48, NG5, M29, E48, / WG43, F19, MF0, B2, D0, Frz0, C0, NA1

Julian Barnes, Elisabeth Finch

Jedesmal wenn ich einen neuen Barnes lese, merke ich wie sehr ich ihn vermißt habe und dass ich ihn wirklich öfter lesen sollte. Nicht nur wegen des eleganten Sprachstils und wie er es schafft jedes Buch schon nach den ersten Zeilen fesseln zu lassen, auch wenn wie hier sowohl Erzähler als auch die Titelfigur immer geheimnisvoller und undeutlicher werden, je weiter man im Buch vordringt. Eine begnadete Lehrerin, ein Schüler, der sie so bewundert, dass er nach ihrem Tod den halbherzigen Versuch wagt eine Biografie zu schreiben obwohl er noch nie in seinem Leben ein Projekt zuende geführt hat, und eine interessante, neue Denkansätze fordernde These (um Julian den Apostat, von dem ich bisher nichts wusste), die Finch beinahe zum Verhängnis wird, all das ergibt eine richtig gute Geschichte - aber was kann man von Barnes auch anderes erwarten.
Und ja, was mich besonders freute waren die Stellen über die heilige Ursula und die Frage, ob es wirklich 11000 Jungfrauen waren in ihrem Gefolge, nicht nur aber auch weil es mich an Jürgen Beckers Version der Geschichte erinnerte.
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Linda, who often seemed to be suffering from what she quaintly called 'heart trouble', asked anxiously, 'What have you got against monogamy? Isn't it how most people want to live? Isn't it what most people dream of?'
'Beware of dreams', Elizabeth Finch replied. 'Also, as a general rule, beware of what most people aspire to.' She paused, half-smiled at Linda and addressed the class through her. 'Enforced monogamy is as much to say enforced happiness, which we know is not possible. Unenforced monogamy might seem possible. Romantic monogamy might seem to be desirable. But the first normally collapses back into a version of enforced monogamy, while the second is liable to become obsessive and hysterical. And thereby lies close to monomania. We should always distinguish between mutual passion and shared monomania.'
We were all silenced, taking this in. Most of us had had the average sexual and amatory experience of our generation: that's to say, far too much in the opinion of the preceding generation, and pathetically little in the view of the next, pressing generation.
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Here's another thing: the dead can't tell you that you are wrong. Only the living can do that - and they may be lying. So I trust the dead more. Is that bizarre, or is it sensible?
And further to this: why should we expect our collective memory - which we call history - to be any less fallible than our personal memory?
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'It's a recurrent delusion that a change of government will make a difference.'
'That's a counsel of despair.'
'No, it's a counsel of realism. Do you see me despairing?'
'No. But I also bet you have voted in every single election.'
'In the sure knowledge that it will effect little.'
'Then why do it?'
'Civic duty. It is expected.'
At which point I slightly lost it. 'That sounds incredibly patronising.'
'To whom?'
'To... well, the rest of the electorate.'
'You mean that I am meant to share fully in their hopes and dreams and subsequent disappointments? A politician's main function is to disappoint.'
'That sounds incredibly cynical, you know.'
'I disagree. I am not a cynic.'
'What are you then?'
'I am not vain enough to attach a label to myself.'
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And then there is the inevitable third stylisation - of posthumous memory. Leading to the moment when the last living person to remember you has their very last thought about you. There ought to be a name for that final event, which marks your final extinction.
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'You know how she was,' Anna began. 'A mixture of utter candous and sudden concealment. Also, utter sympathy and occasional distance. Talking to her was completely different from any other woman I've talked to in my life. Most women tell you How We Met' - she did air-quotes - 'and What Went Wrong and How It Ended and What I Learnt From It All. I'm not disparaging that: I do it myself - turn my life into a story. We all do it. EF wasn't like that. She'd give you a conclusion but not the narrative. Why? The obvious, normal reason would be a sense of privacy, of discretion. But I decided that it was also perhaps something bigger: a sense that a life, much as we would like it to be, does not amount to a narrative - or not a narrative such as we understand and expect.'
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(Julian Barnes, Elizabeth Finch, 2022)

4, NG3, M2, E4

Julian Barnes, The Man in the Red Coat

Während der Lektüre fragte ich mich immer wieder, wie lange Julian Barnes die Idee für dieses Buch schon mit sich herumgetragen hat und wieviel Recherche, Zeit und Liebesmüh er investiert hat. Vieles muss ihm schon bei seinen Studien von Flaubert vertraut gewesen sein. Und immer wieder hatte ich das Gefühl einen langen Vortrag über die Belle Epoque, oder vielleicht einen ausgedehnten Essay zu lesen, in dem er immer wieder von Namen zu Namen springt, bedeutende Ereignisse in einen Zusammenhang bringt und mitunter rasante Bögen schlägt, so dass letztendlich ein sehr informativer und oft unterhaltsamer Überblick entsteht, mit Dr. Pozzi, der indirekten Titelfigur und Schlüsselperson als Dreh- und Angelpunkt. Mir war vor dem Buch garnicht klar, wie wenig ich selbst über die Personen, die mir schon ein Begriff waren - wie z.B. Oskar Wilde - eigentlich wußte. Allein dafür lohnte sich das Buch schon. Vielleicht wäre die gebundene Ausgabe mit all den Bildern in Farbe besser gewesen, aber das lässt sich ja immer noch nachholen.

Flaubert was always sternly against the sentimental, meliorist view of literature: the notion that an uplifting storoy with a happy ending (though weepie-happy would do just as well) might inspire readers to behave better and improve their lot. But 'knowing humanity' and describing it accurately is an essentially corrective action. Things are not like that, you are saying, things are like this. People operate like this; society runs like this; religion (and sentimental literature) affect human sensibilities like this; what you have read in other novels is wrong. And this corrective function - oh, and by the way, love and sex and death aren't like that either - has an effect, the effect of truth, of restored vision. Though what people - readers - choose to do with this truth is not up to Flaubert. Some close the book in their hands, and simultaneously close their minds; others leave it open, and are filled with a form of grave reverie.
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Any practising novelist will be familiar with the jocular-yet-serious response when someone newly met discovers what you do. 'I'd better watch what I say, then, hadn't I?'; or, sometimes, 'I've got a great story for you.' You (well, I) will tend to answer, 'It doesn't work like that', because it doesn't. There is nothing more useless than someone else's already highly worked-up anecdote - 'varnished for eternity', as Lucien Daudet said of Montesquiou; nor does a novelist 'study' a real-life person with any deliberate intent to copy and paste them into a novel. The whole process is usually much more passive, sponge-like and haphazard than that. The reader's motive - wanting to understand the process of literary creation - is of course legitimate, but also ultimately futile, since even the most self-conscious novelist often cannot properly explain what it is he or she does, and how it comes about.

(Julian Barnes, The Man in the Red Coat, 2019)

Neu gelesen: (als E-Book)

Julian Barnes, The Only Story

Wie fast alle Bücher von Barnes stimmte mich dieses meist wehmütig. Und nachdenklich. Und wie immer finde ich es einfach nur bewundernswert wie gut er Erinnerungen, Situationen, Zeiten und Gefühle beschreibt, so gut, dass ich mich kaum davon losreißen konnte und - mal wieder - versucht bin das halbe Buch hier zu zitieren.

We tend to slot any new relationship we come across into a pre-existing category. We see what is general or common about it; whereas the participants see - feel - only what is individual abd particular to them. We say: how predictable; they say: what a surprise! One of the things I thought about Susan and me - at the time, and now, again, all these years later - is that there often didn't seem words for our relationship; at least none that fitted. But perhaps this is an illusion all lovers have about themselves: that they escape both category and description.
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Sad sex is when she is sober, you both desire one another, you know that you will always love her regardless, just as she will always love you regardless, but you - both of you, perhaps - now realize that loving one another does not necessarily lead to happiness. And so your lovemaking has become less a search for consolation than a hopeless attempt to deny your mutual unhappiness.
Good sex is better than bad sex. Bad sex is better that no sex, except when no sex is better than bad sex. Self-sex is better than no sex, except when no sex is better than self-sex. Sad sex is always far worse than good sex, bad sex, self-sex and no sex. Sad sex is the saddest sex of all.
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He had shocked his parents with his sexual behaviour. Now he was shocked when sex was so often portrayed as mindless, heartless, thoughtless shagging. But why the surprise? Each generation assumes that it has got sex just about right; each patronises the previous generation but feels queasy about the succeeding one. This was normal.
As for the wider question of age, and mortality; no, he didn't think he felt a panic at the shutting of the doors. But maybe he hadn't yet heard their hinges creak loudly anough.
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(Julian Barnes, The Only Story, 2018)

Neu gelesen:

Alphonse Daudet, In the Land of Pain. Edited and translated by Julian Barnes.

Ja, ein 'richtiges' Buch, d.h. kein E-Book - hauptsächlich weil ich es mir bestellt hatte, bevor ich mir den Paperwhite zulegte und die Bestellung nachträglich nicht mehr ändern wollte. Vielleicht hätte es in elektronischer Form auch nicht die gleiche Wirkung wie das schmale, fast verletzlich wirkende Bändchen von verstreuten, an Tagebuchaufzeichnungen erinnernde Notizen von Daudet über seine Leidensgeschichte in den Jahren vor seinem Tod, denen Julian Barnes hier einen Rahmen und Hintergrund gibt, und dadurch das Buch zu einer Biografie macht. Eine kurze, aber darum nicht weniger bewegende und anrührende, genau wie die Notizen sehr kurz, aber oh so treffend und nahegehend bei allem bitteren Humor.

Are words actually any use to describe what pain (or passion, for that matter) really feels like? Words only come when everything is over, when things have calmed down. They refer only to memory, and are either powerless or untruthful.
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Pain, you must be everything for me. Let me find in you all those foreign lands you will not let me visit. Be my philosophy, be my science.
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The Russian, who can't move his arms and has a servant to roll cigarettes for him. They have a row: the servant has to make furious gestures for both of them.
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Our pain is always new to us, but becomes quite familiar to those around us. It soon wears out its welcome, even for those who love us the most. Compassion loses its edge. Even if I didn't try to keep my suffering to myself out of concern for others, I would do so out of pride: I don't want to read weariness and boredom in the eyes of those dearest to me.
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(Alphonse Daudet, Doulou/In the Land of Pain, edited and translated by Julian Barnes, 2002)

Neu gelesen (als E-Book)

Julian Barnes, The Noise of Time

Das Buch verdient auf jeden Fall ein baldiges Wiederlesen und etwas gründlicheres Studium - beim ersten Lesen war ich zu nervös und unter Zeitdruck vor allem bei den ersten Kapiteln. Trotzdem oder gerade deswegen berührten mich die Stellen, in denen Shostakovich reisefertig mit dem Koffer in der Hand nächtelang vor dem Fahrstuhl wartet, nur damit er bei seiner Verhaftung nicht unvorbereitet aus dem Bett geholt wird, ganz besonders mit ihrer tragischen Absurdität. Und ja, es ist keine "richtige" Biografie, sondern bei aller akribischen Recherche reine Fiktion, aber so überzeugend, dass sie genauso gut als wahr und realistisch angesehen werden kann. Gut genug auf jeden Fall.
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What he hoped for was that death would liberate his music: liberate it from his life. Time would pass, and though musicologists would continue their debates, his work would begin to stand for itself. History, as well as biography, would fade: perhaps one day Fascism and Communism would be merely words in textbooks. And then, if it still had value - if there were still ears to hear - his music would be ... just music. That was all a composer could hope for. Whom does music belong to, he had asked that trembling student, and though the reply was written in capital letters on a banner behind her interrogator's head, the girl could not answer. Not being able to answer was the correct answer. Because music, in the end, belonged to music. That was all you could say, or wish for.
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And this, perhaps, was their final triumph over him. Instead of killing him, they had allowed him to live, and by allowing him to live, they had killed him. This was the final, unanswerable irony to his life: that by allowing him to live, they had killed him.

(Julian Barnes, The Noise of Time, 2016)

Neu gelesen:

Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot

Doch, doch, "neu gelesen" stimmt tatsächlich, obwohl das Buch schon seit 2002 in meinem Regal steht. Ein "Two-in-One" Band mit "The History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters" noch dabei, den Julian Barnes mir bei der LitCologne 2002 sogar signierte, und anscheinend habe ich nach der Lektüre des anderen Teils den ersten schlicht und einfach vergessen. Wie das eben so geht. Somit war diese so ungewöhnliche wie anschauliche 'Biografie' von Flaubert so überfällig wie unverzichtbar und ich bin wirklich froh sie jetzt endlich gelesen zu haben. Nur an den Stellen, an denen Dr. Braithwaite nicht mehr umhin kann über den Tod seiner Frau zu sprechen, wünschte ich doch, ich hätte den Band vor 2008 gelesen. Aber da hilft alles nichts.
Und ja, ich sehe schon, zumindest um Madame Bovary komme ich einfach nicht mehr drumrum.

You expect something from me too, don't you? It's like that nowadays. People assume they own part of you, on no matter how small an acquaintance; while if you are reckless enough to write a book, this puts your bank account, your medical records, and the state of your marriage irrevocably into the public domain. Flaubert disapproved. "The artist must manage to make posterity believe that he never existed." For the religious, death destroys the body and liberates the spirit; for the artist, death destroys the personality and liberates the work. That's the theory, anyway. Of course, it frequently goes wrong.

Ellen. My wife: someone I feel I understand less well than a foreign writer dead for a hundred years. Is this an aberration or is this normal? Books say: she did this because. Life says: she did this. Books are where things are explained to you, life is where things aren't. I'm not surprised some people prefer books. Books make sense of life. The only problem is that the lives they make sense of are other people's lives, never your own.

(Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot, 1984)

Neu gelesen:

Julian Barnes, Keeping an Eye Open. Essays on Art

Julian Barnes Essays über Maler - von Gericault über Manet, Delacroix, Cézanne, Degas zu Magritte, nur um die zu nennen, die mir schon vor diesem Buch ein Begriff waren - lasen sich noch interessanter und fesselnder als ich dachte, und das obwohl ich vorher wusste, dass Barnes selbst ein Telefonbuch interessant machen kann. Wie er selbst sagt, sollte im Idealfall ein Bild für sich selbst sprechen, unabhängig von seinem Schöpfer und dem Hintergrund, vor dem es entstanden ist, und sehr oft kommt es auch tatsächlich so weit im Laufe der Zeit - aber trotzdem ist es immer wieder faszinierend zu erfahren, welche Persönlichkeit hinter dem Bild steckt, was seinen Maler umgetrieben hat und wer und was dargestellt wurde und warum.
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We wander through the great galleries, appreciative or dismissive according to our knowledge, our temperament, the state of our digestion and the fashion of the times, putting this or that picture into our top ten, and remaining incorrigibly curious about this or that artist's private life. But the art itself goes on regardless, above our heads, massive and uncaring.
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Trust the art, not the artist; trust the tale, not the teller. The art remembers, the artist forgets. Flaubert, when he wrote to Taine about Madama Bovary, forgot that he had indeed informed the reader that Homais was 'lightly marked with smallpox'.

(Aus: Julian Barnes, Keeping an Eye Open. Essays on Art, 2015)
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