Rilke, "Weißt du, ich will mich schleichen"

A work ("Know that I softly shall escape") by this Austrian poet.  You can read the original here.

Know that I softly shall escape    
Far from this loud, encircling gloom,   
Once I espy the wan stars' shape  
So high above the oaks' broad cape, 
And know their bloom.

Shall I choose paths of rarest weaves,   
By poet nor by mortal view’d, 
Among the palest evening leas?   
No dream but this within me heaves:  
That you’ll come, too.  

The Dream Woman

Anyone who bothers to remember his nightly peregrinations will assure you, even if he knows not why, that our dreams may prefigure our lives. More than occasionally we are stopped by reality's eerie coincidences, feelings of having experienced a particular moment at least once before, and odd bends and breaks in logic that seem reasonable to us because reason knows no greater bugbear than the megrims of the sleeping human mind. I often begin to write down pieces of my other existence, but my thoughts are betrayed by captions of waking notions. These are two separate lives, and when they begin to merge we may get something akin to the events of this story.

Our protagonist is Isaac Scatchard, a plain man of middling education and no luck in any field. Events have conspired time and again to relegate him to menial work that never pans out into a more permanent station, and while he is diligent and true, he always seems to be too late for the job. As might be expected of a man nearing the middle of life's generosity, he resides with his mother who makes a point of celebrating her son's birthday as if he were still a child. This whole setup is intended neither as farce nor an opportunity for psychobabble and mindless theories about the familial structure. Its distinct purpose is not to paint the picture of a soul howling in the caverns of the night to a God who has forsaken him, but of an average man who has little recourse but to accept his lot. Two days before his birthday, Isaac sets out on a day's journey for another possible job at a stable. Even before he takes a step in that direction, we know two things: the job will be gone when he arrives and his return home will be complicated by an obstacle, if true tragedy is meant, then a self-imposed one. Sure enough, after yet another disappointment in what is turning into a hideous pattern, Isaac makes inquiries and learns that "he might save a few miles on his return by following a new road." All good works of horror append a scene in which the character is allowed the option of retreat or of following sage and time-tested advice, advice he will invariably reject out of hubris or personal convenience, thus making him deserving of his gruesome fate. That Isaac seeks out an alternative to his long hike simply because he wishes to be home in time for his birthday meal can only bode poorly.

As it turns out, poorly would have been far more pleasant. Losing his way on this new road – the symbolism is blunt but appropriate – Isaac is obliged to spend the night as the solitary guest at a family inn. Usually an early sleeper, he stays up well past his normal hour; and when he retires to the humble guest room he notices "with surprise the strength of the bolts and bars, and iron-sheathed shutters." Why would any simple innkeeper have such an outlay in home protection? An explanation is given that cannot be true, but which suggests that our Isaac has, by his own will naturally, stepped into a realm of which he should want no part. What happens to him that night will not be revealed here; suffice it to say the sequence remains one of the most terrifying you will ever encounter in a text of this caliber. Isaac beats a hasty path homeward from these premises and soon enjoys what must be considered for him exceptionally good luck. This little streak lasts, we are told, seven years, and consists of steady work for one master and a "comfortable annuity bequeathed to him as a reward for saving his mistress's life in a carriage accident." If all this strikes you as more than a little curious, you will not be greatly astounded by what ensues shortly before another of Isaac's birthdays: 

Mrs. Scatchard discovered that a bottle of tonic medicine which she was accustomed to take, and in which she had fancied that a dose or more was still left, happened to be empty. Isaac immediately volunteered to go to the chemist's and get it filled again. It was as rainy and bleak an autumn night as on the memorable past occasion when he lost his way and slept at the road-side inn. On going into the chemist's shop he was passed hurriedly by a poorly-dressed woman coming out of it. The glimpse he had of her face struck him, and he looked back after her as she descended the doorsteps. "You're noticing that woman?" said the chemist's apprentice behind the counter. "It's my opinion there's something wrong with her. She's been asking for laudanum to put to a bad tooth. Master's out for half an hour, and I told her I wasn't allowed to sell poison to strangers in his absence. She laughed in a queer way, and said she would come back in half an hour. If she expects master to serve her, I think she'll be disappointed. It's a case of suicide, sir, if ever there was one yet."

This fantastic passage precipitates yet another choice, namely to accost a woman who seems to have been on the verge of committing that most cardinal of Catholic sins. Although our poor Isaac has finally gained in luck and finances after almost four decades of hardscrabble denigration, he has yet to learn much about the fairer sex for his own purposes. That may account for, we suppose, his gallantry towards a wounded soul. And yet in an interview the woman reveals nothing that would require his intervention:

He asked if she was in any distress. She pointed to her torn shawl, her scanty dress, her crushed, dirty bonnet; then moved under a lamp so as to let the light fall on her stern, pale, but still most beautiful face. "I look like a comfortable, happy woman, don't I?" she said, with a bitter laugh. She spoke with a purity of intonation which Isaac had never heard before from other than ladies' lips. Her slightest actions seemed to have the easy, negligent grace of a thorough-bred woman. Her skin, for all its poverty-stricken paleness, was as delicate as if her life had been passed in the enjoyment of every social comfort that wealth can purchase. Even her small, finely-shaped hands, gloveless as they were, had not lost their whiteness.

Has Isaac found beauty pure and unblemished or something much more malevolent? Is it telling that the young woman, whose name is Rebecca Murdoch, asks Isaac to a meadow for their first private meeting? And what then of the editorial insert about "a man previously insensible to the influence of women" – and it is best to end our interrogation right here.

While the profundity of Collins's contributions to English literature could be questioned, his style and ability to enthrall are glorious. I fear that only his two most famous novels are read with any regularity, as much a testament to our unlearnedness as to the fleeting caress of literary enamourment. This much-adapted work concludes disappointingly because the evildoers are revealed somewhat too early along, and the value of this magnificent novel lies more in its innovation than its perspicacity. Nevertheless, the reading of even one of them should assure the student of literature that he is dealing with a heavyweight. What is particularly superb about The Dream Woman is how neither of the main characters' actions require any explanation or motive. Skeptics may claim that short stories necessarily predicate a single decision, gesture, or even a word, because there is little time for anything else. But in the hands of first-rate writers even short stories may make their ensembles live. And why then did our dream woman not bother to complete her sin? There is only one plausible reason, but I will leave that discovery to the curious among us who are still not afraid of turning on the light in the wee hours just to take a look around the room. Sometimes ignorance is both bliss and salvation.

The Rumor

We possess a most malevolent habit of claiming to know more than we really do, a habit so developed that it has engendered the cult of lying, of deception, of chicanery. Why is lying so attractive? Because in many ways it is easier than the truth. The truth in its common form has limitations: colors, dimensions, dates, surfaces.  Something happened to a specific someone at a specific time and place, and to be good and faithful reporters, we must have the precise combination of these details or confront a quick barrage of no-confidence votes. And although a certain type of mind, usually a bit dry, is most adept at bringing us the latest bulletins and in-depth coverage, it takes entirely another spirit to concoct and embellish. I suppose you can say that fiction has never actually hurt anyone, except when it bleeds into the vastness we call real life. Which brings us to a story from this collection.

Their names are Frank and Sharon Whittier, which given some revelations towards the end, should count as humorous and ironic – but let's not spoil all the fun. They have known each other since childhood, almost an eternity; they have three children; they moved in the tumultuous 1970s from "the comfortable riverine smugness of semi-Southern, puritanical Cincinnati" to New York, "this capital of dreadful freedom"; they are gainfully employed as the owners of a small art gallery on West 57th Street; and, most importantly as our story opens, they seem to have survived the self-aggrandizing and gaudy decadence that was the nineteen-eighties. They would be called high school sweethearts by a reporter if it weren't for the fact that we have no immediate evidence of the image that such a moniker generally bestows – the homecoming dances, the varsity jackets, the necking behind the gym or a locker door, the earth-shattering loss of innocence. All we have is their marriage date, Frank's fear of being drafted, and their shared interest in the humanities. Offspring bound them more closely together, as did work, and life trod on in unobtrusive fashion until one day, after about twenty years of husbandship and wifeship had sailed along, Sharon gets word that Frank has a gay lover.

The source of this rumor is Avis, one of Frank's former adulteresses – a can of worms that is thankfully kept shut. Avis is a "second-wave appropriationist who ma[kes] colored Xeroxes of masterpieces out of art books," then does something rather terrible to them with her bodily fluids. She first heard of Frank's secret life from two other members of that powerful subculture that had patiently waited its turn and was now demanding that the term "equal rights" be extended to those young men in tight jeans and somewhat feminine demeanors. Yet Frank had spent twenty years as a confirmed and shackled heterosexual without having ever suggested that what he endured every day was just that, enduring, and not enjoying. A discovery of this nature, especially given the pretentious and trashy informant (Frank apparently had a rash of flings, but Avis was particularly abrasive), tends to diminish the credibility of the accusation. Sharon questions Frank, who answers in a manner she finds studied, whereupon she remembers his womanly fastidiousness about his weight. For the time being, this minor revision is sufficient to admit society-wide subterfuge:

In the days that followed, now that Sharon was alert to the rumor's vaporous presence, she imagined it everywhere – on the poised young faces of their staff, in the delicate negotiatory accents of their artists' agents, in the heartier tones of their repeat customers, even in the gruff, self-preoccupied ramblings of the artists themselves. People seemed startled when she and Frank entered a room together: the desk receptionist and the security guard in their gallery halted their daily morning banter, and the waiters in their pet restaurant, over on 59th Street, appeared especially effusive and attentive. Handshakes lasted a second too long; women embraced her with an extra squeeze; she felt herself ensnared in a net of unspoken pity.

There is much in what follows about being the proverbial last person to know; there is also a generous helping of ambiguity that has always served as a topic for art because unlike ethnicity, age, or gender, sexual orientation can be successfully and continually suppressed for an entire life. How often have we seen film or literary characters act in an unusual and initially inexplicable way, only to have it all sobbingly confessed in the end as another case of fear and loathing? Too many, I suppose; not that such methods are ineffectual in heightening awareness and perhaps making us ponder the eccentricities of neighbors and old friends – but here we stray onto territory that should remain ungrazed.

To opine that the story adheres to a formula would be unfair. Where its tension flutters is precisely those passages in which Sharon's conscience becomes our lodestar. I will not go so far as to say that a betrayed wife's mind is a dull rock of presumption, but I think you know what I mean. The cuckolded husband and his enraged quest for knowledge is old hat even though newer additions to the canon are invariably distinguished not only by a vivid imagination, but one positively grotesque. Such is not Sharon's problem. Even when she computes the hours whiled away apart, the grooming, the lecherous looks exchanged between Frank and strangers, the "buttery, reedy tone of voice that might signal an invisible sex change" (a marvelous description), she still arrives at the same prime number. He simply cannot be something he has always been and something that he might very well be, because one life effaces the other. What can be said, however, is that there is only really one artistic exit from this conundrum, and it is the one taken by Updike. Anything less would have acceded to hideous plot devices and conspiracy at its most macabre. And what wagging tongues could possibly find all that interesting?                 

Herz aus Glas

A casual observer will notice that the average filmgoer's attention span is commensurate with the time it takes for a variegated, exciting movie poster (seen from afar) to be approached and understood (seen at arm's length) as yet another ensemble of preposterous gags. Yes, we are all drawn to the gaudy and outlandish – they would hardly exist otherwise – and that brief moment is enough to lead the more impulsive among us to purchase a ticket, download a song, or enter a store with a mission. In a world filled with near-equivalents, we are naturally attracted to what involves an idealized partner, location, or version of ourselves (no nonsensical psychology classes required to come to that conclusion). Thus the least successful advertising campaign, a staunch effort at sabotage, might boast heaping doses of dreariness, ugliness, and mystification. Who would want to see such a film, and, more importantly, who would want to make it? The same small segment of mankind that can appreciate a conceptual endeavor if the images correspond to the motifs. To wit, if from that murky mystery something profound and artistic can be derived, which brings us to this highly unusual production.

Our setting is Germany and our time is around 1800. These details, we note, are gathered simply from the language spoken and the attire worn; nothing in the way of context is afforded the viewer. We begin with a shepherd gazing at some misty cows, then, much more sensationally, at lush hills that appear and disappear as the mist wends around their girths. When a ruthless cataract becomes the camera's subject, a voiceover expresses some pseudo-philosophical concerns ("I begin to feel the cataract. It pulls me down. Death pulls me down"), yet we are still uninformed as to why we're looking at these nature shots at all. After several minutes in slow preamble, our lens focuses and we follow our herdsmen whose name is Hias. Hias is probably short for Matthias, and the basis for this character, as well as for another character called Mühlbeck, may well be this alleged soothsayer (Mühlhiasl and Matthias Stormberger seem to be separate accounts of the same person), the "prophet of the Woods." Whatever one may think of such folk heroes, if one such figure is the cornerstone of your film, you are interested in neither realism nor straightforwardness. And indeed, once Hias retreats to his herd, he is besieged by villagers who claim they have seen a giant. Giants "break our trees and slay our cattle," they lament. "Did you not," he chides them softly, "pay attention to the position of the sun? Otherwise you would have seen that it was the shadow of a dwarf," which is where our film distinguishes itself from many other allegorical tales. Most films would not have gone the extra step and added "dwarf" (the elongated shadow of a normal-sized man would be frightening enough), yet Herzog underscores that what we are watching is not only a nightmare, but a nightmare destined to come true. One day, dwarfs will indeed walk like giants. But for the time being the villagers face a more immediate crisis: the death of Mühlbeck, the glass factory foreman.

Mühlbeck is never shown on-screen, augmenting his legendary status as the only villager privy to the formula of the red glass, the lifeblood of the village's economy. I should say, the lifeblood of the wealth of the factory owners, an unnamed father and son complacent and paranoid in their mansion as the rest of the town drudges through hand-to-mouth squalor. Upon the foreman's death panic strikes the locals, most of whom are employed in the factory. Protracted scenes of attempted glass-blowing and actual craftsmanship remarkable in their simplicity and beauty are interwoven with the melodramatic worries of the nobles. "Will the future see the fall of the factories just as we have understood the ruined fortress as the sign of inevitable change?" the son tells his pint-sized butler, Adalbert. Yes, the butler is a dwarf, and the son claims he will die if the secret of the red glass is not discovered ("I need to put my blood in the Ruby glass or it will trickle away"). The father, whose laugh suggests insanity, has not left his armchair for twelve years, the last time he put on his shoes and inspected the factory and the outside world. With the image of the factory owners more fully defined, it is not difficult to imagine what is really going on, especially after Hias, renowned for his prophecies, states: "Those with smooth hands will all be killed." What is being predicted is an overthrow of the ruling elite – the means of production has literally changed hands – but the villagers seem to be the last people to know. In fact, it would not be surprising if the events in this little isolated hamlet postdated this notorious period, and Hias's visions were both prescient and things of the recent past.

Many critics have detected in Herz aus Glas not only the advent of the French and October Revolutions, but all the future of mankind. While it is not my place to belittle such assumptions, it might be better to restrict our ambition to the era in question: that is to say, the general upheaval, unification, and democratization of nineteenth-century Germany. As such, we could describe some of the minor characters: the lobotomized exhibitionist who seems to live in a convent; the sexually repressed, destructive maid Ludmilla; Mühlbeck's deaf-mute mother, garbed like a Corsican widow, who sees her son's favorite Davenport sofa torn up and restored as the nobles' search team ferrets around for the secret; the two mates, Ascherl and Wudy, who are told by Hias that one will end up dead on top of the other and decide to drink their sorrows and fears away (every time a beer mug is picked up, we assume it will be downed in one gulp); the endless assortment of clownish and clueless extras, some of whom appear to be wearing lipstick. Who are all these characters? Most of them are parodies of standard figures from German folktales, whose heyday is coming to a screeching halt. It may also help to know that Herzog, in an unprecedented move, hypnotized the entire cast apart from Hias. The herdsman then became the sole bastion of reason and, consequently, slightly aloof and disdainful of everyone else ("If nothing changes," he says to them with disgust, "you think it's a blessing"). Since Herzog has a long and vivid history of casting locals with little or no theatrical experience, it is impossible to determine what kind of performances he could have elicited had his charges not been as sleepy-eyed and sluggish. The film's best scene takes place when the sofa is actually delivered to the nobles' house. "I am excited about this letter," the young noble tells Adalbert. He then requests a letter opener, slices open the sofa as if it were a piece of daily correspondence, finds nothing except springs and padding, and declares, "when a letter's words are scrambled, it makes you think." One would hope so. One also wonders what the young nobleman thinks when Hias whispers: "You will never see the sun again and rats will bite your earlobes." And we haven't even mentioned what Hias does to that bear.  

Bunin, "Когда на темный город сходит"

A poem ("When deepest sleep in soundless night") by this Russian man of letters.  You can read the original here.

When deepest sleep in soundless night  
Invades the city's darkest squares,   
A blizzard swirls and with it bears
The chime of bells in crazed delight.

How cold the heart does freeze in fright!
As if a plaintive song is struck,               
Through raging yelps and fateful luck,
Unheeded bells mourn their sad plight.     

The world is bare, the winter weak;      
And snowstorms catch cadavers' limbs,          
Extinguish stars by windy hymns,           
And beat the bells in darkness bleak.  

In great and empty churchyards hide
Our worlds embalmed by minute hands;
As Death his savage joys expands,           
And weaves his shroud of blackest tide!