Traveller’s Comments (group member since Jan 14, 2015)

Traveller’s comments from the On Paths Unknown group.

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "I'm not sure I agree the servant ever had a "good" character. We watch him vacillate back and forth between acceptance of his own desperation and contempt for what the same desperation has driven t..."

Oh, good, I was hoping you'd push back on at least some of things I proposed. Discussions are always more fruitful that way.

Yes, indeed, I agree with you that the servant was never necessarily "good", and I suppose it is possible to misinterpret my quote marks there, since some of us don't buy in to the Manichean concept of "good and "bad" or "good" and "evil" in the first place.

So let me rephrase that: When the story starts off, the servant is still in the mindset of what the establishment's idea of morality is - he buys into the norms of those who are accepted and powerful in society.
He himself probably never had much power while he was working according to establishment rules, but he now realizes that he can grab power for himself by rejecting those rules and making up his own rules, just as the lady pulling the hair has done.

This also folds into the idea, for me, that each person may have their own rules, and especially in modern society, we have the freedom to align ourselves with those sources of authority (church, law, state, religion (note I place this separately from church), family and national tradition, and personal philosophy. In ye olden days in European society, if you veered too far left of what church and state said you were allowed to do, you might soon have found yourself burnt, drowned or headless.

Really enjoying this chat! I'll come back but Xmas and people are distracting me, sorry about that!

Amy (Other Amy) wrote: "I really, really loved this one. (Which surprised me given the subject matter. (view spoiler)[ I am so, so tired of men writing rape in a way that robs the woman of her agency as a person in the story. (hide spoiler)]" None of that foolishness here!..

Well, no, and also one needs to look at this particular story in the context of how Japanese society views concepts of honor and dishonor. What happens to the woman and the Japanese views on honor is of course an integral part of the story and how each character views the events.

Darn, I still wanted to watch my film of this, and dig up my old notes, but Christmas preparations have been stymieing me. Will be back soon, apologies for the delay.

I think this story (these stories) are a bit of a window on traditional Japan, but some of the issues are central to being human, no matter which culture you're from.

Of course honor is a big thing with them, so burying your dead with the proper honors and a grave where your relatives can visit your remains, etc, I think was quite important.

So simply throwing bodies in a heap where the crows can make a meal of them, must be a thing reserved for the truly dishonorable and for the extremely poor who didn't have relatives to bury them.

...and that of course brings us to the lady who is forced, through hunger and poverty, to pick things off of the dead in order to stay alive. I must admit, I can't think of anything more despicable than to actually pull the hair of the dead out in order to make wigs, and this was of course also the male servants' first response - one of shock and disgust.

(This story is pretty intricate under it's deceptively short appearance). What then basically happens, is that the old lady engages with the servant in a dialogue re morals: "Yes what I am doing might seem despicable, but this is what all of us on the "outside" of society is forced to do to stay alive." The old woman is giving him a quick course in "Being Marginalized 101".

She explains that she knew the woman whose hair she was taking, and that that woman would 'understand' because she herself had been forced into doing despicable things just in order to stay alive.

Now, up to this point, the servant had still been "inside" the system. Even though he had just been a lowly servant, he had belonged somewhere, he had had a master caring for him, he was a necessary part of society and accepted there, so he also bought into their system of morals.

We see him making the transition in his mind, then, from being de facto marginalized, but still part of "acceptable" society in his head, to coming to the realization that the world of the old lady is his world now. She has been the facilitator in making him see that once you're on the outside, your ideas of what is acceptable and what is not acceptable, simply have to change if you were to survive.

I find this story extremely poignant and thought-provoking. I'm sure different people have their thresholds of what they're prepared to do in order to stay alive, and at what point they'd go:"Hold on, I'd rather starve to death than to cross this line".

I have, for example, in the past, often pondered that plane crash in the mountains where survivors ate the flesh of other passengers in order to survive. I think I'd do that too if they were strangers. But I'd have to be really starving, etc. Also, it's really very different when you're sitting in a cozy warm arm-chair with well-fed tummy to do your philosophizing from, and when you're in a life-death situation where your survival hangs in the balance. I think one's thinking changes.

How do you feel about that - agree, disagree? ..and where would your 'line' be drawn?

Hi Amy! *Trav gets a duster and dusts down the cobwebby thread a bit*

Delighted to see you, truly!

Well, of course, this story is a stinging indictment of poverty and the things it can force people to do. The man obviously originally had a "good" character, since he really struggled against the idea of stooping to robbery or thievery which is a different thing in the Japan of earlier centuries.

You would get thieves who are cutpurses, usually young people who could grab and run away quickly. I presume you might have had your usual household robbers, though not sure on that, because wealthier people worth robbing, had servants and guards, so a thief would have needed to get past them.

Then you also had your armed highway robbers who would attack travelers for their money or possessions. From the fact that this man had a sword that he was quite ready to use, I would guess that he was contemplating on becoming the latter.

BJ wrote: "This finally arrived at the library today, and is now in my hands :) I'm looking forward to diving in this weekend and discussing these stories!!"

Oh, goody goody! This one, In a Grove, is quite long and invites a lot of discussion. The other one that I made a thread for, Rashomon, (here https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...) is short but should make for an interesting psycho-sociological discussion, so if you don't have it, it would be nice if you quickly read it online so that we can discuss!

Bonitaj wrote: "Hey everyone.... getting there. so enjoying it! I'm up to where Czentovic has lost his first game and the main protagonist has just found out how Dr.B. acquired his chess prowess. I've tried not to..."

Oops! Sorry Bonitaj. I've now covered the spoilers. You can just click on the green link when you feel ready to view them. Glad you're enjoying it! :)

So I gave Akugatawa his own folder, to be found here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/group...

And here is the thread for the first story, titled "Rashomon"
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

PS. A "Rashomon" is a layered structure forming a city gate.

Hello everyone! I only realised after I sent the group reminder out, that one thread will definitely not be enough for the discussion of even a few Akugatawa stories.

Aplogies for sending you around so much, but do you mind going here for this discussion: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Hope you found a readable copy, Bonitaj, the second story, "In a Grove", which is the actual main attraction, should also be available online.

Here is a workable copy, but there should be better if you look around: http://johnsnow.matrix.msu.edu/broads...

Here is a much better version: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&am...

Thread for discussion of "In a Grove"

This is the thread for the first story, "Rashomon".

Since there is a lot of Akugawata worth exploring, I thought we may as well keep the threads separate. The titular story, 'Rashomon' is very short, but it has some potential for discussion.

The second story, "In a Grove" is the actual material used for the film 'Rashomon', and has quite a bit of material worth discussing, so I thought that we might do that here : https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Hello Jonfaith and Nilanjana, apologies, but silly old Goodreads never notified me of your posts. Glad you're liking it, and interesting thoughts!

Well, it might be time to start adding our opinions on the ending and on the story in general. So,

Uncovered ENDING SPOILERS ALERT:

Vigneswara wrote: "It's a really short story, but leaves you nauseated towards the end."

Indeed, Vigneswara! (view spoiler)[For we find out that although Dr B has the innate ability to beat Czentovic every time, in a rather strange twist of irony, when Czentovic notices that Dr B is very impatient he exploits that fact by stalling, and Dr B's very active mind causes him to go into a manic state similar to when he experienced his breakdown while being held by the Nazis.

I also find it ironic that the framing narrator had initially so deeply underestimated Czentovic's underhanded abilities to coldly exploit a situation to his own advantage. He had initially, based on what his friend had told him, thought of Czentovic as a singleminded oaf, as nothing better than an overperforming village idiot, but clearly the man's shortcomings lies rather in the area of how to make an emotional connection with people, which I suppose could possibly put him in the autism spectrum.

There have been suggestions that Zweig equated Czentovic's cold, callous modus operandi with how the Nazis approached things, and I personally can't really fault that idea. (hide spoiler)]

Jonfaith wrote: "I intended "framing narrator" as it is his experience in the novella as listener and participant which frames/links the myriad narratives within.
..."

Good to put that out on the discussion. This story is indeed a very nice example of the "nesting" technique with primary and secondary narrators where the "overall"or "framing" narrator frames the story, and as you explain so well, links and frames all the narratives that form the story as a whole.

We might be posting a bit at cross-purposes here, missing the other person's last post every time, but no worries, it's good that we have stuff to chat about! 🧐

Jonfaith wrote: "Sorry, I should have said framing narrator.
Oh, you mean in terms of that he views it (chess) as entertainment?
Hmm, I'll be in a better position to comment once I've read more Zweig, though I'd already be inclined to view him as somewhat more heavyweight than a pure entertainer - though I think you might also in part be referring to the fact that he prefers to keep himself at a once-remove?

Biographically I only know of Zweig in exile. My best friend bought me The Impossible Exile: Stefan Zweig at the End of the World which I enjoyed, though unfairly I appreciated the contrast between his and Thomas Mann's situations.."

Was it your review of The Magician that I read and commented on the other day? Oh wait, I see now that it's a novel, not a straight biography of Mann.

I don't know, I've tried to like Mann, but there's just something about him that puts me off. In any case, bad rap he got with his stint in the USA...

Re biography of Zweig, I've recently acquired Three Lives: A Biography of Stefan Zweig, but haven't had a chance to read it yet.

I think both Mann and Zweig were very complex people with layers to them! :)

Oh, I forgot to mention! I think the Freud friendship was due to Zweig being a "collector" of friendships with eminent people - one of the things he lost when the Nazi's came in to spoil the broth. He was also a fanatical manuscript collector. So fanatical that he once bought the manuscript of a speech by Hitler.

Jonfaith wrote: "Wasn't aware of Freud's interest in Zweig, but not surprising given Zweig's fame. ..."

Apparently that was a mutual fan club. Apparently Freud praised Zweig's work Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman, all the while making it very clear that the story was not any kind of psycho-analysis. 😏

It also echoes the protagonist of this novella in terms of his approach to chess.
The protagonist? You mean the initial narrator? (He seems less of a clear protagonist to me since I almost feel Dr B is the secondary protagonist, being more involved in the story actually than the narrator is.) Both of them express opinions re chess.

Despite the historical context of the author, I have never been able to approach his work with any trappings of the tragic, unlike, say, Babel or Benjamin.
I've not read much of Zweig yet, a situation I intend to remedy soon) but yes, Zweig's work does seem to be tightly controlled, lest anybody suspect that there be any trace of autobiography in his works. He was apparently a pretty naughty boy behind closed doors.

Jonfaith wrote: "One of the crucial tensions of the novella explores the human capacity for focus but a vital need for distraction. The Yugoslav grand master lacks an ability to parse much of life, thus lacking any...[...] Likewise the genius of torment that B faces is an environmental/sensory vacuum. "

In the story "The Yellow Wallpaper" a "cure" for female anxiety and depression is described, where the patient is put into solitary confinement under conditions of a strict lack of any kind of extraneous or intellectual stimulation.

It feels rather ironic, that barely thirty years later, a person with acute insight into the human psyche and well-informed about psychiatry (just btw, Sigmund Freud was a fan of Zweig), such as Zweig, clearly describes the deleterious effects of solitary confinement and sensory deprivation upon the human mind.

I'm going to be lazy and cut and paste from my The Yellow Wallpaper review:

A note here on the effects of solitary confinement : Over time, the stress of being isolated can cause a range of mental health problems.

According to Dr. Sharon Shalev, who authored A Sourcebook on Solitary Confinement in 2008, these problems may include: anxiety and stress, depression and hopelessness, anger, irritability, and hostility. panic attacks, worsened preexisting mental health issues, hypersensitivity to sounds and smells, problems with attention, concentration, and memory, hallucinations that affect all of the senses (like seeing moving and creeping things in wallpaper, when it is the only thing you have to look at, maybe?), paranoia, poor impulse control, social withdrawal, outbursts of violence, psychosis, fear of death, self-harm or suicide.

Research indicates that both living alone and feelings of loneliness are strongly associated with suicide attempts and suicidal ideation.

Most studies focus on the psychological effects of solitary confinement. However, psychological trauma and loneliness can also lead to physical health problems. Studies indicate that social isolation increases the likelihood of death by 26–32%.

According to Dr. Shalev’s book, the recorded physical health effects of solitary confinement include: chronic headaches, eyesight deterioration, digestive problems, dizziness, excessive sweating, fatigue and lethargy, genitourinary problems, heart palpitations, hypersensitivity to light and noise, loss of appetite, muscle and joint pain, sleep problems, trembling hands, weight loss. A lack of physical activity may also make it difficult to manage or prevent certain health conditions, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease.

So yes, even just loneliness, let alone an acute lack of stimulation to accompany it, can make people pretty ill. In the "Yellow Wallpaper" story, it drives the patient that it was inflicted upon, totally batty and she loses her mind.

So Zweig is writing with surprising insight and acuity about that aspect of the story.

The studies I mentioned earlier was done with regard to solitary confinement in the US prison system, and it found that even solitary confinement 'lite' can have serious negative consequences.

I watched an experiment where a scientist subjected himself to such conditions for, I think 3 days? In this experiment, there was never a variation of light - the electric light was just always on in his small room. He had enough food and drink to last the 3 days, so that he couldn't observe any kind of routine, such as food being passed to him.

The guy very quickly became seriously disoriented regarding the passing of time, and became very anxious towards the last day, because in his mind, more time had elapsed, and he was starting to get paranoid that something had happened, because he couldn't understand why he wasn't let out. It's amazing how much we rely on feedback from our environment.

Jonfaith wrote: "One of the crucial tensions of the novella explores the human capacity for focus but a vital need for distraction. The Yugoslav grand master lacks an ability to parse much of life, thus lacking any..."

Wonderful, our discussion is heating up! Fearing the sound of my own voice in a vacuum, you guys are stepping up like magic to fill the spaces in the void, thanks so much Jonfaith!
..and like magic and as I had hoped, you've broached exactly the next subject of great importance in this story. Will comment more on that soon.

BJ wrote: "And of course the fact that Dr B worked for the Austrian royal family - talk about backing kings into corners."

Thanks for that intro regarding what I wanted to talk about next, BJ, being the enmity between Hitler and the Austrian royal family.

At the center of this enmity, stands a man named Ferenc József Ottó Róbert Mária Antal Károly Max Heinrich Sixtus Xaver Felix Renatus Lajos Gaetan Pius Ignác; or rather:

Franz Joseph Otto Robert Maria Anton Karl Max Heinrich Sixtus Xaver Felix Renatus Ludwig Gaetan Pius Ignatius von Habsburg, third in line to the thrones, as Archduke Otto of Austria, Royal Prince of Hungary, Bohemia, and Croatia.

Imagine writing that on forms that required your full names! 😣🙈

In any case, Otto von Habsburg, as he was called, was a very interesting man. Long story short, his father was the last emperor of Austria and king of Hungary.
Charles, (Otto’s father) the last Habsburg to rule in Austria-Hungary, renounced the right to participate in Austrian affairs of government on November 11, 1918, and in Hungarian affairs on November 13.

The Austro-Hungarian empire was dissolved in April 1919, and the monarchy abolished. For brevity, I won’t go too much into that background, but rather stay focused on the Hitler thing.

Now, in spite of the Hapsburgs having been expelled as the rulers of Austria, the next in line, being Otto, was still popular in many Austrian ranks, and, being an intelligent and able man, held considerable influence. Otto denounced Nazism, stating:

“ I absolutely reject [Nazi] Fascism for Austria ... This un-Austrian movement promises everything to everyone, but really intends the most ruthless subjugation of the Austrian people .... The people of Austria will never tolerate that our beautiful fatherland should become an exploited colony, and that the Austrian should become a man of second category.”

He strongly opposed the Anschluss, and in 1938 requested Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg to resist Nazi Germany. He supported international intervention and offered to return from exile to take over the reins of government to repel the Nazis.

Apparently, Austrian Jews were among the strongest supporters of a Habsburg restoration, since they believed the dynasty would give the nation sufficient resolve to stand up to the Third Reich.

Well, I could go on, but I’m sure you already get the idea why Otto and Adolf weren’t the best of pals.

Following the German annexation of Austria, Otto was sentenced to death (in absentia) by the Nazi regime (luckily he wasn't in Austria and never got caught) and as ordered by Adolf Hitler, his personal property and that of the House of Habsburg were confiscated. The leaders of the Austrian legitimist movement, i.e. supporters of Otto, were arrested by the Nazis and largely executed.

Now, Dr B, the Austrian nobleman from our story, had been a banker for Otto’s family, as well as for the very wealthy Catholic church, so he knew were money and property was hidden that the evil Nazi’s wanted to get their hands on.

Not only were the Nazi’s thugs and murderers, they were thieves as well. It is estimated that the Nazi’s stole nearly 120 billion Reich marks – over £12 billion at the time – from German Jews alone. That’s not even counting all the precious art works they stole from museums and galleries, and other money and property they stole from the church and others, and not counting the modern art which they willfully destroyed because dear little Adolf didn’t like modern art.

Dr B also mentions that he worked for the Catholic Church.

Nazi policy towards the Church was at its most severe in the areas it annexed to the Reich, such as the Czech and Slovene lands, Austria and Poland. In Polish territories it annexed, the Nazis set about systematically dismantling the Church—arresting its leaders, exiling its clergymen, closing its churches, monasteries and convents.
Many clergymen were murdered. Over 1800 Catholic Polish clergy died in concentration camps.

Nazi security chief Reinhard Heydrich soon orchestrated an intensification of restrictions on church activities in Germany.

Hitler and his ideologues Goebbels, Himmler, Rosenberg and Bormann hoped to de-Christianize Germany in the long term. Expropriation of monasteries, convents and church properties surged from 1941. Clergy were persecuted and sent to concentration camps, religious Orders had their properties seized, some of the youth were sterilized(!!) Not a pretty picture.

So yeah, for the Nazi’s the Austrian Royal Family and the Catholic Church were fair game, and Dr B is lucky to have escaped with his life, if only with half of his sanity.

Oh good, someone else posted a cool comment, thanks so much for that, BJ! Yes, about what the French call "idiot-savant", I see Zweig uses a term which is translated to English as "monomaniac". He doesn't seem to see it in terms of brain damage or genetics, as modern research tells us these conditions are usually caused by, but Zweig seems to almost imply that it is by great focus of will that these people build up their singular strength.

BJ wrote: "Another sign, to me, of Zweig's total control over his narrative."
Indeed, yes. Zweig's use of the "nested form" also increases his control over an already tightly controlled narrative.

Thanks to all of your contributions so far, members, the thread is starting to fill out nicely!

… and now we have the first bit out of the way, we can have a look at the linchpin of the story, the Austrian compatriot of Stefan Zweig, Dr B.

But perhaps it might be useful to first have a look the political climate in Austria when Stefan Zweig, who as mentioned before, was Jewish, decided to leave in 1934.

With the unification of Germany in 1871, Austria, a German-speaking country, had not been included. For various reasons, there had been both the desire for unification, as well as opposition to it, but the point is that adding Austria to Germany was not an unheard of thing, but a political bone of contention. By the time Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, he coveted Austria for its various resources, and of course, Hitler also had imperialist ambitions.

Interestingly, according to some sources, Austria was 80% pro-unification in 1932, due to fierce Nazi propaganda in Austria, but by the end of 1933, about 60% ANTI-unification.

This had to do with the fact that Adolf Hitler was sworn in as the chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933 upon which the Nazis came into power – although the Nazi party had gained popularity in Austria, many Austrians seem to have disliked the idea of being ruled by the Nazi’s. No wonder - the Nazi’s weren’t always as subtle as sticking to propaganda. Austrian Nazis committed terrorist attacks against Austrian governmental institutions, causing a death toll of more than 800 between 1934 and 1938.

A right-wing government managed to take power in Austria in 1934 which was quite authoritarian and worked towards dampening Nazism in Austria. However, the Nazi’s caused so much damage that it wore the Austrian chancellor, Kurt von Schuschnigg down.

Despite the unpopularity of the Nazi’s, in February 1938 Hitler invited von Schuschnigg to Germany and forced him to agree to give the Austrian Nazis virtually a free hand. Then, on March 12, 1938, Austria was formally annexed by Germany, in a process called the Anschluss (‘the joining’).

To better understand Zweig’s actions and mindset from about 1933 onwards, one has to realize that anti-semitism was quite strong in Austria even before the Nazi’s took power, and before the Anschluss of 1938. If you were to think that there was anti-Semitism in Germany in the 1930s, it seems to have been even worse in Austria.

Prior to the Anschluss, the Austrian Nazi party's military wing, the Austrian SS, was an active terrorist organization. After the Anschluss, Hitler's Austrian and German armies were fully integrated. During the war, 800,000 Austrians volunteered for Nazi Germany in the Wehrmacht and a further 150,000 Austrians joined up to the Nazi party's military wing, known as the Waffen-SS.

The majority of the bureaucrats who implemented the killing of Jews were Austrian. Political scientist David Art of Tufts University notes that Austrians comprised 8 per cent of the Third Reich's population and 13 percent of the SS; he states that 40 per cent of the staff and 75 per cent of commanders at death camps were Austrian.

With such strong anti-Jewish sentiment in his home country, no wonder Zweig felt that he could never return.

...and now that it is officially the 7th, let me kick off the discussion of the text with some short comments:

We see two nested stories contained within the ‘main’ story – the story of Czentovic, and the story of Dr B. ('Nested' meaning the main narrator narrates events told to him by yet another narrator.)

Czentovic’s story is described first, told by ‘an acquaintance’ of the main narrator of the story.

As a matter of interest, although Czentovic is described as an idiot savant, it seems that no real idiot-savant chess players have been known to history. If you do know of any, please share with the rest of us! (An ‘idiot-savant’ is a person who has a mental disability or learning difficulties but is extremely gifted in a particular way, such as the performing of feats of memory or calculation. )

I'd love to know what you guys think of the character sketch of Czentovic. Do you feel that this character feels authentic?
At first I felt sympathy for him as the underdog, but it soon became clear to me that he was not meant to be portrayed as a sympathetic character.

In this story, Zweig actually makes more commentary on the human psyche and human cognition than on the game of chess itself – although he does have quite a lot to say about the game of chess as well.

The narrator says:

But is it not already an insult to call chess anything so narrow as a game? Is it not also a science, an art, hovering between these categories like Muhammad’s coffin between heaven and earth, a unique yoking of opposites, ancient and yet eternally new, mechanically constituted and yet an activity of the imagination alone, limited to a fixed geometric area but unlimited in its permutations, constantly evolving and yet sterile, a cogitation producing nothing, a mathematics calculating nothing, an art without an artwork, an architecture without substance and yet demonstrably more durable in its essence and actual form than all books and works, the only game that belongs to all peoples and all eras, while no one knows what god put it on earth to deaden boredom, sharpen the mind, and fortify the spirit? Where does it begin, where does it end?

Any child can learn its basic rules, any amateur can try his hand at it; and yet, within the inalterable confines of a chessboard, masters unlike any others evolve, people with a talent for chess and chess alone, special geniuses whose gifts of imagination, patience and skill are just as precisely apportioned as those of mathematicians, poets, and musicians, but differently arranged and combined.

Zweig, or his main narrator, comments a lot about the "uselessness" of chess, but is not any competitive game useless? What is the usefulness of baseball or hockey?

And that said, a lot of mathematical theory produces nothing either, and doesn't really "calculate" anything to do with the real world - I often feel like it's a bunch of geeks trying to outdo one another while building their models and formulating their theorems.

I'd say chess is rather more exciting in that there's always the element of the unknown, even when watching a game by people whose style and approach you are cognizant of. There is no single path to winning- there are endless permutations to reach a point where you either achieve 'mate' or a draw. How do you guys feel about that and/or about the usefulness/uselessness of games and/or Zweig's apparent opinions in this regard?

Just by the way, chess is apparently pretty good for humans in a variety of ways, and one of them is that it helps stave off dementia in older people, and seems to have a positive influence on the memory function. As they say, 'use it or lose it'.