Rilke, "Die Kathedrale"

A work ("The Cathedral") by this Austrian poet.  You can read the original here.

In those small towns where every home 
Just like the year's fair, old and true
Has shut all shops in sudden view  
Of it in fear, in silent gloam; 

Then hawker, then the drumbeat stills 
To its awake and sharpened ear:
Since calm amidst its lapping hills,  
It sits and knows no house or fear. 

And in those towns you'll also note
Cathedrals grown past near and far.
Cathedrals whose arrival spoke 
Of nothing else, no sun or scar.  

And close looks gain on our own life;
Continually they elevate;                           
Like nothing else occurred, like fate    
In endless stacks in endless night.  

In stone and set in endless stead,            
Yet not what stirred on darkened streets  
That took those names which pure chance greets;
As children danced in green and red,                  

By hucksters cut by apron lines.    
These layers held both birth and day;
Strength, crush and fury then gave way, 
And love was rich like bread and wine.        

So porches filled with love's lament, 
And life delayed by clock's soft breath;
And in the towers' quelled ascent, 
and sudden spurn of skies, sat Death. 

The Miracle of Moon Crescent

Etymology tells us that "miracle" is from what is to be gazed upon and wondered at – one might think of the Spanish mirar and the German Wunder as its bookends – but the most common understanding remains its theological significance.  To the layman a miracle is what he fears most: evidence that his materialistic smugness proves not the dullness of the universe but his own.  Perhaps the thought of a being of human shape gliding across a body of water has always brought a sneer to his crooked face; yet there is something that even the staunchest and most militant of non-believers will admit: that there exist indefinite occurrences that modern science has never been able to fathom.  The more arrogant among our godless will quickly aver that, in time, science will get to these points as one sees to a series of operose errands.  The irony of such proclamations is that these devotees of science await the advent of All-Knowledge in precisely the same way that those of faith imagine the Second Coming.  Actually, there is one rather important difference; and that difference explains the events in a story found in this collection.

One tends to overlook the authority of tales whose protagonist is a short, scruffy and almost ubiquitous priest, and the scene around Moon Crescent is no exception.  The person we first meet and one who "could be only be compared to a tidy whirlwind," is the appropriately named Warren Wynd. His entire appearance resembled that of a spark of flame: bright, wondrous, and ruthless in his decision-making.  His operations are as efficient and robust as he is frisky and small.  We first meet Wynd in deep negotiation with a shallow and pompous millionaire called Silas T. Vandam, a nonsensical name for a nonsensical person.  Vandam does not get the deal he wants, is dismissed by a bored Wynd, and departs the latter's office only to encounter another wealthy and irreverent figure, the "westerner" Art Alboin.  Alboin represents what Chesterton often thinks of Americans and their money, swagger and complete ignorance of what preceded the formation of their mighty state.  And although it is easy to ridicule those who only worship the present, some people are particularly worthy of our derision:

Nothing supernatural ... just the great natural fact behind all the supernatural fancies.  What did the Jews want with a God except to breathe into man's nostrils the breath of life?  We do the breathing into our own nostrils out in Oklahoma.  What's the meaning of the very word Spirit?  It's just the Greek for breathing exercises.  Life, progress, prophecy; it's all breath.

There is a tenderness in this statement that evinces a child's harmless worship of the wonder of simply being alive; on occasion, when our mind drifts from the perfunctory actions that compose a certain portion of our days and nights, we find it incredible that anything works at all.  If only man were inspired by oxygen alone, how simple would our lives be?  Vandam and Alboin are already convinced of its simplicity and have a faltering ally in Wynd's redheaded secretary Fenner, a bitter young man tired of catering to Wynd's every tyrannical whim.  That does not prevent him, however, from fulfilling his duty and denying entry to Wynd's office to both businessmen who plan on persuading the little spark that they should all become partners and make each other even richer.  Their petty debate ends with the appearance of a small priest and a fantastic claim: that Mr. Wynd, who has been alone in his office for all of ten minutes, has hanged himself.  Since no one saw anything or any one during this time this could not possibly have occurred, chant the three non-believers in cacophony.  Until, of course, they indulge the priest's petition and find the office completely empty.    

Even if you know little about Chesterton's oeuvre you will easily recognize the atheist humbug which he so casually destroys – or, I should say, allows to destroy itself.  But experienced Chestertonians will detect something more.  As the story of the whirlwind opens, we are presented with additional facts about our miniature cyclone that supposedly distinguish him from his peers.  Indeed, one trait seems to be unique to him:

All sorts of stories and even legends were told of the miraculous rapidity with which he could form a sound judgment, especially of human character.  It was said that he selected the wife who worked with him so long in so charitable a fashion, by picking her out of a whole regiment of women in uniform marching past at some official celebration, some said of the Girl Guides and some of the Women Police.  Another story was told of how three tramps, indistinguishable from each other in their community of filth and rags, had presented themselves before him asking for charity.  Without a moment's hesitation he had sent one of them to a particular hospital devoted to a certain nervous disorder, had recommended the second to the inebriates' home, and had engaged the third at a handsome salary as his own private servant, a position which he filled successfully for years afterwards.

Some may find it a coy measure to include the Girl Guides and Women Police; others may point to the adjective used in front of rapidity as a coincidence; still others might ask themselves whether moon crescent isn't redundant (as it were, luna crescens has been correct Latin since at least the first century).  Yet the most intuitive of readers will be drawn to the three equals set before another human being who deemed himself not their equal and master enough to divine their hidden truths "without a moment's hesitation."  Now that would require power well beyond our comprehension. 

The Brazilian Cat

Almost exactly eight years ago, as autumn was gathering its troops for an assault on the Northern European summer – perhaps the closest thing to Paradise we may experience on this earth – I drifted into this film festival with a certain plan in mind.  The two films selected differed significantly in their premises but were indicative of my particular bias for the region: two Russian sisters, baptized into a life of luxury by an unscrupulous father, were the subject of the first tale; the second featured the most beautiful city in Europe and a black feline whose origin was, well, probably somewhere beyond our realm.  That the sisters' reality reflected the brutal capitalism of the New Russia, or whatever it calls itself, was of lesser importance than the manifest superstition of the typically skeptical Dane.  Even small tractable beasts in their sleekness and perfection hint at some distant power, which brings us to this story.

Our protagonist is an impecunious gentleman, Marshall King, of "expensive tastes, great expectations, aristocratic connections, but no actual money."  We cannot lament the fact that he is given to "pigeon-shooting and polo-playing" any more than the condition of other landed elite who just happen to be stony broke.  Yet King is more sensitive than your average peer.  His desire to stave off his mounting creditors – a strange parallel to what would occur later in his story – is attenuated by a longing for a plain, happy life bereft of the social responsibilities that accompany wealth.  Since in the family there is a considerable amount of money, King cannot help but feel that he is being precluded owing to little faith in his capabilities, a rather damning verdict for a man of leisure if true.  For that reason then does he leap at an unexpected invitation: his first cousin Everard, who is anything but impecunious, has just arrived from Brazil, bringing with him fauna of the most outlandish caliber, from birds to serpents to creatures wholly unknown to contemporary Europe.  But while Everard's panama hat, white linen clothes, cigar and back-slapping mirth all cater to an unfortunate stereotype, it is his Brazilian wife who may be his most exotic import:     

Nothing could be more hearty than his manner, and he set me at my ease in an instant.  But it needed all his cordiality to atone for the frigidity and even rudeness of his wife, a tall, haggard woman, who came forward at his summons.  She was, I believe, of Brazilian extraction, though she spoke excellent English, and I excused her manners on the score of her ignorance of our customs.  She did not attempt to conceal, however, either then or afterwards, that I was no very welcome visitor at Greylands Court.  Her actual words were, as a rule, courteous, but she was the possessor of a pair of particularly expressive dark eyes, and I read in them very clearly from the first that she heartily wished me back in London once more.

If you are familiar with Conan Doyle's most famous collection of tales, you may detect similarities between this Latin American woman and a couple of others – but I will leave that to the Holmesians.  King gladly treks out to Clipton-on-the-Marsh dreaming of a blank check, his wretched frame inspired with hope from Everard's reputation as a benevolent and unstinting soul. The invitation is for a week, during which time he will get to know his cousin and his wild adventures, ostensibly a socially acceptable means of currying favor with a more moneyed relative.  He is not disappointed, but rather whisked into a manor of immense proportions, and immediately asked to do nothing except be himself – all of which, coupled with Everard's manic requests for telegrams ("he had never fewer than three or four telegrams a day, and sometimes as many as seven or eight") might lead less gullible minds to a certain conclusion. 

Apart from a few flashes of incomplete understanding, King never questions his cousin's behavior.  He never really wonders why the man has so many animals but no children, why he invited a cousin he barely knew to exist and who could be expected to hit him up for an intrafamily loan, or, considering his eccentric hobbies, why he would bother to come back to England in the first place.  King is certainly more chary of the wife, who is portrayed by Everard as kind but "incredibly jealous," her ideal for the couple being "a desert island and an eternal tête-à-tête."  The shrewd reader will already have two or three scenarios in mind as Everard reveals the main attraction of his private zoo, a beast kept apart from the rest of the animals for very obvious reasons.  Although details of this monster will not be divulged here, one should ask oneself what type of megalomaniac would risk life and all four limbs to cordon off part of his manor for a dangerous pet (another Holmes story might aid in answering this question).  King does everything he can to display his helplessness and lack of knowledge on the nature of the beast, and despite the fact that the whole scheme smacks of skulduggery, we will only be as informed as our first-person narrator.  Even if we know what type of brutes Everard would keep on his desert isle.    

The Red Room

What we perceive as culture may be broadly understood as what we do with our free time.  For those only interested in money and power, culture will comprise what material items wealth and influence can acquire – at once seemingly limitless and bound to the earth that crushes our bones.   Those who pursue art and its sweet rewards, however, will have a very different perspective on culture.  They will eschew the resorts, the shopping, the discos, and the expensive and meaningless excursions to expensive and meaningless pockets of humanity; you will find them instead in bookstores, cinemas, sidewalk cafés, libraries, and museums, often sauntering about, seemingly directionless, and in any case inefficient in the conventional sense of the word.  Upon being asked about their leisure time, materialists will irreverently joke about what they ate and bought, and perhaps complain about the service; but artists will tell you something that they discovered about themselves or others.  It may just a fragment of a portrait, a revelation about someone's true motives, an understanding of a minor event, but it is from these seeds that art grows and blooms.  And the question of whether such pursuits are really worth our time is at the heart of this novel.

The uniqueness of the color has already been discussed on these pages, and the room in question is a salon in Stockholm where those of artistic temperament could convene and shirk their mundane duties:

They wanted a meeting place, somewhere they could talk, somewhere they could guarantee to meet an acquaintance at any time.  And since music was no barrier to conversation, rather the reverse, it was tolerated and gradually became as much a part of a Stockholmer's evening menu as punch and tobacco.  Thus Berns' Salon soon became the bachelor's club for the whole of Stockholm and each coterie had its own corner.  The inhabitants of Lill-Jans had commandeered the rear chessroom behind the gallery and because its furniture was red it had, for the sake of brevity, become known as the Red Room. 

This selection is from the sixth chapter, an arbitrary designation suggesting a certain lack of cohesion – although should we expect much more from a novel with the subtitle "Scenes from the Lives of Artists and Authors"?   As it were, we realize rather quickly that the Red Room, a symbol of decadence or inequality, is the only venue that links these disparate souls.   The ostensible protagonist for a large number of pages is the idealistic civil servant Arvid Falk, whose name implies a bird of prey but whose actions are reminiscent of a sparrow.  He wafts between the steady path of conformity he has already walked, with regular consultations with higher-ranking members of the Swedish bureaucracy as to the next steps, and something resembling an artistic existence.  The almost mid-twentieth century angst (a conundrum not unlike the one faced by the main character in this novel written ninety years later) has allowed Strindberg's novel to endure countless editions and still be considered the prototypical Stockholmer work.  Falk can sense and see what shapes his soul sculpts in time and space, but cannot distill this data into everlasting art.  He publishes poems with an unscrupulous arbiter of taste by the name of Smith, "a feared figure with a thousand tentacles," but does not advance much past the doggerel he dedicates to a young lass who loves an actor and fame more than him.  

Falk has a host of companions along his peripatetic way, including Olle Montanus, a Bohemian philosopher who has a moment of great pathos at the novel's conclusion, Lundell, a painter of popularity, Yngberg, another philosopher with certain ambitions, Sellén, a struggling painter, and Borg, whose role only becomes clearer after Falk endures greater and greater adversity.   And while Lundell's fate is most definitely what Falk fears ("He painted what public taste desired; he was never crippled by doubt; he may have left the Academy but he had done so for private practical reasons and he had not broken with it, even though he went about claiming to have done so"), his greatest apprehension is what he sees in his older brother, Carl Nicolaus Falk.  Carl Nicolaus is a money lender, a boor, a social climber, and one of nineteenth century literature's most outstanding creations.  Arvid comes to talk about Carl Nicolaus's having cheated him out of his rightful inheritance, an accusation that, as is common in family disputes, only arises sporadically.  Yet Carl Nicolaus has long since steeled himself to this charge:

He criss-crossed the room several more times, his footsteps sounding as if they were applauding his performance, and he rattled his bunch of keys as if signalling the curtain to fall.  His final speech had rounded things off so well that anything further would destroy it all.  In spite of the gravity of the accusation, which he had actually been expecting for several years as he had always believed his brother to have a false heart, he was more than pleased that it was now over with, so successfully over with, so completely and cleverly over with, that he almost felt happy and even a touch grateful. 

Whenever Carl Nicolaus appears – bickering with his insufferable sloth of a wife, berating his shop assistant Andersson, trying to impress those who could ordain civil honors, or dreaming up new forms of usury – the novel sparkles with the wit and precision of a small town tale by Melville or Hawthorne, and clearly foresees the mature Strindberg's future greatness.  That the rest of The Red Room is not as tight cannot detract from the beauty of its surroundings, of Sweden, of life in Northern Europe, of the epicenter of culture, philosophy and progressive thought that still wonders about what Heaven might bring.  As Montanus writes in a revealing letter:

It is a curse to feel the growth of your soul stunted while your body sinks ever deeper into the mire.  Walk behind the oxen and the plough day in and day out with your eyes fixed on the grey clods and you will eventually forget to look up at the sky.  Toil with the spade digging out a ditch under the scorching sun and you will feel yourself sinking down into the waterlogged soil, feel that you are digging a grave for your soul.  Ye know nought of this, ye who make merry all the long day and labor only to pass the idle hour between breaking your fast and dining.  And in summer, when the earth is green, you rest your souls and rejoice in nature as if it were a play, noble and uplifting.  That is not how nature is for a laborer: a field is food, a forest is timber, a lake is a washtub and a meadow milk and cheese.  Just soil, not soul!

Montanus once counted himself these laborers, who could not possibly figure in a novel about "Artists and Authors."  And yet they do: they hide in the shadows, begging for crumbs from the food dropped by these artists and the patrons that think money can buy culture; they waft in and out of the portraits we see hung on the Red Room walls; and in one scene they even sleep in a famous theater after all the shows and all the encores have died out.  Art has its societal benefits after all.

What Iva Recorded

It is rare for me to mention a film featured at the annual Croatian Film Festival in New York, and even rarer to be so entertained during a single, unpaused viewing.  Such is the charm of this handheld experiment that resonates beautifully with its subject matter: the birthday party (of sorts) of fifteen-year-old Iva (Masha Mati Prodan) in Zagreb.  The invited guests are few – her mother Zeljka (Anja Šovagović-Despot), her father Božo (Ivo Gregurević), and a greatly anticipated German client (Karl Menrad).  For her fourteenth birthday, Iva received the camcorder with which the whole film will be shot.  This gift will have to do for her fifteenth birthday as well, as her special day has been superseded by the family’s immediate monetary needs.  Yes, Božo drives a Mercedes (apparently a common sight in Croatia owing to the large migrant population in Germany), and, yes, the family lives in a rather nice, if unhesitatingly middle-class apartment with a balcony that will look rather good from where you’re sitting.  But this is apparently not enough.  Herr Hoffner (whose name comes from the German for “hope”) is expecting big things from this business deal and must be treated as an honored guest.  Honored guests should be served scampi, even if, Božo exclaims in one of many hysterical moments, he must go to “Mars” to fetch them.  The stakes are high and no one in the family is particularly amused at the pressure of the evening.

Much-needed levity comes in the form of Iva’s older and rather parasitic brother Darko (Boris Svrtan).  What is lovely about this character is the complexity with which he is imbued.  In a lesser film, an unwelcome Darko would bound merrily into the family dinner, get plastered, offend said honored guest, insult his bourgeois parents, sob in self-loathing, and then continue with his pathetic revolution.  We are offered instead the most complex of all the engine’s cogs. Doubtless, Darko is a drunken loafer; but he is also uncannily sharp and knows exactly how to handle the small situations that elude the sledgehammer straightforwardness of his father.  He notes, for example, that Croatia is renowned for its beauty queens and suggests that they procure one for the German to ogle.  “Is he married?” inquires Zeljka innocently, to which her husband replies in the affirmative.  “But he’s coming here alone?”  That is all the impetus Darko needs.  Soon he dials up an old flame who he claims has a perfect command of Herr Hoffner's mother tongue.  After numerous barbs are exchanged and Darko and sobriety part ways, the doorbell rings and, as promised, a young and frisky Croat by the name of Nina (German-born Barbara Prpić) appears and immediately addresses Božo with a slew of German niceties.  The automaticness with which Nina proceeds provokes an unpleasant thought that is soon confirmed when she reveals her “area of study.”  She speaks Croatian, German, French, and English, but does something quite different with her precious time.

About two-thirds the way through, all hope appears to be gone.  Surely, we tell ourselves, it would be a symbolic coup for Hoffner not to come, for the more economically advanced nation to shun the humble fare of its southern neighbor, and for the whole evening to disintegrate into a microcosm of the failing marriage of Iva’s parents.  But such predictability is reserved for far less thoughtful films.  Here there is no Waiting for Hoffner, no existential angst, no musings that would befit spoiled and ungrateful members of our privileged society with too much time on their soft, white hands. This is a family who works harder than most and has little time for philosophy.  By this point, Božo is so upset that he whacks the camera, which reacts poorly to the swift violence committed upon it, and for a few moments emits a hideous buzz in black-and-white.  I doubt whether any director would have had the testicular fortitude to let the rest of the film run in that annoying format for the sake of metaphor, so we soon return to normalcy.  When we resurface into the bright world of a Zagreb October, our German friend has indeed arrived.  In the first shot, he is all we can see, sitting at the head of the table and, to fulfill a Teutonic stereotype, extremely apologetic.  “I am glad to see,” he adds with a humble smile, “that Zagreb was not devastated in the war.”  We are then shown the entire table, with Božo handicapped by his poor English to Hoffner’s right, and Nina on his left keeping their client linguistically and physically interested.

From here the film takes a few more conventional steps, but they are the right ones.  The insufficiencies of a dinner at home cajole the group into dining at an upmarket restaurant, and Herr Hoffner continues to negotiate with Božo, who he knows cannot convey the slightest nuance in his English.  Nina refocuses her attention on Darko and Hoffner begins to talk up a flirtatious Zeljka, perhaps because she seems to have suffered the most abuse that evening.  Actually, it is Božo who gets the short end of just about every stick, but he also makes the most important decision in the entire film.  And let us not forget Iva, who for her birthday just wants her family to be together, and happy, like any other fifteen-year-old girl might.