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| Hannah Arendt - Barbara Sukowa |
NYTimes Essay on Hannah Arendt
“Isn’t it strange that the literature that that best represents our present time is literature that is light, mild, slight. It is a literature, that without being in the least squeamish, proposes above all (and almost exclusively) to entertain. Careful, I do not condemn the authors of this entertaining literature, as among them, in spite of their lightness, there are true talents. If in our times it is rare to undertake literary adventures that are as daring as those of Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Rilke or Borges, it is not only due to the writers. It is because the culture we are now immersed in does not encourage readers to challenges which end up in works that demand of the reader an intellectual concentration almost as intense as that which made them possible. Readers today want easy reading books,that will entertain them. This demand becomes a powerful incentive for writers.” Vargas Llosa – my translation
In my 1990 interview in Lima with Mario Vargas Llosa I asked him why I had had such a task reading his Conversacíon en la Catedral. He told me that he had been inspired by William Faulkner’s short story The Bear. He added that in the reading difficulty, the reader shares and participates in the creation of the work of the writer.
Because I am 83, and I am surrounded by friends who have died, have Parkinson’s, mental problems and dementia, I worry that if I do not exercise my brain I will go into those same directions.
I have ceased reading novels, police procedural and mysteries. I now lean into books with essays that are a tad difficult to read. Borges to me is not as difficult as I have been reading and re-reading his output for years. I am not sure if this mental exercise will in the end keep my marbles from slipping.
For over 25 years I have been getting a daily delivered, hard copy, New York Times, Breakfast in bed with Rosemary and the paper was our long-standing tradition. I now have it in the company of my two cats Niño and Niña.
The Sunday NY Times crashes at my door on Saturday night around 8:30.The first section I read is the Book Review. In this Sundays there was a two-page essay on Hannah Arendt. Below is the pay-wall free link. I can gift 10 of these per month. If I send the link in emails, all the people can open them with no restrictions. We know that in Canada Meta does not allow us to put links to newspapers. But in blogs it is just fine.
When I read the essay many thoughts came to me. In 1972 when I was teaching at an American high school in Mexico City I was carefully watched by the principal who was a member of a right-wing group Daughters of the American Revolution. In my ancient and medieval class to 9th graders I told them that Herodotus had written that perhaps because the Israelite had lived for years under the Egyptians they might have copied the custom of circumcision. I told a Jewish boy to stand up and to explain what this was. I was called into the office and told not to teach sex in my history class and to avoid any mention of Herodotus.
Strangely I told that same class that if they happened to go to parties and they sought serious conversation they would be authentically themselves. I told them that this party theory was one of Martin Heidegger. I did not tell them that Heidegger had been a member of the Nazi Party. This never got back to the principal. And I did connect Heidegger to Sartre who taught that we cannot find ourselves.We just have to be.
All the above somehow came to light on a flight to Argentina with Rosemary on Air Canada flight in 1912. The in-flight film was most unusual. It was a biographical film called Hannah Arendt. New to me was to find out that Arendt not only spoke in German but also in English as she had escaped Europe in the 40s to the United States and promptly found a job with the New Yorker. In the film when Barbara Sukowa (the actress playing Arendt) spoke German there were three subtitles. One was in English and the other in Spanish as our plane was going to Argentina. And yes in French, too! When she spoke in English the subtitles were in French and in Spanish.
Seeing Barbara Sukowa as Hannah Arendt immediately brought memories to me. Sukowa had faced my camera in her room of the Hotel Vancouver in October 1991 assigned by the Globe and Mail.
Because we are now in this 21st century I remember with shock that when I told her to look into my camera and seduce me, which she did, is something I could not get away with now.
As for my marbles I hope they do not slip soon.
