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* Week 9 -- October 7 – 13. Read from “A Good Soldier” (Als Soldat und brav) p. 590, until Chapter 7 “Vingt et un” p. 659.
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Kalliope
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Jul 15, 2013 08:21AM
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I have liked his speeches in this section...., even with their usual dogmatic tone...
Language is civilization itself. The Word, even the most contradictory Word, binds us together. Wordlessness isolates. p. 613.
Joachim seems to be defeated by his return. His rebellion in order to do his duty was betrayed by his body. And you're right, Kalliope, Settembrini is starting to make sense.
Aren't Masons and Catholics supposed to be hereditary enemies? I'm not sure about this one; any solutions?
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I am not an expert but here is what I think.
Catholics are forbidden to be Freemasons. Rather than enemies, it is more of a one-way enmity. Freemasons believe in what they believe, meaning that they keep independent and set themselves apart from most organized religions. But the threat are felt more by the latter.
But I have known Catholics who were also Freemasons (secretly, of course).
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A hero! A hero! she cried several times and demanded that they play Beethoven's "Erotica" at his graveside.
I love it...!!
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I'm glad to see you have feelings not just for freedom and progress, but for serious matters as well.
Changing a couple of words it could be said to Thomas Mann as well...
Joachim, in his quiet way, captured the love and respect of everyone, including Dr. Behrens. "But honor was the death of him, or--if you turn it the other way around--death did him the honor." While Hans still flounders without much of a belief system in anything. Still the "problem child".
Yes Diane, and now he doesn't even have Chauchat for himself with the appearance of Mr. Peeperkon, new competence... or another to one adore from the distance?And Kalliope, I also laughed out loud at this passage:
"Frau Stöhr called him a money magnet (the unhappy woman meant magnate)"
Thomas Mann is the master of irony and dry wit, I didn't remember his playful tone from my first reading.
A Good Soldier is one of my favorite chapters. This probably has to do with the discussion on Freemasonry. It makes me want to re-read Eco's Foucault's Pendulum (one of my all time favorite novels).
The story of Joachim's return and death was so well done ... and so sad. That really was an excellent chapter. I agree the parts on Freemasonry were interesting too.
Language is civilization itself. The Word, even the most contradictory Word, binds us together. Wordlessness isolates.These words of Settembrini's echo these: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and God was the Word." Western Civ in a nutshell.
But (and this why the people in the State dept should read more) in one of Mohammed Mrabet's novels (check them out; he was an illiterate Moroccan boy who dictated several novels to the American writer Paul Bowles) he mentions this. His German girlfriend asked him about his family; he had just had a big fight with his parents, so he told her they were dead. Several weeks later, when he was once again on good terms with his folks, he invited his girlfriend to come and have dinner with them. She exploded and called him a liar. And here's what he thinks: "Those Nazarenes; they act like words were sacred."
