The winter holidays are here, people are away, and work has been slow. It's good to take some time off, travel a bit, and just generally relax. I got myself a few novels to read to aid in this process of relaxation - Milan Kundera's
Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Herman Hesse's
Narcissus and Goldmund, Mikhail Bulgakov's
The Master and Margarita, Jorge Luis Borges's
Ficciones, and some other novel by Hemingway. So far, I've only managed to complete the first 2 of this lot, and I started reading Bulgakov's book on Christmas day. The 2nd chapter of the book, is a fiction-meets-history account of the trial and execution of Jesus Christ in the court of the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate. I certainly did not expect this in a novel that is supposed to be a satire on Russian intellectuals in the Soviet era. The chapter piqued my interest and for the first time in my life I read up a little bit about the history of the Roman Republic and Empire, and of course, of Jesus. It is simply curious that this happened on Christmas day.
On to the first two books. Milan Kundera's
Book of Laughter and Forgetting is really a collection of seven short stories that feels somewhat forced into a single novel. I chose to read more of Kundera because I recalled reading his
The Unbearable Lightness of Being with some interest a few years ago. This book did not change my opinion of Kundera. It is, as with other books of his, replete with literary witticisms and between prose there are many intelligent, short interjections on human behavior, especially between the sexes. However, as is usual, it also puts forth Kundera's very perverted view of human society, i.e., men are typically driven by sexual desire and narcissism, generally, while women, although wielding a lot of emotional leverage on men, remain mere distractions that refuse to show an appetite for anything more sublime. This is perhaps the mildest of his offenses because, there is, after all,
some element of reality in such a worldview - just that it has been constructed so by millennia of social engineering which has only now started to become undone. But as I said, there are bigger red flags. The book is littered with small autobiographical portions, and in one portion, for instance, Milan describes his desire to rape his colleague. In another short story, he asserts, somewhat equivocally I'll give you, that rape is the most natural way of sex. In short, it is difficult to see how the witticisms on human behavior that are found in the book, based on such a skewed view of male-female interactions can be considered trustworthy in today's times. This is to be kept in mind that Milan Kundera is not an anachronism of sorts, he is a Franco-Czech writer of the later half of the 20th century and is exceedingly popular in today's times, especially amongst men.
Now some more about the novel itself. The general theme that ties together the short stories is the nature of love and relationships in the times of life under an oppressive, authoritarian state. The specific setting of the stories is Gottwald's pro-Soviet authoritarian state in Bohemia/Czech Republic. There is one particular story that I grew a bit attached to. Indeed, Milan describes the central character of this short story, Tamina, as the central character to whom this novel is dedicated to. Tamina's story is tragic. She and her husband flee Prague for a small town somewhere in western Europe after they get charged for political treason on account of campaigning against the authoritarian state. But shortly after their escape, Tamina's husband dies, and she lives in perpetual anguish because of his loss. She's a very faithful wife who cannot let go of her husband's memories, yet she finds herself losing the details of those memories. And this is when she begins to yearn for her box of
Lost Letters and diaries that she and her husband wrote together and for each other but left behind in Bohemia because they worried that the letters would get in the hands of police while they fled with them.
The story is deeply tragic. In her quest to retrieve those letters, she contacts friends and family, who all offer essentially conditional assurances to help her get the box of letters - she helps them with their ambitions and then they let her down. They cannot see her pain, for they are hollow human beings, and they cannot care beyond their wishes to help Tamina. The last of her efforts to retrieve the letters filled me with even more dread. Tamina effectively offers her body to please a younger man who is obsessed with her and claims to be willing to do anything for her. She figures that if she sleeps with him, he'll eventually get the letters for her, as he promises to do. Milan describes the sex scenes, and the dissonance between them and it invokes dread. In the end, this younger chap talks about becoming a journalist who wants to write about the cause of people like Tamina who fled Gottwald's horrible state. He does so, knowing that after such a publication, he would never be allowed into Bohemia and will not be able to retrieve those letters, but he decides (selfishly) that this is what is more important to the cause of the world (aka his cause of becoming famous). The scene in which he tells Tamira about his ambition, its execution, and her reaction is also dreadfully painful.
So the
Book of Laughter and Forgetting is not a bad read. There are portions there that certainly resonated with me or made me think or made me laugh. And Kundera has a way with words. The way he sees certain situations is both profound and poetic, so much so that it can change the way you think about those instances forever. Take for instance, this sentence,
" The phrase "It's absolutely the same with me, I ..." seems to be an approving echo, a way of continuing the other's thought, but that is an illusion: in reality it is a brute revolt against a brutal violence, an effort to free our own ear from bondage and to occupy the enemy's ear by force. Because all of man's life among his kind is nothing other than a battle to seize the ear of others."
Or, in another short story, "Men have always been divided into two categories. Worshipers of women, otherwise known as poets, and misogynists, or, more accurately, gynophobes. Worshipers or poets revere traditional feminine values such as feelings, the home, motherhood, fertility, sacred flashes of hysteria, and divine voice of nature within us, while in misogynists or gynophobes these values inspire a touch of terror. Worshipers revere women's femininity, while misogynists always prefer women to femininity. Don't forget : a woman can be happy only with a misogynist ... Worshipers or poets can bring drama, passion, tears, and worries to women, but never any pleasure."
While I'm certain that the statement that women are only happy with misogynists is pushing it too far, it is certainly an acute observation that some men (possibly, me) love and almost revere femininity more than women themselves. This is as dangerous and as stupid as an idealization/romanticization of any thing in the world, be it nation, religion, let alone human beings. And it is possibly also a burden on the woman being romanticized, which is possibly why in Kundera's worldview she prefers the misogynist. Question is, what does Kundera make of himself? As far as I can tell, his worldview is simply perverse because it is a romanticizes a misogynistic view of women being innocent passers-by in the fate of men. The two notions are almost intertwined, the way I see it.
This is then a good point to introduce Hesse's
Narcissus and Goldmund. Hesse's worldview is also very patriarchic, but it allows for men at least to possess some form of feminine qualities. According to Hesse, the calm analytical mind is the
masculine mind, the mind of the
thinker. while the creative, adventurous mind that lives in the world of senses is the
feminine mind, the mind of the
artist. According to Hesse, all men strive to achieve a sense of perfection (besides of of course, the useless, who probably form 99.9% of the population, who do not aim to achieve anything) that makes them
better, somehow, that makes their life worth living.
Narcissus is a young prodigy at the cloister who knows Greek, Latin, geometry and theology, while Goldmund is a younger boy who has just been enrolled into the cloister. Goldmund admires Narcissus immensely and aims to emulate him in his ascendency into an ascetic, thinker's life. Narcissus is also immensely fond of Goldmund, but tries to explain to Goldmund, in a subtle way, that Goldmund is an artist, not a thinker, and he needs to explore the world of the senses to complete his life.
Hesse has always been somewhat inspired by Indic philosophy. His book
Siddhartha left a very lasting impression on me when I read it in college. And, it must be said, this discussion between Narcissus and Goldmund reminds me of the discussions in the
Gita between Krishna and Arjun. Arjun is a warrior, Krishna is a scholar, and a guide to Arjun. The setting is the Mahabharat, or the grand war, fought between the Pandavas and Kurus. On the battlefield, at the brink of war, Arjun is suddenly getting cold feet. He begins musing about the meaning of war, death, and human life. And in a moment of weakness, he says to Krishna that he would like to forfeit his participation and go to the forests to lead the life of an ascetic. This is when Krishna asserts that there many paths and
yog (practices
) to attain
nirvaan (salvation), and that everyone needs to find the way that is right for them. He explains that Arjun is a warrior, he is trained to fight, and his prime duty is to serve people who have suffered injustice (to free the people from the tyrannical reign of the Kurus). He describes that while
sanyaas-yog (life of meditation, asceticism and scholarship) is a fine route to salvation, it is not advisable for him. An idle mind not built for the purposes of scholarship will not be able to achieve any sense of perfection in this way - it is just not instinctively natural to such a person. Arjun's path is that of
karm-yog or the path to salvation that involves practicing one's duty, but with a sense of detachment. For instance, a judge must honestly sentence his own child if the child has wronged. One cannot relinquish duty, because that is unproductive, but one must relinquish a love of the phenomenal world, for it often misdirects human efforts from their sense of duty.
Getting back to Hesse's novel, Goldmund eventually realizes the truth in Narcissus's appeal and moves on out of the cloister to lead the life of a vagrant. I often imagined Goldmund to be whoever played Thor in the movies, because of the repeated assertion that he has blond hair and is very charming to women. Moreover, Goldmund gets laid often, and makes this a big part of his journeys and adventure. This is where I do not quite understand Hesse. What is there to be learned from women in one-night stands besides possibly compiling some version of the
Kamasutra? At one point Goldmund finds himself in the somewhat enviable position of having the affection of two sisters and asks both of them to enjoy the night with him. The two sisters actually bail on him, and he goes away with the feeling that he never loved any woman more than the elder sister, although he finds the younger one far more attractive (as if that is a signifier of the purity of love.) It's all a bit absurd to me and I can't quite fathom the deep reasoning here that I could have missed. That love for the older sister soon dissipates as Goldmund finds many more women. There's also the case of one woman who has a limp, is otherwise very pretty, and who very selflessly shows care and affection for Goldmund. And Goldmund refuses to touch her (Is there supposed to be a deeper message there?) I must admit, when I read this part, I felt a strange sense of affection for this limp girl. It reminded me of the time when I was 5, it was my birthday, and this older girl with a pretty pale face, long dark hair and a fractured hand showed up at the party. I remember trying to cosy up to her - apparently, I sat on her lap for most of the party.
Unknown Girl in Pink when I turned 5. Hopefully she never finds this page.
There is a deeper question in all of this, though, and that is, who decides the instincts one is born with? How was Narcissus so sure that Goldmund's instincts were that of an artist? How was Krishna so sure that Arjun was not meant to be a scholar? How did I know, at the age of 5, that women are attractive beings? When the maid in Russia would take me outside to the park to cycle, she noticed that I was simply interested in charming women, even at that age, and would tell my mother that I would grow up into some 'Romeo'. It is an interesting affliction, as I think of it sometimes - it drove me from a young age to learn interesting things (the first of which was to dance like MJ, although it seems I am not capable of this any more), but it also seemed like a huge burden at times. I thought often, that sexuality was a gift to man for it made men learn, but man was also condemned to be sexual, because in parts the whole thing seemed absurd, and was very often painful, especially when I was in college.
I think there are only two important driving forces for humans to continue existing - 1) their desire to please the opposite sex and 2) to
justify their existence by striving to be
unique. The first one is common to all animals, but the second one seems to me to be a highly evolved feeling possessed only amongst humans - maybe it evolved as a consequence of monogamy (leaving humans with a sense of void given the disappearance of option 1) which explains why human society progressed most when monogamy became a thing. It is likely that different humans are influenced in greater or lesser degree by these two urges. I attribute all my artistic talents to the first of the urges and my love for science to the second, but I admit that the first of these urges has often been a greater motivator for me than the second. The second of these urges is bound by the weight of reality, and a realization about the absurdity of all existence while the first one has no ceiling. It is a fair game played amongst all men and women - it is after all, a game of the senses and it offers a simple way to beat death, i.e., through progeny. But I think I know why I was more motivated by the first and it is not a matter of hormones (in fact, I think it possible that men who first experienced an affection for women due to hormones are not romantic but more animalistic about their urges and are probably Kundera's misogynists.) I believe it is due to the simple fact that I am an only child who grew up in perpetual jealousy of the affection his cousins received from their elder female siblings. As a child, I thought I could persuade my female cousins, through flattery, subservience, to reject their younger male siblings in favor of me, but I soon realized that it never worked - nothing is greater than the bond between siblings. And this is why I grew especially more susceptible to yearning for feminine affection later in life.
But enough of my meanderings. Let us return to Goldmund and his women. So Goldmund then saves a Jewish girl, who is devastated as she sees her family being falsely implicated and eventually murdered for the plague that is ravaging the towns (the novel is set in the middle ages). Right after saving her, he basically asks for her to romance him. She is quite rightly disgusted, and thankfully Goldmund realizes this and leaves her alone. Eventually Goldmund realizes his artistic worth, and finds a master who teaches him sculpting. He goes back with this wisdom to Narcissus, who hires him to decorate the cloister with his sculptures. At the end Goldmund feels very appreciative of Narcissus for guiding him to the right path, dies of a mishap, while Narcissus muses whether his life as a
thinker has left him with nothing to show for, unlike the
artist, and experiences a moment of self-doubt. The end. There are moments where this novel did touch me - I do identify in parts with both Narcissus and Goldmund, and perhaps the idea is that everyone can have a bit of both within them, but overall, I felt that the novel felt a tad hollow.
On to Bulgakov, Borges, and Hemingway.
