Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus: Chapter X (fin)

(Ayres photographed by his partner Deborah May 3rd 2008 at the studio of S. Brown discussing the issue of light in painting)


As a matter of (or perhaps "in light of") dealing with the fact that we are going to hell for writing this sort of thing: each for our own interest, I thought that this little passage from Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus would be excellent: I will remind you that you sent this book during a period of writing a dissertation on research, where I stated that the best thing you could hope for research is that you are in some manner going to hell (the example of Dimitri from Brothers Karamazov, the example of Dante from La Commedia Divina, and the example of anyone from Robert Musil's "Mensch ohne Eigenshaften"):

We kept looking for additional references and found them everywhere: Murakami's wind up bird, constituted a whole unpublished chapter, and my phenomenological comparison of Augustine and Rousseau (please remember that you Oppermann are very much like Augustine: you "set them idiots straight!" and so does Augustine stand in his dream on a "rule" with his mother Monica. But I have already spoken about the problem of walking with your mother and having the insight about that woman you see approaching: "I knew that very moment she meant to do me harm:" This is the Tom Paine formula as the Lord of Music would say. The question with this woman who means to do you harm and the formula of the small animal of your body is another mephistophelean question that I am asking here: in other words you are screwed either way, it's another 20 years for you):

"Aescetic, Kretschmar would say," he answered, "the ascetic cooling off. In that Father Beissel was very genuine. Music always does penance in advance for her retreat into the sensual. The old Dutchmen make her do the rummest sort of tricks, to the glory of God; and it went harder and harder on her from all one hears, with no sense appeal, excogitated by pure calculation. But then they had these penitential practices sung, delivered over the sounding breath of the human voice, which is certainly the most stable-warm imaginable thing in the world of sound..."
"You think so?"
"Why not? No unorganic instrumental sound can be compared with it. Abstract it may be, the human voice - the abstract human being, if you like. But that is a kind of abstraction more like that of the naked body - it is after all more a pudendum." I was silent, confounded. My thoughts took me far back in our, in his past.
"There you have it," said he, "your music." I was annoyed at the way he put it, it sounded like shoving music off on me. as though it were more my affair than his. "There you have the whole thing, she was always like that. Her strictness, or whatever you liek to call the moralism of her form. must stand for an excuse for the ravishments of her actual sounds."
For a moment I felt myself the older, more mature.
"A gift of life like music," I responded, "not to say a gift of God, one ought not to explain by mocking antinomies, which only bear witness to the fullness of her nature. One must love her."
"Do you consider love the strongest emotion?" he asked.
"Do you know a stronger?"
"Yes, interest."
"By which you presumably mean a love from which the animal warmth has been withdrawn."
"Let us agree on the definition!" he laughed. "Good night!"
We had got back to the Leverkühn house, and he opened his door.

(Dore's Black Prussian Eagle is perhaps a little too heavy handed in this context: the black eagle may be seen however as a precursor of the phoenix itself: the blackening being an important counterpoint: its dire solicitation without succor makes the dangerous moment when the bird enters the flames and nears death, or death's lack of mystery: the phoenix behind the black eagle presumably is the universal medicine, but again Hölderlin warns correctly in Patmos: "Wo aber Gefahr ist das Rettende auch." And perhaps this line is too easily spoken, so that it forgets its own danger. I will wait a little longer, that is all)

(An irritating national symbol, predatory nationalism is its gross threat, my own patina added to some degree of success, however it's blackness is not to be under-rated)

You should accept this as your rebuke for lavishing only interest in the music of Bach. You may be right though: I believe that Bach leaves place for the fragile animal fragments of the human soul, as well as marching in the direction of the spiritual. But these barely passable pop songs: you might do well to review the first meeting between Hermine and Harry Haller in Steppenwolf: at the "Black Eagle:" Here we see the blackened eagle as opposed to the golden music of Bach or perhaps its transparent luminosity... the black eagle still soars heavenward, seeking out of its poor substance something: perhaps a place where it bursts into blood and feathers in the midst of a turbulent cloud filled evening sky.

(This image came from the 26th of January or thereabouts.)

I believe that the substance of any attempt to create a great work is that one is going to hell. We might also point to Thomas Bernhard's "Beton/Concrete" as bringing up the issue of "concrete relationship" (as well as Hegel, Marx and the history of western philosophy, and then we would really be going to hell). The problem here, with this kind of text, which to me is tremendously compelling, the one I am forced to write here: that it always takes the Faustian initiative and does the deed with the devil. One can only hope that this form of text writing is some manner more conscious of the devil in the text than say George Bush and Tony Blair signing some stupid arms accord. There they are signing a treaty so that everyone can go to the devil, and the devil is glad because --- he never gets talked about.)

Now I do not know which one of us, Oppermann or I, would best qualify as a Leverkühn, or which of us qualifies as his feeverishly writing friend: who is implicated by his own feeverish fascination to document and contemplate the whole affair: everyone gets to go to the devil, and it is only the frailest refrain of the soul that somehow still begs for the redemptions (and there must be many of them) from the kindness of God.

Or... perhaps an Oppermann or just an Ayres?

Listening to Variation XV Canone Alla Quinta: Andante A 1 Clavi from the 1955 Goldberg Variations by Bach as interpreted by Glenn Gould....