Kean by Jean-Paul Sartre

Kean by Jean-Paul Sartre (1953)
Based on the play by Alexander Dumas
Translated from the French by Kitty Black
The Devil and the Good Lord and Two Other Plays by Jean-Paul Sartre
(New York: Vintage, 1960)

See this post for an introduction to Edmund Kean and some history on Dumas’ and Sartre’s plays.
This post looks at Alexandre Dumas' play Edmund Kean: or, The Life of an Actor, as well as some differences between the two versions of the play.

Kean: Do you believe I am paid to act? I am a priest; every evening I celebrate mass, and every week I receive the offerings of my public, that is all. (Act I, page 180)

The play begins at the Danish Embassy in London. Elena, Countess de Koefeld (the Danish Ambassador’s wife) is preparing the Embassy for a ball that evening. She confesses to Amy, Countess of Gosville, That she is in love with the actor Edmund Kean. The Prince of Wales arrives and informs the women that Kean has eloped with Anna Danby, a businessman’s daughter. Anna was a known admirer of Kean but was engaged to Lord Neville. Kean appears at the Embassy asking for help to clear Anna’s name. He gives a letter to Elena to read—on the front is a letter confirming Kean rebuffed Anna’s attempt to elope with him. The back of the letter, in Kean’s handwriting, contains an invitation for Elena to visit the actor in his dressing room.

The next night in Kean’s dressing room the actor nervously awaits Elena’s visit while Solomon, Kean’s factorum, tries to get Kean to understand they are broke. The Prince of Wales arrives and draws Kean’s intentions from the actor, confirming what he suspected (since he has seen this before from Kean). They wager whether or not Elena will appear. The Prince hears a knock at the secret entrance and leaves, assuming Kean has won the bet. It is Anna Danby telling the actor she has run away from home in order to become an actress in Kean’s troupe.

After the play Kean goes to his old haunt The Black Horse, a bar and brothel by the docks. The troupe Kean used to perform with is there but they are glum because a key member has broken his leg. Anna appears at the bar, following instructions she received in a letter she thinks is from Kean but is from her fiancé. A very drunk Kean offers to perform Othello the next evening with Anna playing Desdemona as charity for the troupe. Lord Neville comes to the bar but Kean, seeing through his intentions, embarrasses him and avoids his thugs’ attempts to murder him.

The next day Anna rehearses her part in Kean’s dressing room. Elena arrives and tells Kean she couldn’t show up the previous evening because her husband is suspicious. Kean realizes the Prince of Wales desires Elena, too. A contest of wills follows as Kean and Elena demand favors from each other. The performance falls apart and Kean harangues the prince and the audience from the stage. The next day Anna tells Kean she is leaving for America. Elena and Kean agree to part but her husband shows up demanding satisfaction. The Prince of Wales saves Kean from the count, from the court, and protects Elena from discovery. Kean is exiled for a year and he chooses to go to America and marry Anna.

Kean: What am I, if not the man you have made of me?
Prince: I?
Kean: You and all the others. We believe that men need illusion—that one can live and die for something other than cheese. What have you done? You took a child, and you turned him into an actor—an illusion, a fantasy—that is what you have made of Kean. He is sham prince, sham minister, sham general, sham king. Apart from that, nothing. Oh, yes, a national glory. But on condition that he makes no attempt to live a real life. In an hour from now, I shall take an old whore in my arms, and all London will cry “Vivat!” But if I kiss the hands of the woman I love, I shall find myself torn in pieces. Do you understand that I want to weigh with my real weight in the world? That I have had enough of being a shadow in a magic lantern? For twenty year I have been acting a part to amuse you all. Can’t you understand that I want to live my own life? (Act II, pages 188-9, emphasis mine)

Sartre’s play was written as a favor to the French actor Pierre Brasseur so the focus is on the playful performance. As I mentioned in the earlier post on Kean, Sartre was intrigued by Kean, seeing him as an archetypical existential man, alienated from himself and everyone around him. Sartre used the play to include expressions of philosophy but don’t try to hang all of existentialism on the play—it can’t sustain it. What it does, though, is add funny and moving commentary on this alienation. Kean succeeds as an “existentialist play” because it follows a traditional format. In this case the framework was Dumas’ play, of which I will have more on in a separate post. As you can see from the synopsis it faithfully follows a Romantic comedy format. The rest of the post will look at the commentary Sartre adds.

Kean: “Are you unhappy? Are you in love?” Every woman asks the same questions. To be or not to be. I am nothing, my child. I play at being what I am. From time to time, Kean himself plays a scene for Kean. (Act II, page 195)

These musings focus on reality and illusion as well as how the two interact. There are plenty of opposites in the play involving variations on image vs. reality, action vs. play-acting, authenticity vs. disingenuousness. Showing these tensions in a theater is common since it falls within the normal course of business. For Kean, though, the lines are blurred. Since a “play” exists both on the stage and in the audience’s mind, Kean acts in order to move the audience and involve them inside the world he creates. His affirmation comes from the applause in the theater and the adulation outside it, but there are major differences between the two worlds. Kean “rules” while in the theater, but while he may seduce countesses off the stage he is considered an inferior being—an actor. Kean and Sartre highlight the role theater plays in our lives, where we enter the world of fiction in order see representations of ourselves. Under expert hands the theater becomes a mirror.

Kean becomes a hall of mirrors highlighting the many roles we play in life. While the actors play a role on the stage, the audience also has a role to play in the theater. And, as everything folds back on itself in the play, while the audience escapes from reality while attending the play (in order to see their own representation on the stage), Kean hides himself from the reality of his life. Despite his tendencies, Kean works toward self-realization and achieves it just as the curtain falls. Like the audience understanding life from the artificial machinations it sees, Kean uses the unreality of his situation to reach self-awareness.

Kean (on stage, out of character, addressing the Prince of Wales): Where do you think you are? At court? In a boudoir? Everywhere else you are a prince, but here I am king, and I ask you to be quiet, or we will stop the performance. We are working, sir, and if there is one thing the idle should respect, it is the labor of others. (Act IV, Scene ii, pages 248-9)

Kean continually attacks the status quo but he also revels in it. He enjoys the notoriety and benefits of being famous while at the same time bemoans his troubles. He understands that people love Kean the actor but don’t care about Kean the man. Usually Kean’s focus is on Kean and no one else, so when he genuinely helps someone else it stands out. Often his generosity comes at high expense, such as throwing the last of his money to a street musician. His concern for former troupe members is genuine, even if the performance turns into a fiasco. Consistent with Shakespeare, the play within a play reveals the true state of things.

The choice of Othello (a change from Dumas’ play’s choice of Hamlet) works perfectly. Othello’s jealousy becomes Kean’s as he watches Elena talk with the Prince of Wales. Instead of a murder, though, we watch Kean’s self-destruction by committing lèse-majesté. When Kean walks to the edge of the stage, out of character, to insult the prince and draw his prop sword, the handle of the sword symbolically comes off in his hand. Kean is impotent off the stage, but he eventually finds his own voice. The illusion of the play has been destroyed, but the reality of his life receives the audience’s laughter and contempt. For a man that has acted in order to deceive himself, reality provides a bracing wake-up call. Kean’s exhortation that they only care for illusion could be equally applied to himself for much of the play.

Kean: Come, sir, you need not be afraid. It is only Kean the actor, acting the part of Kean the man. I am the man who makes himself disappear, night after night. And you, who are you? You are playing the part of the Prince of Wales? Very well, we shall see which of us wins the greater applause. And the Countess? I would say, of we three, she is by far the best actress. [He laughs] What shall we call the play? As you Like It, no doubt. Or Much Ado about Nothing? Wait, we must make sure of a happy ending. The prince and the countess must have plenty of children, and the old count must receive a great many decorations. As for the buffoon—ah well, his debts will be repaid. (Act II, pages 191-2)

The differences between the two lady-interests helps us understand Kean’s progress toward self-realization, too. Elena is typical of Kean’s attention and conquests. Well-placed in society as a countess, Elena makes it clear she fell in love with Kean the actor. Anna Danby, on the other hand, comes from a Danish merchant family (there are plenty of jokes about cheesemongering in the play) but she falls in love with Kean the man. Elena and Anna are similar people though from different classes, but Anna rejects the societal upgrade thrown to her from her engagement to Lord Neville.

Anna represents an absolute, doing what it will take in order to act on the stage and get what she wants. From this perspective she’s an uncorrupted version of Kean. Anna treats Kean as a man, not an actor, which he has trouble handling even though he calls for this throughout the play. The only other person that treats Kean as a man instead of an actor is his servant Solomon, but Kean brushes him aside time after time (ironically, in part, because of Solomon’s role in society). Anna’s force is confirmed by Solomon as she practices her role of Desdemona and breathes too much life into the character. Anna, in acting as in life, refuses to be a victim. On the other hand, Elena accepts her place in society and gives up Kean. She refuses to give up her role in real life, as shown by the handling of the return of her love letters. Kean goes straight to the resolution by handing the letters to her while she delays accepting them because she follows the ‘form’, as shown in plays, she must adhere to in their return. Kean accuses Anna of wrecking his life but she allows him to live the life he claims he wants.

Kean (to Elena): Listen—we are three victims. You, because you were born a woman—he [the Prince of Wales], because he was too highly born, and I, because I was a bastard. The result is you enjoy your beauty through the eyes of others, and I discover my genius through their applause. As for him, he is a flower. For him to feel he is a prince, he has to be admired. Beauty, royalty, genius; a single and same mirage. We live all three on the love of others, and we are all three incapable of loving ourselves. You wanted my love—I yours, he, ours. What a mix-up. You were right. Three reflections, each of the three believing in the existence of the other two; that was comedy. (Act V, page 269)

As I mentioned earlier, the play is a hall of mirrors, with theater and reality constantly reflecting each other. It turns out the existence of Sartre’s play follows nested reflections, too. I’ll end with a quote I found that concisely captures some of that mirroring. Next week I’ll post on Dumas’ play (if he did write it, that is) that Sartre’s Kean uses as its basis.

In short, Sartre’s Kean is a play about an actor [Kean] requested from him by an actor [Brasseur], and adopted from a play about an actor [Kean] requested by another actor [Lemaître] from an unknown author [Théaulon and de Couey], but signed by a great novelist and playwright of the day [Dumas].
- Sartre’s Theatre: Acts for Life by Benedict O’Donohoe (Peter Lang: 2004), page 170

I'll admit my bias about the play. Kean has been a personal favorite since I saw it at Shakespeare Santa Cruz in 2000. Bias aside, I think it's a marvelous play. Very highly recommended.

Update: I inadvertently left off a link to Stuart Fernie's page with his reflections on Kean. If you're interested in the play, please take time to visit his page.

Instant movie for the weekend: A Royal Affair (2012: Denmark)

Another historical drama, but this one is less like a soap opera than last week’s recommendation. A Royal Affair, directed by Nikolaj Arcel, is “set in the 18th century, at the court of the mentally ill King Christian VII of Denmark, and focuses on the romance between his wife, Caroline Matilda of Great Britain, and the royal physician Struensee.” (from the Wikipedia entry) The entry provides the production history of the film, which was influenced by Per Olov Enquist ‘s novel The Visit of the Royal Physician.

Christian has taken Caroline for his bride but his mental instability proves to be unsettling for everyone around him except those that wish to control him. After Caroline gives birth to a boy, Christian takes his leave of the court to journey in Europe. Johann Friedrich Struensee, a German physician, is depicted as a man of the Enlightenment having published anonymous tracts calling for reforms. He is approached by Rantzau and his son Brandt while Christian is traveling on the continent. The king's aides concerned about his health, mental and physical. Rantzau and Brandt hope that Struensee can win the job of king’s physician and help the pair return to the king’s good graces. Struensee goes for the interview, which begins like this:

Christian (morose): “I don’t need a doctor.”

Struensee: “The court thinks you need a doctor. Do you have any idea why?”

C: “I like to drink. I like hookers with big breasts. And I like fighting.”

S: “What’s wrong with that?”

C: “I am King!”

S (sits): “What if you weren’t king? What would make you happy?”

C: “To sleep, perchance to dream.”

S: “Often expectations fail, and most often there where most it promises.”

C (looks closely at S, taking his measure): “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”

S: “They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts.”

C (coming alive): “What a piece of works is a man.”

S: “There something rotten in the…”

C (waving his hand dismissively): No! I don’t like that one. I don’t like it. (smiling) Pick another. Come!”

Needless to say, Struensee gets the job. What follows after Christian returns to Copenhagen is a tangled web of scheming by everyone struggling for power: Struensee, the Royal Dowager (Christian’s stepmother) and her son, and members of the council are only a few of the players in the drama. Caroline’s inclusion in the plots begins as she struggles to achieve some level of freedom but her role changes as she finds a kindred soul in Struensee. After the council is dissolved the physician becomes the sole member of the cabinet, passing many laws providing freedoms and reforms to Christian’s subjects. The physician is shown in an idealistic light, although the mask slips occasionally when he uses the same controlling language as the council. The backlash from his reforms and his affair with Caroline generate more machinations by members of the dissolved council, setting plans in motion to place the Royal Dowager’s son on the throne.

Brandt, in talking about his father, provides a warning to Struensee when he quotes from Malory’s Le Morte d'Arthur: “Yes, men have an odd ability to ignore reason when it comes to beautiful young women.” My main enjoyment in the movie came from the relative complex characters, rarely descending to caricatures (although sometimes approaching it). The intersection of desire, duty, ideals, and historical forces makes for a powerful brew. Currently available through instant streaming sources.

IMDb.com page
Official website (includes a trailer)

Mads Mikkelsen as Struensee and Alicia Vikander as Caroline Mathilde
Picture source

Great Battles Lecture: Hannibal’s Secret Weapon in the Second Punic War

Dr. Patrick Hunt, Stanford University, speaks. Hannibal, a Carthaginian commander who lived ca. 200 BCE, is considered one of the greatest military commanders in history. His use of the environment in his warfare against Rome in the Second Punic War—often called the Hannibalic War—set precedents in military history, utilizing nature and weather conditions as weapons to complement his generally smaller forces. This strategic marshaling of nature could be described as a "second, secret army," as demonstrated in his battles at Trebbia, Trasimene, and Cannae. (Lecture given on June 5, 2013)

I enjoyed the last Great Battles Lecture from the Penn Museum so much I thought I would continue to post on them as new ones are available. Dr. Hunt’s lecture is on Hannibal’s “secret weapon” in the Second Punic War (218 to 201 BC…all subsequent use of dates will be BC unless otherwise noted). Dr. Hunt gave some background on the growing conflict between Carthage and Rome that led to the Punic wars, explored Hannibal’s background, looked at possible routes over the Alps into Italy, and focused on his strategy and tactics. “Secret weapon” may be reaching a bit, but it is clear (as noted in the above description of the lecture) that Hannibal included the use of weather and nature to his advantage. Instead of a summary like I provided for the previous lecture here are my notes and the content of a few slides from the lecture:

Polybius believed a good historian had to visit the locations he was writing about in order to adequately write about them—this gave him “topographical credibility.”

Hannibal’s strategies have been studied for centuries:

1. Know and control the terrain
2. Know your enemy
3. Exploit your enemy’s weakness (including dual consuls)
4. Give your army the best tools (including psychology: encourage your men but be brutal)
5. Ambush whenever possible (deception)
6. Surprise (do the unexpected)

On #4 and psychology: Andreas Kluth’s Hannibal and Me says that Hannibal’s situation, where the army had to “do or die,” is what drove a lot of Hannibal’s men—as invaders, constantly surrounded by superior numbers, they had to either win or die. Hannibal shared the hardships with his men, building camaraderie, but also wanted to be feared. Machiavelli’s maxim that it is better to be feared than loved captures Hannibal’s approach.

Hannibal’s “secret weapon”: Use Nature to your advantage. It was the equivalent of expanding his arsenal with a secret army). His tactics included the following:

• Cross mountains (Alps in winter)
• Use winter cold and time (Trebia)
• Cross swamps in spring (Arno River)
• Use summer fog (Trasimene)
• Fight at night (Ager Falernus-Volturnus)
• Use dust-blowing wind (Cannae)

Dr. Hunt steps back at this point to look at Carthage in general, then focuses on the 3rd century. First Punic War—Sicily was the battle ground (264-241) as Rome expanded and came into conflict with Carthage’s trading superiority. The Treaty of Lutatius is onerous on Carthage. After the First Punic War, Rome called the Mediterranean Mare Nostrum (“our sea”).

In his 1935 work (title not mentioned—I’m guessing Roman Alpine Routes) Walter Woodburn Hyde says that early Romans are show a fear of mountains in their writings.

Dr. Hunt reviews the debated point of Carthage’s child sacrifice and the tophet. Also covers Hannibal’s mention of his experience having a proxy animal sacrificed in his place. His father, Hamilcar, had a grudge with the way he was treated by Carthage. He went to Spain to build up autonomous resources.

Hannibal received aide in crossing the Alps, after researching it. A maritime crossing into Italy was not feasible—heavily guarded. Valleys within the Alps was the route. From Livy’s History (XXI.32): “The dreadful vision was now before their eyes: the towering peaks, the snowclad pinnacles soaring to the sky, the people with their Wild and ragged hair.” (Livy, unlike Polybius, didn’t visit the locations he wrote about). Dr. Hunt has been exploring possible routes over the Alps, following the valleys and passes and narrowing down the possible routes based on the historian’s descriptions. He provides some of Polybius’ descriptions and shows slides from some of his own trips along the route (around 37:30 is an anecdote about taking Stanford football players on a trip).

Hannibal makes an example of the Taurinian clans (Celts). Polybius (Book 3, 52-53): when Hannibal descends out of the Alps his men are more like beasts than humans—they have suffered so much. Hannibal augments his troops with Celts. Up to 25% of troops at this time are Celts. Up to 10 languages spoken by Hannibal’s troops, a true international force.

Dr. Hunt showed some of the artwork by Angus McBride, drawings of various allies Hannibal absorbed into his army and their unique weaponry. He also displayed pictures from Serge Lancel’s Hannibal to highlight the weapons used by varying groups in his multicultural army, such as the falcate (cleaver). The takeaway from these pictures was that Hannibal had different tools and weapons because of the many backgrounds in his army.

Battle of Trebia: on the winter solstice—shortest day of the year. Hannibal sent his Numidian cavalry across the Trebia River early in the day. Sempronius was in charge of the Roman army because Scipio had been wounded. Hannibal knew the strengths and weaknesses of each general he faced and took advantage of Sempronius being in charge. The forces of Sempronius were lured, unprepared, into the freezing Trebia River while the Numidians had prepared for it. Hypothermia set in before the Romans had crossed the river—Hannibal used the weather as an ally. Romans treated Trebia as an accident, not realizing the tactics Hannibal used to his advantage.

Then Hannibal crossed the Arno—the crossing of a swamp, which was not a happy time for his army, but had the element of surprise. Trasimene saw another hothead, Flaminius, in charge of the Romans. Hannibal took advantage of the fog from the lake that occurred this time of year—Hannibal’s army was hidden in the fog while Flaminius charged into a killing zone. At least 30K Romans and allies killed in this battle.

Fabius Maximus, now commander of the Roman army, declined to engage Hannibal directly. Fabius was nicknamed “the delayer,” which wasn’t intended as a compliment. At Ager Falernus, Hannibal had been bottled up in the valley while Fabius had blocked river crossings and mountain passes. Hannibal escaped and avoided a major battle by using his cattle, alighting bundles of flammable material on their heads and sending them into the hills. Fabius knew it was a trick but his guards chased the cattle, leaving a pass open. Yet another disaster for the Roman army.

At Cannae, wind from off the coast carried dust this time of year, creating a screen for Hannibal. Rome was using many raw recruits, due to previous losses, as well as new leaders that were politically motivated. The terrain has been chosen by Hannibal to make the Roman attempt to fight like a Greek phalanx ineffective. Hannibal has less men but the Roman army was constrained…they could not sweep out, or envelop the Carthaginian army. Combine this with the dust and wind, and once the experienced Roman leaders were killed Carthage was insured the victory. Hannibal’s troops feint and encourage the Romans to rush to their deaths.

Effect of Roman defeat at Battle of Cannae: depending upon the source, it is estimated that 55,000 (Livy) – 70,000 (Polybius) Romans were killed or captured at Cannae. Among the dead were the Roman consul Lucius Aernilius Paullus, as well two counsuls for the preceding year, two quaestors, twenty-nine out of the forty-eight military tribunes, and an additional eighty senators (at a time when the Roman Senate was comprised of no more than 300 men, this constituted 25%-30% of the governing body). Virtually 1 in 5 of very Roman male between 18-40 was killed. Not a single Roman family was unaffected. Hannibal collected 200 gold rings of Eques knights. All this happened in six hours.

At this point Rome lay open to Hannibal but he decided not to lay siege to the city, the hinge-point of the war. From Livy’s History XXII.61: “How much more serious was the defeat of Cannae, than those which preceded it can be seen by the behavior of Rome’s allies; before that fateful day, their loyalty remained unshaken, now it began to waver for the simple reason that they despaired of Roman Power.” Hannibal spent (wasted) a decade in Italy, then Scipio Africanus takes the battle directly to the Cartheginians. Roman military strategy and tactics changed after Hannibal.


Update: More detail on Carthage can be found in my post on Richard Miles’ book Carthage Must Be Destroyed

Edmund Kean: fact, myth, and everywhere in between

Edmund Kean by James Northcote (1819)
Picture source at the National Portrait Gallery

Edmund Kean (1787 – 1833), an English actor noted for his leading roles in Shakespeare, was as famous for his personal life as for his professional one. His messy divorce, many affairs, adultery trial, and riotous excesses were fodder for gossip. His stage performances alternated between laughable and brilliant—in his last performance (Othello) he received an ovation while he was suffering what he thought were his death throes. Six weeks later he died. His was a life of celebrity that other notables found memorable, good or bad. About the actor Samuel Taylor Coleridge said, "Seeing him act was like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning." Harry Houdini collected Kean memorabilia.

Jeffrey Kahan in The Cult of Kean (Ashgate Publishing Co., 2006) traces the celebrity of the actor, looking at the cultivated image Kean tried to project, and sometimes live up to. Kahn also looks at the various hagiographic treatments his biographers published, adding to the actor's reputation. Three years after Kean’s death, Alexandre Dumas wrote the play Edmund Kean, Or, the Life of an Actor at the behest of the actor Frédérick Lemaître. In an ironic case of symmetry, after the French actor Pierre Brasseur played Lemaître in the film Les Enfants du Paradis he asked Jean-Paul Sartre to write a play based on Dumas’ work so he might play Kean. Sartre was intrigued by Kean, seeing him as an archetypical existential man, alienated from himself and everyone around him: “He [Kean] was the Myth of the Actor incarnate. The actor who never ceases acting; he lives out his life itself, is no longer able to recognize himself, no longer knows who he is. And finally is no one.” (140)

Sartre based his portrayal of Kean not on the actor himself but on Frédérick Lemaître, who is said to have “become” Kean on the stage and in his personal life. The legacy of Kean continued with a musical comedy, Kean by George Forrest and Robert Wright, playing on Broadway in 1961. It was based on Sartre’s play which was based on Dumas’ play, emblematic of the way in which the legend-building Kean’s life comes to us. Kean, as a character, has become as famous as his performances during his life, on and off the stage. His death scene as played by Ivan Mosjoukine in 1924’s film Kean (renamed Edmund Kean, Prince Among Lovers) is larger than life, setting a record for the longest death portrayed in cinema—ranging between 16 and 20 minutes depending on the speed of the projector. Note in the review they even take pains to point out that the portrayal is “more like the popular idea of the famous actor” instead of an accurate depiction.

Brian Moyes has a great post on Kean leasing a Scottish house on the Isle of Bute. Check out the pictures of the busts adorning the gate: Edmund Kean, William Shakespeare, Philip Massinger, and David Garrick. As Brian notes, “Obviously modesty wasn’t one of Kean’s traits.”

Posts regarding the two play versions of Kean:

• Alexandre Dumas' Edmund Kean: or, The Life of an Actor and some differences with Sartre's play
• Kean by Jean-Paul Sartre

Update (19 Jun 2013): Edmund Kean at Richmond, a page providing detail on Kean's life in the Richmond Upon Thames borough of London. There's a link for further reading on the topic, too.

Playbill for a performance of Richard II, 13th March 1815, Theatre Royal, Drury Lane
Featuring Edmund Kean as Richard II.
Picture source at the Royal Shakespeare Company

Fateless (2005 movie: Hungary)

A link to my post on the novel

IMDb.com link

From The New York Times: a review of the movie and an article on Kertész and the movie (both of which I’ll reference in the post)

Since I posted so much about the book in the link above I’ll try and keep this post short. Since Imre Kertész wrote the novel and the screenplay, the differences between the two (as well as how they took advantage of the different medium) are what I will focus on in this post.

The first thing noted in The New York Times review is what impressed me about the movie—how can you make a film about the Holocaust be so visually beautiful? The colors are muted in the beginning, with exceptions like the yellow stars, and become even more washed out as the story unfolds. This muting allows for a potent use of light and color, such as allowing brighter light and golds during Gyuri’s (Georg’s) “golden hour” in the camps. Many scenes don’t need dialogue or even actors since the shot speaks volumes. Powerful scenes like this include Gyuri’s grandfather’s facial expressions during his son’s “going away to the labor camp” dinner or the focus on the luggage and coats piled up next ot the railcars at Auschwitz.

So how do you convey what is going on in the inner mind, where so much of the novel takes place? Voiceover provides many of thoughts, but Kertész also added scenes to show Gyuri ascribing humanity during the dehumanization process:

• The job foreman tries to intercede on the kids’ behalf after they are rounded up by the police.
• The policeman leading them to the train station indicates to Gyuri he should take off during an opportune moment.
• An entertainment scene is added during their transport, effectively making the surreal even more strange.
• In the novel Gyuri talks about being hungry and watching the guards eat. There is a great scene where Gyuri gets vicarious pleasure watching a guard eat—while watching the guard Gyuri mimics him, remembering what it felt like to eat. The German notices this and turns his back to Gyuri, depriving him of the pleasure he was experiencing but also sparing him the torment.
• An American soldier(Daniel Craig) tells Gyuri he should get off the transport before he gets home since they would be handed over to Soviet soldiers, one of the few explicit uses of foreshadowing.

Like the novel, Gyuri’s return to Budapest is only a small portion of the film but it is very moving and highlights the disconnect from what he just went through. He sees a former helper to the SS preventing a lynching. The contrasting messages Gyuri receives are clear, with the journalist wanting to publish the message of what happened while family members, defensive and rationalizing, encourage him to put the past behind him. The added image of women at the train station holding portraits, wanting word of their loves ones, is a powerful visual to offset the call to forget.

In The New York Times article Kertész talks about writing the screenplay:

"The film is more autobiographical than the book," he said in an interview at his Berlin home, where his wife, Magda, volunteered to interpret his Hungarian. "I'm not even sure if I wrote the screenplay from memories or from memories of the book."

I’m not sure what he means by “more autobiographical” since the novel and the film follow each other closely, unless certain added scenes were from experiences. He does mention the Daniel Craig’s character was a composite of many American soldiers encouraging him not to return home.

These are the types of adaptations I take pleasure in watching after I’ve enjoyed a book, where scenes may be added or excised but the overall spirit is maintained while successfully taking advantage of the different medium.

Fateless by Imre Kertész

“But who can judge what is possible or believable in a concentration camp? Who could explore, exhaust all those countless ideas, inventions, games, jokes, and ponderable theories, which are easily accessible and transferable from a make-believe world of fantasy into a concentration-camp reality? You couldn’t, even if you mustered the totality of your knowledge.” (148)

“Son, wouldn’t you like to tell me about your experiences?” I was a little surprised and told him that I couldn’t tell him very many interesting things. Then he smiled a little and said, “Not to me, to the world.” Even more astonished, I replied, “What should I talk about?” “The hell of the camps,” he replied, but I answered that I couldn’t say anything about that because I didn’t know anything about hell and couldn’t even imagine what it was like. He assured me that this was simply a metaphor. “Shouldn’t we picture the concentration camp like hell?” he asked. I answered, while drawing circles in the dust with my heels, that people were free to ignore it according to their means and pleasure but that, as far as I was concerned, I was only able to picture the concentration camp because I knew it a bit, but I didn’t know hell at all. (181)

I’m going to start with a note on the translation I read. My copy of the book is the Northwestern University Press edition, translated by Christopher C. Wilson and Katherine M. Wilson. There is a newer translation by Tim Wilkinson titled Fatelessness. On the author’s page at the complete review I learned that Kertesz was not a fan of the translation I read:

In a profile by Dylan Foley in The Journal News (7 November 2004), Kertesz has his say about the original situation:

"I really tried to protest against the first translations, but I found complete rejection," Kertész says. "The publisher (Northwestern University) was not willing to do new translations. It was a really bad feeling. It was as if you had a very sane character who has a rendezvous with the reader and the person who shows up is basically a real jerk, with a stammer, bad breath and a foul mouth."

The first translators did their own inaccurate interpretations of his work. "The translators didn't understand what I wrote about," says Kertész, still cringing. "The radical nature of my words was something that estranged them. They thought in the interest of the reader, they would make the text more human, to round it off and chisel it a bit."

As to Wilkinson's efforts, Kertesz is enthusiastic: "I got carried away with Tim Wilkinson's new translations (.....) I'm extremely overjoyed."

So unfortunately you’re stuck with a real jerk with bad breath. Oh yeah, and a disappointing translation. The novel opens as the father of fourteen-year-old Georg Koves prepares to leave for a labor camp. The family’s business and valuables are transferred to a non-Jewish employee while the family gathers to say goodbye to Georg’s father. A few months later, while travelling to his imposed job, Georg and other Jews are pulled off their busses and herded to a train station. An odyssey of sorts follows as Georg lives in and travels between Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Zeitz (a labor subcamp of Buchewald). After the liberation of the camps, Georg returns to Budapest where people make varying demands on him, whether it’s asking him to broadcast his experience to the world or put it all behind him and carry on as if it didn’t happen.

While the depiction of Georg’s experience in the camps is the centerpiece of the book there are other themes I hope to cover in this post. In the first chapter we get glimpses of Georg as a self-centered teenager, wishing his father was already at the labor camp so he could avoid the uncomfortable feelings of his farewell. These inner revelations continue throughout the book, creating an issue around the story: is it told by the adolescent Georg or the grown up Georg. At times the young Georg is unable to process or understand what is happening to him and to other Jews, an uncertainty or failure to comprehend mirrored by the people around him. We see Jews spending time and effort on the yellow stars they have to wear, focusing on the symbol while avoiding the deeper significance. Avoiding what is really happening and the real meaning is a recurrent theme. People act as if they don't believe the bad things they hear about in the east, but on some level people realize what is happening. Why the need to transfer everything to a non-Jew? Why the feeling that Georg’s father won’t be coming back from the labor camp? An interesting contrast arises as the people are pulled off buses on the outskirts of Budapest: the boys treat it as a joke and a mistake while the adult men recognize what awaits them. Georg laughs at the situation, feeling he has dropped into “an absurd theater play,” while also having a typical adolescent, self-centered reaction imagining how his stepmother will react when he doesn’t return home.

Georg’s misunderstanding continues when he arrives at Auschwitz. He sees men in striped pajamas and barb-wire around the camp, believing there is a separate place for convicts and criminals instead of realizing that is his fate. There is a running theme on this lack of comprehension. At Auschwitz, prisoners had a favorable view of labor camps but, after being in one, Georg doesn’t share that outlook. Prisoners who had been in the camp system for years can’t comprehend Georg’s comments about how the Jews were treated in the city after the older convicts had been arrested. This will mirror the attitude of friends and family left behind in Budapest, who can’t comprehend what Georg went through in the camps.

Throughout his torment Georg ascribes a genuine humanity to his persecutors. He feels guards and doctors like him. He hears that those sent to the gas chambers at Auschwitz, the weak, young, women, and children, were treated with care and affection by the guards. Georg constantly looks to understand the motivations behind the way he is treated and usually decides good intentions or self-interest explains their behavior. Even when things go bad, such as when capes are handed out to the prisoners only to find they are useless, Georg still notes that they were doled out conscientiously. Doubts creep in, not on his tormentors' bad intentions but on Georg’s own self-worth:

I was in some ways mesmerized, fascinated by it all. I had to smile a little when I remembered the policemen’s nonchalant, almost modest accompaniment at home on that day as we were going to the barracks. But the behavior of the military policemen, I had to admit, seemed only noisily self-important compared with this silent and in every respect harmonized professionalism. And although I could see their faces well, the color of their eyes or hair, one or another characteristic distinction, or even some flaws, a pimple or a bump on their skins, still I was not able to grasp all of this. I almost had to doubt it. Really, in spite of everything, were these people who were marching beside us basically the same as us? Were they made of roughly the same human materials that we were? But I thought that my way of looking at this was probably flawed, because I was not the same as they were, of course.” (89)

Georg does realize that some people can’t stand the Jews. An early example is a baker in Budapest that shortchanges Jews their daily bread ration. Georg believes he understands why the baker believes as he did, which only solves one part of the equation: “I understood at that moment why he had no choice but to dislike Jews. For if he liked them, he’d be left with the unpleasant feeling that he was cheating them. This way he acted according to his convictions, his acts being governed by an ideal, and that made everything entirely different, of course.” (9-10) Georg’s narrative highlights his difficulty in defining his identity. Georg may have been viewed as a Jew in Budapest but other prisoners had different definitions on what it meant to be a Jew. A clique of prisoners asked Georg if he spoke Yiddish.

When I told them no, unfortunately not, they were finished with me; they treated me as if I were a nonentity. I tried to speak up, to make them take note of me, but it was fruitless. “You are no Jew.” They shook their heads, and I was entirely perplexed to see people who, after all, were supposed to be so experienced in business affairs insist so irrationally on a thing that was much more of a loss and a disadvantage to them than a profit, when you consider the end results. Then, that day I also experienced that very same tenseness, that same itchy feeling and clumsiness that came over me when I was with them, that I had occasionally felt at home: as if I weren’t entirely okay, as if I didn’t entirely conform to the ideal; in other words, somehow as if I were Jewish. That was a rather strange feeling, because, after all, I was among the Jews and in a concentration camp. (102)

Georg’s self-identification isn’t the only thing that changes in the camps. He emphasizes incremental changes, slight changes that accumulate over time and form major changes. “[T]ime can deceive our eyes.” Georg places a lot of emphasis on the power of time, believing at one point that he simply wasn’t given enough time to grow accustomed to camp life. Time plays tricks with Georg’s memory. He remembers things in great detail from the first days in a new camp but after that he only retains a general impression. Time and identity intersect when Georg can only remember the number assigned to him instead of his name.

Time also plays a role in one of the more unsettling parts of the book. “There was an hour in the day, between our return from the factory and mustering—an important, always-active hour, full of relief, which I for one liked best and anticipated eagerly. Incidentally this was also the dinner hour.” (104) Lest you think this is the older Georg forgetting the horrors he endured, the “special time” is mentioned several times and has an appeal in many ways. For instance during this hour Georg “found out that at home everybody was perfectly happy and mostly rich.” (108) (There is a lot of deadpan humor in the book.) Georg and other characters refer to certain periods of time in the camps as a “Golden Age.” On the last pages of the book, Georg notes he was homesick for that special hour, his “favorite hour in the camp” and remembers everyone “with a tiny, affectionate resentment.” These final pages provide the real power of the novel. Up to the liberation of the camps, Georg’s narrative has been very matter-of-fact, even bland. The horrors of the camp will still move the reader, but even here these descriptions are upstaged by Georg ascribing humane characteristics to his tormentors. Why the longing for that hour in the camps, and why resent other prisoners? Part of the answer lies in the awkward forward/back nature of the narrative, which I think provides a major key to reading the novel. The older Georg has lived through communist regimes, so in part he may be commenting on his preference in totalitarian systems. To this point Kertész commented in his Nobel Foundation lecture, "If I look back now and size up honestly the situation I was in at the time, I have to conclude that in the West, in a free society, I probably would not have been able to write the novel known by readers today as Fateless." Where he was and who he was allowed him to use irony in a fifteen-year-old boy’s thoughts. It also refers to his thoughts on fate, a recurring topic in the book.

“Fate” has several meanings in the novel. The most obvious is how Georg was sent to the camps and more importantly how he survived. It’s important to note Georg never explicitly uses the word “fate” in this context but it is clearly an important meaning in its use. He could have easily run away from the policeman when being marched to the train station in Budapest. Even though he’s not the only boy to lie about his age at Auschwitz, the doctor motions him to the group that won’t be gassed. The first letter of his name was the reason he was sent to Zetiz. Bandi Citrom, another prisoner from Budapest, saves Georg’s life several times. Georg acknowledges his natural stubbornness played a role in his survival. Upon his return to Buchenwald he is laying next to a body that is as lifeless as his, yet the other body is thrown in the pile to be cremated while Georg is taken to the hospital. All of these things are important in Georg’s survival, his fate. There are two other meanings of “fate,” though, that Georg explicitly talks about. (In this multi-layered meaning of “fate” I’m reminded of the many meanings Vasily Grossman had in mind when he titled his book Life and Fate.)

The first of these is his Jewishness as well as his identity and fate tied to that meaning. A childhood friend worries about why so many people hate her because she is Jewish and what it even means to be Jewish. Georg tries to console her, telling her that there is nothing distinctive about being a Jew, which upsets her even more.

“With a cracking voice, she desperately shouted something to the effect that if our distinctiveness was unimportant, then all this was mere chance, and that if there was the possibility of her being someone other than whom she was fated to be, then all this was utterly without reason, and to her that idea was totally ‘unbearable.’” (29)

Georg’s Uncle Lajos and a rabbi he meets on the train talk about the Jewish fate for having turned their faces from the Lord, giving meaning to their trials and tribulations. Georg doesn’t openly come out against this meaning while accepting the part of this argument that being on earth means they will be judged. But he also feels it is a message pointing to something beyond being Jewish…maybe simply being human? I think that explains some of the reason he is so disturbed by the nice treatment he receives in the camp’s hospital—it was at odds with the idea and existence of a concentration camp. The second additional meaning of fate comes close to Grossman’s meaning, where fate and freedom are at odds. This is why the “ordered life-style” is so important in captivity—the lack of freedom meshes with fate. Once the camp is liberated Georg notes that freedom is nice, but where is their daily food? He’s only able to begin to savor freedom after plans to feed the former prisoners are broadcast. There’s understanding in his voice when talking about people willing to swap their freedom for a preordained fate. You will live out a given fate, whether it is yours or not. As Georg puts it, “we ourselves are fate:”

“We can never start a new life. We can only continue the old one. I took my own steps. No one else did. And I remained honest in the end to my given fate. The only stain or beauty flaw, I might say the only incorrectness, that anyone could accuse me of is maybe the fact that we are talking now. But that is not my doing. Do you want all this horror and all my previous steps to lose their meaning entirely? Why this sudden turn, whey this opposition? Why can’t you see that if there is such a thing as fate, then there is no freedom? That is,” and I stopped to take a breath, “that is, we ourselves are fate.” (188-9)

As I mentioned earlier, part of the power of the novel lies in its final pages when Georg returns home. It’s hard to tell what Georg dislikes most, the journalist who wants him to share is story (he’s already said that the totality of a man’s knowledge cannot comprehend a concentration camp unless you have endured it) or the defensive, well-meaning relatives who advise him to move on with his life. I think this is another reason he mentions the golden hour in the camps for which he was homesick—the experience shaped him and became part of him. To deny what has happened would be to deny who he is. His return to Budapest reinforces his fate in the most common meaning: some people help him, some ignore him, and others torment him. He doesn’t fault the last two groups, ascribing a humaneness to them that probably doesn’t exist, by noting they couldn’t possibly understand him.

OK, I didn’t mean for this to be such a rambling post. I did want to convey the complexity of the novel, which I think is often dismissed as a thinly-veiled, bland retelling of Kertész’s experience. I think the most moving parts of the novel, the opening two chapters and the final one, are the most moving on purpose—his experience in the camp can be documented but not adequately communicated unless you have been through it. Highly recommended. I’ll have a post on the 2005 move Fateless (Kertész wrote the screenplay) soon.

Instant movie for the weekend: The Devil's Mistress/The Devil's Whore (2008 miniseries)

This 2008 TV miniseries covers parts of the English Civil War, using the fictional Angelica Fanshawe and historical Edward Sexby as focal points (although there is some historical basis for her character). Peter Flannery wrote the screenplay. Parts of the series are cartoonish and skip over major events, but overall I enjoyed it. I wish it had been a little longer to round things out, but that's the problem you face when trying to present both an individual's story and sweeping historical events. If you aren't familiar with the period it helps to read up on essential events to make sense of the storyline. A very enjoyable few hours, even when it veers away from historical accuracy.

The program can be watched in several places, including the original airer Channel 4 and other instant stream sites like Netflix.

A bleg: "Kean," starring Anthony Hopkins

So I went the WorldCat route in trying to obtain a copy of the BBC performance of Jean-Paul Sartre's "Kean" with Anthony Hopkins in the title role. There are only two libraries listed with copies and neither loan audio-visual material. So I'm out of luck with that approach.

If anyone has a copy or knows how to get a copy of this performance (it is listed here) I would greatly appreciate any and all leads. I'm not sure the product matches what I'm looking for. The two sources with the videos (both on VHS) are not consistent with the description, so I think I need a different approach.

I would love a full version of this play to view, and this is a play I would love to post about on my blog! Any help is greatly appreciated.

Imre Kertész in The Paris Review

Here’s an excerpt from The Paris Review’s interview with Imre Kertész. One quote from it:

To me, there were three phases, in a literary sense. The first phase is the one just before the Holocaust. Times were tough, but you could get through somehow. The second phase, described by writers like Primo Levi, takes place in medias res, as though voiced from the inside, with all the astonishment and dismay of witnessing such events. These writers described what happened as something that would drive any man to madness—at least any man who continued to cling to old values. And what happened was beyond the witnesses’ capacity for coping. They tried to resist it as much as they could, but it left a mark on the rest of their lives. The third phase concerns literary works that came into existence after National Socialism and which examine the loss of old values. Writers such as Jean Améry or Tadeusz Borowski conceived their works for people who were already familiar with history and were aware that old values had lost their meaning. What was at stake was the creation of new values from such immense suffering, but most of those writers perished in the attempt. However, what they did bequeath to us is a radical tradition in literature.

I recently finished Fateless (Fatelessness) and watched the 2005 movie for which Kertész wrote the screenplay. I plan to post on both later this week since they are both very powerful works. One of the things that comes through in both versions, more in the book, is the humanity he ascribes to the people abetting the atrocities. More on this in later posts.

Persecuting myself to the full extent of the law

Or an update to the state of the blog.

So I think by announcing a November read-along it’s clear I plan on continuing the blog. I needed some time away (despite erratic posting) to think about what I wanted to do with the blog. There were many issues leading to the earlier post on continuing the blog. I realize some of these won’t go away, such as seeing the bulk of a post showing up on money-making sites without any attribution. That’s the nature of the game, I guess, like it or not. But I think the biggest pressure that led to my questioning whether or not to continue came from me and not knowing what I wanted from this blog. I’m not going to pretend I have a clear picture but it’s slowly coming into focus.

What I have enjoyed doing most with this blog has been “project based,” loosely defined. This can be tackling all the English translations of Benito Pérez Galdós (something I need to get back on track), doing a series of posts on classic works like Herodotus or Thucydides (expect one on Xenophon soon), or finding an author that deserves a wider English-speaking audience and posting about a few of their works. I will still post on individual books I read and I need to post more on the nonfiction. There will continue to be plenty of cross-media posts, especially movies made from novels or plays. The recent posts on pre-glasnost Hungarian plays have been remarkably satisfying despite having a limited audience.

There will be posts that look deeper into a work, too. One example I’m planning on soon is some posts on Jean-Paul Sartre’s play “Kean” along with his inspiration/basis, Alexandre Dumas’ play “Edmund Kean, Or, the Life of an Actor.” And if I can obtain a copy of the BBC production with Anthony Hopkins in the title role, I’ll post on that, too. The November read-along is another example. I’ll probably only read a few books from the (expanding) list of 19th-century U.S. women writers but I’m hoping others join in so we can create a nice resource beyond the usual, well-documented suspects.

So there it is. Posting will probably be more erratic depending on my free time. While there are many stellar book blogs out there, I’d like this blog to be a resource people enjoy visiting and getting ideas for something to read or view…whether it involves authors to explore, plays or movies to watch, or whatever I’m focusing on at the moment. As I said, it’s still coming into focus but I think a more relaxed posting schedule and focusing on projects I enjoy gets the blog closer to what I want to see. As always, comments are greatly appreciated. It's nice to know when something strikes a chord with readers.

By the way, my wife has imposed a $1 fine for every obscure reference I make. I usually protest that the reference isn't obscure...she just isn't familiar with it. I mention that because I realize I owe her a dollar for the title of this post.