I hope to have time to comment more on your other writeups soon, but this one I had to first because it sounds excellent, fascinating, and horrifying! and I think generally speaking I would really enjoy it -- though right now I'm not sure I would be up for reading something quite so dark, even if my German was good enough or I enlisted mildred's help, so thank you, Royal Reader, for reading it and for the detailed analysis :)
The biggest difference to Der Meister of Sanssouci is that Gundling while being an incredibly tragic figure is written as being partly complicit in his terrible fate. Not in the sense of "he deserves this", absolutely not, but as he goes back to understand how his life turned out this way, he realises at several points where he still could have made other choices, where it hadn't been too late yet.
Wooooow. 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).
Can you keep your integrity and your art while accomodating absolute power?
*nods* That sounds like a fascinating thematic thread and also... well... the answer is "no" when we're talking about FW :P (Only I guess it wasn't quite "no" for Morgenstern, huh.)
he too, joined everyone else's laughter, unable to realise he was looking at his own future.
Oh man, I'm seeing that screenshot you took of Fassmann in the film. Brrrrr.
and they slide into a fatal dynamic where Gundling lives for those moments of "truth telling" where he makes clever remarks the King and his other companions can't find good rejoinders too, and those moments where he actually manages to change FW's mind on something; that's what he draws his ever more fragile sense of self worth from as much as the increasing amounts of alcohol
That is just chilling and fascinating.
(This is also when Gundling realises that he's been kidding himself when clinging to the belief he could shame FW into doing the right thing now and then as a justification for staying around.)
Ouch, and that rings very true as a sort of self-justification.
that was the last moral differentiation he's been clinging to, and he's lost that as well. From this point onwards, all that's left is drinking himself to death.
This is, indeed, super harrowing. But also so interesting in the way, like you say, that he is complicit in his own destruction (even though he's not the principal architect of it).
Gundling's death is his final escape, when he is at least free of fear and pain and feels that curiosity again he had as a boy when he wanted to learn everything and wanted to understand and find out all the reasons, and when he understands that, he's free.
I have all kinds of mixed feelings about this :( I guess we'll say i'm glad he escaped. Sort of.
(The director and the actor didn't let Fassmann do this mockingly but suddenly fully aware he's next, and thus terrified.)
Which I think is a great choice.
But what he does is the systematic destruction of a human being, that's made crystal clear in both versions (the film makes it even more literal in that the gigantic barrel of wine in which Gundling will later be buried is literally full of wine when it arrives so Gundling can drink himself do death on it, and does, while Anne is kept away from his bedroom by two soldiers), and that he does this is its own judgment on him.
*nods* I felt this way when you first told me about Gundling. I think it's possible that nothing else FW has done -- yes, even Katte -- has bothered me quite as much. (ALSO. BEARS. WHO DOES THAT.) I'm really glad that Stade wrote this book and that Gundling got his own story, even if hundreds of years too late for him.
Re: Book Review II: Der König und sein Narr (Novel and Film)
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.
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Re: Book Review II: Der König und sein Narr (Novel and Film)
The biggest difference to Der Meister of Sanssouci is that Gundling while being an incredibly tragic figure is written as being partly complicit in his terrible fate. Not in the sense of "he deserves this", absolutely not, but as he goes back to understand how his life turned out this way, he realises at several points where he still could have made other choices, where it hadn't been too late yet.
Wooooow. 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).
Can you keep your integrity and your art while accomodating absolute power?
*nods* That sounds like a fascinating thematic thread and also... well... the answer is "no" when we're talking about FW :P (Only I guess it wasn't quite "no" for Morgenstern, huh.)
he too, joined everyone else's laughter, unable to realise he was looking at his own future.
Oh man, I'm seeing that screenshot you took of Fassmann in the film. Brrrrr.
and they slide into a fatal dynamic where Gundling lives for those moments of "truth telling" where he makes clever remarks the King and his other companions can't find good rejoinders too, and those moments where he actually manages to change FW's mind on something; that's what he draws his ever more fragile sense of self worth from as much as the increasing amounts of alcohol
That is just chilling and fascinating.
(This is also when Gundling realises that he's been kidding himself when clinging to the belief he could shame FW into doing the right thing now and then as a justification for staying around.)
Ouch, and that rings very true as a sort of self-justification.
that was the last moral differentiation he's been clinging to, and he's lost that as well. From this point onwards, all that's left is drinking himself to death.
This is, indeed, super harrowing. But also so interesting in the way, like you say, that he is complicit in his own destruction (even though he's not the principal architect of it).
Gundling's death is his final escape, when he is at least free of fear and pain and feels that curiosity again he had as a boy when he wanted to learn everything and wanted to understand and find out all the reasons, and when he understands that, he's free.
I have all kinds of mixed feelings about this :( I guess we'll say i'm glad he escaped. Sort of.
(The director and the actor didn't let Fassmann do this mockingly but suddenly fully aware he's next, and thus terrified.)
Which I think is a great choice.
But what he does is the systematic destruction of a human being, that's made crystal clear in both versions (the film makes it even more literal in that the gigantic barrel of wine in which Gundling will later be buried is literally full of wine when it arrives so Gundling can drink himself do death on it, and does, while Anne is kept away from his bedroom by two soldiers), and that he does this is its own judgment on him.
*nods* I felt this way when you first told me about Gundling. I think it's possible that nothing else FW has done -- yes, even Katte -- has bothered me quite as much. (ALSO. BEARS. WHO DOES THAT.) I'm really glad that Stade wrote this book and that Gundling got his own story, even if hundreds of years too late for him.
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.