Blok, "Как мимолетна тень осенних ранних дней"

To Alexandra on her birthday, a work ("Like momentary shade of fall days past") by this poet.  You can read the original here.

Like momentary shade of fall days past,  
I wish to keep the germ of their ill ease,
This yellow leaf against the roadside leas,
This purest day, with shade its main repast;  

Because these shades compose burst beauty's seam,  
Because these days hold peaceful agitation,
They bear, they lend to final inspiration, 
The remnants of a dissipating dream.

Like the momentary shade of fall days past,

How one wishes to retain their early alarm,

And this yellow leaf fallen on the road,

And this clear day, so filled with shadows.

Because the shades of day are beauty’s surfeit,

Because these days are of a peaceful anxiousness,

They bear, they lend to final inspirations,

The surfeit of a dissipating dream.

Rede über die jiddische Sprache

An essay ("A speech on the Yiddish language") by this author. You can read the original here.

Before we come to the first verses of the Eastern Jewish poets I would like to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that you understand a great deal more of our idiom than you think.  

I don't have any real worries about the effect it will have on each one of you tonight, yet I want the effect to be liberated if it is supposed to be so. This cannot occur, however, if many among you remain so afraid of our idiom as to summon this fear to your features and gestures. I do not speak of those who arrogantly oppose it. But fear of our idiom, fear coupled with a certain resistance on this basis is, in the end, quite understandable.

Were we to take a cautiously fleeting glance at our circumstances in Western Europe, this would be our position. Everything, so to speak, in its turn. We live in rather harmonious contentment; we get along when necessary; we do without one another when we see fit, and even in such conditions we still get along. From such order then who could understand the confusion our idiom presents and who would have any desire to do so?

Our idiom is the newest European language, only about four hundred years old and, in many ways, much newer. It still has not formed locutions with the clarity that we need. Its expression is short and fast. It has no grammar texts. Enthusiasts try to write grammars but our idiom is continuously being spoken and modified; it cannot rest. People cannot let it sit and pose for grammarians to depict. It is composed solely of foreign words. Yet these words also do not lie inert within the language, they display the haste and liveliness with which they were introduced. The migrations of peoples have filtered our idiom from one end to another. All this German, Hebrew, French, English, Slavic, Dutch, Rumanian, and even Latin is accepted into our idiom with unheedful curiosity; there is already enough power behind it to hold the languages together in this state. Thus no reasonable person would think of making this idiom into a world language, as close as it might actually come to being one. Only the cant of thieves enjoys extracting individual words because it has more use for them than for locutions and phrases. And because our idiom has long since been a language held in contempt.      

Amidst this linguistic back-and-forth one does find some elements of known language rules. For example, our idiom originates from that time in which Middle High German passed into New High German. There were choices in the forms to employ, with Middle High German taking one form and our idiom the other. Or perhaps we could say that our idiom developed Middle High German forms with more logical consistence than did Modern German. One example is our idiom's rendition of "we are," mir seien (New High German: wir sind), a more natural development from Middle High German's sîn. Or we could say that our idiom stuck to Middle High German forms despite the rise of Modern German. Once a word entered the ghetto, it did not hasten to leave. For that reason we are left with forms such as Kerzlach, Blümlach, and Liedlach (New High German: Kerzchen, Blümchen, Liedchen, diminutives of candles, flowers, and songs, respectively).

And now into this language structure of rule and randomness flow dialects of our idiom. True enough, all our idiom can be said to be composed of dialect, even the written language, if one actually has mastered the idiom in its written form. With all this evidence I feel that I have, at least provisionally, convinced most of you, ladies and gentleman, that you would not understand a word of our idiom.

Expect no help from the explanation of the compositions. If you cannot understand our idiom at this point no cursory explanation would be of aid. At best you would understand the explanation and note that it dealt with a difficult matter. Everything will run in this vein. For example, I can say to you: 

Mr. Löwy will now, as he actually will, read to you three poems. First, "Die Grine" by Rosenfeld. These Grine are the German Greens, the Greenhorns, the new settlers in America. These Jewish emigrants proceed with their sullied luggage in a small group through a New York street. A crowd gathers, of course, stares at them in amazement, follows them, and then laughs. From this perspective our agitated poet then extrapolates these street scenes to include Jewry and mankind. One has the impression that as our poet speaks this same group of emigrants stumbles, although they remain quite far and out of earshot. 

The second poem is by Frug and called "Sand and stars" (Sand und Sterne). In a bitter interpretation of a Biblical promise, we are likened to the sand beside the sea and the stars in the sky. And while we are certainly stepped on like the sand, when will the part about the stars come true?  

The third poem is by Frischmann and called "The night is still" (Die Nacht ist still). One night a young couple chances upon a prudish scholar who is going to temple. Startled and fearing that have been betrayed, they then calm and comfort one another.  

Now you see that such explanations have done no good.

On the basis of these clarifications you would look in the readings for what you already know – and what really is present you would not see. Fortunately, everyone who knows German can also understand our idiom since, quite broadly speaking, the external comprehensibility of our idiom is formed from German. This is an advantage over all other languages on earth, but there is quite rightly also a disadvantage: it appears to be almost impossible to translate our idiom into German. The connections between the two are so tender and meaningful that they do not need to be torn apart right away. Whenever our idiom is translated into German, only something insubstantial remains. Now, translate our idiom into French and some of it can be conveyed to the French, but in German this would be destroyed. Toit for example is not tot, nor does Blüt mean Blut.

But it is not only through German that you, ladies and gentleman, can understand our idiom – you may come a step closer. Not too long ago, at least, arose the reliable business language of German Jews. You can find this language whether you live in town or in the country; you can find it more in the East or the West as a closer or more distant precursor of our idiom, and many gradations have remained. For that reason the historical development of our idiom could have been traced as much in the depths of history as in the surface of the present time.     

And you will come very close to our idiom when you consider that within you lies not only knowledge but power – power which allows you to understand our idiom in a sensitive manner. Only here can an explanation help; only here can information calm you so that you no longer feel excluded; only here would you be able to realize you cannot complain that you do not understand our idiom. This is paramount since with every complaint, our understanding and sympathy weaken. If you were not to move at all you would suddenly find yourself amidst our idiom. Once you have understood it – and our idiom is everything: words, Hasidic melodies, and the very essence of this Eastern Jewish actor – you will no longer be able to recall your previous peace of mind. And once you have sensed the true unity within our idiom, so strong that you become afraid – no longer of the idiom, but of yourself – you will not be able to bear these fears alone. You will not be able to bear them alone unless you also gain confidence from this idiom, confidence that can withstand this fear because it is stronger. Enjoy it as best you can! And if you lose this confidence tomorrow or later – and how could it remain in your memory from one single evening of readings! – then I hope that you will also have lost your fears. Because, after all, we do not wish to punish you.      

Kontroll

There is much to be said for the notion within a film that anything can happen, but there is even more to be praised in a work that can achieve that effect in a very narrow context. Some of the greatest dramas have benefited from their very form: as stage productions, they are necessarily limited to the feeble mechanics of deceiving or astonishing a live audience. That we may enjoy as a play the downfall of a Scot amidst the surfacing of a realm of hell suggests that its eventual filming in glorious computer-generated magic – and yes, such a beast may be growling in our vicinity soon enough – might be even more extraordinary. So we should not commit the rather unforgivable sin of equating the adage "anything can happen" with "there are no laws." Laws exist either deductively or a priori, and I will leave it to the astute reader to guess which set would be more welcome on these pages. While he's pondering the matter, we will turn to this rather entertaining film. 

The opening sequence features a man and a prepared statement, which may also be understood as the general definition of a script. Our man in Budapest claims to be the head of the city's subway system and is appearing on camera for the sole purpose of informing us that the conductors portrayed in the film do not reflect the actual enforcers floating about the rails that transport "more than three hundred million people every year." Yet honeycombed in this disclaimer are a few offbeat comments regarding the film's artistic purpose – surely the first time in cinematic history that the purported head of a metro system has acted as a preemptive film connoisseur. The film is both "symbolic and fictional," which means that it can be distinguished from a documentary only by its commitment to ludicrous nicknames and overdrawn characters, and here we should permit ourselves a gentle aside. Given the format of what follows, we care nothing for the likelihood that the person speaking is also an actor, nor that the film may or may not have been shot on location, nor, as it were, that Budapest even has a system of onboard enforcement as opposed to turnstiles and greater pre-boarding impediments. Can you imagine an action film preceded by a similar disavowal? If the tactic is one of national protection, it is a mild measure; if, however, a surreal film becomes more surreal by the inclusion of another layer of doubt, then we truly have a masterpiece.

The masterpiece in question will have many aspects of an action film. It has a hero Bulcsú (Csányi Sándor), who was once an architect, and it has what all heroes deserve, a loyal band of confederates: Muki, a mammoth narcoleptic with a very bad temper; the Professor, an older and meticulous gentleman; Lecsó, an elfish sidekick; and Tibor, the proverbial new kid on the block (in a classic hazing ritual, Tibor even gets to vomit at the sight of his first dead body). The red armbands they sport unfortunately suggest another police unit from more hideous times, but an executive decision is made early on to switch to black leather coats with pockets for both badge and band. This motley quintet work as ticket conductors, although only Muki can really defend himself against the seemingly endless stream of aggressive non-compliers. While the film threatens at times to devolve into an overlapping collection of vignettes, each highlighting the eccentricity of a different band member, these threats prove to be quite hollow. The only one accorded significant depth is Bulcsú, but the other all evince enough humanity to make them real (Tibor, for example, vacillates wildly from afraid to overconfident to frustration to panic). They clash with another conductor band, whose self-assured leader Bulcsú bests in a rather dangerous late-night contest and their internal disputes are thankfully kept to a minimum. As is, it should be said, the interference of the management at the top of the metro pyramid, who has been having an appalling time with the large number of opportunistic suicides or "jumpers" in the last few weeks. One such incident begins the film; yet a second incident about fifteen minutes later reveals that all these suicides were unknowingly assisted by a man in a leather jacket and black hood.

Unlike the bangs and scratches of most movie heroes, Bulcsú's scars accumulate. He becomes bloodier, paler, and more fatigued; he also becomes gradually estranged from the reality that he chooses to limit to the underground network, a sort of Frankenstein's monster with his every struggle clearly demarcated on his person. And in a great scene towards the end, Bulcsú even does two things protagonists normally are not allowed to do: he runs for what seems like ten minutes and, during those ten minutes, he loses steam and ambition, his muscles almost giving way to the rest they never properly receive. Despite his increasingly freakish appearance, he attracts a young woman, the daughter of an alcoholic metro driver who has always been friendly and kind to Bulcsú's team. The woman is, however, not without her quirks. Most notably the ubiquitous wearing of a teddy bear suit (perhaps inspired by this film) and her absolute refusal to buy a ticket, a right granted by her father's job. They eventually agree to go to the masked ball held in the metro and advertised very early on by an inconspicuous poster, but not before Bulcsú's past is broached in a wonderful dialogue just at the film's midpoint. His interlocutor is a former colleague, a man that in lesser films would be far less average or passionate. The man praises Bulcsú's work and genuinely misses him, having obtained the team leader position by virtue of, he implies, Bulcsú's departure. It is here that our protagonist reveals his very human fear of failure and the excuse that so many use not to harness their abilities to the maximum. He admires the man's tie and is astonished to learn that the man has kept "every scrap" of his old projects in the hope of his return to the firm. They part in a tacit expression of mutual respect and affection that simply could not occur in Hollywood productions, where every emotion is exaggerated to its puerile extremes. 

And what of our, ahem, assisted suicides? The film also does not resolve its mystery in an expected way, although it betrays nothing to mention that the killer shares a certain gesture with another character – and I will leave the matter at that. In view of the strict rules of train schedules, tickets, and government funds, one could claim that public transportation is the segment of our existence in which we are most bound by social etiquette – in no small part because of the need of collective safety. But while the metro never becomes a hell, even when an owl, a classic harbinger of very bad things, is seen perching below, there is a reason Bulcsú tells the paramedics scraping up one of the "jumpers" off the tracks, "I never thought there was a job worse than ours." Perhaps that's also why, at one point, all the escalators are going up.

King Kong

Around Christmas thirty years ago, for reasons that in retrospect make little sense, I nagged my father into taking me to see this sequel. The film was appalling enough, even to my untrained tastes; but the most notable part was that we comprised two-thirds of the audience, the only other moviegoer ensconced in the front row in a gorilla mask (that theater in northwest Washington D. C. is long since defunct, even if memories such as mine are probably not uncommon among local thirty- and fortysomethings). How odd then that it was the 1986 disaster and fugitive pieces of the 1976 movie, which I found in any case hopelessly dated, that formed my notions of the most famous giant ape in cinematic history (and if you think for one moment that I as a teenager could have endured the 1933 original, I have some seafront property in Bern that you'll just love). For that reason and a few others did I welcome the newest and best version of the Kong.      

We begin in the worst of times in 1933 New York, mere weeks into the most decisive presidency the United States has ever known. The feeble and malnourished often coincide with the beautiful and talented, such as Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts), a vaudeville actress whom we first see playing to an almost empty theater. That she will be unemployed by the next couple of scenes is hardly a secret; yet a hint as to her future comes in the casual mention of a play called Isolation. The playwright, Jack Driscoll (a starry-eyed Adrien Brody), has long been admired by Darrow, so much so that she has no qualms about buttonholing an obnoxious, well-fed theater producer and begging him for a part in Driscoll's play. Ann's eyes blench at the Italian restaurant at whose threshold she and the producer will have to part, and in a brief moment of pity he gives her a name and an address ("You're not bad-looking. A girl like you doesn't have to starve"). An implication is made about what Ann would have to do at that address, and the matter is smartly never rehashed. Instead, we turn our gaze to the morally and financially bankrupt world of Carl Denham (Jack Black).

Denham is the prototypical B-movie director, which means that he greatly resembles one of his own stock characters. While success has eluded Denham, he has also done his part to avoid it. We first meet him as he insolently abuses the investors for yet another preposterous jungle adventure featuring a live lion and a rather lifeless lead (Kyle Chandler), and the comments made in his absence befit a charlatan or a madman. A more socially aware reviewer than I would note that his witticisms ("Defeat is only momentary"; "Dammit, Preston.  All you had to do was look her in the eye and lie"; "There's nothing officially wrong with it because technically it hasn't been discovered yet") reflect the desperate torpor of the times – but readers of these pages know my destination for such nonsense, i.e. the circular file. B-film directors and their relentless pursuit of profitable mediocrity have always existed in the form of pulp writers, street buskers, and anyone who has an iota (and often not more) of artistic talent and an excellent nose for commercial demand. Denham wisely senses that the average consumer does not want to consider his own morbid situation too closely; films about poverty, while touching and necessary, do not entice the human imagination to create and soar. As such, he aims for the blockbuster that could not possibly be a blockbuster since that level of marketing domination had never before occurred. But then again, no one before had had a map of an unknown Pacific isle called Skull Island.

It is never revealed how Denham acquired this map, nor does such a contrivance affect our enjoyment of the spectacle. A common solution in movies of this kind is the fateful stroll by an antiques stop window, where the eye of our ever-curious protagonist is inexorably drawn to some bibelot containing a love letter or other long-concealed document. Denham is introduced with the map already in his possession so that we are spared the character development and misgivings that so obviously will not take place. His investors, already cash-strapped by their standards, haven't the slightest interest in funding a project to be filmed literally on the other side of the earth. Since minor obstacles – debt, disgrace, physical threats – have never stopped Carl Denham, a trip around the world may appear to someone of his relentless greed as simply commensurate with the eventual payoff. He coerces Ann to join the cast in a scene out of many other movies, with the difference being that Denham is not really a pimp (Ann ultimately signs up because of the chance of working with Driscoll, a man she will be destined to love, providing us with a foil to the later love story that I think you might already know), and Ann approaches a docked ocean liner with the assumption that this must be "the moving picture ship." But of course that honor is reserved for a rusty battered tramp steamer christened the SS Venture whose voyage out concludes the first act.

The legend of Kong has offended many because of the racial implications, and Jackson's film goes out of its way to make the swarthy Kong-worshipping inhabitants of Skull Island look like "no other people on earth." That said, one never has the impression that the predominantly white crew members of Denham's mission contemn the natives for being evolutionarily closer to their idol. And while one of the crew members is reading this very controversial novel, madness and colonialism have little sway in the world of Kong since he exists in an ecosystem preserved from human interference. It is no coincidence that Ann shares a surname with someone who had a great affinity for the link of man and ape, and that the damsel in distress is as refined and Aryan in feature as Kong remains a dark, amorphous hulk. But as opposed to prior Kongs, this beast is granted hegemony in a realm of equally gargantuan monsters (the famous fight scene with the Tyrannosaurus Rexes has to be seen to be believed), not just godhead among the primitives. Not that we could possibly revere anything that would want our destruction.     

Hölderlin, "Tränen"

A work ("Tears") by this German poet.  You can read the original here.

O tender love so heavenly!
If I your fateful eyes forgot,
Of ashes fiery – and if not,  
Forlorn, untamed, would you still be –

Those islands dear, that wondrous hub!  
For you alone do me address, 
Your shore, where the idolatrous 
Atone, if heavenly, their love.  

There saints in endless gratitude, 
And wrathful heroes served, in days  
Of beauty; there trees will have swayed,
And cities stood in patent view,  

Much like a thoughtful man; anon
Are heroes dead, love's islands seem  
Well-nigh deformed. So must love's dream  
Outwit all silly fools, bar none.  

Your softest tears do not my sight 
Occlude in full; let memory –
Deceptive, thieving – outlive me: 
Leave this so I may nobly die.