The reader and the text (“Birthday issue” 2020)

Now the first anniversary of my year – Shakespeare’s birthday – is approaching fast, and I will probably not be able to commemorate it in any way I would like. As by eating out with Claudia or putting up my own ”festival” as I did last year. (Though I have a faint hope of something online – like some Shakespeare from Digital Theatre, or maybe streaming “Twelfth Night” released by the National Theatre - which probably won’t work as there will be hundreds of people streaming … Thousands???) But I might celebrate anyway, in a different way, by looking into READING. (And, very aptly - as I am still “under the influence” – into theatre …)

Right in the beginning, I unconsciously used the term READING as it is defined by common use, as dealing with WRITTEN text. But this was just because of how I got started, using my blog – and the idea of reading Shakespeare again – as “therapy”. I thought I’d just start reading and then see what happened. It was only by and by that I got into the habit of acquiring theatre productions and film adaptations of the plays on DVD and watching them after having read the text. Only then did I observe that I use the CONCEPT of reading, as it occurs naturally, to describe how I engage with fictional text in an intense and complex way which is basically the same when I am reading written fiction or am watching a film or a staged play. In fact, the most basic object or activity or event in real life as such is infinitely more complex than any text could ever be, but we are accustomed to REDUCE their COMPLEXITY in order to deal with them. Reading, instead, is an activity that encourages and ENHANCES COMPLEXITY by dealing with text on different levels AT THE SAME TIME. Intellectually, by finding out what happens in that story, which is often rather complicated, or why it happens, and so on. Emotionally, by reacting to characters with empathy or repulsion. Sensually, by automatically creating sensations and images, or reacting to the way they are created with pleasure, distaste and so on. Ethically, by making judgements on characters and their actions, and probably more … And this way of creating complexity is what I experience as AESTHETICAL.

(Which, as I just found out, is quite important because “aesthetical” is the fundamental adjective referring to ART – and my natural understanding of aesthetical – which is, of course, anything but new! – nonetheless defines art as something profoundly “democratic”. I realize that what I am doing when I am reading is to take the text out of the hands of the artist and use it AS MY OWN. This is also the reason why I am totally not interested in “elitist” art – art which is DEFINED by the personality of the artist. (Which doesn’t mean that I deny its existence or importance!) And why I love the theatre so much more than I actually ”use” it – because nothing can HAPPEN there without the audience becoming a part of the performance. The inevitable corona update: Football premier league can start again without people watching, as almost everybody is watching (and paying!) on TV anyway, and an audience makes zero difference to the playing. But – even if we could watch remotely! – reopening the theatres without letting in the people makes no sense at all.)

The secret of reading, therefore, is making something more complex than it is. And this requires a SKILLED READER. A person that can not just decipher text and determine its meaning, but somebody who is aesthetically skilled. Somebody who LIKES to make things more complex than they are and knows how to do this. (The last being, I think, what is commonly referred to as IMAGINATION. Fiction is certainly not the only but the most comprehensive way of dealing with this nagging feeling that there are ALWAYS more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.) And it requires a TEXT that can be used in this way.

In the fictional universe, a TEXT is not just the written word but every object that can be used aesthetically, as films, TV series, theatre productions, songs, paintings, even instrumental music. The reason why I am never dealing with painting or music is that I am not a skilled reader of these. I may happen to deal with them in a significant way occasionally, being totally happy and fascinated with some music I am hearing, or suddenly struck by a painting, as “everybody” is. But this is over very fast, and I seldom think about it. I have no real skill in dealing with them whereas, I think, I have become an exceptionally skilled reader of written or spoken text and art featuring interpersonal relationships a long time before I even knew it. I suspect the reason is that, unlike most people, I have never taken either of these for granted but experienced them as beautiful and enjoyable (where the written or spoken word is concerned) or utterly scary and nightmarish. (The latter mostly when it comes to interpersonal relationships. And I just realized – partly due to the corona crisis – that I still do. How extremely cautiously I am still dealing with real people, suspecting the madness and bullying to come out at any moment, though I am never prepared for it when it does. I think, one of the first things I learned, socially, is that I am the kind of person that will be disliked and maltreated – and I still think it is something as important to remember as it is to forget … I actually forgot! Must have been this film that reminded me? See below …)

Obviously, READING is the most important concept in this world I am investigating because it describes its BOUNDARIES. Everything that is not reading, or somehow came into my reading, has to stay outside. READER and TEXT are next, the first dichotomy, basically without hierarchy because they are totally dependent on each other. Without a text there are no readers, only people, and without a person to read it there are only words but no text. As this is such a commonplace statement that it is almost embarrassing to utter it – why do I still find it so fascinating? I suppose because I never know HOW it begins. How the two come together, or why. The only thing I know and can describe is WHEN it has happened.

The READER might appear to be the far more important concept in my blog because I am constantly writing about them – especially about ME as a reader. It appears that this is what it is all about – all I can write about with authority: what happens to me when I am reading. But the text is so much more fascinating and mysterious. As a reader, I only BECOME interesting when I am dealing with a beautiful and fascinating – or fascinatingly nightmarish - text and am experiencing the change it brings about in me. As regards content, the text is so much more important than I am. It is the “thing” I absolutely need, the thing I worship, the thing without which I – as a genuine (= not dull and bullshitting) human being – cannot survive. But what is this thing?

Maybe the most important part is to understand – as in Socrates – that I don’t know. The only thing I know about a fictional text is that it is never just words, words, words … Maybe “What?” is even the wrong question because it should in fact be “When?”. As it starts to be a fictional text WHEN it transcends words. But how do I KNOW when? How do I know that I can begin to deal with something I read or see in a complex, aesthetical way?

I so wish that I could remember my first time. When I got told a story and realized that is was a STORY. I guess that there must be something like GOING THROUGH A DOOR involved. To OPEN a book, the sensation when a curtain is raised … that is how we LEARN what a fictional text is. (When we have learned it we are able to make guesses, I suppose, and will recognize it even in unlikely places.) Actually, the first natural way I have observed with children to appreciate and use fiction is in fact some kind of THEATRE. A curtain is raised and Kasperl and Gretel (or Judy and Punch) appear. It is a way of initiation, and other nations have different ways. In fact, a glove puppet is more than enough to get any small child totally excited. And I remember my baby niece visiting for the first time and instantly inspecting the content of my bookshelves that didn’t even have any pictures. (Actually, as I know her, mostly as a means of reassuring herself, and making sense of ME: Oh, this aunt is something like my mother, she READS!)   

And I might just have found out why it is THEATRE. Why theatre is this ideal place to set up a fictional situation. As usual, there was a really long “run up” to get there.

Which I started far back in the past, but the finding out began with the elder of my two sisters calling recently. When we were done talking about the corona situation, she told me that she had seen “Joker” and had been totally fascinated with the film, the actor and, obviously, the (actor as a) man. I was pleased as I knew I could get the film the next day at Müller Markt (the German equivalent of Boots which is also the only chain store in Germany where they sell music and DVDs on a big scale). I bought it and watched it and was fascinated. I told my sister I would send her a text when I had seen it, rating my reaction to the film, the actor and the man on a scale of one to ten. That was a joke – it eludes me how people rate ANYTHING on a scale from one to ten, but I did something similar. I send her two thumbs up about the film – which is fascinating, (though I was bored in the beginning and only got fascinated during the last quarter, where there is this bit about tragedy and comedy – saying exactly what I said in my last post, only so much more perspicaciously and radically.) I gave the actor one thumb up – solely because - as, in this case, the actor practically IS the film and the film is great - I had to ASSUME that Joachim Phoenix must be a good actor. (I should have been reassured about this by him winning an Oscar, of course, but I never am.) The thing is that I couldn’t TELL. In fact, I had been bored with the much bigger half of the film and only fully noticed what an interesting film it is when I was done watching ( – which sounds absurd but happens regularly to me. It is the reason why I almost never stop watching when I am bored. I know from experience that I might be bored because I don’t (yet) understand what the film is about. And the films that I don’t understand at first are the most likely to tell me something new or show me something in a new light.). The reason I had been bored was exactly THIS: That I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t tell if I liked what the actor was doing. And that bothered me … more so as I have now positive proof that it has nothing to do with my rating of him as a man – where I must have disappointed my sister giving him two thumbs down. The proof being what recently happened about Toby Jones and “Uncle Vanya” - which made me aware that my finding somebody fascinating as an actor basically has nothing to do with the fact that I find them sexy, or attractive as a person. (“Basically” because, if I don’t, it might take so much longer until I NOTICE that it might never happen.)

It bothered me that I couldn’t tell about Joaquim Phoenix – having so much “independent” proof. And this made me aware that this is something which happens all the time. That is, it happens all the time IN FILMS whereas it never happens when I am watching THEATRE. With theatre, I can always tell if an actor is good or not. And quite often this even leads to unpleasantness – mostly when I am actually IN the theatre watching. I am stressing this because I see theatre productions much more often on DVD or in the cinema than actually in the theatre because I cannot afford to travel to London or Stratford all the time. And with recorded theatre this practically never happens: a lead actor being more or less out of sorts. It just happens EVERY TIME I am actually IN the theatre. And – though this has only been a few times lately – I guess that means that it happens a lot. It happened when I saw “Macbeth” in Stratford, and - even though I loved Chris Eccleston’s playing - I could see that he was only at about sixty to eighty percent on that day (- which is still over fifty percent more than most other actors!). And I definitely KNEW this when I finally saw him at a hundred and thirty on DVD. (Still, if he wants to go on playing Shakespeare - which I fervently hope! - he should really get used to learn his text WORD FOR WORD, it actually helps!) It happened with “Antony and Cleopatra” at the Olivier Theatre – where everybody was good on that day EXCEPT Ralph Fiennes – whereas he WAS when I saw it again in the “Cinema”! And it happened recently when the curtain was raised on “Uncle Vanya” and I became aware that Richard Armitage was boring me … And - though I was appalled, especially in this case! - in a way, I always come to love this kind of failure. I love it because it infallibly leads to some important discovery. As “Uncle Vanya” could not be recorded, there will be no direct comparison, but my most intense theatre experience – at least until I saw James McAvoy recently as Cyrano – was the twenty or so seconds when Richard Armitage entered the stage in “The Crucible” BEFORE he opened his mouth to say anything and BEFORE he did anything at all, and when I KNEW something extraordinary was going to happen. Compared with what DIDN’T happen when I saw him at be beginning of “Uncle Vanya”, it is my stellar point of reference for what I can always see in the theatre and so often cannot see in films. In the theatre, I ALWAYS see if an actor is ACTING.

  

I don’t know yet why this is so, but I suspect that I had actually been right about the FOURTH WALL when I brought it up the first time in my blog. In the theatre, I never just see characters in a story, I ALWAYS see actors acting at the same time. And when I CANNOT see it, I know that there is something wrong. There is nothing more irritating or dispiriting in the theatre than an actor who isn’t acting. I believe the reason for this is that, in a stage situation, it is the ACTING which creates the fourth wall. More precisely: the acting and NOTHING ELSE. I love to hit on the “fourth wall” in films – when a speck of mud or drop of water hit the camera – because I like it to become aware of a fictional situation. It is also an indication that in films it is created in a different way. That the way of going through a door into the fictional world is different. There are important films without any significant acting – though I usually love the other kind. I sometimes notice the use of music in the theatre with pleasure – but I would never miss it. Whereas I desperately miss it in films, except in the rare cases where the lack of a soundtrack is actually compensated by the acting - as I noticed recently on behalf of “My Zoe”. Most (conventional) films actually don’t WORK without their soundtrack, whereas in the theatre only the actors – and especially the way they are INTERACTING - determine what we are supposed to feel. There is this intense PHYSICALITY which somehow never works like this in films where people get naked all the time, and have sex, and it is never remotely like when actors just touch or just react physically with one another on a stage. Of course actors love this: being so totally in control of the fictional situation, getting in touch with their audience without actually having to meet them, having this immediate power to guide us where they want to. But it is also a heavy and exhausting responsibility, doing this every single time over a period of weeks and months. Therefore I am always lenient regarding this kind of failure, at least if it is temporary – but this is not the point.

The point, in this context, is that, watching theatre, I CANNOT start reading until I get convinced that the actors ARE ACTING. In the theatre I cannot go through that door into the fictional world unless the actors open it for me. And this happens THE MOMENT I see them acting. The exciting twenty seconds in “The Crucible” and the many agonizing minutes at the beginning of “Uncle Vanya” are positive proof of something that is usually difficult to determine: if there is some quality IN THE TEXT that actually turns the expectation of a fictional situation into a fictional situation. It is one of these rare opportunities where I was able to actually lay a finger on something that has to be there - independent of me as a reader - and which I came to think of as the TEXT VORTEX.

Reading as text production

Now that I have „read“ myself „out“ of „Chekhov“, and there is no Shakespeare waiting to be read  or anything else to amaze me 😢 AND I am in „home office“ indefinitely because of the corona virus, I should finally find the time and elaborate on the concepts I used to describe and improve my reading …

Well, there WAS something to amaze me which has to be mentioned, though I couldn’t write about it. That is, I couldn’t go back to it because it was too sad. As planned, I saw „Cyrano de Bergerac“ with James McAvoy in the leading role in the Cinema, and it was just stunning. It was definitely bad timing, so immediately after what was supposed to become my theatre event of the year, but I readily agreed with the text Claudia sent me immediately after she had seen it in London: „James McAvoy is God!“ (Had to, even though I stopped admitting any more gods as my personal Olympus is already crowded.) I have rarely seen anything so emotionally precise – where I knew every split-second with absolute certainty what the character was feeling. But what I admired and enjoyed even more is the way he dealt with the poetic language. I wrote about this in my blog a few times, but there has never been anything quite like it. There probably wasn’t an opportunity like this before as, after all, the play – in the ingenious new adaptation by Martin Crimp – doesn’t only deal with one of the greatest love stories of all times AND with the impact of political repressions on the cultural élite. It is also a play about the POWER of poetry. What it can do, and where it fails. And something as powerful as this had been beyond my imagination.

(I noticed that I have just spent my personal „best actor“ award for 2020 – and left out 2019! There was so much great cinema – totally disregarded by the jurors, the Oscar nominations turning out so boring that I didn’t even watch … - and, nonetheless, it was probably something quite old: Ralph Fiennes as Hauptsturmführer Amon Goeth in „Schindler’s List“ which I hadn’t seen at the time – for achieving something nobody had before. He played the „Unmensch“ in a way that I HAD to watch. And I created a new personal award for “best actor/actress playing a character that nobody cares about” (which I unofficially gave to Brian Protheroe for his brilliant and unconventional vignette appearances in RSC productions at least two times) and now officially grant to Tanya Reynolds as Mrs. Elton in the recent cinema adaptation of “Emma”, roughly for the same reason. She was the first actress who played Mrs. Elton as if she was a real human being, not a comedy character. Awesome!!!)

But, whereas I absolutely enjoyed „Uncle Vanya“ until the end (though not that much in the beginning!), I noticed that, after the emotional peak when Cyrano is declaring his love for Roxane in Christian’s voice – after the poetry is gone and misery begins to show its naked face - I kind of blocked it. I didn’t WANT to feel anything like this. I suppose it is this ABSOLUTENESS I cannot deal with anymore … It seems that there are people one cannot get to stop talking. I am somebody, once I have started, I cannot get to stop writing. But, comparing my two recent theatre experiences, I just noticed something important about myself. When I read Chekhov, one of my most important finds was that I always get the impression that life is GOING ON, and therefore – even though the misery got at me much more than, for example, in “Shakespeare” -  I just couldn‘t give up on any of these characters. At least not on those I diagnosed as being still alive and suffering. And why my favourite bit of the play is this moment where Dr Astrov is reaching out to Vanya because he cannot accept his ABSOLUTE misery. (And I might not be the only person that reacts to “Chekhov” in this way, as we got into speculating about what might happen if Professor Serebryakov actually died!) Tragedy is not the most „tragic“ bit of life - once it is OVER. The most tragic is actually in comedy  - which Chekhov regarded his plays to be! - because the greatest comedy is about what happens to people once they have been chopped down to what they are. Obviously, I have come to regard this „chopping down“ as something we have to ACCEPT in order to have a proper life and some degree of happiness. (Thence, maybe, my obsession with Demut/humility?) There are two extremes here that both become ultimately tragic. I cannot even imagine what Vanya is supposed to do after having been chopped down to THIS (apart from topping himself!). But neither is it a reasonable option to run up the walls in the way Cyrano does all his life. If somebody can bring him so close to me as James McAvoy did, I easily understand that – for him! – there is no choice, and he probably wins my empathy, maybe even admiration. But, in the end, I couldn’t bear with him because it is just STUPID. The chopping down even is the essential WORK we – or „the world“ – have to do so that we can BEGIN our lives and not get stuck in the same stupid treadmill fed by illusions that have become stale. And ESPECIALLY the people who have succeeded in living their dream instead of dreaming their life – I suppose I cannot have any idea how much „chopping“ they had to do to get there!

So, that might be it – except for something I’ll (definitely!) just mention – for the record. It turned out particularly interesting to deal with two totally different contemporary ADAPTATIONS of historical fiction. It would be such an intriguing thing to look into – especially as it is something I am often dealing with implicitly when I am reading a play and then see how my reading of it changes when it gets on the stage. Basically, reading something like „Antony and Cleopatra“ or, just now, „Cymbeline“, I automatically include one or even two additional time frames – apart from my own contemporary world as reference: the time where the action is taking place and the time the play has been written. On the stage – even though, I am certain, in case of a relevant production or adaptation, people are doing exactly the same! - one of the main concerns has to be how to TAKE OUT these two time frames to make it convincingly contemporary without losing essential context. (Which sometimes pops up as a dilemma, as I noticed expressly watching “Uncle Vanya” on behalf of the bit about men and women being able to become friends only after the sex issue is moved out of the way.) To my astonishment – even though Martin Crimp’s adaptation is absolutely striking where he explores the parallel between rhymed poetry and contemporary poetry slamming and rap lyrics – in my experience, Connor McPherson ultimately had been more successful. (Though that’s my age and socialization, no doubt. „Kids“ would certainly judge differently!) Apart from that - even more than contemporary PRODUCTIONS – these adaptations are such a great opportunity to see what other people have READ. And there is a great transition to the theoretical section of my blog.

An adaptation of a work of historical fiction for the stage is so interesting for me because it results in a direct MANIFESTATION of the activity I am dealing with in my blog. I called it „Reading Shakespeare“ from the beginning, but I didn’t really know why. I just liked the title. (Apparently, I implicitly knew most of what I was going to find out!) As I went back in time recently, looking at my early posts, I discovered that I have used the term REALLY READING in my very first post about „The Taming of the Shrew“. I didn’t really know then what I meant, I was just beginning to find out, but that was the moment when I noticed the DIFFERENCE.

I became aware recently that I don’t care much about the term – even tried to swap it with something like „deep reading“, but, after I went back to how it was created spontaneously, I decided to keep it. And it is this activity of Really Reading that manifests itself in something like a written adaptation of a play. Reading the translation of the Russian original and then seeing the adaptation on the stage – as in case of “Uncle Vanya” – or seeing the adaptation and activating my knowledge of the historical text – as in case of “Cyrano de Bergerac” – makes me WITNESS what another human being thought about this text. What was important for them, what they left out, and how – sometimes even why! – they changed the meaning the historical context suggests. Basically, this is what „we“ are doing when we are reading, on a different level, on another scale, but every time when we enjoy a fictional text and it becomes personal and important to us. It shows in what way reading is not a trivial occupation – to finally find out what happens in that book, pass the time, reproduce content and feelings we know well already, all of which it can ALSO be! – but some kind of active and relevant EXCHANGE.  An exchange between me – as the reader of a fictional text – and the text – as this obscure object just waiting for what I would do with it, and, in turn, doing all kinds of unexpected things with ME.

Really Reading has therefore the distinctive feature that it ALWAYS results in some kind of new text being „written“. In the case of an adaptation, we actually can walk into Foyles and buy a copy of this text while the play is shown in the West End - as we did when we saw “Uncle Vanya”. Most of the time, though, reading is going on unnoticed as no text ever manifests itself. Nonetheless I got convinced that there is ALWAYS some kind of text being written - while I am reading, and afterwards to memorize an experience I enjoyed. Now this observation appears trivial, but, when I started to do this, it has been one of my most relevant discoveries in the department of Really Reading that I ALWAYS produce a text after I have seen a film or play that I liked or found memorable in any way. Quite often even consciously, on my way home from the cinema or at some point while I am watching, but not always. Strictly speaking, this is something that cannot be proved, but there was one experience of „negative“ proof that ultimately convinced me of it. It was when I saw „The Desolation of Smaug“ and walked out of the cinema and became instantly aware that I couldn’t „read“ the film. That I wasn’t able to produce the text that would have told me what the film actually meant for me. As I have certainly written somewhere in my blog, this disagreeable experience was revoked when I saw the third film, but it is not something likely to be forgotten. It is this kind of unpleasantness or failure, though, that often leads to finding out something essential because It makes me aware that I am dealing with something that is real, not “just in my mind”. It is how I came to EXPERIENCE Really Reading as an activity of TEXT PRODUCTION.

It is also important in this context that reading, though a necessary part of text production, as to the AMOUNT of activity involved is only a small part of it. I believe that the biggest part of my obsession with actors is the discovery that great actors are usually uncommonly gifted and skilled readers. Probably the best proof that reading actually is a SKILL: when I can see this kind of result. We usually never become aware how we learned it. The actors I love, I love mostly because I discovered that they are reading what I am reading, just so infinitely better and closer - and „truer“ - than I ever could. Nevertheless, it is just a small part of the skills they USE to produce their text, probably somewhere in the one digits, and probably mostly unknown to themselves. It is not, actually, what actors DO. Even for those that consciously consider it as a substantial part of their work –  by producing their own text, actually writing diaries and backstories for their characters – all this only ends up indirectly in the text we see. As important as it may be for them to make the text in their mind more substantial, and to know so exactly what the character is about, most of it we don’t SEE. What we see and hear is what they achieve to “translate” by the superior awareness and control they have of every means of expression (face acting, voice, accent, body language, posture, movement and so on …) This is the material from which we then produce OUR text, which might not be at all what they read or intended! It MIGHT be, of course, and I have at least some proof, through commentaries or interviews, that it has partially been the “same” text we were reading. But, ultimately, the only text I control to some degree is the text I produce. 

As I am usually dealing with complex works of fiction, like films and series and theatre productions, and much less with books, just trying to read the final credits makes me aware of the amount of activity required for making a film that includes very little reading or no reading at all. But I wrote a post already at Christmas 2018 - when I saw this film about Dickens writing „A Christmas Carol“ - that I find increasingly interesting as it deals with the issue of how much of activity, and calculation, and prerequisites come into the production of a simple STORY which are purely “economical” or otherwise have nothing at all to do with the text we are reading. Nonetheless, without all this, the story wouldn’t have come into existence or wouldn’t have turned out the way it did.

Reading is a decisive part of text production but only a small one. It is, however, the only part that is available to everybody, and the only one that turns the text into the “end product” of a production process. And it is this singular and incomprehensible opportunity of experiencing something without actually DOING it.