Louis Begley

Luchino Visconti nennt in der Verfilmung das Schiff Esmeralda, die Giftassoziation.

I'm sorry, you know, I'm very sorry, but if I've seen the Visconti movie, I have completely forgotten it. I've just completely forgotten it.

Verano ist ja der größte Friedhof Roms, der größte Friedhof Italiens. Zufall?

Yes. Well, everything is an accident, of course, but it's the writer's business to arrange these coincidences. Similarly, it's a sort of a coincidence that Thomas Mistler, TM, has a sort of a connection with you-know-who. [lacht] Nicht mehr als Witze? Well, jokes are very profound.

Sie lieben Tizian genauso wie Mistler. Können Sie die Faszination, die Sie empfinden, beschreiben?

Oh, well, you see, Titian is an extraordinary figure. As a man, he started painting very young. He was Giorgione's pupil, one thinks. In fact, there is good reason to believe it. He had an extraordinarily long life. He reached the plenitude of his powers very early. He was the painter of triumphant flesh, of women of extraordinary beauty.

Titian's skin is a miracle. He was also a phenomenal painter of old men. I'm thinking of, for instance, the portrait of Emperor Charles V, which is one of the great studies of a man worn by life, a very deep psychological penetration. And then in a series of paintings, which to me bring Titian to stand side by side with Rembrandt. He is a painter of the last moments of life and the despair and the ultimate agony in life. I'm thinking, of course, of the Martyrdom of St. Lawrence, about which I speak in Mistler's Exit, but I'm also thinking of the Pietà in the Accademia, of the extraordinary flaying of Marsyas in the Capodimonte.

These are paintings that, to me, seize the tragedy in the human condition better than any painter, except perhaps for Rembrandt.

Fühlt er sich selber so ein bisschen wie der heilige Laurentius, nämlich zu Unrecht mit dem Tode bestraft als persönliche Buße?

Was ist für Sie der persönliche Reiz, die Faszination dieses schönen, schrecklichen Werkes?

Well, first of all, it's an overpoweringly beautiful painting. I think you have to start with that. I hope that you will show the painting First of all, there's the extraordinary beauty of the painting. The light in the painting is entirely interior. It comes, of course, from the coals under the grill on which the saint is being tortured. There is the mysterious, powerful light at the height of the painting, about which Mistler wonders whether it is the light of the Holy Ghost or some other amazing source of light. There is the mysterious figure on the left. Is it fate?

Is it death? Is it simply the figure of mystery? The detachment of the figures of the two – are they poets, philosophers, friends who are lost in discussion, ignoring the outrage that goes on. And last but not least, the indifference of the elegant soldier mounted on a horse one can barely make out. There is a quality of finality in the picture.

The saint we know cannot escape. That is, of course, a given. But everything seems to have been brought there by necessity. Perhaps the figure on the left is the figure of necessity. The painting is one that has made an immense impression on me, as indeed, I must say, has the Pietà in the Accademia. I would think that if I were to compare the quality of apprehension of human suffering in that painting to work by another master, I wonder whether I wouldn't think of the series of the small Rembrandts that can be seen in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, in which there is a Deposition from the Cross, in which Christ is reduced really to white and practically formless flesh, more human than any flesh that one could imagine, cold, one feels the cold of death in it.

Sie attackieren das Christentum aus einer jüdischen Perspektive?

Oh, certainly not. I have no use for any religion. In fact, Mistler makes the point that he finds Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac equally hateful. I think I am attacking, I think that's perhaps not the right word. I am putting in question the obsession with punishment, with torture, with crucifixion, with senseless mutilation of the human flesh, with vengeance, with divine vengeance being venerated. I do not find anything admirable about a God who destroys his creatures.

It certainly is not a Jewish perspective. Don't forget that the Jewish God brought the Flood, saving only Noah and his family and two of each species. It's, after all, the Jewish God who burned Sodom and Gomorrah.

So as far as destroying his creation, the Jewish God is not far behind the Christian Trinity.

Denkt man an die Brutalität in der Bibel, würden Sie – also gerade auch, wenn man anfängt mit dem Kreuz als Symbol... Denkt man an die Brutalität in der Bibel, das fängt schon an beim Kreuz als Symbol, würden Sie dem zustimmen oder würden Sie glauben, dass das Schwarzbuch des Christentums, würde man es denn schreiben, vielleicht schlimmer wäre als das derzeit viel diskutierte Schwarzbuch des Kommunismus?

Can you say this in English? This was quite a question.

Mentioning the brutality of the Bible – The what? The brutality of the Bible, or in the Bible, described in the Bible, to start with the symbol of the crucifix.

That's the New Testament you're talking about.

Yes. Does Christianity mean...

Speak up a little bit. I really can't hear you.

Would you agree that a black book of Christianity would be even worse, I mean more horrible, than the in our days widely discussed Black Book of Communism?

What is the Black Book of Communism?

I thought it's an English expression.

I've never heard of it.

Okay, springen wir die...

Entschuldigung. Es ist in Frankreich im Augenblick sehr diskutiert. Of course black book is Schwarzbuch, but I've never heard of a Schwarzbuch of Communism.

Das ist eine Dokumentation

über die gesamte Kriminalität des Kommunismus.

I simply don't know, but I don't think it's a good question anyway. Okay.

Bedeutet Christentum für Sie eine Drohung oder eine Einschüchterung oder eine Art Erpressung, wenn man an die Brutalität, die in der Bibel beschrieben wird –

Does Christianity mean to me a

threat or an intimidation or a kind of blackmail?

Oh no, I don't think of it that way at all. First of all, you must understand that Mistler, as he explains in internal dialogue, feels that he is entitled to be blasphemous and outrageous because he is a sick man dying of cancer, which is a horrible disease inflicted on people quite regardless of their moral position, and you must not confuse Mistler's tirade with my personal position.

They're distinct. Even Mistler does not think what you are suggesting. Mistler says that this religion has been hijacked, that it has been taken and made to do things that it was not intended to do. I think that Mistler would joyfully subscribe to the good news of the New Testament, the news of Christian love, the news of a higher morality, the news of doing unto others as you would have others do unto you.

He explodes at the sight of the repeated portrayals of crucifixions and torture of saints. He explodes at the sight of the iconography of torture. That's what he's talking about. He is not directing himself at the mild and beautiful message of Christianity.

Mistler sagt aber auch, am Tag des Jüngsten Gerichts werden die Sünder ins Konzentrationslager geschickt.

No. Mistler says, at the day of the Last Judgment, the sinners get sent to the concentration

Mistler's attitude toward Jews in concentration camps? No, what are you talking about?

camp. Isn't it an evil sentence, an evil statement?

Is that an evil statement? I don't understand why it's evil. Can you say that in German?

Böse.

Böse. Well, I don't think it's an evil statement. He is saying that when he looks at the paintings of Last Judgment, and I suppose that he has in mind the great Last Judgment of Torcello, because he does advert to that mosaic elsewhere in the book, when he looks at the punishments of the damned, the way they are eaten by monsters, roasted, torn apart, drowned, Und er

wundert sich selber ein bisschen darüber: Empfindet er sehr wenig Lust und auch wohl immer weniger Lust, in der verbleibenden Zeit noch Dinge zu tun, die er schon immer mal hatte tun wollen in seinem Leben. Ist das ein Paradox?

No, well, yes and no. I think that it's a question whether if one is dying, one will want to continue doing the same things that one has done, or whether one will be possessed by a sort of disgust, a tedium, a desire to reject all the occupations of the past. You see, when a novelist writes about a situation such as Mistler's, he has to make certain choices. He doesn't write a treatise on all possible attitudes or all possible states of mind.

At least I start a novel with a character. I think a character presents himself to me with a certain way of thinking, a certain way of speaking, and a certain problem that confronts the character. And then to tell the story is a series of choices, choices of the character's responses to the things that happen to him.

One cannot write a novel and produce a lexicon of all the possible responses one might have to a given situation. I suppose if I had wanted to, or if I wanted to even now, I could write the story of Mistler in the sense of a man facing imminent death. That would be quite different. He might have an entirely removed attitude from the attitude of Mistler, but this is the story of one man conceived in a certain way, which develops according to the internal logic of that character, logic which, of course, I invented.

Nochmal zu Thomas Mann. Ebenso wie bei Thomas Mann, auch in Ihrem Buch, gibt es diese Verbindung von Sex und Tod. Eine typische Dekadenzthematik, sage ich mal. Zumindest so im Wiener Impressionismus wurde das sehr stark benutzt. Und ich frage Sie: Was ist die mysteriöse Verbindung von Sex und Tod für Sie?

It's the same connection as there is between death and life. One is, as it were, the opposite of the other. Sex is a powerful expression of life. It's how we express love between men and women, or it doesn't have to be between men and women because we know that there are different sexual orientations, but it is the reaching out to another, coupling, if you like. We all want to couple in some form, and sex is the primary means toward that, so that one can see that when death approaches, the sexual drive or the regret for the absence of the sexual drive or the impossibility of physical love become extraordinarily important.

So auch der Versuch, die alte Liebe mit der alten Freundin wieder aufleben zu lassen. Ist es auch so ein bisschen so zu sehen als ein bemitleidenswerter, vielleicht ein bisschen grotesker oder auch ein bisschen lächerlicher Versuch, gerade auch an einer Phase des Lebens festzuhalten, die wirklich vorbei ist, an der Jugend, wo das nicht geklappt hat?

I sometimes worry about a novelist explaining his book, because it's readers who must interpret the book, not the novelist. Let us simply say that Mistler is astonished to find that the woman he thinks could have been the great love of his life was there in Venice, had been there in Venice for years, that he could have visited her years ago, that he could have gone to see her the moment he arrived in Venice, that he could have somehow perhaps obtained something even then that had escaped him when he was young.

I don't think I ought to comment on it further.

Würden Sie sagen – letzte Frage –, Mistler hat ein falsches Leben gelebt, oder er hätte es anders leben können oder sollen?

All lives are questionable. I don't know of anybody who can say I have done it just right. At least if I meet such a person, I think I will run away. [lacht] And I think that what distinguishes Mistler is not so much the falsity of his life or its errors. What really distinguishes him is his capacity for introspection and his capacity for putting in question the things that he has done.

He is not a bad man, to my mind. In fact, he's a very honorable man. And he has managed his life, in fact, in accordance with a certain recognized morality. Of course, there have been slips of various sorts, but who does not sin? I don't know anyone who does not sin. So I don't think that it is the emptiness of his life or the falseness of his life or his straying from the right path that is important. It's his pitiless, pitiless, inexorable examination of what he has been and what he is.

Ich habe noch eine letzte Frage, und zwar: Sie sind Amerikaner, und Sie haben das Buch in Amerika geschrieben, Bedeutet Venedig für Amerikaner etwas Besonderes, etwas anderes, als Venedig zum Beispiel für Europäer, für Franzosen oder Spanier bedeutet?

I don't think so. I think that, of course, one has to assume a cultivated reader, a reader who either has been to Venice or who at least knows what Venice is. And of course, Europeans fall into the same categories. I think that given some understanding of what Venice signifies, the response would be not too different. You know, it's a very surprising and marvelous thing that novels can make people who have never been to a particular place, who have never known a particular situation – stop. Can you get him to stop this?

It's quite extraordinary how novelists and novels can make people believe in what the novelist tells them. Take, for instance, Dickens' novels. Take anyone. Take David Copperfield, which everybody presumably has read. Well, how many of us today has been to a 19th-century brutal school of the sort described in David Copperfield? How many of us have been to a debtor's prison described in Little Dorrit? The fact of the matter is that if a novelist is good, he creates the place and he draws the reader into feeling that the place is familiar and affecting and that he is there together with the personages in whom the writer has interested him.

Apropos Feeling, was der Autor produziert: Würden Sie dem zustimmen oder es verstehen, wenn ich Mistler sehr viel freundlicher als Person und auch das Buch von der Atmosphäre her finde als Schmidt?

Well, I'm flattered and charmed. I think that's very sensitive and I think you're a good reader if you came to that conclusion.

Thank you.

Thank you, I found this very interesting.

It's wonderful to have this low-tech picture being taken. [lacht]

What

is it? What kind of camera is this?

It's... Was ist es für eine? Eine Jena-Optik, I don't know.

Is it 36 mm? Yes. Yes.

I'm sorry, you know, my eyes are tired from this, so I keep on blinking.

It's hard, this light.

Yes.

Jetzt haben wir noch eine kleine...

No.

More to the middle.

A little bit faster, you can hear.