For some peculiar reason - and it can only be the forbidding title of his best-known work, I guess - Nikolai Gogol appears to intimidate people. Hell, he intimidated me for long enough, and I read Beckett for a laugh.
Which is an enormous shame. Because it doesn't take more than a brief acquaintance for you to realise that he's not like that at all. Not even slightly. "Dead Souls" isn't a grave, dismal account of poverty-stricken Russian peasantry, nor is it a deathly-dull exercise in philosphical chin-scratching; it isn't even much of a forerunner for Fyodor Dostoyevsky's work, despite being widely trailed as such. It's just a ludicrous riot of florid, flamboyant prose, impossibly wayward asides and, very occasionally, when it really can't be avoided, a bit of a story; it is emphatically not what you expect it to be. It made me laugh out loud on trains, for pity's sake.
His short stories, as I've been discovering, are equally erratic and, sometimes, equally inspired. "Ivan Ivanovich and Ivan Nikiforovich", for example, features a memorable insult - "I sneeze on your head!" - that I plan to try out myself when the opportunity next arises, along with a chapter entitled "From Which The Reader May Easily Learn Everything Contained In It". And a fat bloke stuck in a courtroom doorway. You're starting to get the idea.
But let's not dismiss Nikolai Gogol as a mere eccentric. Use that as a reason to read him, by all means; you won't be disappointed. There's substance too, though: in particular, there are astonishing hints of writing that would be revolutionary decades, many decades, after his death. There's Dostoyevsky, sure; you'd expect that, I suppose. But the resemblance of certain passages - especially "The Overcoat", with its central character's futile pursuit of authority - to Kafka is quite extraordinary; at other times, there are suggestions of Nabokov, even of Beckett. These, from a Russian novelist who died in 1852.
The point is not that Gogol was ahead of his time, not at all. Rather, it's that his best writing stretches every furthest point of his imagination, conjuring up fresh invention with virtually every paragraph. It never settles, it has none of the stillness, the insight or the control of other masters. Its beauty is in the very act of creation, in which it can leap forward centuries, not by anticipating the future but by happening upon and then casually discarding inspiration, forgetting where it buried the bone. It is indeed erratic...but then, that's genius for you. And "genius" is precisely the right word.
30 May 2006
14 May 2006
Brighton Festival's Samuel Beckett Weekend
"Tonight's performance will last for three hours...." There is an audible gasp from the audience, something approaching terror. Especially from those of us who, unwisely, have decided to wait until after the performance to eat.
Especially from those of us whose weekends have already contained a hefty, full-to-bursting helping of Beckett recitals elsewhere. Brighton Festival's Beckett Weekend, centred around three prose adaptations by the Gare St Lazare Players, certainly lives up to its name. It's not for the faint-hearted.
Indeed, even the strong-hearted, the heartfelt Beckett evangelists, might flinch from some of this. The venue for our first two portions feels perfect - sparse furniture in a dimly-lit concrete cellar, just a wooden bench and a ledge for a stage - but the choice of works is brave in the extreme. Or, perhaps, just extreme in the extreme.
These are difficult pieces, to perform and to digest. The three excerpts of Texts For Nothing, welded together to form as much of a whole as nothing can form, are deliberately hesitant and doubting. They coil back upon themselves as soon as they appear to have reached any kind of conclusion, shrinking instinctively from the light. Occasionally, a coherent image forms and is extinguished almost instantly, returning us to a lost, confusing greyness. There is some great writing here, to be sure, and it is performed with loving care by Conor Lovett. But, Jesus, it tests a faltering attention span after an extremely long day.
And then, Worstward Ho follows on the Sunday afternoon and is harsh and impenetrable even by Beckett's considerable standards. Just a few ghostly images haunting prose that's frequently an impossible maze, insistently recounted by Lee Delong. It is another fascinating hour, demanding and ultimately rewarding. It is as far as Beckett went, pretty much, and that's quite a long way further than anyone else bothered to go. I have spent more relaxing Sunday afternoons.
In both cases, acute concentration is required, and the slightest slip loses the thread entirely. It seems to me that the performances are more than partly responsible, even though both deserve immense praise for tackling such daunting territory in the first place. Somehow, the music that's inherent in so much of Beckett's prose is lost in the desire to explain, to convey meaning. There's too much effort, too much work. Too much constipation. There's none of the joy that can
be found even in Beckett's bleakest work, none of the purity and the greatness. It's all a bit of a strain.
And thus, another three hours on Sunday evening is an intimidating prospect. But, to the relief of all, Conor Lovett's performance of excerpts from the trilogy of Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable is brilliant, riveting and, in comparison, the time flashes by. At last, here's the joy: the comedy of Molloy is so riotous and absurd and occasionally filthy that you could be watching great stand-up.
It's a marvellous introduction, but Malone Dies is where you find the reasons why some of us love this stuff, why it is held so close to our hearts rather than merely admired from a distance. Here, there are traces of that black, surreal comedy...but they're framed by something profoundly still, something deathly. Malone's stories disintegrate and splinter, life's flame flickering and then spluttering out. It is beautiful writing, kind and yet totally unsentimental, perfectly poised; as a consequence, it manages that most impossible thing: it is hopelessly moving, yet resoundingly intelligent at the same time.
After which, The Unnamable, perhaps the grandest of all Beckett's works, is a glorious, gorgeous after-glow. His movements echoed by an enormous shadow on the back wall, Lovett lingers in the after-life, somewhere between ghost and angel and god. Resisting the novel's classic but somewhat worn ending ("I can't go on. I'll go on."), he makes random noises into the nothingness to pass the time, before finally extinguishing the spotlight, disappearing into the void. And returning for the applause.
It's been a remarkable few weeks, really. Hours and hours and hours spent listening to Samuel Beckett's work - for you spend much more time listening than watching - and yet no sense of having exhausted it. Set aside the literary landmarks, the vast historical importance of it all, and you're left with fundamentals: that he left behind writing so full of humanity that it will always be irresistible. Too much humour, too much kindness, too much sadness, too much simple beauty. Everything that art can be, with so little of the nonsense.
Here's to you, guvnor.
Especially from those of us whose weekends have already contained a hefty, full-to-bursting helping of Beckett recitals elsewhere. Brighton Festival's Beckett Weekend, centred around three prose adaptations by the Gare St Lazare Players, certainly lives up to its name. It's not for the faint-hearted.
Indeed, even the strong-hearted, the heartfelt Beckett evangelists, might flinch from some of this. The venue for our first two portions feels perfect - sparse furniture in a dimly-lit concrete cellar, just a wooden bench and a ledge for a stage - but the choice of works is brave in the extreme. Or, perhaps, just extreme in the extreme.
These are difficult pieces, to perform and to digest. The three excerpts of Texts For Nothing, welded together to form as much of a whole as nothing can form, are deliberately hesitant and doubting. They coil back upon themselves as soon as they appear to have reached any kind of conclusion, shrinking instinctively from the light. Occasionally, a coherent image forms and is extinguished almost instantly, returning us to a lost, confusing greyness. There is some great writing here, to be sure, and it is performed with loving care by Conor Lovett. But, Jesus, it tests a faltering attention span after an extremely long day.
And then, Worstward Ho follows on the Sunday afternoon and is harsh and impenetrable even by Beckett's considerable standards. Just a few ghostly images haunting prose that's frequently an impossible maze, insistently recounted by Lee Delong. It is another fascinating hour, demanding and ultimately rewarding. It is as far as Beckett went, pretty much, and that's quite a long way further than anyone else bothered to go. I have spent more relaxing Sunday afternoons.
In both cases, acute concentration is required, and the slightest slip loses the thread entirely. It seems to me that the performances are more than partly responsible, even though both deserve immense praise for tackling such daunting territory in the first place. Somehow, the music that's inherent in so much of Beckett's prose is lost in the desire to explain, to convey meaning. There's too much effort, too much work. Too much constipation. There's none of the joy that can
be found even in Beckett's bleakest work, none of the purity and the greatness. It's all a bit of a strain.
And thus, another three hours on Sunday evening is an intimidating prospect. But, to the relief of all, Conor Lovett's performance of excerpts from the trilogy of Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable is brilliant, riveting and, in comparison, the time flashes by. At last, here's the joy: the comedy of Molloy is so riotous and absurd and occasionally filthy that you could be watching great stand-up.
It's a marvellous introduction, but Malone Dies is where you find the reasons why some of us love this stuff, why it is held so close to our hearts rather than merely admired from a distance. Here, there are traces of that black, surreal comedy...but they're framed by something profoundly still, something deathly. Malone's stories disintegrate and splinter, life's flame flickering and then spluttering out. It is beautiful writing, kind and yet totally unsentimental, perfectly poised; as a consequence, it manages that most impossible thing: it is hopelessly moving, yet resoundingly intelligent at the same time.
After which, The Unnamable, perhaps the grandest of all Beckett's works, is a glorious, gorgeous after-glow. His movements echoed by an enormous shadow on the back wall, Lovett lingers in the after-life, somewhere between ghost and angel and god. Resisting the novel's classic but somewhat worn ending ("I can't go on. I'll go on."), he makes random noises into the nothingness to pass the time, before finally extinguishing the spotlight, disappearing into the void. And returning for the applause.
It's been a remarkable few weeks, really. Hours and hours and hours spent listening to Samuel Beckett's work - for you spend much more time listening than watching - and yet no sense of having exhausted it. Set aside the literary landmarks, the vast historical importance of it all, and you're left with fundamentals: that he left behind writing so full of humanity that it will always be irresistible. Too much humour, too much kindness, too much sadness, too much simple beauty. Everything that art can be, with so little of the nonsense.
Here's to you, guvnor.
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