|
CounterPunch
August
31, 2002
IMMORTALITY
THE
QUEST FOR FIRE
by
Gavin Keeney
"Somewhere, even
now, a lamb was being led up to the altar steps, a lamb chosen
for its perfection and purity: even its delicate hooves, its
knobby, skinny legs, were perfect. The eyes of those who had
chosen it were loving -- they valued it, enormously. And the
lamb itself? It felt this love and shyly looked up at the eyes
around it glowing with desire. It would not comprehend that desire
had different depths. Gratified, it would get to its knees, it
would gracefully lie before its lovers, it would never suspect
the blow."
-- Jane Alison,
The Love-Artist
THE CHARTERHOUSE OF PARMA -- Stendhal's great novel (written in 1838)
follows the life of "our young hero" Fabrizio del Dongo
(a Lombard nobleman) through the early 1800s and life in-between
the various reactionary and revolutionary movements following
the French Revolution, including (early on) a turn on the battlefield
of Waterloo. It seems to mimic the realist novel but is something
else altogether.
The Romantic hero is actually an anti-hero, and the various allies
and enemies he engenders in his quest for fire by "enthusiasm"
turn one way then the next as circumstances dictate. The rapid
succession of troubles -- reversals of fortune -- lead the reader
into a labyrinth of social mores and historical-cultural shadows
that end only by illuminating the timeless landscape of tragedy.
Stendhal's worldweariness reads in a manner of a literary mannerism
-- it is unclear what his intentions are beyond spinning an extravagant
tale of immense intrigue and abominable outcome. His noted style
is  somewhere between the detached irony
of George Sand and the great illumined tableau of Balzac. As
the story races ahead -- and there are few (perhaps no) denouements
allowing the reader to catch his/her breath -- an entire epoch
unfolds and begins to collapse (notwithstanding the closing,
momentary glory of the Prince of Parma's court).
The sheer bravado of Stendhal's performance sketches a period
of despotism "marred" by the revolutionary fervor of
Northern Italy and one detects an almost structural edifice for
the tale lurking below the apparatus of places, venues, situations,
character, and -- um -- coloratura. The novel seems to arrive
full-blown from the ear of Stendhal and the "libidinal economy"
of the protagonist's rebellion (and eventual accommodation) suggests
that the tragedy is more a matter of universal portents told
against the rugged landscape of Lombardy than an historical tale
of ruination by passion.
It might be best to read this thing straight through without
stopping. Such a strategy enhances the nature of the narrative
which is truly a tour de force -- an (intentionally) overwrought
avalanche of words and images -- and matches the origin of the
text insofar as Stendhal is said to have dictated the story in
"a mere seven weeks".
The
Love-Artist -- Jane Alison's re-creation of Ovid's (Augustan)
Rome is sliced through by various portentious events, not the
least of which is the purely fictionalized conspiracy of inspiration
developed between Ovid, after having produced the Metamorphoses,
and Xenia his fair but grave muse.
Xenia's perturbations -- she is a witch seduced and retrieved
from the shores of the Black Sea during a "vacation"
Ovid takes (while waiting to see how his Metamorphoses
is received in Rome) -- become the source material for Medea,
the poet's legendary lost play.
The mutual, suspicious presumptions of the relationship between
the two main characters begin to impress into this timeframe
a dual quest for immortality -- on Ovid's part his desire to
be famous, and on Xenia's part the search for the quinta essentia,
the philosopher's stone. She is actually more a rustic alchemist
than a witch. The patrician Ovid and the wild Xenia mutually
exploit one another as he develops his re-telling of the ancient
tragedy of Medea, hiding from her his tablets of wax and furtively
pursuing his patron, Julia, the granddaughter of the Emperor
Augustus.
Xenia sees and hears things ... The release of the details of
her clairvoyant, visionary experience of Rome are, however, carefully
calibrated and mostly concealed from Ovid such that he must at
times provoke her to reveal his destiny (which is all that seems
to matter to him).
This is an astonishing work of literature that captures the inordinate
ambition of a poet suspected of corrupting the morals of Rome
and a passionate, confused seer laboring to negotiate the splendour
of Rome and cryptic intuitions of the vanity of the same. Alison's
prose singes the reader's eyes and soul as it piles the story
onto the timeless pyre of tragic works of art. Xenia seems to
slowly realize that the elusive quinta essentia "belongs"
to Ovid (the poet) afterall.
As the pressures build, and Ovid nears the conclusion of his
Medea, Xenia has twin visions of the future:
"Here, and here -- you won't believe it -- will be palaces
with walls and ceilings all covered with images of your stories,
with your words, even, painted in gold! And there, on that hill
up the river, will be the most gorgeous hall filled with sculptures
of your characters, so vivid, so like flesh! And not just in
Rome but in palaces beyond the smoky hills to the north, and
farther, in cities and countries that haven't yet risen ... In
small dark cells far beyond the Alps, a thousand years from now
-- imagine -- men will be bent over you, taking pains to put
down your words with a flourish, taking such pains that the thin
line that is your work, your life, will stretch on forever ..."
This confirming vision of Ovid's immortality is countered by
another image of a ruined Rome buried in dust with Cleopatra's
Needle poking through a grassy, pastoral, future landscape ...
Poussin's landscape ... As the relationship of muse, poet, and
patroness reaches a futility mirrored in Alison's prose by ghastly
intimations of what Ovid is writing (plotting) through Medea,
Julia, fueled by hatred of Augustus for banishing her mother
and for her own virtual imprisonment, conjures her own vision
of revenge:
"She wanted the aqueducts to topple into valleys and upon
the famous Roman roads, leaving heaps of pulverized brick. And
that tremendous hieroglyphed needle, for which her grandfather
had ordered an entire ship to be made, to haul it back from conquered
Egypt -- she wanted it to shiver as it shattered upon the ground.
And oh, the millions of bodies buried beneath all this wreckage,
reduced to what they were all along, masses of pulp and blood,
senseless. Then, the world torn open, how the beasts, smelling
the chaos and blood, would break free from their dens, come blinking
out into the sudden harsh light!"
This vision of catastrophic ruination occurs slowly, dawning
on Xenia and Julia. For Xenia, it is always coupled with the
realization: "So few will remain, she thought, shutting
her eyes and listening. But of all of them, Ovid would. Of all
this great age, this great Roman world. She could see his face,
ancient and boyish, laughing from millennia ahead." Strange,
then, that Ovid is banished by Augustus (a disgrace that actually
occurs in the opening scenes of the novel) to a rotting Roman
outpost on the Black Sea for his various presumptions and vainglories,
and that he dies there never to return to Rome.
"So it was not just that his words would live on for a few
hundred years; it was more than that. The bodily, expiring things
of the world were transformed by him into words -- which themselves
would be taken up, millennia later, by other hands, other minds,
and transformed once more into voluptuous bodies of color and
marble. Sublimation."
Gavin Keeney writes on the subject
of landscape + architecture. He is the author of On
the Nature of Things (Basel: Birkhauser, 2000)
Stendhal, The
Charterhouse of Parma, trans. Richard Howard (New York:
Modern Library, 2000)
Jane Alison, The
Love-Artist
(New York: FSG, 2001)
Weekend Features
Gavin Keeney
Return to the Charterhouse of Parma
David Vest
Porkland:
Confronting Republicans & Police in Portland
Ralph Nader
The Highway
Lobby
M. Shahid Alam
CNN Reporting
(poem)
Neve Gordon
Sharon's
Subjugation Strategy
Dr. Susan Block
The Gangbang
Asthete
The Sexual Life of Catherine M.
Kurt Nimmo
Clueless
at the State Dept.
home / subscribe
/ about us
/ books
/ archives
/ search
/ links
/
New Print
Edition of CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
- War Talk As White Noise:
Anything to Get Harken and Halliburton
Out of the Headlines;
- First Hilliard, Then
McKinney: Jewish
Groups Target Blacks Brave Enough to Talk About Justice in the
Middle East; Intimidation
is the Name of the Game; Smearing
"Insane" McKinney As Muslims' Pawn;
- The Missing Terrorist?
Calling Scotland
Yard: "Where's Atif?"
- They Never Booed Dylan!:
Tape Transcript Shows
Famed Newport Folkfest Dissing of Electric Dylan Not True. The Catcalls were for Peter
Yarrow!
- New Shame from the Liffey
Shrike
Remember, the CounterPunch website is
supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe
Now! Or Call Toll Free 1-800-840-3683
home / subscribe
/ about us
/ books
/ archives
/ search
/ links
/
|
August 31,
2002
Gavin Keeney
Return to the
Charterhouse of Parma
David Vest
Porkland:
Confronting Republicans & Police in Portland
Ralph Nader
The Highway
Lobby
M. Shahid
Alam
CNN Reporting
(poem)
Neve Gordon
Sharon's
Subjugation Strategy
Dr. Susan
Block
The Gangbang
Asthete
The Sexual Life
of Catherine M.
Kurt Nimmo
Clueless
at the State Dept.
August 30,
2002
Alexander
Cockburn
American
Journal:
Hitchens, Kissinger, Springsteen, Haggard & Elvis
August 29,
2002
Chris Floyd
The Secret
Sharers:
The CIA and the Murder of Frank Olson
August 28,
2002
William Ring
War on Iraq:
The Brightest Scenario
August 27,
2002
Sam Bahour
The Violence
of Curfew
Wenonah Hauter
From Johannesburg:
Pacts with the Devil: Public-Private Partnerships and the Global
Environment
Jerre Skog
Wanted:
"Our Kind of Guy"
in Iraq!
Uri Avnery
Letter
to a Pilot
August 26,
2002
Sami Al-Arian
Fighting
for the Right of
Dissent and Due Process
Ruebner /
Turaani
What
is Israel Hiding?
Norman Madarasz
Brazil
and the IMF:
Democracy and Emerging Market Liberalism
Robert Fisk
War Crimes:
Reporters Aren't Prosecutors
Douglas Valentine
Phoenix,
CIA and Maj. Gen. Bruce Lawlor: From Vietnam
to Homeland Security
August 24
/ 25, 2002
Susan Davis
Proverbial
Wisdom:
Of Clogs and Enron
Falk / Krieger
No War
Against Iraq
Ceylon Mooney
Fasting
for Iraq
Jonathon
Wright
Police
Brutality in Atlanta
Ralph Nader
Congress's
Pay Raise Scam
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Chainsaw
George
Alexander
Cockburn
Alterman
Cheapens Holocaust
August 23,
2002
Dave Marsh
Selling
Out?
Anthony Gancarski
Super-Duper:
Oil, al-Qaeda and a West African Adventure
William Hughes
Lieberman's
Conflict
of Interest?
Kurt Nimmo
The Lapdog
Conversion of CNN:
They Didn't Want to "Criticize" a Popular War
Sean Donahue
Hardline
in Colombia
August 22,
2002
Sean Donahue
Hardline
in Colombia
Wayne Madsen
Crushing
Congressional Dissent: The Fall of Hilliard, Barr and McKinney
Gilad Atzmon
The Zionist
Lobby and
American Foreign Policy
Robert Johnson
Right
Wing Doves?
Alexander
Cockburn
Taking
Down McKinney
August 21,
2002
Gary Leupp
The Return
of Mani
Romi Mahajan
Bhopal
on $40 a Day
Jerre Skog
Bush and
Europe:
Fun, Profit & Betrayal
Tom Crumpacker
The
Politics of the Cuba Embargo
August 20,
2002
Kathleen
Christison
Israeli
Tilt: the NYT
and Palestine
August 14
/ 19, 2002
Susan Davis
Played
Out: a Journey to Central City, Colorado
CounterPunch
Staff
Our Favorite
Films
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Usonian
Utopia's:
Frank Lloyd Wright, Working Class Housing and the FBI
Gilad Atzmon
Sharon and the Iron Wall
Uri Avnery
A Phone
Call from Hell
Wendy Brinker
Racism
is Alive and Well in the South Carolina Death House
Hamit Dardagan
The
Unbearable Lightness of Bombing
Ahmad Faruqui
The Legacy
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Philip Farruggio
Leading
by Example
Anthony Gancarski
Union
Jackass: Richard Perle's UK Charm Offensive
Jeff Halper
Fortress
Israel: the Message of the Bulldozer
Robert Jensen
Our Failures
are Borne by the Palestinians
Gary Leupp
An Open
Letter to Bruce Springsteen about Bush's War on Terrorism
Dave Marsh
Sing a
Simple Song
Rashmi Mayur
To Johannesburg
in Search of Hope
Steve Perry
Another Fine Mess:
Martha Stewart and Paul Wellstone
Anis Shivani
What's
Next...Concentration Camps?
Edward Said
Punishment
by Detail
Jeff Taylor
Paul Wellstone's
Legacy
August 10/11,
2002
Walt Brasch
The Bush
2 Legacy...So Far
August 9,
2002
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Corporate
Crime:
More Shareholder Power
Not the Solution
Ansar Ahmed
The Waning
of the
Pax Americana
Alexander
Cockburn
War,
the Military and the Hunt for the "Violence Gene"
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By
Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
Read
Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
|