The Silence of Longing p2

The Silence of Longing p2

1 November The Silence of Longing p2
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/104349

http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/104342
reposted on 3d November

Rusalka, a nymph,. inconsolably laments to the moon of her love for the prince. Restricted to the lake and invisibility, she languishes. Although the symbols are similar, there is no hope for Rusalka. The moon is cold, dispassionate and symbolizes infertility. She longs in vain for what can never happen. There will be no redemption for her at the end for the moon can not hear and feels no compassion for her fate. Ironically, the moon is also Diana, the maiden huntress, the goddess who turns Acteon into a deer for his own hounds to tear apart limb from limb because he accidentally trespassed her sacred grove where she bathed. Diana will have no sympathy for a nymph yearning to be held in the arms of a man. The guardian of the lake, the vodnik overhears her misery and despairs. he will lose his fairest daughter. He tries to warn her of the danger, but it only deepens her longing. Like the mermaid, she goes off to find the witch in order to transform herself through magic. Willingly, she suffers self-mutilation in order to gain the prince's attention. Beautiful, she entrances him but as a shadow she hovers on the edge of his life. Without speech there is no means for communication and the prince is soon weary of her transparent beauty. She can only watch as he becomes involved with another woman on their wedding night. Forsaken, she has lost everything. She has lost her life, her people and voice—she has not even the ability to express her dreadful agony.

A fairytale? No, all too real as the roles are reversed in Alben Berg's Wozzeck based on Buchner's work. In agony, tormented by poverty and exploitation, Wozzeck can only watch as the Drum Major and his commander buy sexual favors from Marie. She taunts him with the gleaming earrings given to her by his rival. Marie's child is his, but her affection wanders to whomever has the baubles and words to entice it. Impoverished, Wozzeck works feverishly at odd jobs, indenturing himself to his rivals who exploit his misery to flaunt their control over his life. Shine the captains shoes, shave his beard, cut his wood—the misery knows no end when he sees Marie flirting with them. He can not pay for the toddler's food or for the shoes on his feet. He is at the mercy of those who pay his rent and they take delight in tormenting him. In fury, he kills Marie, but as a soldier, he has no escape. He drowns himself in the lake. He does what the mermaid refused to do. He struck out at the object of his torment and ended his life in the marsh.

In reality, Woyzeck was hung in the Leipzig Marketplace on 27 August 1824. George Buchner was eleven years old. The world was deeply split between the abject poor who lived in the streets and crowded cellars and the insulated rich, who lived behind high walls that surrounded their luxurious villas and palaces, keeping stables within the heart of the city. Their hunting lodges spread over enormous areas. A walk through Schonnbrunn in Vienna or the Star Castle in Prague takes hours to go from gate to gate. Their extensive forests were fenced in by brick walls for their hunting pleasure where even the deer or boar could not escape the cruel call of their horns and the bay of dogs chasing at their heels. With no home and no hope the poor scrabbled for their daily existence outside the walls, in the streets and under the burden of taxation. They escaped through indentured servitued, brutal apprenticeships and military enlistment in a world of the industrial revolution. In 1845, Engels published, the Conditions of the Working Class in England, influencing generation after generation of writers, initiating the novel as a means for social criticism: Disraeli, Dickens, Hardy and D H Lawrence all hinging their works on the plights of the classless poor, the impoverished mute rejected from society.

And although hidden in symbol and allegory, Andersen only transforms the bitter criticism with his pen into a children's fairytale." Like anything magical, take up the mirror and look within to find the bitter reality existing in Andersen's world.

How much Andersen transformed into myth is difficult to say. Surely he never suffered as Dickens did. Andersen had no difficulty in living off the ultra-rich as he moved from benefactor to benefactor for his provision. Dickens, though, never escaped his childhood, bearing poverty on his back all his life, always aware of the misfortunate.

Dvorak, Rusalka with Benackova-Cap
http://www.sdmusic.cz/koi/arcodiva/benackova/
apparently the only recording easily available on the internet
Mackerras in Prague

Alban Berg, Wozzeck
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000001G9D/104-9791498-0399134?v=glance

Wiener Philharmoniker mit Claudio Abbado, Hildegaard Behrens und Franz Grundheber

gibt nichts besserer / brilliant performance

http://www.wiener-staatsoper.at/shopnode/shop/?sid=kOpY6bO0svNCHWk&shopid=3&lng=&productid=72&do=15&amount=1 im Staatsoper Shop

brief bio: Berg
http://www.berkeleysymphony.org/encyclopedia/berg.html

very brief review of 1987 production
http://hallvideo.com/index.php/Mode/product/AsinSearch/B0000016TJ/name/Alban%2520Berg%2520-%2520Wozzeck%2520-%2520Claudio%2520Abbado.htm

I was there...
for envy: Staatsoper plan 2003-2004 season
http://www.wiener-staatsoper.at/Content.Node2/home/spielplan/repertoire_datum_stop.php

"As Good A Murder As You'd Ever Want To See"
Human Reduction in Georg Buchner's Woyzeck
http://www.io.com/~jlockett/Grist/English/woyzeck.html
Joseph L. Lockett, Modern Drama: Ibsen to 1940 20 December 1989

Woyzeck (at the Barbican)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/critic/review/0,1169,801616,00.html
Michael Billington , The Guardian 30 September 2002

Engels, The Conditions of the Working-Class in England, 1845
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/condition-working-class/

Karl Marx: The Man of the Century
http://www.swp.ie/resources/KARL%20MARX.htm

Parisian Days: Marx Becomes a Socialist
http://www2.pfeiffer.edu/~lridener/DSS/Marx/MARXP3.HTML

Open Directory: Engels
http://directory.google.com/Top/Society/Politics/Socialism/Marxism/Communism/People/Engels,_Friedrich/

Image search "industrial revolution"
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22industrial+revolution%22

Image Gallery for Dickens, David Copperfield
http://www.ellopos.net/gallery/19en/copper_england3.html

Image Gallery for George Cruikshanks illustrations for Dickens
http://images.google.com/images?q=%22George+Cruikshank%22++Dickens&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&btnG=Google+Search

American Society of Poets: Thomas Hardy
http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?45442B7C000C070408

Representative Poetry Online: Thomas Hardy, The Voice
http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem928.html

"Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were

When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.

 Can it be you that I hear?  Let me view you, then,
Standing as when I drew near to the town
Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,
Even to the original air-blue gown!"

Sur la Lune- The Little Mermaid
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/littlemermaid/index.html

Illustrations at Sur la Lune
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/illustrations/littlemermaid/index.html

Sur la Lune History
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/littlemermaid/history.html

Sur la Lune- related stories hyperlinked
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/littlemermaid/other.html

RELATED
&&&&&&&&&
22 June 2003 The Ugly Duckling
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/101567
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/06/ugly-duckling.html

1 December 2004 Nix of Mill Pond
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/112524

3 November Silence of Longing part 2
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/104342

part 2: Rusalka, Berg and literary social criticism
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/11/silence-of-longing-p2-1-november.html

1 November The Silence of Longing p2
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/104349

http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/104342

reposted on 3d November was deleted
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/11/silence-of-longing-p2-1-november.html

2 November Silence of Longing Part 1
http://www.suite101.com/articles.cfm/16568
intro

1 November The Silence of Longing p1
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/104352
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/11/silence-of-longing-p1.html

24 October The Waterline p1
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/104111
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/10/mermaid-waterline.html

24 October The Waterline Going Deeper p2
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/104110
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/10/mermaid-going-deeper.html

24 October 2003 The Waterline: Drowning p3
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/16568/104109
http://pogoland.blogspot.com/2003/10/mermaid-drowning.html