There is much to be said about Ibsen. I want to focus on one of his plays, An Enemy of the People (1882), which Ibsen wrote partly (or, probably more accurately, very much directly) in response to criticism that he received for his earlier play Ghosts (1881). That play centered on some issues that nineteenth century Norwegian society couldn't much appreciate—things like suffering from hereditary syphilis, sibling incest, and whether or not to opt for euthanasia.
Yesterday, I walked past one of my favorite bookstores and spotted a book in the window that screamed out to me. Aptly titled—and emphatically designed—I could not resist stepping into the place and buying Sue Prideaux's new biography of Nietzsche: I Am Dynamite! I began reading it later that day, huddled up in bed with my cat Tai Tai by my side, and ended up sleeping much too late. So it goes.
Very few are spared losing someone they love. When it happens, when someone we love dies, a reaction is called for—the loss echoes from the heavens, resounds deep inside of us. Even the absence of an apparent reaction, or perhaps especially such a palpable absence, is part of the response: we are surprised to still be living, we are dismayed that after such a tragedy we can and do still live. Guilt may set in; guilt at not feeling—not continuously, not persistently, not all of our waking moments and for the rest of our lives feeling—the spectacular tragedy of the loss.
Thomas Bernhard's novel Old Masters, first published in 1985, consists—true to style—of a single paragraph. The plot is very minimal, as with most of Bernhard's works: the tutor Atzbacher (who is also, apparently, a philosopher, even though he has never published anything) has been summoned for a meeting by his elderly friend Reger at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. For thirty years, Reger has visited the so-called Bordone room, which houses Tintoretto's painting White-Bearded Man, every other day. Precisely every other day.
Victor Hugo witnessed the workings of the guillotine at first hand. More than once, in fact, he found himself among crowds of curious, expectant, agitated, hate-filled people awaiting a show of death. Much disgusted and angered by the twisted joy that people seemed to take in it—by the distinct ugliness of the spectacle—he decided to write a book against the death penalty. Apparently, it was the day after Hugo had strolled past an executioner casually preparing the guillotine for its next victim at the Place de l'Hotel de Ville, that he began writing The Last Day of a Condemned Man, which Dostoevsky would consider "absolutely the most real and truthful of everything that Hugo wrote." .
