are
family has been entirely secular for three generations, but as
I
Indeed,
Muslim. I
am,
it
My
as far
can know, the descendant of an unbroken line of people under the
same
religious discipline for at least
two millennia, and have
plexion and cast of features which identify
me
as the
a
com-
descendant of
a
branch oi European (probably originally Sephardic) Jewry, while the Sarajevans of for at
most
Muslim
origin
five centuries
toman Empire), and
come from
families that have
(when Bosnia became
been Muslim
province of the Ot-
a
are physiologically identical with their southern
Slav neighbors, spouses,
and compatriots, since they are
in fact the de-
scendants of Christian southern Slavs.
What Muslim adherence had
existed throughout this century was
already a diluted version of the moderate, Sunni faith brought by the
Turks, with nothing of what
asked friends
who
now
called fundamentalism.
in their families are or
they invariably said: they usually said:
is
my
my
grandparents.
If
great-grandparents.
the only one with religious leanings
were
I
religiously observant,
they were under thirty-rive,
Of
the nine actors in Godot,
was Nada, who
Indian guru; as her farewell present she gave edition of The Teachings of Shiva.
When
me
a
is
the disciple of an
copy of the Penguin
Waiting for Godot
Pozzo: There (They
is
no denying
it is still
Sarajevo
in
309
day.
look up at the sky.)
all
Good. (They stop looking at the
OF COURSE To was
lit
start with,
usually
flashlights I'd
sky.)
there were obstacles.
we
ethnic ones. Real ones.
The bare proscenium
rehearsed in the dark.
stage
by only three or four candles, supplemented by the four brought with me.
was told there weren't
When
I
I
asked for additional candles,
was told
any. Later I
for our performances. In fact, dles;
Not
that they
never learned
who
when
they were simply in place on the floor
I
I
were being saved
doled out the canarrived each
morn-
ing at the theatre, having walked through alleys and courtyards to
reach the stage door, the only usable entrance, at the rear of the free-
modern
standing
building.
The
theatre's facade, lobby,
cloakroom, and
bar had been wrecked by shelling more than a year earlier and the debris
had not been cleared away.
still
me with comradely re"We have many bad habits
Actors in Sarajevo, Pasovic had explained to gret,
expect to work only four hours a day.
here
left
over from the old socialist days." But that was not
ence. After a
bumpy
start
— during the
first
my
experi-
week everyone seemed
pre-
occupied with other performances and rehearsals, or obligations
home
—
at
could not have asked for actors more zealous, more eager.
I
The main
obstacle, apart
from the siege
lighting,
was the fatigue of the
malnourished actors, many of whom, before they arrived for rehearsal at ten,
had
for several hours
been queuing for water and then lugging
heavy plastic containers up eight or ten
had
to
walk two hours to get to the
to follow the
The only
member
who seemed
to
of
stairs.
Some
theatre, and, of course,
same dangerous route actor
flights
at the
end of the
of them
would have
day.
have normal stamina was the oldest
of the cast, Ines Fancovic,
who
is
sixty-eight. Still large, she
lost more than sixty pounds since the beginning of the siege, which may have accounted for her remarkable energy. The other actors were
had
— SUSAN SONTAG
310
underweight and tired
visibly
tionless
through most of
heavy bag he
Atko,
carries.
me
dred pounds, asked
empty
on the
suitcase
his
who now
Whenever
movement
a
I
lines
than any actors
opening they
the
his
halted the run-through for a
or a line reading, lie
down on
were slower
fatigue: they
to
all
the actors,
the stage.
memorize
their
have ever worked with. Ten days before the
I
needed
still
down
he occasionally rested
if
with the exception of Ines, would instantly
Another symptom of
Lucky must stand mo-
weighs no more than one hun-
him
to excuse
floor.
few minutes to change
Beckett's
easily.
long scene without ever setting
and were not word-
to consult their scripts,
perfect until the day before the dress rehearsal. This might have been
of a problem had
less
not been too dark for them to read the scripts
it
they held in their hands.
who
An
then forgot the next
actor crossing the stage while saying a line,
was obliged
line,
to
make
a
detour to the
nearest candle and peer at his or her script. (A script was loose pages, since binders
The
and paper
clips are virtually
unobtainable
play had been typed in Pasovic's office on a
writer
whose ribbon had been
little
in Sarajevo.
manual
type-
in use since the beginning of the siege.
I
was given the original and the actors carbon copies, most of which
would have been hard
to read in any light.)
Not only could they not read face, they
their scripts; unless standing face-to-
could barely see one another. Lacking the normal peripheral
vision that
anybody has
in daylight or
when
there
is
electric light, they
could not do something as simple as put on or take off their bowler hats in unison.
And
they appeared to
mostly as silhouettes. At the
me for
moment
a
long time, to
early in
Act
I
my despair,
when Vladimir
"smiles suddenly from ear to ear, keeps smiling, ceases as suddenly" in
my
version, three Vladimirs
false smiles
from
lying across
my
OF COURSE, learn their lines forgetful. It
was
my
stool
—
some
was not
and
their
my
just fatigue that
was
and
fear.
my
flashlight
night vision improved.
movements and
distraction,
a shell exploding, there
couldn't see a single one of those
ten feet in front of them,
scripts. Gradually,
it
I
made to
the actors slower to
be often inattentive and
Each time we heard the noise of
relief that the theatre
had not been
hit,
but
Waiting for Godot
had
the actors in
my
to
be wondering where
cast, Velibor,
and the
oldest, Ines, lived alone.
the theatre each day, and several of
near Grbavica, a part of the
them
city
3
1
I
had landed. Only the youngest
it
wives and husbands, parents and children
lines,
Sarajevo
in
The
home when
at
others
they
left
came
to
lived very close to the front
taken by the Serbs
last year,
or in
Alipasino Polje, near the Serb-held airport.
On July at
30, at
two o'clock
in the afternoon,
two weeks of
Nada, who was often
news
that
eleven that morning Zlajko Sparavolo, a well-known older actor
who
during the
late
first
rehearsal, arrived with the
had been
specialized in Shakespearean roles,
neighbors,
when
a shell
landed outside
killed,
his front door.
the stage and went silently to an adjacent room. the
first
me
to speak told
everyone because, up
till
that this
then,
news was
along with two
The
actors left
followed them, and
I
particularly upsetting to
no actor had been
killed. (I
had heard
who had each lost a leg in the shelling; and I knew Nermin Tulic, the actor who lost both legs at the hip in the first months of the siege and was now the administrative director of the earlier
about two actors
When
Youth Theatre.) the rehearsal, hour,
all
I
asked the actors
but one, Izo, said
some of the
actors
ett
S E
T
I
had designed
—
as
himself could have desired
tered, acted on,
But
yes.
they
felt
after
up
to continuing
working for another
found they couldn't continue. That was the
only day that rehearsals stopped
THE
if
early.
minimally furnished,
—had two
and exited from
levels.
I
thought, as Beck-
Pozzo and Lucky en-
a rickety platform eight feet
deep and
four feet high, running the whole length of upstage, with the tree to-
ward the
left;
the front of the platform was covered with the translu-
cent polyurethane sheeting that
the shattered
windows of
UNHCR brought in last winter to seal
Sarajevo.
The
three couples stayed mostly
on
more of the Vladimirs and
Es-
the stage floor, though sometimes one or
tragons went to the upper stage.
It
took several weeks of rehearsal to
arrive at three distinct identities for them.
Estragon (Izo and Velibor) were the false starts, the
classic
The
central Vladimir
buddy
pair.
and
After several
two women (Nada and Milijana) turned into another
kind of couple in which affection and dependence are mixed with ex-
SUSAN SONTAG
312
asperation and resentment: mother in her early forties and
daughter. a
And
Sejo and Irena,
who were
grown
also the oldest couple, played
quarrelsome, cranky husband and wife, modeled on homeless people
downtown Manhattan. But when Lucky and Pozzo were
I'd seen in
onstage, the Vladimirs and Estragons could stand together,
something of a Greek chorus
by the
terrifying
master and
becoming
an audience to the show put on
as well as
slave.
Tripling the parts of Vladimir and Estragon, which entailed
more
stage business,
good deal longer than
play a
would run was
at least
had the
intricate silences, it
usually
ninety minutes. Act
I
is.
soon realized that Act
would be
II
shorter, for
a half
hours long.
And
I
come
deliers could
from
a shell, or
if
down
if
was taking place on as
many
as a
a
planks.
in the
hit.
deep proscenium stage
be squeezed together;
up outside the
stage
(tickets are free).
hot, since
I
knew
lit
only by a few candles. close to the actors, at
a half
How
very choices
was
also
I
was high summer, and they would
many more people would be
could
I
ask the audience, which
sit
in
I
could not do
of Waiting for Godot. But the
all
had made about the staging which made Act
meant
that the staging could represent the
dramatic literature in which Act
place and time of Act II:
"Next
would have no
so uncomfortably, without moving, for
for Godot, while using only the words of Act
work
lining
hours?
concluded that
I
that
made from wood
door for each performance than could be seated
lobby, bathroom, or water, to
two and
it
Further, there
auditorium could see what
hundred people could be seated
They would be
would be two
whose nine small chan-
the front of the stage, on a tier of six rows of seats
Act
idea
the building suffered a direct hit
an adjacent building were
was no way three hundred people
it
my
I
could not envisage asking people to watch
crashing
even
the play
II,
the play from the Youth Theatre's auditorium,
But
new
making the
to use only Izo and Velibor as Vladimir and Estragon. But even
with a stripped-down and speeded-up Act
and
result of
day.
I are:
Same
"A country
time.
Same
I.
For
I is itself
road.
place.")
A
long as
whole of Waiting
this
a
I as
may be
complete
tree.
the only
play.
The
Evening." (For
Although the time
is
"Evening," both acts show a complete day, the day beginning with
Vladimir and Estragon meeting again (though in every sense except the
Waiting for Godot
in
Sarajevo
3 13
sexual one a couple, they separate each evening), and with Vladimir (the
dominant one, the reasoner and information-gatherer, who
ter at
fending off despair) inquiring where Estragon has spent the
They
night.
bet-
is
talk
about waiting for Godot (whoever he may be),
Pozzo and Lucky
ing to pass the time.
strain-
while and
arrive, stay for a
perform their "routines," for which Vladimir and Estragon are the audience, then depart. After this there
Then
they are waiting again.
more
they have waited once
Of Act
I
course, there
which
Act
is
II.
Not
between Act
only has one
Vladimir has given in to despair. Perhaps for the Sarajevo audience,
second time when Godot does not subliminally, that
Act
Godot was so apt an
might be
II
.
/
'
Avaj, avaj
—from Lucky PEOPLE
's
IN
.
.
relief:
them
that
and the replay of
and
by.
Everything
that the despair of
wanted
I
Maybe
is
pathetic and blind,
to spare
wanted
I
Act
them
I
a
to propose,
different. For, precisely as Waiting for
now
an arbitrary, alien power to save
protection
its
ing Waiting for Godot, Act
.
tell
illustration of the feelings of Sarajevans
them or take them under
.
now
is
I felt
arrive.
bereft, hungry, dejected, waiting for
Alas, alas
I
more day gone
worse. Lucky no longer can speak, Pozzo
was enough
and
a time of deflation
in vain.
a difference
is
is
the messenger arrives to
—
it
seemed
apt, too, to
be
stag-
I.
.
monologue
SARAJEVO
live
harrowing
lives; this
was
a
harrowing
Godot. Ines was flamboyantly theatrical as Pozzo, and Atko was the
most heartrending Lucky ing
and was
a
movement
I
have ever seen. Atko,
teacher
at
who had
ballet train-
the Academy, quickly mastered the
postures and gestures of decrepitude, and responded inventively to suggestions for
Lucky s dance of freedom.
Lucky 's monologue, which
in every
It
took longer to work out
production of Godot I'd seen
cluding the one Beckett himself directed in 1975 in Berlin) was, to this
speech into
my
taste,
five parts,
delivered too
it
(in-
the Schiller Theatre
at
fast, as
and we discussed
my
nonsense.
line
by
I
line, as
divided
an argu-
SUSAN SONTAG
314
ment, as
Atko
a series of
images and sounds,
as a lament, as a cry. I
wanted
about divine apathy and indifference,
to deliver Beckett's aria
about a heartless, petrifying world,
as if
made
it
Which
perfect sense.
it
does, especially in Sarajevo. It
me
has always seemed to
realistic play,
though
or vaudeville
style.
it is
Godot
that Waiting for
is
supremely
a
generally acted in something like a minimalist
The Godot
that the Sarajevo actors
were by
inclina-
temperament, previous theatre experience, and present
tion,
cious) circumstances
was
direct,
full
most able
of anguish, of
violence. That the messenger
to perform,
and the one
immense sadness and, toward
was
a strapping adult
meant
(atro-
chose to
I
that
the end,
when he
announces the bad news, Vladimir and Estragon could express not only disappointment but rage: manhandling him as they could never
have done had the role been played by
a small child.
(And there
are
not two, of them, and only one of him.) After he escapes, they sub-
six,
side into a long, terrible silence. It
solute pathos, as at the
butler Firs wakes
up
was
a
Chekhovian moment of ab-
end of The Cherry Orchard, when the ancient
to find that he's
been
behind
left
in the aban-
doned house.
FELT, during the mounting of Godot and
IT
jevo, as if I
were going through the replay of
the severest shelling of the
city's
this
second stay
a familiar cycle:
in Sara-
some of
center since the beginning of the siege
(on one day Sarajevo was hit by nearly four thousand shells); the ing once
Clinton solve)
more of the hopes (if
outwitting
is
of American intervention; the outwitting of
not too strong a term to describe so weak
by the pro-Serb United Nations Protection Force
FOR) command, which
rais-
a re-
(UNPRO-
claimed that intervention would endanger
UN
troops; the steady increase in despair and disbelief of the Sarajevans; a
mock
cease-fire (that
means
more people ventured out and maimed each
The that
cast
and
I
just a little shelling
in the street,
and sniping, but since
almost as
many were murdered
day); et cetera, et cetera. tried to avoid jokes
about "waiting for Clinton," but
was very much what we were doing
in late July,
when
the Serbs
Waiting for Godot took, or ture of
the
seemed
to take,
Mount Igman,
Mount Igman would
city,
and hope rose again
gun
against the Serb
Sarajevo
in
3 15
The
just
above the
airport.
allow them to
fire shells
horizontally into
that there
would be American
cap-
air strikes
arms embargo.
positions, or at least a lifting of the
Although people were afraid to hope, for fear of being disappointed, the same time
no one could believe
that Clinton
intervention and again do nothing.
when
again
a journalist friend
at
would again speak of
myself had succumbed to hope
I
showed me
dim
a
transmis-
satellite fax
sion of Senator Biden's eloquent speech in favor of intervention, twelve
single-spaced pages, which he had delivered
on July
The Holiday
29.
on the western
Inn, the only
still
on the
floor of the Senate
functioning hotel, which
side of the city's center, four blocks
from the nearest
Serb snipers, was crowded with journalists waiting for the jevo or the intervention; one of the hotel
been
this full since the 1984
SOMETIMES ton.
We
Lucky 's
were waiting suitcase
for our props.
hadn't
Godot, or Clin-
There seemed no way to find cigarette holder (to substi-
and whip. As for the carrot that Estragon munches
slowly, rapturously: until
two days before we opened, we had
hearse with three of the dry
Holiday Inn dining room
and
of Sara-
Winter Olympics.
and picnic basket, Pozzo's
tute for the pipe)
actors
fall
staff said the place
THOUGHT we were not waiting for
I
is
assistants
rolls I
(rolls
and the
to re-
scavenged each morning from the
were the breakfast offered) to feed the
all-too-rare stagehand.
any rope for Pozzo until a week
after
we
started
We
on the
could not find stage,
and Ines
got understandably cranky when, after three weeks of rehearsal, she still
did not have the right length of rope, a proper whip, a cigarette
holder, an atomizer.
The bowler
hats
and the boots for the Estragons
materialized only in the last days of rehearsal.
whose designs proved
I
And
the costumes
had suggested and the sketches of which
in the first
week
—did
not
come
until the
I
had ap-
day before
we
opened.
Some Some of
of this was owing to the scarcity of everything in Sarajevo. it,
I
had
to conclude,
was
typically "southern" (or Balkan)
SUSAN SONTAG
316
man an a -ism.
("You'll definitely have the cigarette holder tomorrow/'
was told even- morning were the
between
result of rivalry
Why
the closed National Theatre.
There had to be props
theatres.
were they not available
covered, shortly before the opening, that
was not
I
I
But some of the shortages
for three weeks.)
at
to us?
I dis-
just a visiting
mem-
ber of the Sarajevo "theatre world," but that there were several theatre clans in Sarajevo
and
that,
being
allied
count on the goodwill of the others. around, too.
On
with Haris Pasovic's,
could not
I
would work the other way
(It
one occasion, when precious help was offered
another producer,
who on my
last visit
had become
by Pasovic, who was otherwise reasonable and
me
by
was told
a friend, I
helpful: "I don't
want
you to take anything from that person.
Of in
course this would be normal behavior anywhere
Why
not
besieged Sarajevo? Theatre in prewar Sarajevo must have had the
same feuds, think
my
signer,
and jealousy
pettiness,
assistants, as well as
on
to catch
that
some
Finci, the set
us.
to shield
was
to
I
me from
be trusted.
rr
\\
the knowl-
hen
I
began
my
assistants said to
me
sadly:
"Now
that
you
vou won't want to come back anvmore."
SARAJEVO
IS
NOT
only a city that represents an ideal of pluralism;
was regarded by many of
its
citizens as
an ideal place: though not im-
portant (not big enough, not rich enough), be, even
city.
and costume de-
oi our difficulties reflected a degree of hostility
or even sabotage, one of
know
in Sarajevo
any other European
as in
Ognjenka
and Pasovic himself, were anxious
edge that not everybody
it
else.
if,
it
being ambitious, you had to leave
was it
still
the best place to
make
to
a real career, as
people from San Francisco eventually take the plunge and go to Los Angeles or
New York. "You
Pasovic said to me.
duces
a
know
in Sarajevo
"It
can't imagine
what
was paradise." That
very acute disillusionment, so that
the increasing
number
used to be
like here,"
kind of idealization pro-
now
cannot stop lamenting the
it
almost
city's
all
the people
I
moral deterioration:
of muggings and thefts, the gangsterism, the
predatory black marketeers, the banditry oi some army units, the absence oi civic cooperation.
One would
think that they could forgive
Waiting for Godot themselves, and their
There
gallery.
city.
virtually
is
For seventeen months
Sarajevo
in
3 17
has been a shooting
it
no municipal government; hence, debris from
shelling doesn't get picked up, schooling isn't organized for small chil-
dren, et cetera, et cetera.
come
A
city
under
siege must, sooner or later, be-
a city of rackets.
But most Sarajevans are
and of many "elements,"
tions now,
pained vagueness, in the
condemnation of condi-
pitiless in their
city.
would
as they
call
them with
"Anything good that happens here
is
a
my friends said to me. And another: "This is a city of bad people." When an English photojournalist made us the invaluable gift of nine candles, three were immediately stolen. One day Mirza's miracle," one of
lunch
—
chunk of home-baked bread and
a
knapsack while he was on the other actors. But
it
stage. It
a pear
—was taken from
could have been anyone
else, say,
one of the
hands or any of the students from the Academy of Drama dered in and out of the rehearsals. The discovery of depressing to us
number
to leave,
and
was very
when
they can,
will leave
one of my friends from
Batinic, a local journalist. "I can live this life a
Zehra Kreho
me one
who wan-
this theft
"We can my April visit, Hrvoje
say that their lives are not unbearable.
live this life forever," said
friend,
stage-
all.
Although many people want a surprising
his
could not have been one of the
hundred
years," a
—the dramaturge of the National Theatre—
evening. (Both are in their late thirties.) Sometimes
new
said to
I felt
the
same way.
Of course, months," feels?"
weeks. I
I
I
was
it
different for
me.
"I haven't taken a
middle-aged matron said to me. "Do you
a
don't; I only
was
know what
elated, full of energy,
it's
like
bath in sixteen
know how
because of the challenge of the work
was doing, because of the valor and enthusiasm of everyone
with
—but
them, and
I
could not ever forget
how
fact that I
trated
how hard
it
and the danger
city.
play.
worked
What made my
relatively easy to bear, apart
could leave and they couldn't, was that
on them and on Beckett's
I
has been for each of
hopeless the future looks for their
lesser hardships
that
not to take a bath for six
I
was
from the
totally
concen-
SUSAN SONTAG
318
5
UNTIL A week be very good.
before
opened,
it
feared that the choreography and emotional design
I
had constructed
had not been
I
and the nine actors
for the two-level stage
were too complicated for them that
did not think the play would
I
as
demanding
me
that
But
I
suddenly, in the
and
at
went on, hoping last
that
seemed
it
which did honor was
I
then and, in
not yet learned
all
it
came
all
together,
the production was, after that this
was an
all,
effort
to Beckett's play.
also surprised
tional press that
a corner,
made, and
affecting, continually interesting, well
as-
would be not too bad; then
me
to
now and
who had
it
week, they turned
our dress rehearsal
my
oi
was being too amicable, too
I
tantrum
a
particular, threaten to replace the actors
their lines.
Two
should have been.
as I
should throw
I
in five roles
to master in so short a time; or simply
sistants, as well as Pasovic, told
"maternal," and that
I
by the amount of attention from the interna-
Godot was
getting.
I
had told few people
that
was
I
going back to Saravejo to direct Waiting for Godot, intending perhaps
something about
to write
journalists' dormitory.
it
later. I
The day
forgot that
after I arrived I
room
the Holiday Inn lobby and in the dining
next day; and the next.
I
said there
I
would be
was
living in a
fielding requests in
for interviews;
was nothing
to
tell,
that
I
and the was
still
auditioning; then that the actors were simply reading the play aloud at a table; light,
then that we'd
just
begun on the
was hardly any
stage, there
there was nothing to see.
But when desire to
I
mentioned
to Pasovic the journalists' requests
keep the actors free from such
had scheduled
a press
conference for
distractions,
me and
I
that he
I
wanted me
tional Festival oi Theatre
in that I
was
his Alcestis,
was
my
Godot.
ogized to the actors for the interruptions to come,
wanted the
which
a part: the Sarajevo Interna-
and Film, directed by Haris Pasovic, whose
second production, following
too,
to
maximum
publicity not just for the play but for an enterprise of
had not altogether taken
my
learned that he
admit journalists to rehearsals, give interviews, and get the
amount of
and
journalists to
be
I
When
I
apol-
found that
they,
there. All the friends
I
consulted in
Waiting for Godot the city told
me
Sarajevo
in
3
19
would be "good
that the story of the production
for
Sarajevo."
And
so
access to
I
obediently changed
anybody who wanted
my
it.
policy of
no interviews
to giving
This was easy, not only because
was what the actors and Pasovic wanted, but because
I
it
never saw any-
thing that was printed or televised (even the journalists at the Holiday
Inn never saw their stories until they
left
that the rush of interviews in the
two weeks meant
first
Sarajevo).
I
were done before the actors had learned
stories
regretted, though, that
most of the
my
and
their lines,
conception of the play began to work.
The point
of course, that any cultural activity in Sarajevo
is,
who have come
sideshow for correspondents and journalists war.
To
there
is
The
my
original intention.
—perhaps, whatever
promotion. But
this
is
just
best thing
To speak
is
one's intentions,
not to speak
of what one
at all
becomes
—
a
a
to cover a
protest the sincerity of one's motives reinforces suspicion,
suspicion to begin with.
which was seems
is
if
at all,
doing
is
form of
self-
what the contemporary media culture ex-
My political opinions — I would go on about what I regard as the infamous role now being played by UNPROFOR, railing against "the pects.
Serb-UN
siege of Sarajevo"
about them, and If
it
out.
my work
mentioning. But stories as the
illustrates
it
one
Television, print,
When,
my own
to
in Sarajevo,
none of
this
would be worth
something of the way such long-running to.
and radio-journalism are an important part of
in April, I
be
discomfort about some of the
Bosnia are transmitted and being reacted
in
it
to
in
were only a matter of
foreign coverage of
war.
—were invariably cut You want — media land— be about you.
turns out
it
this
heard the French intellectual Andre Glucks-
mann, on
his twenty-four-hour trip to Sarajevo, explain to the local
journalists
who
event,"
attended his press conference that "war
and "wars are won or
telling that to all the
there
mark.
is
a sense in
It's
lost
people here
on TV,"
I
who have lost
media event, but
object of attention,
comes the main
now
a
media
thought to myself, Try their
arms and
legs.
But
which Glucksmann's indecent statement was on the
not that war has completely changed
principally a
is
nature,
that the media's coverage
and the very
story.
its
fact of
and is
is
only or
a principal
media attention sometimes be-
SUSAN SONTAG
320
An
Inn. the
best friend
BBC's admirable Alan
and was shown from
juries
My
example.
a
if
the journalists at the Holiday
Little, visited
one oi the
semi-conscious five-year-old
mortar
a
she would die
among
had
shell that
girl
with severe head
The doctor
killed her mother.
Moved by
Alan began to
about her
talk
Irma" became the front-page story day
tabloids and virtually the only Bosnia story
said
the child's
and the case of
story,
day
after
in the British
TV
on the
news. John
Major, eager to be seen as doing something, sent a plane to take the to
in-
For days nothing
in his reports.
happened. Then other journalists picked up the "Little
hospitals
she was not airlifted to a hospital where she could be
given a brain scan and sophisticated treatment. plight.
city's
girl
London.
Then came the
become
backlash. Alan, unaware at
so big. then delighted because
would help
to bring the child out.
"media circus" that was exploiting obscene, the
critics said, to
it
that the story
first
meant
had
that the pressure
was dismayed by the attacks on a child's suffering. It
a
was morally
concentrate on one child
when thousands
many amputees and
paraplegics, lan-
oi children and adults, including
guish in the understaffed, undersupplied hospitals of Sarajevo and are
not allowed to be transported out, thanks to the other story
i.
oi one child vious,
and
needed
to
That is
was
it
a
good thing
to
—
do
better than doing nothing at
in fact others
were brought out
UN
(but that
is
an-
that to try to save the
life
all
—should have been ob-
as a result.
But
a story that
be told about the wretched hospitals of Sarajevo degener-
ated into a controversy over what the press did.
THIS
IS
THE
FIRST
European genocide
in
our century to be
tracked by the world press and documented nightly on TV. There were
no reporters
in 191
5
sending daily stories to the world press from Ar-
menia, and no foreign camera crews in Dachau and Auschwitz. Until the Bosnian genocide, one might have thought
conviction oi
many
—
this
oi the best reporters there, like
day and John Burns oi
1
York Times
was indeed the
Roy Guttman
—
that
if
of
the story
could be gotten out. the world would do something. The coverage ot the genocide in Bosnia has
ended
that illusion.
Waiting for Godot
Newspaper and radio reporting and, above shown the war
Bosnia in extraordinary
in
by those few people
a will to intervene
TV
all,
detail,
in the
Sarajevo
in
321
coverage have
but in the absence of
world
who make
and military decisions, the war becomes another remote
political
disaster; the
people suffering and being murdered there become disaster "victims." Suffering
visibly present,
is
many people an absence
more
feel
—the
and can be seen
sympathy for the
victims.
in close-up;
and no doubt
What cannot be recorded
absence of any political
end
will to
this suffering:
Eu-
exactly, the decision not to intervene in Bosnia, primarily
rope's responsibility,
which has
its
Quai d'Orsay and the
slant of the
plemented by the
is
origins in the traditional pro-Serb
British Foreign Office. It
UN occupation of Sarajevo, which
is
is
being im-
largely a
French
operation. I
do not believe the standard argument made by
as
makes them
it
real. It is
the absence of action to stop
it
vision but our politicians have
the continuing coverage of the
that
makes us mere
made
history
We get tired of watching the same show. it's
If
it
come
Not
spectators. to
seem
seems unreal,
war
as in
tele-
like re-runs. it is
because
both so appalling and apparently so unstoppable.
Even people
They
atrocities,
said to
is
hope
("How could
this
happen?
can't
I still
happening"). They are genuinely astonished by the Serb
and by the starkness and sheer unfamiliarity of the
lives
they
obliged to lead. "We're living in the Middle Ages," someone
me. "This
People ask there.
seems to them unreal.
it
which does not diminish, which takes the
a rhetorical incredulity
believe this
now
sometimes say
in Sarajevo
are in a state of shock,
form of
are
of television
on the small screen distances them
that watching terrible events
much
critics
The
truth
to direct
and Velibor
as
is
me is,
science fiction," another friend said. if
Sarajevo ever seemed to
2:00 p.m.
17.
unreal while
since I've started going to Sarajevo
The Cherry Orchard with Nada Lopakhin
—
it
seems the most
WAITING FOR GODOT OPENED, on August
me
at 4:00
this
was
winter
I
Madame Ranevsky
real place in the world.
with twelve candles on the stage,
There were two performances that
and the other
as
—
I
day, a Tuesday,
one
at
p.m. In Sarajevo there are only mati-
322
SUSAN SONTAG
nees; hardly
anybody goes out
away. During the
performances
first
third performance,
I
started to
Many
after dark. I
be able
people were turned
was tense with
to see the play as a spectator. It
was time to stop worrying that Ines would
the rope linking her and
let
Atko sag while she devoured her papier-mache chicken; third Vladimir,
would
forget to keep shifting
fore he suddenly rushes off to pee. tors,
and
I
knew
it
was
in
performance on August
The
play
good hands. And 19,
By the
anxiety.
from foot
that Sejo, the
to foot just be-
now belonged
at
to the ac-
the end of the 2:00 p.m.
during the long tragic silence of the
Vladimirs and Estragons which follows the messenger's announcement that Mr.
Godot
isn't
coming
today, but will surely
eyes began to sting with tears. Velibor
audience
made
a
sound.
side the theatre: a street
was
come tomorrow, my
crying, too.
No
one
in the
The only sounds were those coming from
out-
UN armored personnel carrier thundering down the
and the crack of sniper
fire. I I
993]
"There" and "Here'
went TO
Sarajevo for the
newly independent multi-ethnic Bosnian first
stay, I
flew out as
UNPROFOR cargo planes making a Zagreb.
back
The heart-stopping
trail
over
state.
had come
I
in,
regular run between Sarajevo
eighth stays; and by that time, the winter and
Nothing ever equaled the misery of daily sniper
To
fire.
And
life in
Leaving Sarajevo after
lay far in the future,
dards of peril were higher, and first
was
I
up the
on one of the Russian
shock.
summer
a veteran of
The shock
my
on
and
by the switch-
drive into the besieged city
Mount Igman
one
1993,
year after the start of the Serb-Croat campaign to carve
I
that
time in April
first
seventh and
of 1995,
my stan-
dread and shock.
of Sarajevo
itself,
the
the shattered city under constant mortar and
the aftershock of re-entry into the outside world.
leave Sarajevo
and
be, an
hour
later, in a
"normal"
city (Zagreb).
To
get into a taxi (a taxi!) at the airport ... to ride in traffic regulated
by
traffic signals,
along streets lined with buildings that have intact
roofs, unshelled walls, glass in the
switch in your hotel
room
... to use a toilet
to run the bath (you haven't
water, hot water,
come out
and people walking,
windows ...
had
and
flush
a bath in several
of the tap ... to take a
like you, at a
to flip
normal pace
it
light
afterward
.
.
.
weeks) and have
stroll
... to
on the
and see shops,
buy something
in
a small grocery store with fully stocked shelves ... to enter a restaurant
323
SUSAN SONTAG
324
and be given
menu
a
.
.
.
All this seems so bizarre
for at least forty-eight hours,
you
that,
And
very
quite disoriented.
feel
To speak with people who don't want
angry.
and upsetting
to
know what you know,
don't want you to talk about the sufferings, bewilderment, terror, and
humiliation of the inhabitants of the city you've just
when you
worse,
your friends
return to your
"Oh, you're back;
say,
ize that they don't
want
to
know,
never really explain to them
how bad you
own "normal"
feel
I
And
left.
(New York) and
city
was worried about you"
either.
To understand
—neither how
even
terrible
to real-
you can
"there" nor
is
it
—
that
being back, "here." That the world will be forever
di-
vided into "there" and "here."
People don't want to hear the bad news. Perhaps they never do.
But
in the case of
imagine, was
people you
Or
too.
A from
more acute than
feel
Or who
You
ever anticipated.
slaughter
at least
few weeks ago
my
I
comfortable with are those
some other
to
Chechnya.
Bosnia the indifference, the lack of effort to
—El
know, firsthand, what
—I'm writing
in late
find that the only
who have been
Salvador,
my
to Bosnia,
Cambodia, Rwanda, a
war
November
sole option
is.
1995
ninth stay in Sarajevo. Although once again
only land route, this was no longer
try to
I
—
I
came
(UN
returned in
by the
planes were
again landing on a corner of the destroyed Sarajevo airport) and the rutted dirt
trail
over
route in the world. into a
narrow
Mount Igman was no
It
longer the most dangerous
had been widened and graded by was
dirt road. In the city there
UN
engineers
electricity for the first
time since the beginning of the siege. The shells were not exploding, snipers' bullets
were not whizzing past everyone's heads. There would
be gas for the winter. There was the promise of running water. Since
my
return, an agreement has
to the war.
Bosnia
I
am
Whether peace, an reluctant to say. If
war, wants the in Pale,
been signed
war
to
in
Ohio
that promises an
unjust peace, has actually
Slobodan Milosevic,
end and can impose
end
come
started the
on
his proxies
this decision
then the successful campaign to destroy Bosnia by killing or
locating or driving into exile finished. Finished, too,
is
most of
its
population
is,
in
what the Bosnians had held out
ternationally recognized unitary state.
to
who
most
re-
senses,
for: their in-
"There'' and "Here" utterly transformed Bosnia)
So Bosnia (an
be partitioned. So
to
is
new
might, instead of right, has triumphed. Nothing
Thucydides, Book V, "The Melian Dialogue."
vance of the Wehrmacht had been halted in the League of Nations called a conference at
ties,"
that
in
—see
as if the eastern ad-
It's
late 1939 or early 1940
among
and
"the warring par-
which Germany was awarded half of Poland twenty percent of the
part), the invading Russians got
325
(the western
east,
and while
the thirty percent of their country in the middle that the Poles were
lowed ing
it
to
keep did include
went
to the
was very
this
fair
most of the
their capital,
by "moral"
criteria
rior forces of Hitler's
Germany and
be content with what they
ing
still
it all.
got.
At
that
—quickly adding, Since when have
in international politics?
had no chance of successfully defending
they
territory surround-
Germans. Of course, no one would have claimed
moral standards prevailed
their country against the supe-
Stalin's Russia,
least,
Because the Poles
they would have to
the diplomats
would have
said,
have some of their country; they had been on the verge of
And
would have figured
of course the Poles
as the
most
los-
diffi-
cult at the negotiations, since they didn't see themselves as simply
of three "warring parties."
al-
one
They thought they had been invaded. They
thought they were the victims. The diplomats brokering the settlement
would have found them quite unreasonable. Divided among themselves. Bitter.
Untrustworthy. Ungrateful to the mediators trying to stop
the slaughter.
know
Before, people didn't want to in
Bosnia
is
so complicated,
it
is
—you often heard
hard to
know which
is
that the
war
the "right"
—but now more people do understand what happened. They understand the war— the Serb and Croat aggression side
also
that
that
could have been stopped actly the
NATO
any
moment
in the past three years in ex-
same way and by the same minimum application of force by
(entirely sparing soldiers
finally
took place
didn't
want
the
at
is,
this past
on the ground
as well as civilians) as
August and September. But the Europeans
to stop the conflict (both the British Foreign Office
Quai d'Orsay
are traditionally pro-Serb),
and
and the Americans, the
only major power to acknowledge that justice was on the Bosnian side,
were reluctant to get involved.
Now that
the
war
has, or
seems to
326
SUSAN SONTAG
have been, stopped,
it
suddenly looks
complicated.
less
The mood
is
retrospective.
ONE QUESTION in Sarajevo
is
why
I
'
M OFTEN ASKED
widespread indifference
in
and Germany)
than genocide
from
a stay
other well-known writers besides myself haven't
spent time there. Behind this
tably Italy
after returning
lies
the
more general question
of the
nearby rich European countries (most no-
to an appalling historical crime, nothing less
—the fourth genocide of
European minority
a
to take
place in this century. But unlike the genocide of the Armenians during
World War
and of the Jews and the Gypsies
I
early 1940s, the genocide of the
glare of
Bosniak people has taken place
TV
worldwide press and
in the late 1930s
coverage.
No
and
in the
one can plead igno-
rance of the atrocities that have taken place in Bosnia since the war started in April 1992. Sanski Most, Stupni
Do, Omarska, and other
concentration camps with their killing houses (for hands-on, artisanal butchery, in contrast to the industrialized mass
murder of the Nazi
camps), the martyrdom of East Mostar and Sarajevo and Gorazde, the rape by military order of tens of thousands of
captured Bosnia, the slaughter of after the
surrender of Srebrenica
logue of infamy.
And no one
that of Europe: democracy,
the
members
of a tribe.
at least eight
—
this is
throughout Serb-
thousand
men and
boys
only a portion of the cata-
can be unaware that the Bosnian cause
and
Why
a society
visibility rallied to
composed of
citizens,
is
not of
haven't these atrocities, these values,
aroused a more potent response? stature and
women
Why have hardly
any intellectuals of
denounce the Bosnian genocide and de-
fend the Bosnian cause?
The Bosnian war
is
hardly the only horror
show
that has
been un-
folding in the past four or five years. But there are events
events
—
time.
One
that
do seem
to
sum up
—model
the principal opposing forces of one's
such event was the Spanish Civil War. Like the war in
Bosnia, that struggle was an emblematic one. But intellectuals writers, theatre people, artists, professors, scientists
who have
—the
a record
of speaking up on important public events and issues of conscience
have been
as
conspicuous by their absence from the Bosnian conflict
as
"There" and "Here"
Of course,
they were by their presence in Spain in the 1930s.
327
it's
speak-
ing rather too well of intellectuals to think that they constitute some-
thing like a perennial class, part of best causes
—
as
it's
war somewhere be
a reality.
is
Why
so
bad reputation of the Balkans
another? (This
is
is
historical cliches cer-
There
the traditional
is
as a place of eternal conflict, of implaca-
ble ancient rivalries. Haven't those folks always
been slaughtering one
comparable to having said when confronted with the
of Auschwitz: Well, what can one expect? is
as-
response to what
little
There are probably many reasons. Heartless
Semitism
up the there a
Bosnia?
tainly figure in the paltriness of the response.
reality
is
standard of dissent and activism
pacifists to take sides. Still, the
in
to take
is
world that should inspire even would-
else in the
sociated with intellectuals
happened
whose vocation
unlikely that only every thirty years or so
You know,
anti-
an ancient story in Europe.) Not to be underestimated, too,
the pervasiveness of anti-Muslim prejudice, a reflex reaction to
a people the majority of
whom
are as secular,
contemporary consumer-society culture, neighbors.
To
bolster the fiction that this
gious war, the label their army,
and
Muslim
their
is
at its
southern European
deepest source a
reli-
—though no one would think of de-
Orthodox and the
ular "Western" intellectuals their voices to
as their
imbued with
as
invariably used to describe the victims,
is
government
scribing the invaders as the
and
who might be
Catholics.
Do many
sec-
expected to have raised
defend Bosnia share these prejudices?
Of
course they
we
are already
do.
And
this
is
not the 1930s.
Nor
living in the twenty-first century, in
the 1960s. Actually,
which such twentieth-century
tainties as the identification of fascism, or imperialism, style dictators as the principal
"enemy" no longer
(often a facile one) for thought
and
action.
offer a
What made
cer-
or Bolshevik-
it
framework
obvious that
one should side with the government of the Spanish Republic, whatever
its
flaws,
was the struggle against
fascism.
Opposing the American
aggression in Vietnam (which took over the unsuccessful French effort
made
sense as part of the worldwide struggle
to hold
on
against
Euro-American colonialism.
to Indochina)
If the intellectuals
of the 1930s and the 1960s often
showed them-
SUSAN SONTAG
328
selves too gullible, too
happening
really
may
that they
or
in
prone to appeals
to idealism to take in
what was
newly radicalized
societies
certain beleaguered,
may not have
visited (briefly), the
morosely depoliti-
cized intellectuals of today, with their cynicism always at the ready, their addiction to entertainment, their reluctance to inconvenience
themselves for any cause, their devotion to personal least equally deplorable.
asked, each time
I
(I
a place that's so dangerous.)
who
By and
own
countries.
Among
ble now.
—
can go to
I
handful of intellectuals
against, say, racism or censorship
Only domestic
political
more of
(I
should note that
writers than of doctors, scientists,
teristic
the global bilateralism
(a
plausi-
intellectuals, nationalist
and
this
seems
There has
actors.)
been an implacable decay of the very notion of international
Not only has
now
—within
commitments seem
once internationally minded
at
times I've been
from Sarajevo, how
large, that
complacencies have renewed prestige. true
how many
consider themselves people of conscience can be mobilized
solely for limited actions
their
can't count
New York
return to
seem
safety,
solidarity.
"them" versus "us") charac-
of political thinking throughout our short twentieth century,
—fascism versus democracy; the American empire versus the Soviet empire — What has followed the wake of from
1
9 14 to 1989
collapsed.
in
1989 and the suicide of the Soviet empire ism,
is
the final victory of capital-
and of the ideology of consumerism, which
of "the political" as such. All that makes sense alism,
and the
above are
all,
most
cultivation of the self
the ideal of "health"
likely to subscribe.
place where people
asked It's
too
have to
my
son, the writer
much
left
smoke
—
entails the discrediting
is
private
and private well-being
are the values to
("How can you spend
all
the time?"
David
to expect that the
life.
which so
featuring,
intellectuals
much
someone here
Rieff, of his
—
Individu-
in
time in a
New
frequent trips to Bosnia.)
triumph of consumer capitalism would
the intellectual class unmarked. In the era of shopping,
be harder for
intellectuals,
York
who
are anything but marginal
it
has
and im-
poverished, to identify with less fortunate others. George Orwell and
Simone Weil did not exactly leave comfortable upper-bourgeois ments and weekend country houses when
apart-
they volunteered to go to
Spain and fight for the Republic, and both of them almost got them-
"There" and "Here" selves killed.
"here"
is
Perhaps the stretch for
monplace
it
has been a journalistic and academic com-
to say that intellectuals, as a class, are obsolete
of an analysis willing
Europe has
yet to
above
is
and
(Europe
is its self-
is
be born:
fenseless minorities
to incarnate
itself to
Europe
proclaiming that
"Society
between "there" and
intellectuals
too great now.
For several decades
Bosnia
329
be an imperative.
dead, too. a
Europe
It
Now
may be more
there are voices true to say that
that takes responsibility for
for upholding the values
will
— an example
be multicultural, or
it
it
its
de-
has no choice but
won't be
at all).
And
induced abortion. In the words of Emile Durkheim, all
the idea
it
forms of
itself."
The
idea that the pros-
perous, peaceful society of Europe and North America has formed of
—through the actions and statements of — one of confusion, called
itself
intellectuals
cowardice
.
.
Ours, not
.
is
all
those
who
could be
irresponsibility, selfishness,
and the pursuit of happiness. theirs.
Here, not there. [
J
995]
Joseph Brodsky
FOR
LONG
AS
A S we
are,
we're always somewhere. Feet are
always somewhere, whether planted or running. Minds, notoriously,
can be elsewhere. Minds, whether from lack of
vitality
or from
the deepest strengths, can be in the past and the present, or the present
and the
future.
Or
simply here and there. For reasons not hard to un-
derstand, the making of art at the highest plane of accomplishment
during the
last
century or so has required,
more
often than not, an ex-
ceptional development of the talent for being, mentally, in two places at
once. Elated by the landscapes he has been painting and drawing in
the south of France, van "really" in Japan. fulfilling a
Gogh
The young,
Theo
that
he
—
is
unpublished poet from Leningrad
sentence of compulsory labor on a collective farm in a
lage in the Far North, near the
uary 1965
writes his brother
as yet
White
that T. S. Eliot has died in
Sea, receives the
London,
news
sits at a
—
it is
vil-
Jan-
table in his icy
shack, and within the next twenty-four hours composes a long elegy to Eliot,
which
is
also an
homage
to the very alive
W. H. Auden
(the tone
and swing of whose elegy on the death of Yeats he adopts).
He was
elegant
enough always
to claim that
he had not
really suf-
fered during that year and a half of internal exile; that he rather liked
farmwork, especially shoveling manure, which he regarded the
more honest and rewarding
being mired
330
in shit,
jobs he'd
and had got quite
a
had so
far,
as
one of
everyone in Russia
few poems written
there.
Joseph Brodsky
Then, back
he put
sky, as
it
other losses,
it
I
Leningrad, a few years later Joseph Brod-
succinctly, "switched empires." This
from one day
denly,
who,
in his native
33
and
to the next,
happened sud-
among
entirely against his will:
separated this beloved only son from his elderly parents,
in further
punishment of the renegade poet, were thereafter
re-
peatedly denied exit permits by the Soviet government to meet for a brief reunion in, say, nearby Helsinki,
and died without
bracing them again. Intractable
borne with great indignation,
grief,
his ever
em-
great sobriety.
He
even managed to make of his KGB-enjoined departure some-
thing self-propelled
And
as for
hard
all
where
in
space and time one's toe end touches, well, earth
is
over; try the States
—landing among us
hurled from the other empire, a be-
like a missile
nign missile whose payload was not only his genius but his native ature's exalted, exacting sense of the poet's authority. (To
well
among
its
liter-
be found
as
how Gogol and Dostoyevsky moral and spiritual task.) Many aptitudes
prose writers: think of
conceived of the novelist's
eased his rapid insertion in America: immense industriousness and confidence, ready irony, insouciance, cunning. But for
self-
the dash and
all
ingenuity of his connections with his adopted country, one had only to
watch Joseph Brodsky among other Russian ize
how viscerally,
expressively Russian he
ous his adaptation to
us,
exiles
had
and emigres
stayed.
to real-
And how
gener-
along with the eagerness to impose himself on
us, actually was.
Such
adaptability,
such gallantry,
tanism. But true cosmopolitanism
may go by
is
the
place than to time, specifically to the past (which
bigger than the present). This has nothing in
oneself,
which acknowledges the past
is
common
simply so
much
with that senti-
It is a relation,
as
higher standards than the present affords.
of cosmopoli-
matter of one's relation to
less a
mental relation to the past called nostalgia.
name
unsparing to
the source of standards,
One
should write to please
not one's contemporaries but one's predecessors, Brodsky often declared. Surely
he did please them
—
his compatriots agree that
he was
SUSAN SONTAG
332
his era's
unique successor to Mandelstam, Tsvetaeva, and Akhmatova.
Raising the "plane of regard" (as he called
it)
was
relentlessly identified
with the effortfulness and ambitions and appropriate I
think of Joseph Brodsky as a world poet
—
partly because I cannot
read him in Russian; mainly because that's the range he
poems, with
his
commanded
and density of material no-
He
insisted that poetry's "job"
much-used word) was he
farther, faster. Poetry,
to explore the capacity of language to travel
said,
accelerated thinking.
is
It
was
his best ar-
gument, and he made many, on behalf of the superiority of poetry
rhyme
prose, for he considered
mental acceleration in
in
their extraordinary velocity
tation, of cultural reference, of attitude. (a
of poets.
fidelities
essential to this process.
An
the key to his great achievement (and
is
to
ideal of
its limits),
prose as well as in poetry, and to his indelible presence. Conversa-
tion with him, as felicitously recalled
by
his friend
Seamus Heaney,
"at-
tained immediate vertical takeoff and no deceleration was possible."
Much
of his
work could be subsumed under
poems, "Advice to
his
journeying, with
what there was
its
know and
to
mordant avowals of
premium on speedy
of one of
assimilation of
determination never to be duped,
feel,
vulnerability.
title
Real travel nourished the mental
a Traveller."
characteristic
the early
Of
course, there were favorite else-
wheres, four countries (and the poetry produced within their borders)
England, the United States, and
in particular: Russia,
Italy.
Which
is
to
empires never ceased to incite his powers of fast-forward associa-
say,
tion
and generalization; hence,
sites
of ancient
as well as in
his passion for the Latin poets
Rome, inscribed
poems. The
of cosmopolitanism
ment was imperial
is
in
to
first,
be
many
in several essays
in the
end perhaps the
a citizen of
who he and
form
senses.
was
Perhaps no decision he made
as startling (to
many), as emblematic of
was, as his refusal, after the dismantling of the Soviet empire
in the face of countless
for the briefest
And
only, tenable
an empire. Brodsky 's tempera-
Home was Russian. No longer Russia. in the later part of his life
and the
and the play Marbles
worshipful solicitations, to go back even
visit.
so he lived most of his adult
life
elsewhere: here.
And
Russia,
the source of everything that was most subtle and audacious and fertile
and doctrinaire about
his
mind and
gifts,
became the
great elsewhere
Joseph Brodsky to
which he could
not,
would
333
not, out of pride, out of anger, out of
anxiety, ever return.
Now largest,
whose years)
he has rushed away from
most powerful empire of
us, for so all,
it
feels, to reside in
the final elsewhere: a transfer
anticipation (while enduring a serious cardiac ailment for
he explored
The work,
in so
many
the
defiant, poignant
the example, the standards
many
poems.
— and our
grief
—remain. [1998]
On
START WITH a Story. the summer of 1993, and
LL
It's
I
gone there three months
I
earlier), this
Being Translated
was back
time
at
in Sarajevo (I'd first
the invitation of a local
theatre producer to stage a play in one of the besieged city's battered
We'd met
theatres.
interested in
and
my
at the
coming back
end of to
my
work
choice of a play to do
April
stay,
he'd asked
me
—
Beckett's Waiting for
—was
ought to go without saying that the play would be performed it
never occurred to
me
that the actors I chose
should do otherwise. True, most of them
But an
actor's
talent
inextricably
is
rhythms and sounds of the language that talent;
and Serbo-Croatian
on everybody
in the
is
knew some
in
met.
It
in Serbo-
might or
to see our pro-
bound up with
the
which he or she has developed
the only language one could count
audience knowing. To those
smacks of presumption to dare
I
English, as did a
who would come
portion of the educated Sarajevans duction.
was
Godot
agreed to with enthusiasm by him and by other theatre people
Croatian:
if I
as a director, I'd said yes, yes, gladly,
who may
to direct in a language
now operates
think
it
one doesn't
know,
I
much
international circuitry as the opera repertory has always had.
Arthur
can only say that repertory theatre
Miller,
when he accepted an
Death of a Salesman nese than
334
I
knew
in
Shanghai
Serbo-Croatian.
a
with almost as
invitation to direct a production of
few years ago, knew no more Chi-
Anyway
(trust
me),
it's
not as hard to
On do a
as
sounds.
it
good
You
Being Translated
need, besides your theatre
skills,
335
and
a musical ear
interpreter.
In besieged Sarajevo, you also needed a lot of stamina. In July,
flew into Sarajevo on a
I
UN
my backpack
troop plane,
bulging with pocket flashlights and a sack of double-A batteries, and,
pocket of
in a
my
The day
French.
after
my
began auditioning
arrival I
whom
I'd
envisaged the
set,
ented, undernourished actors (most of stay),
making drawings of how
stand
how
things
worked
I
was possible under the privations of
stop
bombardment. Once chosen, the basement
—no
a passel of tal-
met during and trying
generally in the theatre in Sarajevo
that
atre's
and
flak jacket, copies of the Beckett play in English
siege
actors
and the
and
I
my
to under-
—such
first
huddled
week
as
terror of nonin the the-
reason to start working upstairs, on the
vulnerable area of the stage, until after the
first
more
—doing improvi-
and figuring out rehearsal schedules (everyone had complex
sations
family responsibilities, not least of which was several hours' worth of fetching water), and learning to trust each other. side the building
was
more appropriate than I
War
is
didn't have to explain Beckett to Sarajevans.
common. Before
ducer that
I
The
noise from out-
seemed even
noise. Beckett
I'd imagined.
were already familiar with the
tors in
incessant.
play.
And some
of
my
ac-
But we did not yet have a text
leaving Sarajevo in April, I'd checked with the pro-
could count on his having enough copies of a translation
of the Beckett play on hand for the actors and everyone else involved in
working on the production when
said.
my
But when, the day of
distribute at the auditions, he
tance of
my coming
to
work
I
returned in July. Not to worry, he
return,
I
asked for copies of the play to
announced
that, in
honor of the impor-
in Sarajevo, Beckett's play
translated. In fact, the translation
was being worked on
was being
right
re-
now.
Uh-oh.
"The
translation isn't
"Well,
it
Hmmm. So
I
may be
.
.
.
finished?"
finished,"
he
said.
'
had another problem besides the Serbs'
shells,
grenades, and
constant gunfire from snipers on rooftops in the center of the
absence of
electricity
and running water, the shattered
city,
the
theatre, the
SUSAN SONTAG
336
nervousness of the malnourished actors, the
.
.
my own
anxiety and fear,
.
The problem,
my
as
producer explained, was the typewriter: an old
one available
typewriter, but the only
bon was very
faint (having
been
to the translator,
one whose
rib-
was
six-
in use steadily for a year; this
teen months since the beginning of the siege). But, he assured me, this translation patient.
I
said
knew
I
would be I
a real asset to the
would
try to
be
production
only
if
I
would be
patient.
that in the former Yugoslavia there
tions of Beckett's plays
—
had been many produc-
—the most frequently performed being none
other than Waiting for Godot. (Indeed, I'd chosen Godot over the other play I'd thought of doing,
known.) There had to be
more than
one. Perhaps
Ubu Roi,
we
didn't really
"Is the existing translation
who,
"No,
We want "But
"Not
it's
back to the
need
this
not very good?"
had staged
a director himself,
grade a few years
partly because the Beckett play
a translation dating
a
I
new
1950s.
was
Maybe
translation.
asked the producer,
production of the play
in Bel-
earlier.
not bad
at all,"
he
said. "It's just that this
is
Bosnia now.
to translate the play into Bosnian." isn't
what you speak Serbo-Croatian?"
really,"
"Then why,"
he
said.
"did you lend
I said,
dictionary the day
"Well, for you
I
me
your Serbo-Croatian-English
arrived?"
it
"But does that
would be good enough
— mean" — persisted I
to learn Serbo-Croatian."
"that
if
Croatian there are words or phrases in use here that
I
learned Serbo-
I
wouldn't under-
stand?"
"No, you'd understand everything. The way educated people speak in Sarajevo
is
the same as educated speech in Belgrade or Zagreb."
"Then what's the difference?" "I can't explain,"
But
he
said. "It
would be hard
for
you
to understand.
there's a difference."
"A
difference for Beckett?"
"Yes, "If
it's
a
new
translation."
someone did
ferent, too?"
a
new
translation in Belgrade,
would
that
be
dif-
On "Maybe," he
"And from
this
Keep
337
said.
that
new
new
translation?"
"Maybe
Being Translated
would be
translation
different in a different
way
not."
calm,
Bosnian about
"Then what's going
told myself.
I
done here
"Because
it's
"But
some of the words be
will
to
be
specifically
this translation?"
in Sarajevo, while the city
is
under
siege."
different?"
"That depends on the translator."
"You haven't read any of it?" "No, because
I
can't read her handwriting."
"She hasn't started to type
it
yet?"
"She has, but with that typewriter ribbon
"Then how
it's
impossible to read."
and learn
are the actors going to study the play
their
lines?"
"Maybe
we'll
have to find someone with good handwriting to make
the scripts."
Wow,
it
really
the
is
Dark Ages,
I
thought.
AFTER MORE HALLUCINATORY EXCHANGES rising anxiety on my part about when the actors and really to begin,
typed, using
signer,
some
my two
script I
(for the actors, the set designer, the
that
costume de-
and me). Between the
lines of text, so
assistants
and
interpreter,
sound of
it,
by
heart,
and always
the actors were saying. in this story
is
that, as
Beckett wrote his play in
—the English Waiting for Godot of the French — the play has two
two languages
is
not merely a transla-
original languages, in
which
I
am
re-
copied out in ink both the English and the French
(An extra symmetry
tion
would be able
ancient, scarred carbon paper to provide fifteen
that I could learn the Bosnian, the
know what
I
another typewriter was found and the translation
double-spaced scripts
my
of this sort, and
at
home; and now
was completely opaque
What happened working for about
had two
translations, in a language
to me.)
then? After
a
it
both of
week, and
we had gone up on I
had blocked
a
the stage and been
good part of the
first
SUSAN SONTAG
338
act,
my
English
assistant
and two of the actors
— took me
—the two who spoke the most
aside.
Problem? Yes. What they
they had to
felt
tell
and could we
translation really wasn't very good,
translation published in Belgrade in the 1950s. "Is there a difference?"
me was
new
that the
please, please use the *
asked.
I
"Yes, the old translation
better."
is
"Better in what sense?" "It
sounds
"There
more
Or something
translation?
"Not
better. It's
that
natural. Easier to say."
difference? Something Serbian about that
isn't a linguistic
not Bosnian?"
anyone would notice."
"So there aren't any words you would have to change to make the translation
"Not "It's
more Bosnian?"
really.
But we could,
not what
serve. Beckett.
"Well,"
my
I
want,"
you want us
if
my
said, gritting
I
to."
teeth. "I'm just here to
You. Sarajevo. Whatever." Vladimir said thoughtfully, "here's what
we could
Let's
go back to the old translation, and while we're rehearsing,
see a
word we think should be changed
we'll
change
tell
"Nema problema" means.
me,"
said
a
something more Bosnian,
I said.
my
of course means
It's
we
it."
"Don't forget to
Which
to
if
do.
.
Estragon. .
.
but you
know
perfectly well
what
phrase that seems to translate into every language
it
in the
world.
THE END OF THE STORY learn
is
that
—
as
you may not be surprised to
— the actors never changed anything.
Godot opened
in
mid-August, no
member
Further,
when Waiting
for
of the theatre public com-
plained that the translation didn't sound Bosnian, or Bosnian enough.
(Perhaps they had other, more pressing things on their minds
— such
as
waiting for Clinton.)
Much
can be spun from
this story,
including
some consideration of
the potent fantasy that people have about language as a carrier of na-
On tional identity
—which can make on the
concerns newly, lethally
339
a translation, or the refusal to
one, the equivalent of an act of treason. stance taking place
Being Translated
What
territory of the
self- defined
is
make
pathetic about this in-
former Yugoslavia
happen
nations that
same spoken language and are therefore deprived
is
that
it
to share the
may
of, if I
call
it
thus, "the right of translation." It
seems appropriate that the story
place that
—
as I realize
spend so much time
I try
I talk
I've just told
my
you happened
what
to describe
in Sarajevo in the past
two weeks ago, from
just returned,
most people
whenever
two and
ninth stay there)
siege, or the
in a
like to
a half years (I've
with like the other side of the moon.
people can't imagine a war or a
been
it's
It's
—seems
to
not just that
danger or the fear or the
humiliation. More: they simply can't imagine that degree of different-
ness from their
sense
own
and comforts, from
lives
—understandable,
for
it's
based on their
their understandable
own
experience
—
that
the world isn't such a really terrible place.
They
can't imagine that. It
TRANSLATION
ABOUT
IS
and ameliorating, and, lustrates,
it is
also a
Originally
ference of
all:
yes,
way of
(at least in
that
must be translated
differentness.
denying difference
for them.
A
way
—even
of coping with, if,
as
my
story
il-
asserting differentness.
English) translation was about the biggest dif-
between being
alive
and being dead. To
translate
is,
To what end? In
etymologically, to transfer, to remove, to displace.
order to be rescued, from death or extinction. Listen to Wycliffe's Englishing of the
Bi feith
Enok
is
translatid, that
Hebrew Bible's Book of Enoch:
he shulde not see deeth, and
he was not founden, for the Lord translatide him.
come
to
mean
from earth
to
heaven
Eventually "to be translated" did translation
—one
rection,
which
deeth to
lyfe."
is
is
translated
(again in Wycliffe's English) to
"to die."
Death
— and so
is
is
resur-
be "translatid from
In English, the oldest meanings of the verb have nothing to
do with
SON -
N
34C
language
—with
a
mental act and
and
mainly, an intransitive verb,
condition or
site
—usually
each other. The "trans" _
.
is
no
it is
To
translate
so far as these, condition and
a physical "across" or crossing,
graphy of action, action
X was.
transcription.
its
in space.
longer: instead
it is
(or
The formula
is at)
now
Consider the following meanings,
meant
In medicine, to translate once
is.
is,
change of
a physical act. It signifies a
imply
site,
and proposes
roughly:
where
Y.
obsolete:
to transfer a disease
from one
person to another, or from one part of the body to another (something
modern concept oi
like the
property (such as
Contract
metastasis). In law,
a legacy). In the
it
meant
to transfer
words oi Thomas Hobbes:
mutual translation, or change of Right." Perhaps the
is
"All latest
of these meanings which involve an idea oi physical transfer dates from the late nineteenth century. In long-distance telegraphy, to translate to retransmit a
We
message automatically, by means of
is
a relay.
retain only the sense of translation as the transfer or
handing
over or delivery from one language to another. Yet the older meanings
expressed in the as if
tra-
and
trans-
words (welded
an underpinning. The fruitful subliminal, connection.
gap. to
which
To
translate
make something go where is
it
handed "over" or "down"
others, translation
one person,
site,
is
language to is still
something across
not. Like tradition,
(originally,
real,
a
something
something material) to
all
that
its
meaning has
—what being passed or transferred from one another — the sense of physical or geographical is
is
separate-
implicit,
who
to lead
or condition to another. For
and potent. Languages are
tagonistic) communities, each with
the one
is still
was
to -dere* -ducere) remain
of etymology express a
the conveying or transmitting of something from
been "spiritualized"
aess
affinities
its
own
like separate (often an-
customs. The translator
rinds (identifies, formulates) the
comparable customs
is
in
another language.
i'll
mention briefly
three variants of the
modern
idea of trans-
lation. First, translation as explanation.
Motivating the translator's effort
is
the project of replacing ignorance, obscurity ("I don't understand.
On Would you The
Being Translated
341
please translate that for me?") by knowledge, transparency.
translator's mission
is
clarification,
enlightenment.
Second, translation as adaptation. Not simply a freer use of language, which purports to express, in another language, the spirit
if
not
the letter of the original text (a wily distinction), but the conscious creation of another "version" (from vertere, to turn, to change direction): "versionist"
the old English
is
who
lators (usually poets)
word
for translator. Indeed,
"mere" accuracy entirely eschew the word "translation" "adaptation" or "version." Rewriting would be a
and
scription,
new
valuable
if (if
the poet
is,
say,
Allan Poe sial,
deas a
poem
—by him."
The
hubristic extension of the
Of translations which
could be considered im-
original, Baudelaire's translation of
poems of Edgar
one, not too controversial, example. (More controver-
is
to say the least,
Germans
in favor of
more accurate
Third, translation as improvement. translation as adaptation.
trans-
Robert Lowell, the version stands
not wholly original)
provements on the
some
don't want to be held to the criterion of
is
the judgment of several generations of cultivated
—Americans old enough
known German-Jewish
to have
refugees in the academic world or in other professions
—
hearing the fervently held view
Hitler
may remember
that the Shakespeare of the Schlegel-
Tieck translation was better than Shakespeare in English.) Translation as
improvement has sounds better
its
own sub -variant:
in translation"), a dressing
which may or may not
entail actively
THE ACCURACY OF tion. It
is
"There
a
is
translation as obfuscation (as in "It
as well
up or paring down of the
tampering with
a translation
an ideological one.
text,
it.
not merely a technical ques-
is
And
it
has a moral component,
metaphoric use of translation-as-adaptation, which evokes the older, physical
sense of translation: translating (transposing) from one guidelines about
medium
what may be produced by following the
to another.
Here there
are
original more, rather than less,
no lit-
recommended) choosing an inferior work to strut one's stuff. When was "translated to the screen" by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, the filmmaker preserved a large part of the spirit of Doblin's masterpiece, and also made a film that is a masterpiece. What might seem a counterexample, with equally exemplary results: Henry erally;
or
(as is
often
Berlin Alexanderplatz
Bernstein's
Melo
is
far
from
a great play, but Alain Resnais's Melo,
melodrama of He only had to add to
the text of Bernstein's boulevard
1928,
improve Bernstein's
it
play.
his
is
which scrupulously follows
a great film. Resnais did not
own
genius.
have to
— SUSAN SONTAG
342
which becomes the notion of
visible
when
for the notion of accuracy
what
In the ethics of translation,
one who would be always willing
Good,
vise again. it
we
substitute
fidelity.
projected
is
to take
better, best, ideal
.
.
.
more
an ideal servant
is
pains, linger longer, re-
however good the
translation
is,
can always be improved, bettered. Can one translation be the best?
Of
course. But the perfect (or ideal) translation
an ever receding
is
chimera. Anyway, ideal by what standard?
(You
will
have already noted that
I
am assuming
when
thing as an "original" text. Perhaps only now,
common
void of
that there
making
I
such a
ideas utterly de-
sense or respect for the practice of writing have great
And
currency in the academy, would this seem to need saying.
am
is
am
that assumption, but I
also
not only
proposing that the notion
of translation not be too broadly extended or metaphorized, which
what allows one be regarded
to claim,
among
other
as itself a translation
—the
is
the original should
follies, that
"original translation," so to
speak, of something in the author's consciousness.)
The notion perennially one.
means
It
of ideal translation
opposed standards of
likely to
is
translation.
be submitted
Minimum
that the translation will feel like one:
it
to
two
adaptation
is
will preserve,
even flaunt, the rhythm, syntax, tone, lexical idiosyncrasies of the text in its original language. this literalist idea
tion
is
the other.
It
means
text wholly "into" the feel all
one
(The most contentious modern proponent of
of translation
new
tified
with the
must bring the
original
language, so that, ideally, one does not ever at all. Inevitably, this
traces of the original lurking
liberties
Vladimir Nabokov.) Full naturaliza-
that the translator
reading a translation
is
is
text: these
work of dispelling
behind the translation requires taking
adjustments or inventions are not only
jus-
but necessary.
Pedestrian trot versus impertinent rewrite extremes, well within which
lies
and behind the difference
responsibility
translator
what end?
A
two notions of
—the image
translator
may
of course,
lies
is
a
translation in circu-
a larger disagreement about what
one has to the "original"
must serve
are,
the actual practice of most dedicated
translators. Nevertheless, there are lation,
—these
text.
Everyone agrees that the
powerful one
—the
text.
But for
feel that the text (or "original") is best
On
Being Translated
343
served by taking certain liberties, perhaps in the interest of making
more
accessible or gaining for
it
new members
it
of the potential audi-
ence. Is
the
it
work
to
which one
to
it
be
self-evident that
the words of the book. But this
Bible,
this illustrious title
theory of translation, for that
Perhaps
Plato.
it's
Jerome couldn't
because he was the
honor belongs,
because Jerome was the
as
we might
on record
first
rail
a
expect, to
to complain
against ignorant, careless
and brazen confectioners of interpolated passages; and to
And
was
for greater exactitude.
his epistle
"The Principles of Good Translation," who
in the case of Scripture, a translator
a
advance
to
first
campaign
duce
that I
work, to
not a simple matter, either histori-
about translations, about their quality: to copyists
mean
I
faithful to the
called the patron saint of translators.
is
have received
is
one be
The
Take Saint Jerome himself, father of the Latin
cally or normatively.
who
writer? Literature?
One might suppose (maybe
language? The audience?
might suppose)
The
faithful?
is
word-by-word rendering;
that
yet
it
this
should not it
was
same Jerome,
in
said that, except
feel
bound
to pro-
sufficient to translate the
sense.
That
from one language
a translation
sonably faithful (whatever that
Standards of
were
to another
may mean)
is
now
fidelity to the original are certainly
a generation, not to
mention
a
rea-
received wisdom.
now
higher
than they
century, ago. For some time now,
translating, at least into English
(though not,
been measured by more
—
literalist
ought to be
I
French), has
say, into
should say more scrupulous
standards, whatever the actual insufficiencies of most translations. This is
partly because translation has itself
reflection,
and translations
come under
(at least
scholarly scrutiny.
become
a subject for
of important books) are likely to
As part of what may seem
opting by academic
standards of the translator's task,
more
literary
likely that
any
academic
work of importance which
like the co-
more and
it
is
is
not contem-
porary will be accompanied by the translator's "notes," either
bottom of the page or the text
presumed
to
at
the end
at
the
of the book, explaining references in
be obscure. Indeed,
less
and
less
do
translations
presuppose that the reader possesses the most elementary information about history or
literature, or
any language
skills.
The
recent,
much
344
SUSAN SONTAG
heralded re-translation of The Magic Mountain puts the delirious conversation in the pivotal "Walpurgis Nacht" chapter between
Hans Cas-
torp and Clavdia Chauchat, which transpires, crucially to the story, in
French (and
is
French
in
in the old
of 1927), into English. English in
(whose ignorance of French
italics,
H.
Lowe-Porter translation
T.
so the Anglo-American reader
taken for granted) might "feel" that
is
it is
in a foreign language.
TRANSLATIONS patina of time
ARE
LIKE
buildings. If they're any good, the
makes them look
Plutarch, Motteux's Rabelais
.
.
.
better: Florio's
(Who was
it
Montaigne, North's
who
said,
"The
greatest
Russian writer of the nineteenth century, Constance Garnett"?) The
most admired, and long-lived, are not the most accurate.
And,
like building (the verb), translating
Few people
creasingly ephemeral now. tion
—
that
produces something
believe in a definitive transla-
And
one that would not need to be redone.
is,
the force of novelty: a "new" translation, like a
new
car.
then there
more
books there
is
rapidly.
With
German
and since the 1950s vary. Translation is
translations of
at least ten
new
Between 1947 and 1972
The Picture of Dorian Gray,
English translations of Madame Bo-
one of the few cultural practices that
ruled by an idea of progress
become
respect to a few (admittedly a very few)
actually a glut of translations.
there were eleven
is
Submitted to
the laws of industrial society, translations seem to wear out,
obsolete
in-
(in
contrast to, say, acoustics).
still
The
seems
latest
is,
in principle, the best.
The new
cultural populism,
which
be available to everyone,
carries with
thing should be translated
—
or, at least,
counter-example, that the old or anti-populist, as you will
insists that
—
New
Yorker
everything should
the implication that every-
it
be
—
translatable. Recall, as a
call
the magazine snobbish
didn't, as a matter of policy, print fiction
in translation.
Consider the force of the locution "language barrier"
which language interposes between one person
(or
—the barrier
community) and
another, the barrier which translation "breaks down." For language
is
the enforcer of separateness from other communities ("You don't
On speak
speak
my language") as well as the my language around here?").
But we tions
live in a society
—which
is
in the
creator of
is
to
world culture
today
is
—
ide-
effortlessly transmissible form.
unitary, transnational capital-
the practice of translation.
is
tradi-
and knowledge of
be recombined, remade
A leading feature of our ideology of a ist
community ("Anyone
to say, the destruction of fealty to
most portable,
345
pledged to the ceaseless invention of
the specific, local past. Everything ally,
Being Translated
one of the communicational
this perspective, translation
lifelines
quote: "Translation
I
of our global village." In
becomes not merely
a useful, desirable
practice but an imperative one: linguistic barriers are obstacles to the
commodities ("communication"
freest circulation of
for trade)
is
One
the ideology of unlimited business.
more people with
plicit claim:
Ulysses,
can't
namely, that anything can be translated,
Gerard Manley Hopkins, whatever.
for saying this
be translated
is
true.
is
always wants
one's product. Besides the universalist
claims implicit in this goal of unlimited translation, there
ment
euphemism
and therefore must be overcome. Underpinning the ideology
of universalism to reach
a
is
And
if
is
another im-
one knew how.
there
is
a
good argu-
(Perhaps the only important book that
Finnegans Wake, for the reason that
it is
not writ-
ten in only one language.)
The
inevitable instrumentation of this idea of the necessity of trans-
lation, the "translation
universal language
is
machine," shows us
alive
and
well. Saint
how the
Jerome took
did most Christians of the early centuries, that
from one Ur-language (Hebrew, the the presumptuous building of the that, via the
We
computer,
do not need an
all
ancient
all
it
dream of
a
for granted, as
languages descend
original speech of
mankind,
until
Tower of Babel). The modern idea
is
languages can be turned into one language.
actually existing universal language as long as
we
have, or can imagine as feasible, a machine which can "automatically" give us the translation into any foreign language.
and fancy prose writers about what
is,
will instantly
weigh
in
Of
course, the poets
with their old lament
inevitably, "lost in translation" (rhyme, flavor, wordplay,
the grit of dialect) even by experienced, individual, "real" translators.
Imagine the dimensions of the a
loss if the translator
is
not a person but
program! The directions on a Tylenol bottle can be translated with-
SUSAN SONTAG
346
out loss into any language. This
which
hardly the case with a
poem by Ma-
by Carlo Emilio Gadda. But the project of
rina Tsvetaeva or a novel a translation
is
machine proposes quite another idea of language, one
identifies
language with the communication of information:
statements. In the
new
Platonic praxis, the poets will not need to be
banished from the Republic.
It will
dered unintelligible, because the
be processed by
have been ren-
suffice that they will
artifacts they
make with words cannot
a machine.
This universalist model exists side by side with the persistence of
language separatism, which asserts the incommensurability of cultures, of identities (political, racial, anatomical). So, in the former Yugoslavia,
one language
is
being turned into many, and there
triotic call for translations.
Both models
interdependently. Language patriotism
is
the farce of a pa-
exist simultaneously,
may
perhaps
continue to grow as a
country pursues economic politics that sap national sovereignty,
just as
the most lethal myths of national distinctiveness can maintain their
hold on a population even as cultural paraphernalia of
(made
national
it
becomes ever more attached
consumer
in Japan,
made
capitalism,
which
blandly supra-
computer
in the U.S.A.), or to
which promote inevitably the growth of
nologies,
is
to the
tech-
world language,
a
English.
I
BEGAN WITH
an anecdote that illustrated some of the ideological
paradoxes embedded in the practice of translation. another fragment of personal experience: mitting of
my own books
I'll
end by evoking
my participation
in the trans-
into other languages. This has
been
The Volcano Lover, with
a par-
mul-
ticularly
wrenching task
tiplicity
of narrative voices and levels of language. Published in 1992,
in the case of
the novel already exists or
and
I
is
about to exist in twenty foreign languages;
have checked, sentence by sentence, the translations
principal
its
Romance languages and made myself
in the four
available to respond to
countless questions from several of the translators in languages
know. You might say I'm obsessed with translations.
I
I
don't
think I'm just
obsessed with language. I
don't have time to
tell
you any
stories
about
my
dialogue with the
On translators.
I'll
end by saying
available to them.
own
I
wish
I
that
I
wish
work.
I
do not
347
could stop wanting to be
could give up trying to see the words,
sentences, English, shine through.
thralling
I
Being Translated
translate. I
It's
am
melancholy
translated
—
my
as well as en-
modern
in the
sense and in the obsolete sense deployed by Wycliffe. In supervising
my translations, of my words.
I
am
supervising the death as well as the transposition
[
x
995]
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
"A
Poet's Prose"
was written
tive Spirit: Selected
"Where
as
an introduction to Marina Tsvetaeva, Cap-
Prose (Virago Press, 1983).
The
the Stress Falls" appeared in
"Afterlives:
The Case
Machado de
New
ruary
in
June
18, 2001.
the foreword to a reprint-
Winner (Noonday Press, Mourning" appeared in the Times
Literary Supplement, Feb-
Assis"
ing of Epitaph of a Small
"A Mind
Yorker,
is
of
1990).
25, 2000.
"The Wisdom Project" appeared in The New Republic, March 16, 2001. "Writing Itself: On Roland Barthes" is the introduction to A Barthes Reader, ed. Susan Sontag (Hill and Wang, 1982). "Walser's Voice"
Susan Sontag
is
the preface to Robert Walser, Selected Stories, ed.
(Farrar, Straus
"Danilo Kis"
is
and Giroux,
1982).
the introduction to Danilo Kis,
Homo
Poeticus: Essays
and Interviews, ed. Susan Sontag (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995). "Gombrowicz's Ferdydurke" is the foreword to a new translation of Witold Gombrowicz, Ferdydurke (Yale University Press, 2000). "Pedro Paramo" is the foreword to a new translation of Juan Rulfo, Pedro Paramo (Grove Press, 1994). "DQ" was published in Spanish translation in a National Tourist Board of Spain catalogue, "Esparia:
appeared
"A
el sol," in 1985;
it
has never before
Letter to Borges," written on the tenth anniversary of Borges's death
and published 13,
Todo bajo
in English.
in
Spanish translation
1996, has never before
"A Century
appeared
in the
of Cinema" was written for and
lation in Frankfurter
Buenos Aires
daily Clarin,
June
in English.
Rundschau, December
first
published in
German
trans-
30, 1995.
349
Acknowledgments
350
"Novel into Film: Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz" appeared
September
ity Fair,
in Van-
1983.
"A Note on Bunraku" was raku Puppet Theatre
at
program note
a
for performances of the
New York City on March
the Japan Society in
Bun-
12-19,
1983.
"A
Place for Fantasy" appeared in House and Garden, February 1983. "The Pleasure of the Image" appeared in Art in America, November 1987.
"About Hodgkin" was written for Howard Hodgkin Paintings, the catalogue of an exhibition organized by the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, in 1993, and subsequently seen at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. It was first published in Britain by Thames & Hudson in 1995.
"A Lexicon
for Available Light"
appeared
in
Art
in
America, December
1983.
Memory
"In
of Their Feelings" was written for the catalogue Dancers on
Cunningham, Johns, which accompanied an exhibit at the Anthony d'Offay Gallery in London from October 31 to December 2, 1989.
a Plane: Cage,
"Dancer and the Dance"
"On
Lincoln Kirstein"
New York lier,
on
first
French translation and
1986, in
is
appeared
in
French Vogue, December
in English.
a revision,
done
in 1997 for a publication
by the
City Ballet, of a tribute to Lincoln Kirstein written ten years ear-
his eightieth birthday,
which appeared
in Vanity Fair,
May
1987.
"Wagner's Fluids" was the program essay for a production of Tristan und Isolde staged
by Jonathan Miller
at
"An Ecstasy of Lament" was leas et
the Los Angeles
Opera
in
December
1987.
the program essay for a production of Pel-
Melisande staged by Robert Wilson
at the
Salzburg Festival in July
1997.
"One Hundred Years of Italian Photography" is the foreword to Italy: One Hundred Years of Photography (Alinari, 1988). "On Bellocq" is the introduction to a new edition of E. J. Bellocq, Storyville Portraits (Jonathan Cape and Random House, 1996). "Borland's Babies"
House Books,
is
the preface to Polly Borland's
The Babies (power-
2001).
"Certain Mapplethorpes"
is
the preface to Robert Mapplethorpe's Cer-
A
Book of Portraits (Twelvetrees Press, 1985). "A Photograph Is Not an Opinion. Or Is It?" was written as an accompanying text to Annie Leibovitz's Women (Random House, 1999). tain People:
"Homage
to Halliburton"
was published
in
Oxford American, March/April
2001.
"Singleness," one of a group of essays inspired by Borges's "Borges y yo,"
was collected
1995).
in
Who's Writing This?,
ed. Daniel
Halpern (Ecco Press,
Acknowledgments
35
1
"Writing As Reading," a contribution to a series called "Writers on Writing" in
The
New
York Times, appeared on December
"Thirty Years Later ..."
the preface to a
is
new
18, 2000.
edition of the Spanish
translation of Against Interpretation (Alfaguara, 1996).
Threepenny Review (Summer
in English in
"Questions of Travel"
appeared
in
was
first
published
Times Literary Supplement,
the
June 22, 1984. "The Idea of Europe (One More Elegy)" started conference on Europe held in Berlin in late
appeared
It
1996).
May
as a talk delivered at a
1988. It has never before
in English.
"The Very Comical Lament of Pyramus and Thisbe (An Interlude)" was written for the catalogue of an art exhibition in Berlin and first published there, in
German
translation, in
Wulf Herzogenrath, Joachim Hentrich, 1990).
"Answers
It
appeared
in
Die Endlichkeit der Freiheit Berlin
Sartorius,
New
English in The
to a Questionnaire"
was written
La Regie du
Que
peuvent
Jeu, n.s. 21 (1998),
"Waiting for Godot
Yorker,
March
It
Review of Books, October 21, 1993. There' and 'Here' " appeared '
"Joseph Brodsky" was written
in in
published in The
first
1991.
The Nation, December
in
repondent,"
and has never before appeared was
4,
was published,
les intellectuels? 36 ecrivains
in Sarajevo"
ed.
response to a
in July 1997, in
questionnaire sent by a French literary quarterly.
French, in "Enquete:
njcjo,
and Christoph Tannert (Edition
in English.
New
York
25, 1995.
1997 as the afterword to Mikhail
Lemkhin, Joseph Brodsky I Leningrad Fragments
(Farrar, Straus
and Giroux,
1998).
"On Being
Translated," a speech given in
Pellizzi,
November
1995 at a confer-
Columbia University and organized by Francesco the editor of Res, was printed in Res 32 (Autumn 1997).
ence on translation held
at
SUSAN SON TAG novel, In America, fiction in
won
s
the National
most recent
Book Award
for
2000. Her other books include the novel
The Volcano Lover, as well as two earlier novels; a collection of stories,
/,
etcetera; a play, Alice
in
Bed;
and nonfiction works, among them On Photography and
Illness as
Metaphor.
In
2001 she was awarded
the Jerusalem Prize for the body of her work.
Jacket design by Susan Mitchell Jacket painting: Indian Sky, 1988-89 by
Howard Hodgkin.
Courtesy of Anthony d'Offay Gallery© Howard Hodgkin
Author photograph by Annie Leibovitz
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