tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post7623852844101957262..comments2024-03-29T03:04:00.853-05:00Comments on Wuthering <br>Expectations: Notes toward The Last Days of Mankind - this drama has no actor other than all mankindAmateur Reader (Tom)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-64517663571081245822013-05-03T10:49:56.966-05:002013-05-03T10:49:56.966-05:00Maybe I will take a shot at that Grumbler scene yo...Maybe I will take a shot at that Grumbler scene you read in my last post. It is typically slippery.<br /><br />I think you are exactly right about the way Kraus took the war. That aphorism about him hearing the music of the spheres that no on else could hear was psychologically accurate.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-39208938915464059002013-05-02T23:37:31.038-05:002013-05-02T23:37:31.038-05:00"For Kraus, the end of the war did not mean t..."For Kraus, the end of the war did not mean the end of the horror." I don't want to read too much into my 30 pages of Kraus (!), but it does seem that the war scarred him in ways that other German and Austrian writers might have had to wait till WWII to relate to. Of course, maybe he just responded to everything more viscerally than his counterparts--it's hard to get a bead on the guy given the extremity of his persona as revealed in his writings. Thanks, by the way, for your intro-in-progress to the, ahem, longer version of <em>The Last Days of Mankind</em> than my two-act excerpt.Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01746599416342846897noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-13763871402820691452013-05-02T12:59:16.177-05:002013-05-02T12:59:16.177-05:00pure commentary is a beautiful concept. The univer...<i>pure commentary</i> is a beautiful concept. The universal solvent of literature.scott g.f.baileyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05726743149139510832noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-63833383944608461862013-05-02T12:52:03.569-05:002013-05-02T12:52:03.569-05:00I think some of the turn to theory in the academy ...I think some of the turn to theory in the academy was driven by a yearning for <i>pure commentary</i>, commentary with no foundation outside of itself.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-27197050122031785232013-05-02T12:48:32.694-05:002013-05-02T12:48:32.694-05:00An animated version would be able to solve a lot o...An animated version would be able to solve a lot of problems. Or puppets, like Jan Švankmajer.<br /><br />I would rather have it straight, too, in part just for the reasons you mention. Maybe, just maybe, some of the offensive utterances are attached to the characters?<br /><br />Kraus was himself Jewish (and then confessionless, then Catholic, then confessionless again), for what that is worth. <br /><br />The rhetoric of anti-Semitism and anti-capitalism were so strongly connected in Kraus's time that I know why they are side by side here. Still. If some noble fool is out there now, translating this beast, just lay it all out, please!Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-47943434389292945542013-05-02T12:45:28.418-05:002013-05-02T12:45:28.418-05:00"...British readers would not be offended by ..."...<i>British</i> readers would not be offended by Kraus’s anti-Semitism..." I just got that joke. I'm awfully thick sometimes. <br /><br />All this commentary about commentary about Kraus' commentary on commentary. It's like something by Nabokov. Or Sterne, if Sterne hadn't been so amused with himself.scott g.f.baileyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05726743149139510832noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-65698425285101559062013-05-02T11:48:20.497-05:002013-05-02T11:48:20.497-05:00I wonder if the "antisemitic and anti-capital...I wonder if the "antisemitic and anti-capitalist utterances" were Kraus', or if they were from the media sources he quoted?<br /><br />The translation of <i>Dead Souls</i> I'm reading includes a note from the editor that "Gogol uses a number of expressions in which miserliness and dishonesty in business dealings are associated with Jews. Guerney consistently replaced these expressions with neutral ones, and I have preserved his choices." I have wondered if the antisemitism being bowdlerized here is Gogol's, or that of his characters. Either way, I'd rather have it straight.<br /><br />Kraus is a hoot. An angry hoot. With the current interest in metafiction and the relationship of media to audience, I don't know why someone isn't filming the play right now, or at least an abridged 15-hour version of it.scott g.f.baileyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05726743149139510832noreply@blogger.com