I started
writing this the day after I saw the RSC’s show “Shakespeare Live”, broadcasted
from Stratford, on the 26th of April. Of course it was a great show
– as was to be expected. And not just because it was this brilliant “pageant”
which even the Elizabethans might have been satisfied with, celebrating not
only the author but a national institution and, as may well be said talking
about Great Britain: a nation. I must confess I was rather moved by Simon
Russel Beale evoking “this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England”
in a beautifully understated manner. (Well, if the Scots are pissed off we’ll
have to live with it …) But I was even more moved by Akala, squeezing every
drop of poetry from Shakespeare’s text into a rap. Because this is what it was,
“deep down”: not people using Shakespeare to “show off” – which is of course
always part of this kind of celebration – but people living their artistic and
personal relationship with his text, “enhancing” their art and their lives by
using it. And this was how “all of this” began for me. In a very small way
(with a sonnet), and now to see this burst up into a celebration of humanity,
and life, and language was of course exactly the way to celebrate. Writing
this, I am still a bit “hung over”, and I cannot find Akala’s amazing song
ANYWHERE on the internet which is shit. But instead I found a wonderful rap
about the “bullshit” which is a theme very close to my heart, obviously, as I
began my blog with a squib about “the bullshit, John Cleese …”, and a great
love song called “Lose myself” where he is digging into an aspect of love which
is rarely covered in songs but struck me as important: “I want to be more than
myself. I think I need your help.” - And I don’t mind that he might actually
believe that he is the reincarnation of William himself – for all I know!
Because, yeah!, that’s the spirit. I mean it! (And Shakespeare could probably
have done worse …) Joking apart: I found in fact that rap agrees surprisingly
well with Shakespeare for a reason I have already stated somewhere: If it is
good it is never “just talking”. It means business.
All of this
has brought me to contemplate an issue I took up some time ago when I was on a long
train ride and have discarded again – probably not just because there were so
many other things but because it is about something particularly disagreeable.
It is about one of these questions that have obviously haunted my life and
which really NEED an answer. But the answer might be as disagreeable as the
question itself which sounds harmless enough: WHY DO I HAVE TO BE HERE? And it
is not the “big” question about life (as translated into: “Why are we here?”).
As in the wonderful Hamlet skit from “Shakespeare Live” it hangs on which word
(of “to be or not to be”) takes the stress. In this case it is actually “here”.
It is about why I always have to be in a place where I don’t want to be. Or
haven’t achieved to find a “place” where I really want to be. Assuming somehow
that my recurring dreams about weird places are an indication that “place”, in
this case, is a metaphor. And maybe I have even answered this question lately by
not asking it anymore. Going nowhere at all, and having no wish to do so, I might
even have found the “place”. But, as usual, I want to KNOW the answer.
What “came to
me” on that train ride was a memory of a lecture about Goethe which I heard at
uni, about 25 years ago. Whereas I was very much into Schiller’s work for some
time I never really liked Goethe. But I was fascinated, as I realize now,
because the lecture was, in a way, more about Goethe “as a reader” than as an
author. At least this is what I remember because it was actually about something
I have experienced often, and which is certainly one of the most important
motives for writing: the craving for a fictional experience. And, as I know
from experience as well, the author is always a highly competent reader of his
own text. Ideally, his (or her) text is what he (she) most wants to read. And
what impressed me was that I understood for the first time how important a
fictional experience can become for somebody who cannot find the life he
actually wants to live.
The fictional
world as such I didn’t like at all. I think I hated almost everything in it,
especially “Faust”, and especially “Faust II” which you never see on the
theatre, for a reason. It is perverse even for German literary standards where
we have this “tradition” that forbids to feel anything that “normal” people
might actually feel – which is still the main reason why there aren’t any great
German actors, or films, of course. The only “bit” I liked was a kind of tale
called “Märchen” – which is “fairy tale”. In fact it isn’t a fairy tale at all
nor resembles any kind of tale I know. It is a text that has no ties AT ALL to
any real (or fictional) world. Nonetheless it is not only “readable” but
actually beautiful to read. And I understood it and loved it as this
(successful) act of anarchy, especially against the background of an age where
everything with a claim to be relevant had to submit to some kind of LAW. The
desire for freedom - which Schiller expressed mainly politically as freedom TO
DO something, to decide which laws to follow or to define them for yourself –
is here channeled quite differently as freedom FROM rules and regulations OF
ANY KIND.
My teacher,
who had a great understanding of the human “impact” of literature - which might
have been much more important for me than anything he taught me on the subject
- made me understand that Goethe finally “got away” from a life which he had
made for himself and which implied not only wealth but the kind of carrier that
was, in those times, reserved to the nobility, and, literally, escaped to Italy
for a few years. But not before this life had made him ill – literally again.
He just knew he wanted a different life but didn’t know how he could have it –
involving such “basics” as to have “legitimate” sexual relationships with
people you want to have them with. He came back – because nobody in his right
mind would give up what he had achieved for a life as an artist in Rome – but
he made changes. The most important one was that he started to live with his
mistress “officially” – which was not at all the same thing as for “high class
people” to have a wife AND a mistress. And, I believe, not only Schiller
disapproved … He married her, by the way, when it didn’t matter anymore because
everybody got used to it, but this is how such things usually end. In the
beginning, it was certainly “special”.
As a rule, you
don’t “get away” and keep everything you have got. (If you haven’t got much you
care for the decision is a lot easier.) But I think he managed. In one of his
novels he explained the “Tory” manner of thinking and living to me in a way
that stuck. That was because I got it, for the first time, why anyone might
actually WANT to think and live like this. He explained that, when there is a
fire, you would do everything to prevent it from reaching your house, and to
safe the furniture. Well, when I am thinking about a fire in my building I am thinking
of the best way to get out of there, about the most important things to take
with me, and, maybe, how to help other people who are in danger… But I haven’t
got a house! And, as far as I remember, Goethe wrote this after Weimar had been
under siege and his partner managed to keep everything safe. (Which was when he
finally married her.) And, to be honest, if I am thinking about the current
situation, I am not keen on loosing anything I have got, or sharing it with
other people. I am prepared that I might have to, but I don’t relish the
thought. This is why I was feeling and thinking two different things when I
heard Ian McKellen recite the unpublished speech of Thomas More about the
“immigrants”. And I think somewhere here is the “line” that separates Goethe
and Shakespeare, although I am rather sure that Goethe wouldn’t have voted for
the AFD either. And, even though we know not only much less about Shakespeare
as a person than in Goethe’s case, but much less than we are made to believe we
do!, it is safe to assume that his estate in Stratford, and the wealth he
acquired as a theatre “entrepreneur”, was rather important to him. So the
difference isn’t that obvious, it is rather a “fine line”.
In any case,
being able to “get away” from what you don’t want AND to keep everything you
have got is a big, fat success story! Which is WHY there is a big price
attached to it – especially FOR OTHER PEOPLE who paid it because, for different
reasons, they wanted to stand in the light Goethe shed, and didn’t mind. Or
maybe they did …? (He had it right, by the way, when he stated that where there
is a lot of light there is a lot of shadow as well – my favourite quote by him.)
But there is another kind of price “we” are still paying for having “followed”
Goethe. Because, apart from the fact that closing your house against a fire
might not always work, there is a big disadvantage if you close the doors for
good: which is shutting out the world. I don’t think that Goethe even realized
that he had done it because there were so many people – who only echoed his own
opinions and believes - and because the world inside him was so much bigger and
produced so much more light and entertainment than that which could come from
others. And it had become so strong that everything that came from “outside”
had to be adapted and made to fit. And, in a way, I know exactly what this is
like … Maybe that was one of the creepiest of all the creepy things that
happened to me at uni: when I understood how well I understood Goethe. But I
didn’t go back there, after twenty-five years. When I am thinking about the
great “sign-posts” of German literature – Goethe, Thomas Mann, Günter Grass,
and Martin Walser, all of them great writers in their own way which I have read
and admired at one point – the thought of going back there again makes me sick
– literally! THEY are the reason that I was so infinitely pleased, and even
more RELIEVED, when Elfriede Jelinek got the Nobel prize (finally, after Günter
Grass did!) After all, I might still care sometimes about “where” I live. And
of course everybody who cares about texts has his personal “history of
literature” embedded in his bones where you don’t get rid of it. Beginning with
the first book you have read and which made an impression on you. And the
luckiest thing that ever happened to me was to finally get out of “Germany” and
to write the biggest part of it differently.
I did so, by
and by, probably starting with the Icelanders?, and almost without noticing
what I did, until I “hit on” Shakespeare again after twenty-five years. The strange
way – and stranger reason for doing this - made me look closer and think a lot
about it. And then – in this looking glass – I could suddenly recognize what I
had done. And why. And it made me realize what a long way I have come, and
where I am standing now. As this has been all I have written about until now,
at least I should know! - In any case it wasn’t coincidence that I ended up
with Schiller at one point, not with Goethe. Because there are other aspects to
the “classical age” than what had finally become of it – when, in a way, “we”
chose Goethe over Schiller. Schiller obviously didn’t want his house closed.
Even though he was probably quite aware that it was “utopia” (= no place!) he
believed in a world where people might really share what was “going on” inside
them. He actually cared for people – as the inhabitants of his fictional world!
- more than for his own bowel movements, or even more than for what he
experienced himself being in love or any “poetical” state he might use for
literary expression. Same as Shakespeare – of whom, as I have said, we know
almost nothing as to his personality – but from what he has written it is quite
safe to infer that he referred much more to what all kinds of people about him
actually said and did than to his personal experience and feelings. Which are
of course rather important AS WELL for writing great literature like the
sonnets and much of the “poetry” contained in his plays. But the GENERAL FOCUS
was elsewhere. There is one experience I am making every time when I am
starting on a “new” Shakespeare play – as just now with “Romeo and Juliet”
(which I think I must have read a long time ago but didn’t really remember). When
I start reading it aloud I automatically begin to think about WHO these people
might be, and begin to take an interest in almost every character that has more
than a few lines to say. In a way, I begin to “dream up” a Shakespeare play
that is like the BBC production of “Middlemarch” or the incredible “old” version
of “Persuasion” (with Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds) where they finally got it
that it is essential for these films to “work”, in the way the books work, that
EVERY character is equally important and has A LIFE OF HIS OWN. And this shows
me every time where my focus is now, and what I was probably looking for and,
of course, could never find in German contemporary literature, or film, or tv
productions. Because there is no real interest in OTHER people there, just
looking into the author’s precious self, or, worse, into what their “average”
member of the audience might want to see. (And the latter, of course, goes for “Hollywood”
blockbusters as well.) It was like living in a world that was struck blind,
unable to SEE the part of the world Shakespeare did see, and which I somehow
knew was there. And it is not just “our” recent history that is “to blame”. As
I have tried to unfold this started much earlier, with our “classical age”. Even
though it wasn’t just Goethe, of course. But I resist the opportunity to write
a bit of “acid” history of German literature – though I am not qualified for it
I realize that I could. But it wasn’t my intention anyway. I just realized that
the blindness really deprived me, as a reader!, for a long time because there
are “classical” works of German literature as well which are great, with a lot
of genuine human predicaments in them, for example by Fontane, which could be
“brought to life” on screen if there were any directors and actors who could
“see” them. But from experience I know that there is no point in looking at
them with something like “Middlemarch”, or “Little Dorrit” (which I saw
recently) in mind. The same goes for contemporary stuff, of course …
And I have
noticed something else about my blog that struck me as quite important. From
the beginning I have written about other people – much more often than I first
realized - not as such, but about their fictional experience. And in some cases
I did this “consciously” – but I fully understood how important all of them
have been for me for the first time writing this. Because I thought as well
that “it” was “utopia”. And, in a way, it is, but not quite. Maybe because of
them I realize for the first time that it is “real” because these
instances I have gathered are proof that other people have this kind of
experience as well, and that it is special for them. Of course I knew that this
“world” must be somewhere but I couldn’t reach it. And becoming conscious of it
makes me notice it consciously, and gather more of it. Not just remembering the
experience of people I know but actually talking about this kind of experience
more – which is, of course, a privilege. So, this year, I celebrated Shakespeare’s
birthday by actually meeting with somebody to talk about Shakespeare – and
other fictional experiences we had liked. (But, as I remember it, there was a
lot about Shakespeare.) And, of course, I notice what people I don’t know
personally have to say about Shakespeare, and other literary content I am
interested in, much more than I did before. For this the Shakespeare year, and
of course an event like “Shakespeare Live”, are great occasions. So, in a way,
everybody who has ever said something substantial about a fictional experience
which I could get hold of is an inhabitant of this utopia and makes it MORE
REAL. Top of the list: “... one of these roles I had always coveted and known
that, by playing it, I would be changed as a person” and: “I feel as if I am in
this world for real, together with the elf, and the dwarf, and the hobbit.” And
I have just “hit on” one of these rare instances where I had EXACTLY THE SAME fictional
experience as somebody else. Because I stumbled on an interview by Richard
Armitage for “Empire Magazin” which isn’t very interesting as such because it
mainly consists of him trying to answer or dodge stupid questions. (“How much
is a pint of milk?” obviously WAS NOT the most stupid one …) But when he
relates that he gave up on “Game of Thrones” quite early on, because there were
too many dragons in it, and went back to watching “House of Cards” I was extremely
pleased because that was exactly what happened to me – although actually BEFORE
the first dragon appeared. And the gratefulness to everyone of these people I
mentioned is something I couldn’t express, even if I had a gift for words like
Shakespeare’s. And which is what I want to celebrate.
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