As I mentioned in the video, is my third time watching this movie. But it's my first time reviewing it on this blog so according to my new rules, I'm doing this as a video only review.
Frederick Douglass has been on my list of "historical people I'm vaguely interested in, and keep meaning to read up on" for years now.
I don't remember hearing a lot about Frederick Douglass during my school days. Of course, I recognized the name. (Frederick Douglass is one of those names that everyone recognizes.) But I don't remember learning anything about his biography at school.
Sometime during my mid-20s, I started to become more interested in Frederick Douglass's life story. My memory is a little bit hazy, but I think this started as an off-shoot of my interest in John Brown. While reading up on John Brown's life on Wikipedia, I started reading about Frederick Douglass's association with John Brown, and then I got curious about Frederick Douglass himself and started reading his Wikipedia page.
[...wow, that was 15-16 years ago now. I suppose it's kind of pathetic that it took me that long to finally get around to reading a book on Frederick Douglass. But then, I'm a slow reader, and only manage to read a handful of books every year. So sometimes it does take me several years to work my way around to reading up on an area of interest.]
So that made me all the more curious to read this book.
And then in October, I was browsing Book Street here in Ho Chi Minh City, and saw the Collins Classic version of this book, and decided to snatch it up. (see video of the book haul HERE). My reading list was full at the time, so I waited until I had a free slot, but then finally started the book in April.
Background Information
Frederick Douglass lived a fascinating life. Go over to Wikipedia and check out his bio. The dude had an absolutely fascinating story. He started life as a slave. He escaped and became a celebrity in the abolitionist movement in both Britain and the United States--going around and giving speeches to huge crowds. He had some association with John Brown, and although Frederick Douglass ultimately decided he didn't want anything to do with Harpers Ferry, the fallout from Harpers Ferry still resulted in Frederick Douglass having to temporarily flee the country. During the Civil War, he was an active supporter of the union and met with Lincoln. After the Civil War, he was active in reconstruction era politics.
There is a really interesting story to be told about his life.
And Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is Frederick Douglass's autobiography, so you get to hear his story in his own words.
[The publisher's introduction from Collins Classics informs me that slave memoirs were a popular genre at the time, and were often ghostwritten by white writers. But because Frederick Douglass was already a well-known orator when this book was published, and because Frederick Douglass had developed his own distinct rhetorical style which was also the same style that this book was written in, it was clear that Douglass had written this book himself.]
This books is actually the first of three autobiographies that Frederick Douglass published during his life. This book (the book I'm reviewing now) was published in 1845. Douglass later expanded on this material and included more details in a second autobiography published in 1855: My Bondage and My Freedom. And then finally, near the end of his life, he published in 1881 Life and Times of Frederick Douglasswhich apparently includes his account of not only his slave life, but also an account of his activism and political activities post slavery.
Of these 3 autobiographies, it sounds like the final one would be the most interesting. That one would include Frederick Douglass's retelling of all the great historical and political events he was involved with (according to Wikipedia, it includes his relationship with John Brown, Lincoln, Grant, etc). I'll have to remember to try to track down that book down someday.
But upon further research, it turns out that, despite being the shortest, the 1845 autobiography is the most famous of the three. It was hugely influential in the abolitionist movement back in its day, and because of that huge influence, it is the book that Douglass is best remembered for today and that is now regarded as part of the canon of Western Literature. And, no doubt, that's why this autobiography (and not the other two) is the one widely available in bookstores nowadays, and why I happened to stumble upon it when browsing the book displays here in Vietnam.
It's a short little book. (The Collins Classics edition that I read is only 122 pages). And only covers the life of Frederick Douglass up until he escaped from slavery. (In other words, it's a memoir of his slavery years, and not his abolitionist years.)
Summary of the Plot
The version I got (Collins Classic) starts out with a brief publishers introduction giving some of the background, and then we move into not one but two prefaces, both original to the 1845 publication, written by William Lloyd Garrison (W) and Wendell Phillips (W), respectively. (William Lloyd Garrison was a name I recognized, Wendell Phillips was not, but according to Wikipedia they were both famous abolitionists.)
Then on page 15, the narrative proper starts.
Frederick Douglass was born as a slave in Maryland. (Garrison and Phillips both note in their prefaces that Maryland was actually not the worst place to be a slave--the deep south was supposedly far worse. So if what Frederick Douglas is describing sounds horrific, just imagine what the slaves in Georgia and Mississippi were experiencing!)
Douglass describes how slavery affected him right from the beginning--being separated from his mother at a young age, not knowing when his birthday was, not knowing who his father was, etc.
For the first few years of his life he was under the care of his grandmother, and separated from the really harsh realities of slavery, but he observed the other slaves (including his aunt) being brutally whipped by the master. (The narrative is not only an account of the brutalities that occurred to Frederick Douglas personally, but also all the brutalities he witnessed on the plantation.)
Frederick Douglass was somewhat unique in that he moved around a lot as a young slave. (I think this is unique, right?) He was sent off of the plantation to the city of Baltimore to become the house-servant of a family, and there he had a much easier time of it than the slaves at the plantation. (And also began to learn to read and write).
But eventually, he was returned to the plantation.
Douglass is deemed to be unmanageable as a plantation slave. (Perhaps his time in Baltimore made him unaccustomed to plantation work.) And he is sent to live for a year on the plantation of Mr. Covey, who had a reputation as a "Negro-breaker". But after enduring several beatings from Mr. Covey, Douglass finally stands up to him and refuses to be beaten. Covey, astonishingly, backs down. (Mr. Covey could have had Douglass hauled in before the authorities, and it's somewhat puzzling that he didn't, but Douglass surmises that Mr. Covey would have lost his reputation as a Negro Breaker if he had had to get the authorities involved, and that is why he did not.)
After this, Douglass begins to plan how to escape. Although the actual details of the escape are omitted from the narrative, because back in 1845 Douglass didn't want to make public any details about how slaves were able to escape.
I now come to that part of my life during which I planned, and finally succeeded in making, my escape from slavery. But before narrating any of the peculiar circumstances, I deem it proper to make known my intention not to state all the facts connected with the transaction. My reasons for pursuing this course may be understood from the following: First, were I to give a minute statement of all the facts, it is not only possible, but quite probable, that others would thereby be involved in the most embarrassing difficulties. Secondly, such a statement would most undoubtedly induce greater vigilance on the part of slaveholders than has existed heretofore among them; which would, of course, be the means of guarding a door whereby some dear brother bondman might escape his galling chains. I deeply regret the necessity that impels me to suppress any thing of importance connected with my experience in slavery. It would afford me great pleasure indeed, as well as materially add to the interest of my narrative, were I at liberty to gratify a curiosity, which I know exists in the minds of many, by an accurate statement of all the facts pertaining to my most fortunate escape. But I must deprive myself of this pleasure, and the curious of the gratification which such a statement would afford. I would allow myself to suffer under the greatest imputations which evil-minded men might suggest, rather than exculpate myself, and thereby run the hazard of closing the slightest avenue by which a brother slave might clear himself of the chains and fetters of slavery. (p.99 in my edition)
Also largely absent from this book is Anne Murray, who Frederick Douglass met and fell in love with while he was still a slave, and how helped Douglass escape, and then married him after he escaped. (See Wikipedia.) I'm guessing that the omission of Anne Murray's role was for her own protection at the time.
Extended Quotation
The overseer’s name was Plummer. Mr. Plummer was a miserable drunkard, a profane swearer, and a savage monster. He always went armed with a cowskin and a heavy cudgel. I have known him to cut and slash the women’s heads so horribly, that even master would be enraged at his cruelty, and would threaten to whip him if he did not mind himself. Master, however, was not a humane slaveholder. It required extraordinary barbarity on the part of an overseer to affect him. He was a cruel man, hardened by a long life of slaveholding. He would at times seem to take great pleasure in whipping a slave. I have often been awakened at the dawn of day by the most heart-rending shrieks of an own aunt of mine, whom he used to tie up to a joist, and whip upon her naked back till she was literally covered with blood. No words, no tears, no prayers, from his gory victim, seemed to move his iron heart from its bloody purpose. The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped longest. He would whip her to make her scream, and whip her to make her hush; and not until overcome by fatigue, would he cease to swing the blood-clotted cowskin. I remember the first time I ever witnessed this horrible exhibition. I was quite a child, but I well remember it. I never shall forget it whilst I remember any thing. It was the first of a long series of such outrages, of which I was doomed to be a witness and a participant. It struck me with awful force. It was the blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery, through which I was about to pass. It was a most terrible spectacle. I wish I could commit to paper the feelings with which I beheld it.
This occurrence took place very soon after I went to live with my old master, and under the following circumstances. Aunt Hester went out one night,—where or for what I do not know,—and happened to be absent when my master desired her presence. He had ordered her not to go out evenings, and warned her that she must never let him catch her in company with a young man, who was paying attention to her belonging to Colonel Lloyd. The young man’s name was Ned Roberts, generally called Lloyd’s Ned. Why master was so careful of her, may be safely left to conjecture. She was a woman of noble form, and of graceful proportions, having very few equals, and fewer superiors, in personal appearance, among the colored or white women of our neighborhood.
Aunt Hester had not only disobeyed his orders in going out, but had been found in company with Lloyd’s Ned; which circumstance, I found, from what he said while whipping her, was the chief offence. Had he been a man of pure morals himself, he might have been thought interested in protecting the innocence of my aunt; but those who knew him will not suspect him of any such virtue. Before he commenced whipping Aunt Hester, he took her into the kitchen, and stripped her from neck to waist, leaving her neck, shoulders, and back, entirely naked. He then told her to cross her hands, calling her at the same time a d——d b—-h. After crossing her hands, he tied them with a strong rope, and led her to a stool under a large hook in the joist, put in for the purpose. He made her get upon the stool, and tied her hands to the hook. She now stood fair for his infernal purpose. Her arms were stretched up at their full length, so that she stood upon the ends of her toes. He then said to her, “Now, you d——d b—-h, I’ll learn you how to disobey my orders!” and after rolling up his sleeves, he commenced to lay on the heavy cowskin, and soon the warm, red blood (amid heart-rending shrieks from her, and horrid oaths from him) came dripping to the floor. I was so terrified and horror-stricken at the sight, that I hid myself in a closet, and dared not venture out till long after the bloody transaction was over. I expected it would be my turn next. It was all new to me. I had never seen any thing like it before. I had always lived with my grandmother on the outskirts of the plantation, where she was put to raise the children of the younger women. I had therefore been, until now, out of the way of the bloody scenes that often occurred on the plantation. (From Chapter 1)
The Reading Experience
I guess the first thing to note is that the prose is very easy to read.
You can't always take that for granted with a 19th century book, but in this case it is. Hopefully the above quotation illustrates that well enough. It's written in a bit of an older style, but you quickly get used to that after a couple pages, and then it flows smoothly enough.
It is also both enraging and depressing to read. (And again, hopefully the above quotation illustrates this.)
Because this book is so small and portable, I had been using this book as my lunch-break book at work, but it can be pretty depressing lunch time reading.
It can also make you very angry to read.
I suspect I speak for most people when I say that reading about these horrible cruelties makes your blood boil with outrage. It is, of course, an entirely irrational reaction. After all, the injustice committed is a fact of history, and is now beyond our power to remedy. Everyone connected with the horrors of slavery died 150 years ago, what good does it do to get angry about it?
And yet, for whatever reason, we humans react with anger when reading about these great historical injustices. Why is that? I guess it's just another one of those strangely irrational characteristics of human nature.
But although this book can be both enraging and depressing, it's never boring. In fact, the book can be quite gripping. When Douglass is describing one of the confrontations between a master and a slave, or when he's describing some sort of cruel punishment, you feel like you can't put the book down. (More than once, I lingered over this book after I finished eating my lunch, reluctant to put it down until I had finished the chapter.) There's a macabre fascination with the horror and the tragedy on display in this book.
The publisher's introduction to my edition (Collins Classics) informed me that in the 1840s and 50s, slave memoirs (both real and fictional) were a popular genre with the reading public. Nowadays we are only familiar with the most famous ones (Uncle Tom's Cabin, 12 Years a Slave, and of course Frederick Douglass) but apparently the market was flooded with many more of them at the time. But, as Collins Classics informs:
Many of these slave narratives were also tied into the American Romantic movement and audiences demand for sensationalist stories, so their prevalence didn't always have humanitarian or politically-minded roots. (p.viii)
In other words, people read these books as much for the sensationalist entertainment as for the humanitarian reasons. As terrible as that is, I do have to admit to kind of seeing the appeal.
This is a short little book, but it will really get you thinking about a lot of things. While reading this, I found myself thinking about human nature, religion, society, etc. I'm not going to attempt to write down all my rambling thoughts here, but I will jot down a few jumping off points that could easily be long discussions.
But, one can also read in William Lloyd Garrison's preface a tired attitude from someone who has been arguing for too long against people who refuse to acknowledge the basic facts:
So profoundly ignorant of the nature of slavery are many persons, that they are stubbornly incredulous whenever they read or listen to any recital of the cruelties which are daily inflicted on its victims. They do not deny that the slaves are held as property; but that terrible fact seems to convey to their minds no idea of injustice, exposure to outrage, or savage barbarity. Tell them of cruel scourgings, of mutilations and brandings, of scenes of pollution and blood, of the banishment of all light and knowledge, and they affect to be greatly indignant at such enormous exaggerations, such wholesale misstatements, such abominable libels on the character of the southern planters! ... Skeptics of this character abound in society. In some few instances, their incredulity arises from a want of reflection; but, generally, it indicates a hatred of the light, a desire to shield slavery from the assaults of its foes, a contempt of the colored race, whether bond or free. (Preface p.7-8)
You can tell them every fact you want, but they just keep choosing to ignore the facts!
Reminds you of the extreme polarization of today, doesn't it?
Yet another reminder that human beings don't base their political beliefs on rational discussions or facts. It was as true in 1845 as it is today.
* There's also a lot to be said in this book about Christianity. A point Frederick Douglass makes throughout the book is that Christianity did not make the slaveholders any more kind to their slaves. In fact, the more Christian a slaveholder was, the more cruel he was.
This is a point which actually comes up repeatedly. For example in chapter 9:
In August, 1832, my master attended a Methodist camp-meeting held in the Bay-side, Talbot county, and there experienced religion. I indulged a faint hope that his conversion would lead him to emancipate his slaves, and that, if he did not do this, it would, at any rate, make him more kind and humane. I was disappointed in both these respects. It neither made him to be humane to his slaves, nor to emancipate them. If it had any effect on his character, it made him more cruel and hateful in all his ways; for I believe him to have been a much worse man after his conversion than before. Prior to his conversion, he relied upon his own depravity to shield and sustain him in his savage barbarity; but after his conversion, he found religious sanction and support for his slaveholding cruelty. He made the greatest pretensions to piety. His house was the house of prayer. He prayed morning, noon, and night. He very soon distinguished himself among his brethren, and was soon made a class-leader and exhorter. His activity in revivals was great, and he proved himself an instrument in the hands of the church in converting many souls. His house was the preachers’ home. They used to take great pleasure in coming there to put up; for while he starved us, he stuffed them. ...
...I have said my master found religious sanction for his cruelty. As an example, I will state one of many facts going to prove the charge. I have seen him tie up a lame young woman, and whip her with a heavy cowskin upon her naked shoulders, causing the warm red blood to drip; and, in justification of the bloody deed, he would quote this passage of Scripture—“He that knoweth his master’s will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes.”
Master would keep this lacerated young woman tied up in this horrid situation four or five hours at a time. I have known him to tie her up early in the morning, and whip her before breakfast; leave her, go to his store, return at dinner, and whip her again, cutting her in the places already made raw with his cruel lash. The secret of master’s cruelty toward “Henny” is found in the fact of her being almost helpless. When quite a child, she fell into the fire, and burned herself horribly. Her hands were so burnt that she never got the use of them. She could do very little but bear heavy burdens. She was to master a bill of expense; and as he was a mean man, she was a constant offence to him. He seemed desirous of getting the poor girl out of existence. He gave her away once to his sister; but, being a poor gift, she was not disposed to keep her. Finally, my benevolent master, to use his own words, “set her adrift to take care of herself.” Here was a recently-converted man, holding on upon the mother, and at the same time turning out her helpless child, to starve and die! Master Thomas was one of the many pious slaveholders who hold slaves for the very charitable purpose of taking care of them.
And again this point comes up in Chapter 10:
I assert most unhesitatingly, that the religion of the south is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes,—a justifier of the most appalling barbarity,—a sanctifier of the most hateful frauds,—and a dark shelter under, which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal deeds of slaveholders find the strongest protection. Were I to be again reduced to the chains of slavery, next to that enslavement, I should regard being the slave of a religious master the greatest calamity that could befall me. For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others.
In his many debates with religionists, Christopher Hitchens was frequently pressed to admit that there were some circumstances in which Christianity could be a moderating or improving influence on a situation. Hitchens never conceded the point, and argued that Christianity always made people worse.
And here is Frederick Douglass back in 1845 making the same exact point. You think Christianity makes slaveholders more humane? No, it made them more cruel.
But it's important to remember Frederick Douglass was not Christopher Hitchens. In fact, after he escaped from slavery, Frederick Douglass actually became a Christian preacher.
Frederick Douglass is however aware that he has given a very hostile account of Christianity throughout his narrative, so he tries to clarify this in the Appendix:
I find, since reading over the foregoing Narrative, that I have, in several instances, spoken in such a tone and manner, respecting religion, as may possibly lead those unacquainted with my religious views to suppose me an opponent of all religion. To remove the liability of such misapprehension, I deem it proper to append the following brief explanation. What I have said respecting and against religion, I mean strictly to apply to the slaveholding religion of this land, and with no possible reference to Christianity proper; for, between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference—so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one, is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land....
He goes on for a few more pages about this, but you get the idea.
There is a whole long discussion to be had about the nature of Christianity in theory and in practice, but I'm not going to get into it in this particular review. (I'm supposed to be keeping these things short, after all.) All I'll say is that this book makes you think a lot about these things.
10 out of 10 Stars. It's hard to find much fault with the book. Perhaps I could take a star off for being depressing. But this kind of book needs to be depressing. Maybe I could take a star off for being too short. But then, this was as long as it needed to be for its purpose. 10 out of 10 it is.
Why I Read This Book
Confession time: I have no ear for classical music at all. (It's one of my many failings. I've tried to develop an appreciation for it in the past, and just couldn't do it.)
But, as a history nerd, I still sometimes take an interest in the biographies of famous composers. Particularly if the lives of those composers intersect with the historical and political events of their time.
Wagner is an excellent example of a classical composer whose biography is fascinating reading, even to those of us who aren't musically inclined.
Wagner's politics were a fascinating contradiction.
On the one hand, Wagner collaborated with the socialists and the anarchists. Wagner was one of the leading figures in the Dresden uprising in 1849 in which he collaborated with none other than Mikhail Bakunin (the father of modern anarchism).
But on the other hand, Wagner also posthumously became Hitler's favorite composer because of Wagner's ideas of German nationalism, and his rabid antisemitism. And so nowadays, it's impossible to talk about Wagner's legacy without mentioning the Nazis.
So who was the real Wagner? Was he a progressive revolutionary, or a reactionary anti-semite? Seems like it would make a fascinating biographical study either way, no?
But politics aside, as a fan of fantasy and mythology, I was also interested in Wagner's epic mythological 15 hour Ring Cycle. I wanted to know more about, but I also wanted someone to summarize it for me. Because there was no way I was going to sit through 15 hours of opera.
From Wagner's Die Walkure. This looks pretty epic. But could I get the Cliff Notes version, please?
For these reasons, about 12 years ago, I was actively looking for a readable biography of Wagner. I didn't want anything academic. What I really wanted was a readable mass-market biography--the kind of book that might be sold in airport bookstores. To that end, I looked in bookstores, I searched Amazon.com, but I couldn't find anything resembling what I wanted. (In fact, I had a hard time finding any biographies of Wagner at all on Amazon.com (1)).
It was a collection of authentic documents related to the life of Richard Wagner. Which was about as boring as it sounds. To quote myself from my 2009 review:
I did learn interesting bits and pieces about Wagner's life from this book, but it was a poor substitute for a biography. It was just a series of fragments, and the reader had to guess at the gaps.
Moreover, most of Wagner's letters have to do with the techniques of music, which were unappreciated and uninteresting to an unmusical person like me.
I didn't find this book at all enjoyable actually. It was one of those books where I couldn't even get through a single page without my mind wandering off at some point.
I stuck through the entire book simply out of determination.
Okay, so it wasn't an enjoyable reading experience. But it did largely satiate my curiosity. I stopped looking for another Wagner biography after reading that one.
And then, a few months ago, I stumbled upon this book in the bookstores here in Saigon. A nice breezy biography of Wagner written for a popular audience. This is exactly what I had been looking for 12 years ago. (It was published in 2017, so it's no wonder that I couldn't find it back in 2008.)
I initially left it on the shelves. Sure, it would have been nice if I had found this book 12 years ago. But now I had already read about Wagner. My curiosity had been satiated.
But then, when working through my scripted review series, I filmed a video re-capping my old review of Wagner: A Documentary Study, and on camera I found myself re-telling the story of how 12 years ago I had wanted to find a readable biography of Wagner, couldn't find it anywhere, but then just recently saw it in the bookstore and didn't buy it. And I found it hard to justify in words why I hadn't bought it. And then I found myself on camera saying that I would buy this book if I ever saw it again in the bookstores.
...well, after having committed myself on camera, I decided I should really buy this book after all. So the next time I was in the same bookstore, I checked to see if this was still on the shelf. It was, so I grabbed it, bought it, read it, and here I am with the review.
The Review
So, yes, this is the Wagner biography I'd been looking for all along. It's light, easy to read, written in a breezy style, and written by someone more concerned with the interesting biographical details than the technicalities of music composition.
I had wanted something that was for a popular audience and not scholarly, and this was it exactly.
Of course, the trade-off with these kind of books is that there are lots of gaps, omissions, and over-simplifications. (And I'll get around to complaining about some of those in a minute.) But it was fun and easy to read, so that's the big take-away.
The author, Simon Callow, is actually a professional actor. I'd never heard of him before, but when I looked him up on Wikipedia, he has indeed been in a number of famous movies that I've seen (2). I was worried that this would mean that he couldn't write, but in fact his prose is perfectly readable.
Simon Callow in the forward gives the background to his obsession with Wagner, and why he was motivated to write this biography. He also makes the disclaimer: "I am not a musician, either as performer or musicologist. I am a well-informed music lover, but it would be entirely inappropriate for me to attempt musical analysis" (p.xvi).
So much the better, in my opinion. I didn't want to get bogged down in a lot of musical analysis.
At only 200 pages (plus indexes) this is hardly the definitive biography of Wagner. And it's obvious even to the casual read like myself that a lot is being cut out. [At the end of the book, there's a chronology of the major events of Wagner's life (p.201-205) and it was noticeable that some of these events weren't even in the main text--like the death of Wagner's beloved sister Rosalie in 1837.] And yet, the text does a good job of exploring what were the major influences that made Wagner tick.
A lot of what drove Wagner was not entirely rational. Wagner was driven by ego, emotions, romanticism--and also Simon Callow implies that some hallucinations and an over-active imagination also shaped the way Wagner told his autobiography.
But at the same time, there are intellectual developments, and Simon Callow does a good job of tracing these in a way that's very readable.
Wagner was always sympathetic towards the revolutionaries. (As a young man, he participated in the student riots in Germany that accompanied The Revolutions of 1830 (W)). Initially Wagner had to temper his radicalism in order to obtain royal patronage, but Simon Callow does a good job of tracing how exactly Wagner ended up at the center of the Dresden Uprising (W). During The Revolutions of 1848 Wagner was driven towards more radicalism by his associations with his associate conductor socialist August Rockel (W) and Bakunin. It also appeared that he got swept up in the emotions and revolutionary excitement of the 1848 days.
Wagner's participation in the Revolution cost him his job and his royal patronage, and he appears to have regretted his involvement. But he did continue his liberal education by reading Hegel (who he didn't understand) and Feuerbach (W) (who made a great impact on Wagner).
On pages 92-97, there's even some attempt to reconcile Wagner's liberal views with his reactionary anti-Semitism. As author Simon Callow explains, Wagner had a view of humanity as being happiest in the state of nature, but being currently unhappy because of the oppressiveness of modern civilization. All of this sounds very 1960s flower-child-esque, but such a philosophy inevitably has a hidden dark side--it requires the existence of certain people who are keeping humanity from this happy state of nature. And Wagner latched on to the Jews.
But despite this brief attempt to try to explain the antisemitism, Simon Callow usually treats it as completely irrational, and frequently describes Wagner's relentless anti-Semitism almost as if it were an illness.
...Wagner's anti-Semitism ... was more than a bizarre peccadillo, beyond a prejudice: it was an obsession, a monomania, a full-blown neurosis. No conversation with Wagner ever occurred without a detour on the subject of Judaism (p.185)
There's also a fascinating epilogue in which the history of Wagner's legacy is briefly discussed. It turns out that it was not inevitable Wagner would become a Nazi symbol--the immediate heir to Wagner's legacy was his liberal son Siegfried who attempted to distance his father's opera house from anti-Semitism. But, as a twist of history would have it, Siegfried died in 1930, and Siegfried's wife became heir to the Wagner legacy and the opera house. And Siegfried's wife was a huge Hitler fan. And Hitler was a huge Wagner fan, so an alliance was made.
So all of that was fascinating, and for the most part I got exactly what I wanted out of this book. I felt like I understood Wagner's conflicted politics a lot more after finishing this book.
The only thing I didn't get, that I would have liked, was more analysis of Wagner's Operas, particularly his epic Ring Cycle.
Simon Callow does give plot synopses of many of Wagner's early operas and these are interesting for showing Wagner's fascination with the epic and with the macabre. But then by the time we get to the part of Wagner's biography where he is writing the Ring Cycle, we don't get much insight into the plot of the work. Simon Callow mentions its something about dwarfs, dragons, gods and heroes, but he talks about it only in the vaguest of terms, and I didn't really feel like I had much of an idea of what the opera was actually about.
It's not that Simon Callow doesn't write about the Ring Cycle--he writes plenty about Wagner's struggle to get it produced--but the reader is given very little information about what happens in the Opera. Instead, he alludes to themes rather than explaining them.
When discussing The Rheingold (the first opera in the Ring Cycle), Callow writes:
...it embodied with amazing dexterity, within its unbroken two-and-half hour span, Wagner's tragic critique of modern capitalism, grounded in his understanding of Feuerbach, and channelled through figures derived from the ancient myths of the German people. (p.104)
Well, that all sounds fascinating. But what was Wagner's critique of modern capitalism? How did he embody it in The Rheingold? What myths did he use?
Even more tantalizing is the description of the ideological conflict that The Ring of Nibelung caused the Nazi party. You see, Hitler loved the opera, but his commanders? Not so much.
...the more intellectually acute of the [Nazi] high command pointed out that The Ring of Nibelung was a proto-Marxist text, and that Parisfal was dangerously close to a religious experience, which was equally repugnant to the Nazi ethos. (p.197)
So there's something really interesting being hinted at here, but wouldn't it be nice to know why the Nazi high command thought that The Ring of Nibelung was a proto-Marxist text? But we get none of that in Simon Callow's book.
Oh well, I guess that's what I get for deliberately choosing the easy-reading version. I suppose there's always Wikipedia if I need a plot summary of The Ring cycle.
Other Notes
* Mike Duncan, in his podcast on the feud between Marx and Bakunin (which I linked to last July) mentions the anti-Semitism that was present in Bakunin's accusations against Marx, but also cautioned against drawing too much from this, because in the 19th century every ideology was tainted by anti-Semitism. After hearing this, I was wondering whether or not Wagner's anti-Semitism should also be considered in the context of is time. But Simon Callow makes it very clear that Wagner's anti-Semitism was extreme even for its day, and was recognized as such. Even in his day, there was a big backlash to Wagner's infamous article "Judaism in Music". (And actually, while we're on the subject, Francis Wheen thinks Bakunin's anti-Semitism was also extreme even for its day.)
*... and speaking of Bakunin:
On page 78, Simon Callow describes Bakunin in these words:
"It was the Russian anarchist, Mikhail Bakunin, the most notorious terrorist in the world, the Osama bin Laden of his day..."
This strikes me as extremely unfair. Granted, no one would ever describe Bakunin as a pacifist. He believed in violent insurrection. But I think there's a distinction to be made between an insurrectionist and a terrorist. Bakunin was all for fighting on the barricade, but he never would never have thrown a bomb into a crowded coffee house, nor did he endorse such behavior. (Although granted, after Bakunin's death several of his later followers would turn to terrorism. But that's different.)
I think I get what Simon Callow is going for. He's trying to convey to his readers (many of whom may be ignorant of 19th Century history) that Bakunin was really really notorious in his day, and he's trying to do it in as few words as possible, because Bakunin only gets a handful of sentences in the whole book. (Although Bakunin's association with Wagner was infamous, it was also very short-lived). Nonetheless, I thought the comparison to Osama bin Laden was tasteless.
* I had no idea before reading this book, but it turns out Wagner and his wife were intimately connected with Friedrich Nietzsche as well. So that's yet another giant figure of the modern world that Wagner was connected to.
Connections with Other Books I've Read
* Rupert Chistiansen has a blurb on the backcover: "He [Simon Callow] sees the man plainly and he sees him whole, without excessive veneration or excoriation".
For my review of Rupert Christiansen's book, Paris Babylon, see HERE.
* From page 144:
First he [Wagner] moved into a magnificent new house in town; not only did he furnish it to the very height of luxury, it was minutes away from the house once lived in by Lola Montez, the hated mistress of Ludwig's deposed grandfather, Ludwig I. The locals drew their conclusions: Wagner was quickly named Lola II or Lolotte.
Footnotes (docs, pub)
(1) It's interesting that in his bibliography, Simon Callow lists loads of biographies of Richard Wagner. I wonder why I couldn't track these down 12 years ago? I think the mistake I made was I assumed that everything was available on Amazon.com. If I couldn't find it by searching on Amazon.com, it didn't exist--or so I reasoned to myself. But I think I've come to realize over the years there is a lot of books that actually aren't on Amazon.com--particularly stuff published by university presses, I think. I probably would have much better luck if I had searched through inter-library loan or something. (Although at the time, I was living in Japan, so that wasn't really an option.)
(2) Specifically of Simon Callow's filmography I've definitely seen: Amadeus, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Jefferson in Paris, Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, Shakespeare in Love, and The Phantom of the Opera. All of them were before I started my movie review project, so no reviews on this blog for any of them. A few others on his filmography list are might-have-seens (the memory gets a bit hazy).
...and then a bunch of people got angry that Elon Musk would in any way try to associate his brand with Bakunin, which is how it came across my twitter feed.
"Huh," I thought. "I was just vlogging about Bakunin, and how underappreciated he was during the end of his life. What are the odds?"
Elon Musk, it turns out, was listening to Revolutions Podcast. And it turns out that, by sheer coincidence, Revolutions Podcast and I were talking about a lot of the same things last week. Revolutions Podcast was also talking about the fight between Mikhail Bakunin and Karl Marx, how the Paris Commune figured into the ideological split between anarchists and communists, and the split of the first International--all topics I tried to cover in the vlog.
But I'd be flattering myself if I implied that there was any equality between my rambling vlog and Revolutions Podcast. Revolutions Podcast is the real deal--carefully researched, and professional presented. This, really, is what you should be listening to if you want to learn about the subject, not me.
For the episode on Mikhail Bakunin's biography, see HERE.
For the episode on Bakunin's philosophy, see HERE.
For the episode on Bakunin's and Marx's view of the Paris Commune, see HERE.
and for the episode on Bakunin's fight with Marx, and the split of the 1st International, see HERE.
(If you're even halfway interested in these topics, it's time well-spent. Trust me. These are entertaining and engaging podcasts.)
Revolutions Podcast is by a guy named Mike Duncan (W). He's most famous for his History of Rome Podcast (W), which I only found out about a couple years ago. It came up in a conversation in the school staffroom.
(We have a lot of good history discussions in the staffroom. You'd be surprised at how many former history majors and classics majors are teaching English in Asia... actually you probably wouldn't be. It's probably exactly what you'd expect people would do with a history or classics degree.)
This podcast started in 2007, so it wasn't around when I was in college. (In fact I'm fairly sure Mike Duncan is a few years younger than I am.) But my younger colleagues have given me to understand that for ancient history or classics undergraduates nowadays, Mike Duncan's History of Rome Podcast is standard listening for bulking up on all the historical details outside of class.
Then after finishing The History of Rome, Mike Duncan started another podcast of history's revolutions. It turns out Mike Duncan has the exact same interests as me. My main historical interests are also ancient Rome, and revolutions.
It appears Mike Duncan is just an ordinary guy (bachelor's in history) who just deciding to start podcasting about history. Since he's been working on my historical interests, it occurs to me that Mike Duncan is doing exactly the kind of work that I myself would love to do if only I were better organized and more hard-working. (And if I had more concentration, and was a better writer, and more intelligent, and had been more aware of what podcasting was and how to do it back in 2007.... etc.)
So I had known about his revolutions podcast, but I hadn't been actively following to it. (I am planning on listening to the whole thing one day, but I'm working my way through other podcasts first.) So I didn't realize he was covering the same ground as me last week.
We've generally been trying to stick to the classics in this little bookclub of ours. Beloved is the most recent book we've done so far, (first published in 1987) but it's become famous enough that it's arguable a modern classic.
The Review
I have mixed feelings about this book.
I'll start with the positives.
Before we started the book, Tom expressed the concern that this would just be another feel-bad novel about slavery.
But this book is so much more than this. It's a ghost story, and Toni Morrison has succeeded at creating a very haunting atmosphere.
If there was any doubt that this is a horror movie, Hans Zimmer’s score pounds and roars with dread—the appropriate soundtrack for the madness of history.
The idea of slavery as a horror story is probably a more accurate description of Beloved.
The story of the book is told mostly in flashback. Right from the beginning of the book, we hear the names of the former slaves that the main characters (Sethe and Paul D) once knew, but their gruesome fates are only hinted at.
The mystery hooks the reader right in, and helps to add to the eerie atmosphere of the ghost story.
Gradually, the novel gives us more and more hints, until we finally have the full awful picture of what happened at Sweet Home.
Now, to the negatives:
I didn't like Toni Morrison's writing style. It was too poetic for me, and I had to struggle to keep focused.
Granted, this is more reflective of me and my limitations as a reader than it is of the book. If you're the kind of person who likes a lot of poetic description in your novels, then you'll love this book.
Getting frustrated with one of the more poetic passages, I wrote down "Ugh, typical" in the margins next to this paragraph:
Denver was seeing it now and feeling it--through Beloved. Feeling how it must have felt to her mother. Seeing how it must have looked. And the more fine points she made, the more detail she provided, the more Beloved liked it. so she anticipated the questions by giving blood to the scraps her mother and grandmother had told her--and a heartbeat. The monologue became, in fact, a duet as they lay down together, Denver nursing Beloved's interest like a lover whose pleasure was to overfeed the loved. The dark quilt with two orange patches was there with them because Beloved wanted it near her when she slept. It was smelling like grass and feeling like hands--the unrested hands of busy women; dry, warm, prickly. Denver spoke, Beloved listened, and the two did the best they could to create what really happened, and how it was really was, something only Sethe knew because she alone had the mind for it and the time afterward to shape it: the quality of Amy's voice, her breath like burning wood. The quick-change weather up in those hills--cool at night, hot in the day, sudden fog. How recklessly she behaved with this whitegirl--a recklessness born of desperation and encouraged by Amy's fugitive eyes and her tenderhearted mouth.
If you like that, there's plenty more where that came from. But I found this almost unreadable. (To be perfectly honest, if this hadn't been a book club book, I think I would have given up on it. But because we were doing it for bookclub, I struggled through out of a sense of obligation.)
In our book club, Tom and I hated the writing style, and Sabrina loved it. So this obviously differs from person to person.
Other Notes and Random Thoughts
So, with apologies, I'm not really going to be able to do justice to this book. Someone who actually likes it will have to do a better job at tackling it's themes. (See, for example, here.) I've got just a few more scattered thoughts, and then I'm just going to call it a day on this book.
* Parts of this book were harder to read than others. At times, the story was told in a stream of consciousness type narrative. Tom and I really hated this, Sabrina liked it. But then other times the prose would return to something very normal and readable, that all 3 of us agreed we enjoyed.
I'm reminded somewhat of The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner which also kind of did the same thing--alternated conventional easy-to-read story-telling with hard to follow stream of consciousness prose.
* We got some interesting discussion out of our bookclub on the issue of slavery.
Sabrina, being from India, confessed she didn't know much of the history of slavery.
Tom and I were both Americans.
Tom at one point made a comment in the discussion. "In America, we study the history of slavery SO much." But then as soon as the words were out of his mouth, he caught himself and added, "Well, actually arguably we don't study it enough."
I think this sums up my view as well. We talked about the slavery issue so much in my American history classes and yet, arguably, we never fully comprehend what really happened.
I think part of the problem is that we learn all of this history when we are so young. So it gets filed away in our brains with all the other school facts we learn when we are young...the structure of the cell, and the chemical composition of water, and the history of slavery.
We don't often stop and think about the full horror of it. Unless we are made to think about it, like when reading a novel like Beloved.
"Wow!" I thought to myself when I read this book. "Doesn't it blow your mind to think about the fact that we actually had slaves in this country? In America! In the modern era!"
* When reading Beloved, I was reminded of Cambodia's Curse by Joel Brinkley.
In Cambodia's Curse, Joel Brinkley argues that one of the problems facing Cambodia today is that most of the population is suffering from PTSD.
The people who lived through the Pol Pot years are suffering from PTSD for obvious reasons.
But also, Joel Brinkley says, their children are also suffering from PTSD. Apparently psychologists are learning more about how PTSD can actually be passed down from parent to child. Because the children were brought up by emotionally scarred parents, the children suffered an abnormal upbringing, and so picked up a lot of the emotional damage of their parents.
I thought about this in connection with Beloved. Even though the book takes place among freed blacks after the end of slavery, Sethe and Paul D obviously seem to be still suffering from the trauma of what they experienced on the plantation. And Sethe's child, Denver, seems to be inheriting some of the emotional trauma of her mother.
I suspect that this is not just me reading too much into the book--I think one of the themes of the book is supposed to be how hard it was for black people to form real communities after the trauma of slavery.
* I'm deliberately avoiding talking too much about the plot, because a lot of the interest in this book is created by the reader gradually figuring out what the plot is.
Unfortunately, I spoiled this somewhat for myself by reading the Foreword of the book. The Foreword gives too much of the plot away. (If you plan on reading this book, don't touch The Foreword until the end)
* That being said, one of the interesting things that I did learn from The Forward was that Toni Morrison had edited Angela Davis's autobiography.
I actually read Angela Davis's autobiography when I was in college. (That was back in the 1990s, so I wasn't blogging at the time. So no review on this blog. But I have occasionally mentioned Angela Davis's biography--see here, here and here.)
