Garnered Thoughts

I intended to review Classic Stage Company's production of Age of Iron today. But a sick actor resulted in a cancellation of last night's performance. So instead, my thoughts on two films I recently watched.

Alain Resnais' Muriel (1963) and Lars von Trier's Europa (1991, or Zentropa, as it was titled in the 1990s release) share many elements. These European films, partly dealing with the wake of war and war atrocities, both push and experiment with cinematography and narrative in various ways.   But I love Muriel and hate Europa!

I have to admit that Europa aims to be serious artistically and conceptually. Although the photography and sets hardly ever aim at conventional realism, they do aim to convey a reality about the devastation  in Germany after WWII. But von Trier strikes me in the end as sensationalistic and scattered and pretentious. The art simply doesn't seem to gel, and the themes ultimately seem lacking in complexity.

The French debacle in Algeria forms part of the background for Muriel, although the broad time frame of the film encompasses WWII as well. This film is artistically blessed in a host of ways. An eerie score was composed by Henze, one of the 20th century's most serious composers. The voice in the score is Rita Streich, a magnificent singer of the period both in opera and song. Resnais' cameraman was the wildly talented Sacha Vierny. The film deals with broadly with memory. I find it the closest thing in film to something like Proust's interest in the complexity of memory, consciousness, and emotion. The characters' lives and memories intersect in dazzlingly complex ways. I love the ways that the lives of the main characters overlap and interact in such accidental and messy ways. The film abounds in haunting, poetically suggestive images--buildings built but never occupied, apartments that serve as antique stores, films, photographs, old letters and diaries. Here each element seems to me to reenforce all the others. Quick cuts, mosaic construction, half-explained events, minor characters for whom one can easily imagine fuller roles... My guess is you haven't seen this film. Give it a try. It's not as well known as some other Resnais--say Hiroshima Mon Amour, or Last Year at Marienbad...but it's by far my favorite.

Saturday evening I had dinner and book discussion at my house with Adelphi University Honors College alumni. Our book for the evening, John Updike's The Centaur.

Next week I'll be discussing the same book, also in my home, with current Honors students. So I don't want to lay out much of my specific reading until next week after that discussion. But I do have some thoughts about literary criticism that apply not only to this book but--as I approach artistic creation--to every book, painting, building, and musical composition I encounter. 

My first assumption is always that the creator--author, composer, painter, etc.--is better at this than I am. Second, I assume that the creator wanted to do an admirable job and tried to realize that desire successfully. In addition to these two assumptions I know for a fact that the creator spent more time in the creation than I will in the consumption, even if I read the book several times or listen to the piece over and over, or stare at the painting so long that the museum staff may start to get concerned...

Armed with these thoughts, I try to understand what is great and beautiful about the work I'm engaged with. Some aspects of the work may strike me first as strange, or unsuccessful or partially successful or incomprehensible. But rather than accept my reaction as an acceptable evaluation, I tell myself, "But the artist must have had something in mind, something to which great effort was devoted--effort aided by talent, skill, inspiration. So how does this work? How can I 'read' this element as something beautiful or effective?"

Now I know not everything created is perfectly created. And some works are better than others. But this approach usually produces very satisfying results. The harder I work to appreciate the work, the more I see there, the more I understand how it works. This may seem terribly obvious. But when I read professional book reviews, articles, and books, I often find critics complaining about one aspect or another which a more complex reading could account for as artistically successful. I admit that there is a danger of over-interpretation or fanciful interpretation in this approach. But if I had to bet money on whether:

a) I'm getting more out of the work than the artist put in

or

b) The artist put more in than I'm able to get out--

I'd put my money on b) every time. I might lose the bet sometimes, but I feel I'd be bound to come out a lot richer in the long run.

So my approach to The Centaur is to try and understand how whatever might seem superficial or flashy is really deeply successful. And my feeling is that Updike's success is indeed profound. In what ways? Read my blog Wed. Nov. 18. 

A slim but real connection--in the past few days I saw The Barber of Seville at the Metropolitan Opera and watched--long overdue--Nikita Mikhalkov's lovely film The Barber of Siberia. Both provided huge pleasure.

I had seen the Met production before. But the novelty was the lead, Joyce DiDonato, an American soprano who created as fresh and delightful a Rosina as I've ever seen or heard. That's a tall order, because there have been many truly wonderful Rosina's, and a soprano who doesn't merely want to imitate past performances has to be truly inventive. DiDonato is lovely and a lovely, winning actress. She found new phrasing and emphases, had the courage to throw away a few beloved tried and true turns, and shaped her arias with great skill. This, as many have observed, is truly a golden age for the mezzo-soprano: DiDonato has many rivals, if one sees this as a contest. But I will certainly make sure to hear her in anything she sings at the Met in the future.

Nikita Mikhalkov is one of my favorite directors. His Burnt by the Sun is one of my all-time favorite movies, hugely deserving of its Oscar for best foreign film. One of the stars of that film, Oleg Menshikov, also stars in The Barber of Siberia. He's an extraordinarily charismatic actor. In this film, he has lots of company. There's a whole crowd of fellow cadets who broke my heart when they are seeing him off at a train station. I won't reveal the occasion. But it's a unique group performance they put in, never to be forgotten. Set in the final decades of czarist Russia, this film is full of Russian cliches, but wonderful ones, wonderfully and lovingly presented--vodka, performing bears, aristocrats, the Kremlin. And it's permeated with opera, since Oleg's character is cast as Figaro, the barber of Seville, in Mozart's Marriage of Figaro. While this film doesn't carry the weighty seriousness of Burnt by the Sun, it still manages to explore a range from hilarity to tragedy. See it and Burnt By the Sun. I don't see how you could fail to like either of them.

Tonight I will have dinner and a book discussion with several students from Adelphi University's Honors College. Our novel: Aleksandar Hemon's The Lazarus Project. 

Hemon won a "genius grant" from the MacArthur Foundation in 2004, and he is certainly some sort of genius. The Lazarus Project is not quite like any novel I know. The playful narrative inventiveness perhaps recalls some of Nabokov's work more than any other. Hemon also infuses his work with Slavic melancholy and sardonic humor. The novel's narrator is a writer, and he has many stories to tell.

The novel explores the progroms that took place in Kishinev (Bessarabia/Moldova/Russia--one of those parts of the world that from decade to decade gets different names) in 1903 and 1905, the death in Chicago in 1908 of Lazarus Averbuch, an immigrant who survived the 1903 pogrom, and life of the narrator, a writer who left Sarajevo in 1992, lives in Chicago in 2004, and who visits Kishinev and Sarajevo with a photographer, an old acquaintance of his from Sarajevo whom he encounters in Chicago.

Hemon works in the European tradition of the grand philosophical novel, exploring questions of life and death, violence and power, freedom and the individual, the discovery and creation of the self and of the story of the self. Hemon's characters and themes remind one variously of works of Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, Conrad, Ford, Nabokov and Barth--but all combined into one work.

From the start the novel examines story telling in a series of alternating variations--newspaper accounts, daydreams, dreams, jokes, interrogations--Hemon's invention is boundless. The stories from 1903, 1908, and 2004 are so intricately interwoven that it's virtually impossible at some points to distinguish between fact and fiction, invention and reality. And of course that's part of Hemon's project. But just part.... I'm eager for the discussion with students tonight. I'm sure I'll learn more from them and know more about the novel tomorrow than I do today. 

Last night with Gregory Mercurio, one of the Adelphi University Honors College Academic Directors, I saw Jude Law in Hamlet again. His performance continues to astonish, and I thought I might add some to my previous reaction.

People have commented on how energetic Law is as Hamlet. But if you haven't seen the performance, you might not understand all that means. Last night I realized more than I had before just how much he does simply with his hands and arms. You could do a whole class for actors just on that. The amount and variety of movement is staggering and adds quietly and almost imperceptibly to the dynamism of the performance. 

Another form of energy in Law's Hamlet is the enormous physical effort devoted to the vocal apparatus, the clear and beautiful production of line after line, often delivered at considerable speed. We were in the fifth row last night where we could closely observe the constant care with which Law pronounced each word. The effect was overwhelming. 

My admiration for some of the secondary roles grew last night as well. The Laertes was quite engaging. Perhaps he's growing in this role as the production continues. Horatio too is striking--more solemn than I imagine him usually, but effective. Again, if you can manage to get to see this production, do. The play repays every visit you make to it on the page or in the theater. And you're unlikely to have many opportunities for theater visits as rewarding as this.

Academicals that is. Last night I read Terry Pratchett's latest Discworld novel, Unseen Academicals. The book came as a recommendation from one of our Adelphi University Honors College graduates who's now at Harvard Law School. In the end he decided it's not his favorite Pratchett, nor is it mine. But I did  enjoy for several reasons.

It wouldn't be Pratchett without lots of verbal jokes-puns, double entendres, playing with English idiom. There's the usual range plus--also as usual--slightly more literary and learned play. In this novel which involves universities, colleges, archchancellors, deans, and dons, there's a new upstart college--Brazeneck. That's a reasonably learned play on Brasenose College, Oxford, originally named Brazen Nose, presumably after a bronze door knocker shaped somewhat like a nose. More likely to be appreciated by Pratchett's British audience than his young American one. There are quite a number of nods to the world of Harry Potter--wizards on collectible cards, and so on. But all of this, while enjoyable, isn't what keeps me reading Pratchett.

What I love most about Pratchett's Discworld is that it's fundamentally so good-natured and likable. His humans share the world with goblins, dwarves, trolls, vampires and other creatures. And everyone manages not merely to get along but to get along in a very jolly way. The main thing not tolerated is intolerance. The most interesting characters in this Pratchett outing turn out to be not the professors but rather four of the servants at the Unseen University and two very worldly wise figures from the dwarf fashion industry. Differing hugely in temperament, talent, and experience, these six nevertheless all end up demonstrating delightful understanding and compassion. The novel glows with their good will and what that goodness and worth make possible.

This novel also nods in recognition of old-fashioned escapist romance fiction. But in Pratchett everything comes with a difference. Here the most beautiful young girl lands a fairy tale career as a fashion model. But she models the latest version of mail for dwarves--micromail. And on the runway she always wears a beard. It's Discworld.

Pratchett may not be for you. Later this week I'm having two reading circles, one for students on Hemon's The Lazarus Project, and one for alumni on Updike's The Centaur. Unseen Academicals is not literature of that sort. But it is fresh and simply lovable in a lovely old-fashioned way.

Sunday afternoon Adelphi University Honors College students enjoyed the last performance this season of Christopher Wheeldon's ballet company Morphoses. And I do mean they enjoyed it...

The program at City Center began with "Continuum," a Wheeldon ballet from 2002. My reaction to this piece was one I usually have to Wheeldon's choreography: no one creates dance positions and compositions more beautiful and enjoyable to watch and no one creates as many varied movements as Wheeldon. 

The last piece was a Wheeldon premiere, "Rhapsody Fantasie." Although there are other Wheeldon pieces I like better, there were brilliant and moving sections throughout. 

But for me, and I think for most of the audience, the most striking and moving part of the program was "Softly as I Leave You" choreographed by Paul Lightfoot and Saul Leon. The piece uses only two dancers and a rectangular box standing upright, barely large enough to hold the dancers. The choreography broadly suggests the birth, realization and end of a relationship between the two dancers. The movement is sufficiently abstract that different viewers could provide further details in very different ways. But the execution was electric. The lighting inside the box was a luminescent gold. When either or both of the dancers were in the box it had the feeling of a Klimt painting. Audience members wept. This is high art.

Wheeldon has been unable to hire full-time dancers, but dancing in his company is an honor and an exciting artistic experience, so he is able to attract extraordinary talent. Wendy Whelan from New York City ballet is well-known and was predictably lovely. Lesser known but magnificent to watch were the Dutch dancer Rubinald Pronk (voted Holland's sexiest dancer ever), the Australian Andrew Crawford, and Taiwanese-born Edwaard Liang. 

Wheeldon is comparatively young and attracting a young audience. Good news for those of us who love ballet. 

This morning my Adelphi Honors College students and I will discuss books 9 and 10 of the Aeneid. In book 9 Nisus, feeling an urge to act asks himself, "Is it the gods who make me want this, or do we make our desires into gods?" It's a thought that's easy to miss, but worth developing in the context of classical Greece and Rome. 

The invitation is to see the soul as made up of a great jostling crowd of gods, and not just gods who are present, but gods who desire. Athena desiring wisdom, Hephaestus desiring to create, Ares to fight, Aphrodite to love, Zeus to control, Apollo to make music and art, Dionysus to dance and revel and explore new identities. This great polytheistic soul of desire would be the healthy soul. 

This picture makes an illuminating contrast then with the soul in distress and painted by Dante or described by Shakespeare's Hamlet. Dante's suicidal souls live in a desolate empty landscape where they, as thorn bushes, are alone. Hamlet has lost all his mirth, all his interests and desires. That is, all the gods have left. It's an empty space which all former desires have deserted. 

I like Nisus' question and what it suggests about the ancient Greeks and Romans. They are driven by a host of desires, many gods that move them to action and achievement--action and achievement which represent the fulfillment of desire. I feel energized by this picture as I head into the weekend. I'll be gratifying my desires for opera and dance on Saturday and Sunday, and I'll write about it all next week. Have a great weekend. 

Last night I attended Turandot at the Metropolitan Opera along with a group of Adelphi University Honors College students. This was the season premier of one of the Met's most spectacular productions, one of the surviving Zefferelli sets--almost more like a movie set than a stage set. Turandot always provides high drama--decapitation, suicide, and finally of course, love. But last night there was more drama and beauty than usual....

The lights went down, but before the curtain went up it was announced that Guleghina, the soprano scheduled to sing the lead, was ill. She was replaced by Lise Lindstrom who had never sung at the Met before. Tension, worry. This is a brutally demanding role. It turns out Lindstrom is an ideal Turandot. The audience went wild at the second act curtain call, and they were right to. Lindstrom has sung Turandot to great praise elsewhere. I hope we'll hear her more often at the Met in seasons to come. All the roles were beautifully sung. Poplavskaya, who was a very winning Natasha in War and Peace in 2007, was sweet and delightful as the doomed Liu. And Giordani brought the house down with "Nessun dorma"--one of Pavarotti's trademark show-stoppers. And while Giordani is not the star that Pavarotti was at his peak, he sings much better than Pavarotti did in his later performances at the Met. 

It was the Met debut for the conductor Andris Nelsons as well. No worries there either. He led what has become one of the great orchestras of the world in a glorious performance. And our Honors College seats last night were in the fourth row of the Dress Circle, one of the spots I've found over the years to have the best, most vibrant acoustics in the house. So it was another great evening of Honors College culture in Manhattan. Coming up this Sunday we will be at City Center for Christopher Wheeldon's ballet company Morphoses. 

We were fortunate to have the poet Seth Michelson as Senior Tutor in the Honors College for a few years at Adelphi University. Those alumni he taught have wonderful memories. Today I'd like to take a brief look at three of his poems from two of his collections, House in a Hurricane and Kaddish for My Unborn Son.

Seth--in person and in his poetry--radiates and communicates an intense love of life in all its aspects from the most abstract and intellectual to the most concrete and physical. This side of Seth is playfully illustrated in a poem with an intentionally humorous, misdirecting title, "Another Wistful Poem About Heartbreak." This is actually a seventeen line paean to the Cheeto in all its lovable variety with a characteristic playful reference to the philosophy of Heraclitus. Every Cheeto, we're reminded, has a unique shape, length, weight and pattern of cheese-dust on its uniquely twisted surface. Seth wastes no time in whining:

So while those other poems go on crying

and whimpering to godless skies,

this one makes a crunch

like a roach crushed by a heavy boot.

No silly sentimentality here--just a raucous, joyous, Falstavian delight one of the simple and fabulously available pleasures in life.

"Still Life..." is an example of pastoral or idyll, a poem set--as Greek or Roman poetry in the hands of Theocritus or Vergil would set it--in the late afternoon light, warm and sleepy. The traditional elements are there, the sleepy male, trees with trembling leaves, sunlight on closed eyes. But Seth is an urban poet. The full title of the poem is "Still Life with Old Man, Cadillac, and Elms in Late Afternoon Light." So the traditional shepherd youth has been replaced by an old man. And instead of dozing on a Tuscan hillside, the man is dozing in his Cadillac in a "residential block in Queens." The leaves dancing in the branches above him though are still like his own fluttering eyelids. And this urban idyll conveys the same magical, sleepy ideal of a moment when man can rest in an with nature at complete peace and rest. Witty, sly, learned, and delightful to read.

"Kaddish for My Unborn Son" provides the title for the collection in which it appears. It explores life and death, the fragility of life, the violence and suddenness of death, its completely unsentimental brutality. The image carried through the poem is of a hunted rabbit killed by a shotgun blast. But this tragic sadness also provides a frame for understanding the beauty of life, the almost unbearable tenderness, the physical luxury and mystery of love in life. So that at the close of the poem the grieving father, still alive after a night of mourning, registers 

my wife asleep

on my shoulder, her breath

warm on my neck, and so sweet

it could kill me. 

The poem carries what Seth himself always projects, a knowing awareness of all the sadness and difficulty in life, an awareness that doesn't depress or paralyze but rather intensifies the impulse to cherish and delight in what is given to us moment by moment.

There is great and often subtle art in these carefully crafted poems. But they're also bursting with exuberance and delight. How I miss Seth! How lucky I am that he writes these things I can keep with me!

This semester I'm using Sarah Ruden's new translation of Virgil's Aeneid in my course in great literary works (The Human Condition). I gave the translation a very positive review last year in The New Criterion. This fall I'm more enthusiastic than ever.

Unlike other recent translators Ruden holds to one line of English for each line of Latin. So her poem is fast. She uses iambic pentameter, the meter of much Shakespeare and of Milton's Paradise Lost. It may sound extravagant to say so, but at her best she rises to the level of these two poets. Consider the end of Book Five in her translation (One of Aeneas's sailors falls to sleep on the watch and falls off the ship):

The stealthy doze sank in, and he relaxed.

Sleep bent to pitch him into limpid waves. ...

His comrades didn't hear the cries he gave.

Winged Sleep rose through the insubstantial air.

The fleet ran on in safety undisturbed

And free of fear as Father Neptune promised. ...

The father noticed that the ship was drifting

Without its guide. He steered it through the night waves

Himself, with groans of anguish for his friend:

"Oh, trusting victim of calm sea and sky,

Unburied on some strange shore, Palinurus."

Listen to the short "i" sounds in line 2. Notice how line 4 begins with three stressed syllables followed by two unstressed ones, breaking the normal iambic rhythm and imitating in sound the motion of liftoff. Then hear the music of the repeated "f" in lines 5 and 6 and 7. There's a nice enjambment between lines 9 and 10. And then Aeneas' closing elegy in lines 11 and 12 is truly great poetry--the four monosyllables calmly and sadly closing line 11; the three "s" sounds in line 12; then the built-in pause before the final word of the  obituary, the name of the lost friend, Palinurus.

Read the whole passage aloud. The poetry should start to hypnotize you, almost to put you to sleep like the unfortunate Palinurus. Whether you're an old friend of Virgil or never quite warmed to him, try this translation. Now we have one of the world's greatest and most influential poems in English that's a joy to read.

I've now seen Jude Law in Hamlet twice with Honors College students. Of all the Hamlets I've seen on stage and screen, I think he's the best. He brings out better than anyone I've seen how much Hamlet enjoys acting and how good he is at it. 

Part of the success of the performance is surely due to Law's enormous charm. But that charm is deployed with such intelligence! His reactions to other characters are fascinating. He moves through the soliloquies quickly but freshly. And all his lines are delivered beautifully. 

Not everyone or everything in the production is perfect. But it's a very handsome production, spare but stylish and beautifully lit. 

But see it for Law's performance. If you think "the most likable Hamlet ever" isn't what you want in Hamlet, let me know after you see it. You might change your mind. Or rather, Jude might change your mind for you.