Day 36: Zbigniew Herbert, Georges Simenon, Soren Kierkegaard
Zbigniew Herbert - Hermes, Dog and Star
I like this prose poem a lot as it tells a mystifying story that is almost like something from a vaguely sad children's book. Actually, the tone and feeling most reminds me of Moby's animated music video for Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad
In the story Hermes goes out looking for love and connection. He seeks it from a dog and star who are less complex than humans. The dog and star oblige, but not in the way he wants, leading him to feel rejected. The last stanza reads:
"They go along. The dog, Hermes, and the star. Holding hands. Hermes thinks to himself: the next time he goes out looking for friends, he won’t be so sincere."
Now I'm not so sure why the author wrote the poem, though I like this ambiguity. Does this say something about human relationships? It does but I can't put my finger on it. But I relate to the feeling.
Fiction: Georges Simenon - The Hand
"We would present, in the car, the image of a united family.
Except that I no longer believed in the family. I no longer believed in anything. not in myself, not in other people. basically I no longer believed in mankind and I was beginning to understand why Rey's father had shot himself in the head.
who knows if that might not happen to me someday? it was a comfort to have a revolver in the night-table drawer."
A bleak novella about a man who takes a turn to destroy his own life. It is the classic alienated man rage/rebellion/affair story we see a lot in post-war literature, but is psychologically astute and compelling in its disaster.
The atmosphere and voice are very effective, and for a story I have seen many times (and more or less roll my eyes at), it really tells it well. The last line is an absolute ripper.
What makes it good is that there is no wish-fulfillment on the author's part. It is merely bleak, and I guess, cautionary. I liked this a lot more than his other "hard novel" The Man Who Watched Trains Go By which felt too much like an angsty 1990s male-rebel narrative in the vein of Fight Club or Falling Down. This story is more critical of this branch of masculinity.
This is the first time I have finished a whole novel in a day. Next in the collection is Simenon's Betsy.
Essay: Soren Kierkegaard - The Present Age
This an excerpt of a longer essay, featured in the Penguin Book of Existential Philosophy. In this essay, Kierkegaard outlines some qualms he has with modern life in that it is full of normies.
He starts by talking about The public, or, hive mind conformity. We are quite used to this kind of spiel and his prose is very dense and dry. I tuned out until he began to speak of the next topic: the pseudo-subversive culture industry...
Anyone who has read the ancient authors knows the number of things an Emperor could think up to make time pass more quickly. The public in the same way keeps a dog for its amusement. This dog is literary contempt. If someone superior appears, even someone of distinction, the dog is prodded and the fun begins. The snapping dog tears at his coattails, indulges in all sorts of unmannerly rudeness - until the public tires of it and says 'that will do now'. The public has then been levelled. The better one, the stronger one, has been maltreated - and the dog, well, yes, it is still a dog, which the public itself holds in contempt.
What this paragraph makes me think of is the industry of satire and irreverence, which is a safe way to channel discontent with power without having to do anything.
Kierkegard also talks about a few other things beloved by normies, following this sentence formula rach time: x is the repealed passionate distinction between y and z.
Chat is the repealed passionate disjunction between being silent and speaking. [...] Chat dreads the moment of silence that would make the emptiness plain.
Superficiality is the repealed passionate distinction between hiddenness and revelation. It is a revelation of emptiness which in scope does have the tricksters deceptive advantage over essential revelation and its essential homogeneity of depth.
Last great quote which I think is very applicable to everyone today:
Not only do people write anonymously, they write anonymously in their own name, indeed, speak anonymously.
This is a good essay which parts I glossed over. I will return to it maybe after I reach the end of the anthology.