Imaginary

Fictional Narratives

If one places one's self at the culminating point of view of the question, Waterloo is intentionally a counter-revolutionary victory. It is Europe against France; it is Petersburg, Berlin, and Vienna against Paris; it is the _statu quo_ against the initiative; it is the 14th of July, 1789, attacked through the 20th of March, 1815; it is the monarchies clearing the decks in opposition to the indomitable French rioting. The final extinction of that vast people which had been in eruption for twenty-six years--such was the dream. [Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (1862), Volume II – Cosette; Book First – Waterloo, Chapter XVII, “Is Waterloo To Be Considered Good?”]

In Tom’s hurried exchange, he had not forgotten to transfer his cherished Bible to his pocket. It was well he did so; for Mr. Legree, having refitted Tom’s handcuffs, proceeded deliberately to investigate the contents of his pockets. He drew out a silk handkerchief, and put it into his own pocket. Several little trifles, which Tom had treasured, chiefly because they had amused Eva, he looked upon with a contemptuous grunt, and tossed them over his shoulder into the river.  Tom’s Methodist hymn-book, which, in his hurry, he had forgotten, he now held up and turned over. “Humph! pious, to be sure. So, what’s yer name,—you belong to the church, eh?”  “Yes, Mas’r,” said Tom, firmly. “Well, I’ll soon have that out of you. I have none o’ yer bawling, praying, singing niggers on my place; so remember. Now, mind yourself,” he said, with a stamp and a fierce glance of his gray eye, directed at Tom, “I’m your church now! You understand,—you’ve got to be as I say.” Something within the silent black man answered No! and, as if repeated by an invisible voice, came the words of an old prophetic scroll, as Eva had often read them to him,—“Fear not! for I have redeemed thee. I have called thee by name. Thou art MINE!” But Simon Legree heard no voice. That voice is one he never shall hear. He only glared for a moment on the downcast face of Tom, and walked off. He took Tom’s trunk, which contained a very neat and abundant wardrobe, to the forecastle, where it was soon surrounded by various hands of the boat. With much laughing, at the expense of niggers who tried to be gentlemen, the articles very readily were sold to one and another, and the empty trunk finally put up at auction. It was a good joke, they all thought, especially to see how Tom looked after his things, as they were going this way and that; and then the auction of the trunk, that was funnier than all, and occasioned abundant witticisms. This little affair being over, Simon sauntered up again to his property. [Harriett Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin or Life Among the Lowly (1852), Volume II, Chapter 31, “The Middle Passage”.]

Novels, light takes:

• Zadie Smith, The Fraud: A Novel (Penguin Press, 2023): “. . . this is a book about novelists, and it is in lambasting the egos of male writers that Smith has the most fun.”

Poetry

Music: Composers, artists, and major works

“Why is it human nature to want what we can’t have? In 1827, the 23-year-old Hector Berlioz attended a performance of Shakespeare’s Hamlet at the Odéon Theatre in Paris; Harriet Smithson, a charismatic Irish actress, was playing Ophelia. Berlioz was smitten and wrote her an impassioned letter – Smithson did not reply. Undeterred, he continued to bombard her with messages but she left Paris without making contact.” Hector Berlioz, Symphonie Fantastique, Episode in the Life of an Artist, Op. 14, H. 48 (1830) (approx. 49-58’), “tells the story of an artist's self-destructive passion for a beautiful woman. The symphony describes his obsession and dreams, tantrums and moments of tenderness, and visions of suicide and murder, ecstasy and despair.” Top performances are conducted by Monteux in 1930, Ormandy in 1952, Ormandy in 1960, Norrington in 1989, Gardiner in 1993, Boulez in 1997, Colin Davis in 2001, Nézet-Séguin in 2010, van Immerseel in 2010, and Roth in 2019. 

Giuseppe Verdi, Macbeth (1847) (approx. 140-160’) (libretto), is an operatic version of Shakespeare’s tragedy about unbridled ambition and unchecked ego. Verdi “creates an atmosphere of palpable evil from the start.  The prelude, with its sinister figures on strings, harsh brass, and winds shrieking like the owl, describes the loneliness of damnation, lost in night and cut off from hope and every decent human feeling . . .” Its lessons are about greed, power and leadership. “What is singular about Macbeth, compared to the other three great Shakespearean tragedies, is its villain-hero. If Hamlet mainly executes rather than murders,  if  Othello  is  ‘more  sinned  against  than  sinning,’  and  if  Lear  is  ‘a  very foolish fond old man’ buffeted by surrounding evil, Macbeth knowingly chooses  evil  and  becomes  the  bloodiest  and  most  dehumanized  of  Shakespeare’s tragic protagonists.” An excellent filmed recording is by Hampson, Marrocou & Zürich Opera, Welser-Möst conducting, in 2001. Top audio-recorded performances are by Taddei, Gencer & Gui in 1960; Guelfi, Gencer & Gavezzini in 1968; Milnes, Ludwig & Böhm in 1970; Verrett, Cappuccili, Abbado in 1976 *** (with video); Milnes, Cossotto, & Muti in 1976 **; Zampieri, Bruson & Sinopoli in 1983; and Keenlyside, Moore & Gardner in 2013. 

Béla Bartók, Duke Bluebeard’s Castle (A Kékszakállú herceg Vára), Op. 11, Sz. 48 (1911, rev. 1918) (approx. 56-105’): the duke’s new wife learns that he has many other interests, including three other wives, who are being confined in the castle. Bartok was in personal crisis when he composed this. He had married a teenager, and the marriage was troubled. “I am a lonely man!…I may have friends in Budapest…yet there are times when I suddenly become aware of the fact that I am absolutely alone! And I prophesy, I have a foreknowledge, that this spiritual loneliness is to be my destiny.” “Who was then Bartók? For some people, he was cold, lacking emotional intelligence, remote, detached, mathematical, unfriendly, pedantic, caustic and humourless; for some others, he was warm, passionate, friendly, caring, engaged, good humoured.” “Bartók’s personal philosophy was stoic and pessimistic. He held himself apart from others, independent of the ambitious struggle after ‘trifles.’ As a consequence he felt lonely. In his first mature work, the opera Bluebeard’s Castle, Bartók translated his own sense of profound spiritual isolation into music.” Here are links to performances conducted by Kubelik, Dohnányi and Elder. Best recorded performances are by Székely, Palánkay & Ferencsik in 1956, Hines, Elias & Ormandy in 1960, Berry, Ludwig & Kertész in 1965 ***, Ramey, Marton & Adám Fischer in 1987 ***, Lloyd, Lawrence & Adám Fischer in 1988 (video), Howell, Burgess & Elder in 1992, Polgar, Norman & Boulez in 1993, Kares, Vörös & Mälkki in 2021.

Kurt Weill, The Threepenny Opera (1928) (approx. 68-110’), portrays a society made decadent by rampant egoism (including capitalism, in Weill's view) and social apathy. “Set in a society obsessed with money, filled with corruption, where evil runs rampant, and all seem immune to the sufferings of the poor, it is a satire of both traditional opera and the capitalistic Weimar Republic.” “The source for the work was John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera (1728), a humorous ‘ballad opera’ . . . (which) consisted of dialogue interspersed with 69 songs, mainly popular ballads of the British Isles and France, and well-known opera arias . . . A satire of both Italian opera conventions and the political corruption of England's reigning prime minister . . .” Here are links to performances conducted by Bernstein in 1952, Matlowsky in 1954, Brückner-Rüggeberg in 1955; and Silverman in 1976. 

Other works:

• Wilhelm Furtwängler, Symphony No. 3 in C-sharp Minor (1954) (approx. 56-65’): the composer was explicit, he composed this symphony as a tragedy.
• Stephen Albert, Into Eclipse (1981) (approx. 30’) consists of a prologue and five songs on the Oedipus tragedy.
• Stefan Wolpe, Zeus und Elida, Op. 5a (1928) (approx. 27’); Schöne Geschichten, Op. 5b (1929) (approx. 24’): two “decadent” works from Berlin in the 1920s
• Kurt Weill, Die sieben Todsünden (The Seven Deadly Sins) (1933) (approx. 32-39’) (libretto), is a sung ballet, in eight parts. “The surface meaning of The Seven Deadly Sins is clear enough, especially if we bear in mind Brecht's full title, ‘The Seven Deadly Sins of the Petit-Bourgeois’ (Die Sieben Todsiinden der Kleinbiirger). In so far as the two sisters are but aspects of one person, the singing Anna is ‘reason’ and the dancing Anna ‘instinct’ - in other words, intellect versus flesh, the favoured theme of both tragedy and comedy.”
• Grigory Frid, Phädra, Op. 78, No. 1 (1985) (approx. 24’), a tragic work for string quartet and piano, based on a 1677 play by Racine, in which the characters fall victim to their own egos.
• Arnold Schoenberg, String Quartet No. 2 in F-sharp Minor, Op. 10 (1908) (approx. 29-32’): Schoenberg (Schönberg) dedicated the work “to my wife”, who was then having an affair with their friend and neighbor. “Compounding this marital crisis was his disappointment at Gustav Mahler’s departure for the United States. It was to counteract these setbacks that, in 1907 and 1908, Schönberg clearly parted ways with musical tradition, dissolving tonal harmony into atonality and entering that expressionist period of his career that would mark electrifying turn in the compositional development of our century.” “The latter two movements . . . are set to poems from Stefan George's collection Der siebente Ring (The Seventh Ring), which was published in 1907.” Best recorded performances are by Kolisch Quartet (Gifford) in 1936, Ramor Quartet (Escribano) in 1962, Mari Iwamoto Quartet (Nagano) in 1972, Juilliard String Quartet (Valente) in 1975, Pražák Quartet (Whittlesey) in 1994, Schoenberg Quartet (Narucki) in 1996, Aron Quartet (Pammer) in 2003, Diotima Quartet (Lemieux) in 2010, Asasello Quartet (Resch) in 2014, Gringolts Quartet with Hartelius in 2016, Heath Quartet (Sampson) in 2022, and Emerson String Quartet with Hannigan in 2022.   
• Lukas Foss, Song of Anguish (1953) (approx. 22’), are songs drawn from the biblical book of Isaiah, which “address the people’s perversion of moral values, their arrogance and self-righteousness, their adherence to false leadership, their dishonesty and self-delusion, and their hypocrisy and outright malevolence.”

Music: songs and other short pieces

• Pete Seeger, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” (lyrics) (additional performances by Joan Baez, Peter Paul and Mary, Marlene Dietrich and The Brothers Four)
• Dire Straits, "The Man's Too Strong" (lyrics)

Visual Arts

• Lindsay Harper, The Philosopher's Ego (2008)
• Honore Daumier, The Beautiful Narcissus (1842)
• Caravaggio, Narcissus (1599)

Film and Stage

• Macbeth, Shakespeare’s dramatic treatise on greed and runaway ambition
• Throne of Blood, Kurosawa’s adaptation of “Macbeth”
• Yojimbo and Sanjuro, films about raw power. Yojimbo is a straight-up Japanese melodrama in the style of American horse opera, while Sanjuro is “a mischievous, sly, good-humored presentation of a crusty old samurai caught between two groups of plain incompetents, with a playful satiric point”
• The Treasure of Sierra Madre, about greed in the mountains, in search of gold
• Knife in the Water(Nóz w Wodzie): confining three poorly matched people on a boat together, the film “is a devilish dissection of man in one of his more childish and ridiculous aspects”
• Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes(Aguirre, the Wrath of God), an historical drama about a ruthless and megalomaniacal conquistador
• The Big Heat, featuring “dice, vice and corruption”
• Blue Collar, in which workers discover“how powerfully malevolent the union can be in a system that counts on petty divisiveness to keep the larger power structure intact”
• Bob le Flambeur (Bob the Gambler)
• The Damned(La caduta degli dei), about greed in Nazi Germany
• Dance With a Stranger, “an uncompromising look at obsessive love and its consequences on others” (review)
• The Earrings of Madame de . . .: of luxury and loss
• Eight Men Out, about the 1919 Chicago White Sox scandal
• Eyes Without a Face: a man surgically removes the faces of young women to restore his daughter’s appearance after a tragic accident
• The Grifters
• Happiness, with tongue in cheek
• The Last Seduction, about a woman with “undiluted self interest”
• Lovely and Amazing: “The movie zeroes in on contemporary narcissism with a needling accuracy that illustrates exactly the way some people allow their insecurities to poison their intimate relationships.”
• Married to the Mob, where everyone makes compromises
• Monsieur Verdoux: murder as the logical extension of business
• The Private Life of Henry VIII
• Stormy Monday, a film noir crime thriller
• Story of Women, about a woman who performs abortions for money in Nazi Germany and then is executed for depleting the pool of potential soldiers
• Sweet Smell of Success, about everyone out for himself
• Traffic, a “profound and gloomy meditation on greed, violence and contemporary ennui”
• What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?: vanity and cruelty among two theatrical sisters, one a child star who faded early and the other a successful actress disabled by an injury; see also the remake
• White Heat, about a “mother-dominated psychotic who dreams about being on ‘top of the world’”
• Plein soleil (Purple Noon) (Lust for Evil) (Blazing Sun) (Full Sun): the protagonist “believes that getting his own way is worth whatever price anyone else might have to pay”
• In Seven Beauties, the “hero” preserves himself against a background of profound evil