ocean.flynn
Thomas Mann moment
September 1, 2005
Collage of sentences from Thomas Mann's Death in Venice.
It was a late summer afternoon in 2005 when my anxious shrinking world seemed to be beset by menacing clouds blowing from all directions. I feel overwrought from months of frustration built up through this nerve taxing work that will not cease to exact my uttermost sustained concentration. Lately I have been feeling hopeless against the onward sweep of the unproductive thoughts within me. I seek but find no relaxation in all the pleasurable pursuits of the past. I take walks in the hope the air and exercise will send me back refreshed to a good day's work.
September has begun and after the dramatic exit of the month of August with its unprecedented devastation of hail, heavy rains and violent wind storms, a mocking giddy sun shone. Ottawa was full of vehicles and pedestrians. Back home in La Peche, the lake was solitary and still. Trees stirred with the rising breeze. I was brought back to reality with the sound of traffic that blends into the wind in the trees and the hum of the old refrigerator that never stops running. I thought of my work and the place where weeks ago I was forced to lay it down since it would not yield. I had meant to bring the work to a certain point before September. The thought of a leisurely ramble east to the Maritimes or west to my granddaughters seemed too fanciful, too expensive, too luxurious to be seriously entertained. This yearning for a distant place, this craving for freedom, release, forgetfulness - they are, I admit an impulse toward flight, from the spot which is the daily theatre of a painstaking, passionate [] struggle. The research, reading and writing I love has almost come to take on a form of a tyrannical avenger. Again and again I try to untie the knot - which physically grasps my neck creating a sensation of a bulky growth whose finger-like tentacles grasp the back of my neck. Again and again I try to break the knot only to retire at last with a shiver of repugnance. What saps my energy is not that I think I am doing bad work. Since my youth I have known the ectasy of conquering the feelings of easy contentment and half-perfections to discipline myself to [fastidious, scrupulous details]. To me it seems my work has ceased to be marked by that fiery passion. I dread the solitude I used to crave shut up here in my heavy discontent. What I need is a break to make this period in my life more tolerable and productive. So ran my thoughts, while the lakeside gusts of wind sang through the heavy branches of trees in all directions around me. Some other physical or psychical influence came to play as I felt the most comforting consciousness of a widening of inward barriers - a kind of vaulting restfulness, a childlike thirst for the first home, the first grove of poplars that sang that familiar melody. I sat there rooted to the spot, my eyes on the birch tree and my pencil frozen in my hand as I explored these feelings, their bearing and scope in my new composition book, labeled fall 2005.
What pleases the [public are lively and vivid plots, actions and descriptions.] But I seem to need a problem. I am obsessed by the presence of the absence. I have taken false steps, blundered, exposed myself, offended against tact and sensitivity. But I have attained to higher goals. My whole life has been one conscious effort to learn, to be useful, to make a small part of the space around me more beautiful. My active mind has been blunted against the sharp and bitter irritant of knowledge. I have called genius itself in question, have become cynical about the nature of art and the artist's life. My self-conscious constancy of purpose now seems shallow and unaware. I am turning my back on the realm of material knowledge in a right about-face. For this kind of knowledge - which calls itself science or art - has lamed my will, my power of action, has paralyzed my feelings and my passions, has deprived all of these of their convictions and their utility. I reject all heroes except those born of weakness. I admire those who labour at the edge of exhaustion, those who continue trying although over-burdened with challenges and faced with a scarcity of resources. I admire those who are worn out but still hold themselves upright.
Note: By the time Gustav von Aschenbach died on a beach in Venice with tinted hair and his face painted in a grotesque effort to hide the ravages of fifty years plus on the body of a highly-disciplined, severe and celebrated author. there was little to admire or even like in this, the main character in Thomas Mann's Death in Venice. [1]
Mann, Thomas. 1912. aus
München, Hyperionverlag Hans von Weber .
But Thomas Mann's writing . . .
Notes
1. I am not sure about this translation.
Thomas Mann moment
September 1, 2005
Collage of sentences from Thomas Mann's Death in Venice.
It was a late summer afternoon in 2005 when my anxious shrinking world seemed to be beset by menacing clouds blowing from all directions. I feel overwrought from months of frustration built up through this nerve taxing work that will not cease to exact my uttermost sustained concentration. Lately I have been feeling hopeless against the onward sweep of the unproductive thoughts within me. I seek but find no relaxation in all the pleasurable pursuits of the past. I take walks in the hope the air and exercise will send me back refreshed to a good day's work.
September has begun and after the dramatic exit of the month of August with its unprecedented devastation of hail, heavy rains and violent wind storms, a mocking giddy sun shone. Ottawa was full of vehicles and pedestrians. Back home in La Peche, the lake was solitary and still. Trees stirred with the rising breeze. I was brought back to reality with the sound of traffic that blends into the wind in the trees and the hum of the old refrigerator that never stops running. I thought of my work and the place where weeks ago I was forced to lay it down since it would not yield. I had meant to bring the work to a certain point before September. The thought of a leisurely ramble east to the Maritimes or west to my granddaughters seemed too fanciful, too expensive, too luxurious to be seriously entertained. This yearning for a distant place, this craving for freedom, release, forgetfulness - they are, I admit an impulse toward flight, from the spot which is the daily theatre of a painstaking, passionate [] struggle. The research, reading and writing I love has almost come to take on a form of a tyrannical avenger. Again and again I try to untie the knot - which physically grasps my neck creating a sensation of a bulky growth whose finger-like tentacles grasp the back of my neck. Again and again I try to break the knot only to retire at last with a shiver of repugnance. What saps my energy is not that I think I am doing bad work. Since my youth I have known the ectasy of conquering the feelings of easy contentment and half-perfections to discipline myself to [fastidious, scrupulous details]. To me it seems my work has ceased to be marked by that fiery passion. I dread the solitude I used to crave shut up here in my heavy discontent. What I need is a break to make this period in my life more tolerable and productive. So ran my thoughts, while the lakeside gusts of wind sang through the heavy branches of trees in all directions around me. Some other physical or psychical influence came to play as I felt the most comforting consciousness of a widening of inward barriers - a kind of vaulting restfulness, a childlike thirst for the first home, the first grove of poplars that sang that familiar melody. I sat there rooted to the spot, my eyes on the birch tree and my pencil frozen in my hand as I explored these feelings, their bearing and scope in my new composition book, labeled fall 2005.
What pleases the [public are lively and vivid plots, actions and descriptions.] But I seem to need a problem. I am obsessed by the presence of the absence. I have taken false steps, blundered, exposed myself, offended against tact and sensitivity. But I have attained to higher goals. My whole life has been one conscious effort to learn, to be useful, to make a small part of the space around me more beautiful. My active mind has been blunted against the sharp and bitter irritant of knowledge. I have called genius itself in question, have become cynical about the nature of art and the artist's life. My self-conscious constancy of purpose now seems shallow and unaware. I am turning my back on the realm of material knowledge in a right about-face. For this kind of knowledge - which calls itself science or art - has lamed my will, my power of action, has paralyzed my feelings and my passions, has deprived all of these of their convictions and their utility. I reject all heroes except those born of weakness. I admire those who labour at the edge of exhaustion, those who continue trying although over-burdened with challenges and faced with a scarcity of resources. I admire those who are worn out but still hold themselves upright.
Note: By the time Gustav von Aschenbach died on a beach in Venice with tinted hair and his face painted in a grotesque effort to hide the ravages of fifty years plus on the body of a highly-disciplined, severe and celebrated author. there was little to admire or even like in this, the main character in Thomas Mann's Death in Venice. [1]
Mann, Thomas. 1912. aus
München, Hyperionverlag Hans von Weber .
But Thomas Mann's writing . . .
Notes
1. I am not sure about this translation.