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[Hu. Back from the doctor, blurry vision & scarily wide pupils from eye-drops, but everything's fine & I'm getting new contacts, which is probably A Good Thing, since I can't even remember how old exactly the ones I'm wearing now are.]


Anyway. Holiday, the more factual and less depressing part.


Saw M. Kusej's production of König Ottokar's Glück und Ende [ pictures] in Salzburg with sister & sister's boyfriend, and found it ever so slightly disappointing. Perhaps I had too high expectations from his his Hamlet a few years ago, but while he still creates stunningly beautiful pictures/scenes, the interpretation was a little... lacking, IMO, too predictable, too cold, erstarrt in schönen Bildern. Perhaps it is my mood that has changed and what I liked about the Downward Spiral-esque Hamlet then, irritates me here? Maybe I'm seeing the wrong plays, and admittedly I don't see all that many, but I'm getting tired of these oh-so-beautifully staged, but fundamentally cold, detached productions, as if evoking sympathy, allowing some identification with a character is something slightly dirty, especially if this character isn't in some ways a victim. In this case you had the choice between Ottokar, who was portrayed as an unpleasant tyrant from the moment he enters the stage, and Rudolf, a power-hungry, self-righteous opportunist, constantly spouting pious phrases about his sacred mission, which he himself may or may not believe in. There was nothing new, nothing even remotely interesting, nothing really touching. Power corrupts, or, more precisely is inherently evil. Obligatory Bush reference, that is, insertion of what from what I heard was part of one of his speeches. Yawn. All the male characters (with the exception of Seyfried) were unpleasant to a greater or lesser degree, and the women long-suffering pawns and victims (Berta and Margarete), unless they chose to play a part in the male game of power, in which case they become as unpleasant as the men, if not more so (Kunigunde).

It is exactly the interpretation that offers itself when you read the play in todays political climate; it doesn't explain anything, and isn't challenging, because everyone can comfortably sit back and nod in agreement that politicians/leaders are and have always been bad, and the best you can do is chose the lesser of two evils. A little nudity (check) and sex (check) aren't provocative or particularly interesting; there would have been much more potential for provocation and/or interest if the director had allowed you to get a little more into the protagonists' heads, let you see what moves them, what makes people follow them, in a way that doesn't allow the safety of intellectual detachment.

If I remember correctly, Artistoteles somewhere in the Poetik says something along the lines that for a tragedy to work successfully the audience has to be able to sympathise with a character's fate, and that this works best if you show a basically good man (or at least not a thoroughly evil one) brought down by fate / the gods / his own hybris... and reading the play beforehand, I think in some ways at least it does work according to these principles of Greek tragedy. A man at the hight of his success, subsequently brought down by his own pride, because he doesn't know where to stop and believes himself above the rules.

The play isn't cheap black-and-white painting or blind patriotism, and there are a timeless and still very much valid moral and warning in Ottokar's last monologue (Und hab ich auch das Schlimme nicht gewollt, / Wer war ich, Wurm? daß ich mich unterwand, / Den Herrn der Welten frevelnd nachzuspielen, / Durchs Böse suchend einen Weg zum Guten!, going on to emphasis the worth and value of every single human life so easily and thoughtlessly wasted), a passage I personally consider both touching and important, because it puts everything, and not only Ottokar's life and fate, in a totally different perspective, but because one was never able to sympathise with him, his downfall and ultimate remorse were not particularly touching, either, and it went rather unnoticed.


In conclusion, pretty, but a little else.


Tobias Moretti didn't impress me all that much, either, though it's hard to tell whether this is due to him and his acting, or the general style of the production. Still... I can't help thinking there must have been more suitable actors.

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Holiday, pt. 2




[ more pictures here ]


To sum up, and contrary to the evidence of the picture above, it rained. A lot.

In slightly more detail, I arrived in Maishofen. It started to rain. And went on raining. Thursday it finally cleared up and I managed a hiking tour, which was mostly pretty, but where I found out that despite the morning runs my form is still? again? sadly lacking. (Yes, it was kind of steep, and also a few days before my period started, but still...) Also, I need to do something against my cow-phobia. Saturday It started to rain again, and that pretty much was it. So it didn't really matter all that much that - Tuesday, I think - I ran against the door-frame and bruised and maybe, but probably not, slightly cracked my little toe. Trip to the hospital, X-ray, which at least killed an hour or so. Couple of days of hopping around, which was less than amusing. Saturday before I left if finally cleared up again, but by then I still couldn't wear my hiking boots without the toe hurting. Sat on the balcony in the evening with a glass of wine, watching first dusk fall, and then a thunderstorm approaching from the west, lightning flashing over the mountains... which was pretty much the only time I felt truly relaxed and almost happy.

And yes, I do realise that it's horribly self-indulgent and petty to whine about such minor irritations when a couple of hundred kilometers further west streets and houses were swept away by flooding and land-slides.


So what I did was try to at least get out on the bike for a couple of hours each day when/if the rain stopped, and read. A lot. Tolstoi's War and Peace, which for the greater part I liked very much. My only (very minor) issue is with the second part, where occasionally he gets a little too long-windedly didactic in his theoretical historic passages for my taste. The problem, I guess, is whereas his historic approach was probably ground-breaking and new when he wrote the novel, it is rather less so a century and a half's worth of historical and sociological theories later, and you occasionally get a little exasperated, when what you already understood and found interesting the first, second and third time, is explained over and over again. And there's the occasional over-dose of patriotism and partiality for Kutusow... Also while you get to like the characters so much you want them to be happy, the epilogue with everyone happily married and I don't know many children is a little too sweet for my taste, but, again, minor irritations. Great writing, great characters throughout, loved it. Cried through Andrej's death; he's perhaps the character I liked best, always searching for something...something more, something beyond, and never quite reaching it, never really finding peace, only in the end, 'waking up from life'.

Finished Dostojewski's Crime and Punishment this time, and was very impressed with it. The first time I got stuck somewhere around Marmeladow's death, because between the endless, all-pervading misery, the apparently pointless murder and Raskolnikow's constant mood-swings and near-hysteria, I found it rather tiring to read, but once Raskolnikow's motif is explained it and his true tragedy becomes apparent, that it is not remorse for the murder that tortures him, but the fact that he fell short of his own standards because he could not coldly commit and bear the murder that was supposed to prove him one of the few, great people set apart from the masses who for the good of humankind in his opinion are above rules, conventions and laws. The problem of course is that partly he is right, because history has double standards and allows people to spill a lot of blood and will still call them great, but the sheer arrogance of deciding that he is one of these people and committing a murder almost exclusively with the purpose of proving this is breathtaking, as is the hurt pride in the self-disgust at having failed. (It is rather symptomatic that he's convinced that his sister is willing to martyr herself for him, but when she does appear in person it turns out she's not quite the self-sacrificing suffering saint, but a woman with a brain, personality and standards, who's in fact perfectly capable of weighing her options and making decisions for her life.)

Somehow, this novel and Raskolnikow's character seem to be almost prophetic for a good part of the 20th century...

Aber wenn du Blutvergießen aus Gewissen erlaubst, so ist das entsetzlicher als eine offizielle, sanktionierte Erlaubnis zum Morden...

I can't put it into wordes, but there's something about both novels, the sheer scope and depth of emotions, the subjects adressed, that is... TM's 'heilige russische Literatur' makes a lot of sense.


Also read Gogol's Dead Souls, which was a good, amusing read, but I do hate unfinished WIPs, so it's probably a good thing I didn't know that when I bought it...


Barbara Nadel, Belsazar's Tochter and Ake Edwardson, Der Himmel auf Erden, because they were on sale and you can't read Russian classics all the time.


Re-read a good part of TM's Doktor Faustus, still/again very much intrigued & noticed that TM is the first author in a long time whose books I actually re-read.


Gave up on Josef Winkler (too depressing) and Amos Oz (just couldn't get into it).

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Picture spam. Because I can, and because even when I spent two weeks mostly frustrated & depressed, part of me loves this place so much that it's almost a physical ache to leave...