Down and out in Rotterdam

Ideas, meaning and a mind in motion

Tag: Literature

  • De overbodige man

    blair_1-081910

    ‘The superfluous man (Russian: лишний человек, lishniy chelovek) is an 1840s and 1850s Russian literary concept derived from the Byronic hero. It refers to an individual, perhaps talented and capable, who does not fit into social norms. In most cases, this person is born into wealth and privilege. Typical characteristics are disregard for social values, cynicism, and existential boredom’.

    Hoewel, ik heb natuurlijk geen rijkdom nog privilege. Toepasselijk vond ik wel de volgende verklaring van criticus Belinsky over de oorsprong van de term;

    Russian critics such as Vissarion Belinsky viewed the superfluous man as a by-product of Nicholas I’s reactionary reign, when the best educated men would not enter the discredited government service and, lacking other options for self-realization, doomed themselves to live out their life in passivity.

    Mooiste voorbeelden daarvan in mijn optiek Oblomov (roman door Ivan Goncharov) die in de eerste honderd pagina’s van zijn roman twijfelt of hij uberhaubt uit bed wil komen en Prins Andrei Nikolayevich Bolkonsky uit Oorlog en Vrede. Prachtig beschreef Tolstoy hoe deze ambitieuze talentvolle man snel gedesillusioneerd raakt en politiek en oorlog de rug toekeerd om in rust op het platteland te leven. Had ik maar de middelen, dan keerde ik de maatschappij ook direct de rug toe. Ik kijk al geen tv meer. Ik wil eigenlijk zonder Facebook. Als het kon vertrok ik met de noorderzon en leefde ik met een gelijkgestemde partner samen in een staat als Montana, zonder directe buren en zonder gezeik over bootvluchtelingen, zonder de regeldrift van de Nederlandse en EU overheid, zonder hipsters in het straatbeeld, zonder de alomtegenwoordige geestelijke armoede waar je mee besmet raakt en je handen in vuil moet maken om te functioneren in het dagelijkse menselijke verkeer van een grote stad. Een overbodig man. Ik herken me er wel in. Nog cynischer, kritischer en misschien eerlijker wel ben ik een typisch voorbeeld van iemand die spreekwoordelijk wel de klepel kan horen luiden maar hem niet ziet hangen. Uit een arbeidersmilieu met alle gemak en zonder noemenswaardige problemen scholing doorlopen, afgestudeerd aan een universiteit dat de naam universiteit niet mag dragen (in klassieke zin), heb ik mogen ruiken aan een intellectueel leven, aan privilege en kon ik me even als uitverkoren wanen, denken dat ik iets noemenswaardig had gepresteerd om vervolgens rap van mijn imaginaire troon te vallen en losgelaten te worden in een maatschappij die zo egalitair is ingericht dat er geen behoefte, nog ruimte is voor vreemde eenden met een hunkering naar meer met een eigenaardige voorkeur voor zaken die geld kosten en niks opleveren en zonder gram praktisch benul. Mijn laatste illusie dat mijn denken nog van toegevoegde waarde is zal sterven zodra ik de virtuele facebook dood sterf, geld leverde het me toch al nimmer op. Nee, was ik bemiddeld of presenteerde zich vandaag een excuus om voor goed te verdwijnen naar een stille uithoek van de wereld om daar mijn leven eerbiedig uit te zitten, dan was ik weg, gisteren nog. Of is ook dit slechts grootspraak? Kijk ik krabbel alweer terug.

  • Homesick after mine own kind

     

    NPG Ax7811; Ezra Pound by Alvin Langdon Coburn

    Sometimes when for long periods nothing worthwile seems to come from my hands, all I can do is drench and absorb myself in the works of others, hoping to find words to fit my malady. Most people listen to music, but while music might bring comfort, the lyrics almost never fit. It only rarely happens that the words of others seem to reflect what I feel. This is the case with Ezra Pound’s ‘In Durance’. Often when lonely I think of his lines, which struck me from the first. Sometimes not just any company will do.

     In Durance – Ezra Pound (1907)

    I am homesick after mine own kind,
    Oh I know that there are folk about me, friendly faces,
    But I am homesick after mine own kind.

    ‘These sell our pictures’! Oh well,
    They reach me not, touch me some edge or that,
    But reach me not and all my life’s become
    One flame, that reaches not beyond
    My heart’s own hearth,
    Or hides among the ashes there for thee.
    Thee’? Oh, ‘Thee’ is who cometh first
    Out of mine own soul-kin,
    For I am homesick after mine own kind
    And ordinary people touch me not.
    And I am homesick
    After mine own kind that know, and feel
    And have some breath for beauty and the arts.

    Aye, I am wistful for my kin of the spirit
    And have none about me save in the shadows
    When come they, surging of power, ‘DAEMON,’
    ‘Quasi KALOUN.’ S.T. says Beauty is most that, a
    ‘calling to the soul’.
    Well then, so call they, the swirlers out of the mist of my soul,
    They that come mewards, bearing old magic.

    But for all that, I am homesick after mine own kind
    And would meet kindred even as I am,
    Flesh-shrouded bearing the secret.
    ‘All they that with strange sadness’
    Have the earth in mockery, and are kind to all,
    My fellows, aye I know the glory
    Of th’ unbounded ones, but ye, that hide
    As I hide most the while
    And burst forth to the windows only whiles or whiles
    For love, or hope or beauty or for power,
    Then smoulder, with the lids half closed
    And are untouched by echoes of the world.

    Oh ye, my fellows: with the seas between us some be,
    Purple and sapphire for the silver shafts
    Of sun and spray all shattered at the bows;
    And some the hills hold off,
    The little hills to east of us, though here we
    Have damp and plain to be our shutting in.

    And yet my soul sings ‘Up!’ and we are one.
    Yea thou, and Thou, and THOU, and all my kin
    To whom my breast and arms are ever warm,
    For that I love ye as the wind the trees
    That holds their blossoms and their leaves in cure
    And calls the utmost singing from the boughs
    That ‘thout him, save the aspen, were as dumb
    Still shade, and bade no whisper speak the birds of how
    ‘Beyond, beyond, beyond, there lies . . .’

  • Parade’s End

    TV-Parade's-End-StoppardI am in a restless and sad mood.

    I think it’s because I just finished watching the BBC miniseries ‘Parade’s End’. It was magnificent and brought me to tears. But it also made me melancholy because I’ve read the novel and now I’ve seen the series, and I just didn’t want it to end. Parade’s End. Such a fitting and well chosen title. In the novel it signifies an end of the Parade’s of Edwardian society, and the Parade’s of the soldiers who survived the trenches. No more Parade’s.

    I was born in 1980 and I can’t be farther from the age, the morals and the values of early 20th century and yet I have a sincere longing for some Parade’s, any Parade’s for all I care.

    And I feel melancholy because I am through my F. Scott Fitzgeralds and I have read all Salinger’s short stories, even just recently his unpublished ‘The ocean full of bowling balls’ which was illegally thrown online. I’ve read all I could about Hemingway and I can go on like this for hours, and there is so little to rejoice about in current literature, or so it seems.

    And people say there are great writers out there. People recommend some like Dave Eggers and his recently published ‘The Circle’, but I don’t mind the reviews, I am just not interested in the story he has to tell. I don’t want to read about the internet, about a virtual world, about company policies or what not. In fact I didn’t even really like Orwell’s 1984, I much prefer his other stories, especially Burmese Days. Eggers is just one example. The age seems all wrong. The topics seem all wrong. The sentiments seem all wrong. Or so it seems to me! And I don’t care for fantasy but it’s everywhere. And all the women are seemingly reading chicklits, but maybe I should stop here.

    I like Parade’s End because of Tietjens the main protagonist. Tietjens a proud and intelligent, well read and well behaved and dutiful man cause such he was raised. And despite the fact that he marries an adulterous cruel wife who despises him precisely for his good character he doesn’t falter. He doesn’t divorce her because that would be unkind and not done for. He doesn’t take a mistress even though he is terribly in love because of the same rules he stands for. He even goes to the trenches if the rules of the society and the country in which he lives demands it from him, even if society treats him unfairly.

    Who dares to judge character nowadays? Who are our heroes? Who do we look up too?

    If I stroll the bookshelves in libraries or bookstores all I seem to see is poverty. There is a shelf for everything; Japanese manga cartoons, American comics, New Age religion, mysticism, loads of fantasy or science fiction. When I do find the shelves in the section ‘English literature’, I see a lot of questionable reads. I see a lot of post-colonial literature, I see African American literature (seemingly always in stock), you can always find the dharma bums in stock; Kerouac, Bukowsky, Fear and Loathing. So are the works of Coupland, and postmodern classics like Catch 22 and Slaughterhouse 5. Is it too much to ask to reserve one section, say around 20 square feet with just works by great dead white men?

    It saddens me. Luckily there are still some Ford Madox Ford stories left unread for me, and I don’t mind rereading the works of those mentioned.

    There, I let off some steam.