Yeah, that's the most heartbreaking and tragic kind of tragedy, where one sees how one's own actions bear some weight in one's downfall (although of course no one deserves Gundling's fate, so I'm glad it never veers into that territory).
Yes, it can be a tricky balance to get right, but I think the novel does. And of ocurse, this is how Aristotle himself defined the hero of a tragedy - someone whose misfortunes came to be through a mixture of exterior circumtance and his own flaws.
I think it's possible that nothing else FW has done -- yes, even Katte -- has bothered me quite as much.
It's not a competition, but to me it feels in many ways so, too. Perhaps because Katte at least was surrounded by people sympathetic and respectful to him when he died, he had a last encounter with Fritz, he was at peace with his faith (according to what we can know anyway), he knew he would be remembered with love and respect. Whereas Gundling had to stare at a wine barrel bearing a mocking inscription for the last week of his life knowing he would be buried in it, and FW would not stop tormenting him even in the grave. As opposed to the film, his wife was allowed to be with him until he died, but the moment he had taken his last breath (April 11th ten am), she was sent back to Berlin (he didn't die in his own house in Berlin but at the palace in Potsdam where he had had the misfortune of falling sick - this is why FW was informed the preacher had looked sad when leaving him etc.) so she wouldn't be in the way of the grotesquery that unfolded. As soon as the autopsy was done, he was laid out for a wake in the godawful costume for the entire court to mock, and then the barrel etc. There is just a relentless lack of pity and humanity there which isn't even the case with Katte, and that's why it hits me deepest.
Re: Book Review II: Der König und sein Narr (Novel and Film)
Yes, it can be a tricky balance to get right, but I think the novel does. And of ocurse, this is how Aristotle himself defined the hero of a tragedy - someone whose misfortunes came to be through a mixture of exterior circumtance and his own flaws.
I think it's possible that nothing else FW has done -- yes, even Katte -- has bothered me quite as much.
It's not a competition, but to me it feels in many ways so, too. Perhaps because Katte at least was surrounded by people sympathetic and respectful to him when he died, he had a last encounter with Fritz, he was at peace with his faith (according to what we can know anyway), he knew he would be remembered with love and respect. Whereas Gundling had to stare at a wine barrel bearing a mocking inscription for the last week of his life knowing he would be buried in it, and FW would not stop tormenting him even in the grave. As opposed to the film, his wife was allowed to be with him until he died, but the moment he had taken his last breath (April 11th ten am), she was sent back to Berlin (he didn't die in his own house in Berlin but at the palace in Potsdam where he had had the misfortune of falling sick - this is why FW was informed the preacher had looked sad when leaving him etc.) so she wouldn't be in the way of the grotesquery that unfolded. As soon as the autopsy was done, he was laid out for a wake in the godawful costume for the entire court to mock, and then the barrel etc. There is just a relentless lack of pity and humanity there which isn't even the case with Katte, and that's why it hits me deepest.