This is a very short, fun intro to her life. The maker has gathered several nice images of Beauvoir and Sartre.
Monday, April 26, 2010
"The Triumph of the Will" or Leni Loves Adolph
The Triumph of the Will, Film by Leni Riefenstahl
Entire film posted to Youtube
Excellent explanatory article on the film from
THE HISTORY PLACE is posted below.
Most religious movements and political dynasties throughout history have had one city that could be called the focal point, or heart, of the movement - Rome, Jerusalem, Constantinople and so forth. For the Nazis, the heart of their movement was the magnificent medieval city of Nuremberg, symbolizing the link between Germany's Gothic past and its Nazi future.
Each September, a pilgrimage was held in which followers gathered from all over the Reich to participate in torchlight marches and solemn ceremonies honoring fallen Nazis. There were also big military-style parades, and most important of all, a chance to see the Führer in person.
In September 1934, American journalist William L. Shirer had just arrived in Germany to work as a reporter for the Hearst Company. He proceeded to keep a diary of the entire seven years he spent reporting from inside Hitler's Reich.
Shirer thought it would be a good idea to attend the 1934 Nuremberg Rally to better understand the Nazi phenomenon. On his very first evening in the old city, he found himself accidentally stuck among a throng of ten thousand people in front of Hitler's hotel, shouting: "We want our Führer!"
"I was a little shocked at the faces," Shirer wrote in his diary, "when Hitler finally appeared on the balcony for a moment. They reminded me of the crazed expressions I once saw in the back country of Louisiana on the faces of some Holy Rollers...they looked up at him as if he were a Messiah, their faces transformed into something positively inhuman."
The next morning, Shirer was among the attendees at the Rally's opening ceremony, held inside a large hall on the outskirts of Nuremberg. It was Shirer's first experience with Nazi pomp and pageantry.
"I am beginning to comprehend," he wrote, "some of the reasons for Hitler's astounding success. Borrowing a chapter from the Roman [Catholic] church, he is restoring pageantry and color and mysticism to the drab lives of 20th Century Germans. This morning's opening meeting...was more than a gorgeous show; it also had something of the mysticism and religious fervor of an Easter or Christmas Mass in a great Gothic cathedral. The hall was a sea of brightly colored flags. Even Hitler's arrival was made dramatic. The band stopped playing. There was a hush over the thirty thousand people packed in the hall. Then the band struck up the Badenweiler March...Hitler appeared in the back of the auditorium and followed by his aides, Göring, Goebbels, Hess, Himmler and the others, he slowly strode down the long center aisle while thirty thousand hands were raised in salute."
To Shirer, the intoxicating atmosphere inside the hall was such that "every word dropped by Hitler seemed like an inspired word from on high. Man's - or at least the German's - critical faculty is swept away at such moments, and every lie pronounced is accepted as high truth itself."
It was during this opening meeting that Hitler's victorious proclamation was read: "The German form of life is definitely determined for the next thousand years."
At Hitler's personal request, a 31-year-old actress and movie director named Leni Riefenstahl was filming the entire week-long Rally. Utilizing thirty film cameras and 120 technicians, she produced an extraordinary film record of the festivities, featuring many unique camera angles and dramatic lighting effects.
Riefenstahl's finished masterpiece, Triumph of the Will, contains many impressive scenes, but perhaps none more powerful than the scene in which Hitler, Himmler, and the new SA leader, Viktor Lutze, walk down a wide aisle in the center of Nuremberg stadium flanked on either side by gigantic formations of Nazis in perfectly aligned columns.
In previous years, the three men walking that path would have been Hitler, Himmler and Röhm. But the troublesome Röhm was now dead, replaced by the dutiful and lackluster Lutze. Back in February, it had been Lutze who told Hitler about Röhm's comments concerning "that ridiculous corporal." For his steadfast loyalty, Lutze was given command of the SA with strict orders from Hitler to keep the Brownshirts firmly in line.
On Sunday, September 9, during the Rally, Hitler faced a mass gathering of his SA Brownshirts for the first time since the Night of the Long Knives. In scenes well-documented by Riefenstahl's cameras, about 50,000 Brownshirts stood in neat formations and listened to a slightly edgy Hitler attempt to patch things up. Interestingly, the film also shows a huge cordon of SS guards in attendance.
"Men of the SA and SS," Hitler bellowed from the podium, "a few months ago a black shadow spread over the movement. Neither the SA, nor any other institution of the Party, has anything to do with this shadow. They are all deceived who believe that even one crack has occurred in the structure of our united movement...Only a lunatic or deliberate liar could think that I, or anybody, would ever intend to dissolve what we ourselves have built up over many long years...In the past you have proved your loyalty to me a thousandfold, and it cannot and will not be different in the future."
Thus Hitler absolved the SA membership from any complicity in the events precipitating the blood purge. And amid a hearty chorus of 'Sieg Heils,' the Brownshirts sounded their approval. Any concerns over possible trouble from the SA during the Rally had been unfounded.
Riefenstahl's film next shows a lengthy sequence featuring the grand finale parade, and concludes with Hitler's speech at the closing ceremony in which he labels the Rally "a most impressive display of political power." Hitler goes on to declare the Nazi Party "will be unchangeable in its doctrine, hard as steel in its organization, supple and adaptable in its tactics. In its entity, however, it will be like a religious order..."
For many Germans, a trip to the Nuremberg Rally was indeed a religious-like experience and they returned home with renewed dedication to the Nazi cause and increased devotion to their Führer.
Upon the very first screening of Triumph of the Will in 1936 the Nazis knew they had struck propaganda gold. The film played to packed movie theaters throughout Germany. For her efforts, Riefenstahl received a Cultural Achievement award from Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry. The film also won a gold medal for its artistry at the 1937 World Exhibition in Paris.
The legacy of Triumph of the Will lives on today in the numerous TV documentaries concerning the Nazi era which replay portions of the film in regard to Hitler's early days, or show snippets of euphoric Hitler Youth, or the SS goose-stepping smartly on parade.
The film's most enduring and dangerous illusion is that Nazi Germany was a super-organized state that, although evil in nature, was impressive nonetheless.
In reality, Nazi Germany was only well organized to the degree that it was a murderous police state. The actual Reich government was a tangled mess of inefficient agencies and overlapping bureaucracies led by ruthless men who had little, if any, professional administrative abilities. From the Reich's first hours in January 1933 until the end in May 1945, various departmental leaders battled each other for power, and would do anything to curry favor with a superior Nazi authority and especially with Hitler, the ultimate authority. Hence, they would all become enthusiastic cogs in the Führer's war and extermination machines.
In 1934, over a million Germans had participated in the hugely successful Nuremberg Rally. And from this point onward, the rallies got even bigger. The following year, 1935, is remembered for the special announcements concerning the status of Jews in Germany. These new rules became known as the Nuremberg Laws and for the Jews of Europe would one day be a matter of life and death.
Copyright © 2001 The History Place™ All Rights Reserved
Entire film posted to Youtube
Excellent explanatory article on the film from
THE HISTORY PLACE is posted below.
Most religious movements and political dynasties throughout history have had one city that could be called the focal point, or heart, of the movement - Rome, Jerusalem, Constantinople and so forth. For the Nazis, the heart of their movement was the magnificent medieval city of Nuremberg, symbolizing the link between Germany's Gothic past and its Nazi future.
Each September, a pilgrimage was held in which followers gathered from all over the Reich to participate in torchlight marches and solemn ceremonies honoring fallen Nazis. There were also big military-style parades, and most important of all, a chance to see the Führer in person.
In September 1934, American journalist William L. Shirer had just arrived in Germany to work as a reporter for the Hearst Company. He proceeded to keep a diary of the entire seven years he spent reporting from inside Hitler's Reich.
Shirer thought it would be a good idea to attend the 1934 Nuremberg Rally to better understand the Nazi phenomenon. On his very first evening in the old city, he found himself accidentally stuck among a throng of ten thousand people in front of Hitler's hotel, shouting: "We want our Führer!"
"I was a little shocked at the faces," Shirer wrote in his diary, "when Hitler finally appeared on the balcony for a moment. They reminded me of the crazed expressions I once saw in the back country of Louisiana on the faces of some Holy Rollers...they looked up at him as if he were a Messiah, their faces transformed into something positively inhuman."
The next morning, Shirer was among the attendees at the Rally's opening ceremony, held inside a large hall on the outskirts of Nuremberg. It was Shirer's first experience with Nazi pomp and pageantry.
"I am beginning to comprehend," he wrote, "some of the reasons for Hitler's astounding success. Borrowing a chapter from the Roman [Catholic] church, he is restoring pageantry and color and mysticism to the drab lives of 20th Century Germans. This morning's opening meeting...was more than a gorgeous show; it also had something of the mysticism and religious fervor of an Easter or Christmas Mass in a great Gothic cathedral. The hall was a sea of brightly colored flags. Even Hitler's arrival was made dramatic. The band stopped playing. There was a hush over the thirty thousand people packed in the hall. Then the band struck up the Badenweiler March...Hitler appeared in the back of the auditorium and followed by his aides, Göring, Goebbels, Hess, Himmler and the others, he slowly strode down the long center aisle while thirty thousand hands were raised in salute."
To Shirer, the intoxicating atmosphere inside the hall was such that "every word dropped by Hitler seemed like an inspired word from on high. Man's - or at least the German's - critical faculty is swept away at such moments, and every lie pronounced is accepted as high truth itself."
It was during this opening meeting that Hitler's victorious proclamation was read: "The German form of life is definitely determined for the next thousand years."
At Hitler's personal request, a 31-year-old actress and movie director named Leni Riefenstahl was filming the entire week-long Rally. Utilizing thirty film cameras and 120 technicians, she produced an extraordinary film record of the festivities, featuring many unique camera angles and dramatic lighting effects.
Riefenstahl's finished masterpiece, Triumph of the Will, contains many impressive scenes, but perhaps none more powerful than the scene in which Hitler, Himmler, and the new SA leader, Viktor Lutze, walk down a wide aisle in the center of Nuremberg stadium flanked on either side by gigantic formations of Nazis in perfectly aligned columns.
In previous years, the three men walking that path would have been Hitler, Himmler and Röhm. But the troublesome Röhm was now dead, replaced by the dutiful and lackluster Lutze. Back in February, it had been Lutze who told Hitler about Röhm's comments concerning "that ridiculous corporal." For his steadfast loyalty, Lutze was given command of the SA with strict orders from Hitler to keep the Brownshirts firmly in line.
On Sunday, September 9, during the Rally, Hitler faced a mass gathering of his SA Brownshirts for the first time since the Night of the Long Knives. In scenes well-documented by Riefenstahl's cameras, about 50,000 Brownshirts stood in neat formations and listened to a slightly edgy Hitler attempt to patch things up. Interestingly, the film also shows a huge cordon of SS guards in attendance.
"Men of the SA and SS," Hitler bellowed from the podium, "a few months ago a black shadow spread over the movement. Neither the SA, nor any other institution of the Party, has anything to do with this shadow. They are all deceived who believe that even one crack has occurred in the structure of our united movement...Only a lunatic or deliberate liar could think that I, or anybody, would ever intend to dissolve what we ourselves have built up over many long years...In the past you have proved your loyalty to me a thousandfold, and it cannot and will not be different in the future."
Thus Hitler absolved the SA membership from any complicity in the events precipitating the blood purge. And amid a hearty chorus of 'Sieg Heils,' the Brownshirts sounded their approval. Any concerns over possible trouble from the SA during the Rally had been unfounded.
Riefenstahl's film next shows a lengthy sequence featuring the grand finale parade, and concludes with Hitler's speech at the closing ceremony in which he labels the Rally "a most impressive display of political power." Hitler goes on to declare the Nazi Party "will be unchangeable in its doctrine, hard as steel in its organization, supple and adaptable in its tactics. In its entity, however, it will be like a religious order..."
For many Germans, a trip to the Nuremberg Rally was indeed a religious-like experience and they returned home with renewed dedication to the Nazi cause and increased devotion to their Führer.
Upon the very first screening of Triumph of the Will in 1936 the Nazis knew they had struck propaganda gold. The film played to packed movie theaters throughout Germany. For her efforts, Riefenstahl received a Cultural Achievement award from Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry. The film also won a gold medal for its artistry at the 1937 World Exhibition in Paris.
The legacy of Triumph of the Will lives on today in the numerous TV documentaries concerning the Nazi era which replay portions of the film in regard to Hitler's early days, or show snippets of euphoric Hitler Youth, or the SS goose-stepping smartly on parade.
The film's most enduring and dangerous illusion is that Nazi Germany was a super-organized state that, although evil in nature, was impressive nonetheless.
In reality, Nazi Germany was only well organized to the degree that it was a murderous police state. The actual Reich government was a tangled mess of inefficient agencies and overlapping bureaucracies led by ruthless men who had little, if any, professional administrative abilities. From the Reich's first hours in January 1933 until the end in May 1945, various departmental leaders battled each other for power, and would do anything to curry favor with a superior Nazi authority and especially with Hitler, the ultimate authority. Hence, they would all become enthusiastic cogs in the Führer's war and extermination machines.
In 1934, over a million Germans had participated in the hugely successful Nuremberg Rally. And from this point onward, the rallies got even bigger. The following year, 1935, is remembered for the special announcements concerning the status of Jews in Germany. These new rules became known as the Nuremberg Laws and for the Jews of Europe would one day be a matter of life and death.
Copyright © 2001 The History Place™ All Rights Reserved
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Reading Questions, 11 (Beauvoir and Fanon)
Some reading questions for this week. Those of you who are curious about the philosophical concepts behind these works (and want it now!) can look here (not for the faint of heart). Neither text requires extra material to be understood; they might demand a bit of extra time, however...
1. What does it mean for Beauvoir to say that woman is “the Other”?
2. Why is it tempting “to forgo liberty and become a thing” (48)? Is that temptation unique to women? What, according to Beauvoir, is the problem with giving in to that temptation?
3. On pp. 50-51. Beauvoir offers a short history of “the woman question.” If she’s right about this, how do the steps she charts relate to one or two key developments we’ve discussed in the course so far?
4. On 55, we come to her theory of freedom: this is short but very important.
First, look up “transcendence” and “immanence.” [“En-soi” means “in itself.” for French existentialists, for a thing to be merely “in itself” (like a plant or animal) was contrasted to the way a human being could and should be “for itself” (pour soi), by having his or her own self-determined projects and goals in life.]
Now, why does the way men treat women as objects deny their freedom? On what basis can Beauvoir call this an “absolute evil”?
5. Writing in 1952, Fanon aims “to liberate the black man from himself.” Why (and from what, exactly) does the black man need liberation?
6. How does Fanon describe the experience of being looked at, as a black man, by others? What are the effects of this experience on him?
7. Fanon tells us about several different efforts he made—through cultural and philosophical projects—to respond to this experience. Explain one or two of these. Why was he “disillusioned” over and over again?
8. What, according to Fanon, are the similarities and differences between the status of the Jew, the woman, and the black man? How does his view on this issue compare to Beauvoir’s? Where in all this is the black woman?
9. Are Beauvoir and Fanon able to turn the philosophical tools of modernity toward a concrete social-political project in promotion of freedom? That is, are these texts calls to action or cries of despair? Or both?
10. "Beauvoir and Fanon are the intellectual heirs of Nietzsche, but managed to take his thought in directions he could not have imagined." Agree or disagree.
Some questions from Group 10:
1. What is the importance of Franz Fanon’s term “Rhythm?” How does it relate to rationality and irrationality? (Fanon, 102)
2. What is the power behind the term "We?" Why do women not refer to themselves as we? (Beauvoir, 46).
3. What does Fanon mean here: “[without] a black past, without a black future, it was impossible for me to live my blackness” (117)? How do rhythm and history fit in to this idea?
4. Why does Fanon refer to his work as “a clinical study”? How and why does he feel that this is necessary? (Hint: Freud) (xvi)
5. Discuss how both works act as a critique of language. How is language used to marginalize one group of people while empowering another group?
6. What does Fanon mean when he writes, “[from] one day to the next, the Blacks have had to deal with two systems of references”? (90)
7. What, in de Beauvoir's argument, makes women different from "the American Negroes or the Jews” (46)?
8. In both de Beauvior and Fanon’s writing they speak about the “Other.” Is their meaning the same or different?
9. What is the significance of the Jew in Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks?
1. What does it mean for Beauvoir to say that woman is “the Other”?
2. Why is it tempting “to forgo liberty and become a thing” (48)? Is that temptation unique to women? What, according to Beauvoir, is the problem with giving in to that temptation?
3. On pp. 50-51. Beauvoir offers a short history of “the woman question.” If she’s right about this, how do the steps she charts relate to one or two key developments we’ve discussed in the course so far?
4. On 55, we come to her theory of freedom: this is short but very important.
First, look up “transcendence” and “immanence.” [“En-soi” means “in itself.” for French existentialists, for a thing to be merely “in itself” (like a plant or animal) was contrasted to the way a human being could and should be “for itself” (pour soi), by having his or her own self-determined projects and goals in life.]
Now, why does the way men treat women as objects deny their freedom? On what basis can Beauvoir call this an “absolute evil”?
5. Writing in 1952, Fanon aims “to liberate the black man from himself.” Why (and from what, exactly) does the black man need liberation?
6. How does Fanon describe the experience of being looked at, as a black man, by others? What are the effects of this experience on him?
7. Fanon tells us about several different efforts he made—through cultural and philosophical projects—to respond to this experience. Explain one or two of these. Why was he “disillusioned” over and over again?
8. What, according to Fanon, are the similarities and differences between the status of the Jew, the woman, and the black man? How does his view on this issue compare to Beauvoir’s? Where in all this is the black woman?
9. Are Beauvoir and Fanon able to turn the philosophical tools of modernity toward a concrete social-political project in promotion of freedom? That is, are these texts calls to action or cries of despair? Or both?
10. "Beauvoir and Fanon are the intellectual heirs of Nietzsche, but managed to take his thought in directions he could not have imagined." Agree or disagree.
Some questions from Group 10:
1. What is the importance of Franz Fanon’s term “Rhythm?” How does it relate to rationality and irrationality? (Fanon, 102)
2. What is the power behind the term "We?" Why do women not refer to themselves as we? (Beauvoir, 46).
3. What does Fanon mean here: “[without] a black past, without a black future, it was impossible for me to live my blackness” (117)? How do rhythm and history fit in to this idea?
4. Why does Fanon refer to his work as “a clinical study”? How and why does he feel that this is necessary? (Hint: Freud) (xvi)
5. Discuss how both works act as a critique of language. How is language used to marginalize one group of people while empowering another group?
6. What does Fanon mean when he writes, “[from] one day to the next, the Blacks have had to deal with two systems of references”? (90)
7. What, in de Beauvoir's argument, makes women different from "the American Negroes or the Jews” (46)?
8. In both de Beauvior and Fanon’s writing they speak about the “Other.” Is their meaning the same or different?
9. What is the significance of the Jew in Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks?
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Documentary Film- "One Way Street: Fragments for Walter Benjamin" (1993)
Walter BenjaminJuly 15, 1892 - September 27, 1940
card catalogue of the Bibiothèque National, 1932
photo by Gisèle Freund
One Way Street: Fragments for Walter Benjamin (1993)
Directed by John Hughes (Australian filmmaker)
On Youtube in 6 parts
With Anson Rabinbach (Princeton University), Michael Jennings (Princeton University), Lindsay Waters (Harvard University Press, Executive Editor for the Humanities), Susan Buck-Morss (Cornell University),
Dani Karavan (Environmental Sculptor), Elizabeth Young-Bruehl (Columbia University), Dagmara Kimele
One Way Street: Fragments for Walter Benjamin - Part 1/6
One Way Street: Fragments for Walter Benjamin - Part 2/6
One Way Street: Fragments for Walter Benjamin - Part 3/6
One Way Street: Fragments for Walter Benjamin - Part 4/6
One Way Street: Fragments for Walter Benjamin - Part 5/6
One Way Street: Fragments for Walter Benjamin - Part 6/6
Benjamin's Recipe for "Withered Aura Soufflé"
THE AURA - From the BBC TV special "How to Build a Medieval Cathedral"
THE WORK OF ART - 500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art
by Philip Scott Johnson
THE MASSES - Scenes from the film "Baraka"
MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION - 1947 public service film
THE CAMERA'S EYE - Newly discovered footage of SF Market street, days before the 1906earthquake
AESTHETICIZED POLITICS (FASCISM)- Opening scene of Leni Riefenstahl's film "Olympiad"
POLITICIZED AESTHETICS (COMMUNISM)- Montage of various Soviet propaganda posters
THE WORK OF ART - 500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art
by Philip Scott Johnson
THE MASSES - Scenes from the film "Baraka"
MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION - 1947 public service film
THE CAMERA'S EYE - Newly discovered footage of SF Market street, days before the 1906earthquake
AESTHETICIZED POLITICS (FASCISM)- Opening scene of Leni Riefenstahl's film "Olympiad"
POLITICIZED AESTHETICS (COMMUNISM)- Montage of various Soviet propaganda posters
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Reading Questions, 10 (Modernism, Masses, the State)
From pre-WWI Vienna to Nazi Germany, this week reveals a lot of highly politicized concern with the arts. But who thought the arts were really so important, and why?
1. Why are Loos's (offensive) observations on "primitive" peoples and criminals relevant to a discussion of modern architecture? Is this just provocation? What else is at stake?
2. The German Werkbund (see more here) was an association of artists, craftsmen, and industrialists who sought to create new ways of collaborating in order to forge a modern, national style in everything from furniture and silverware to architecture. What are the core concerns behind van de Velde's objections to Muthesius's vision for the Werkbund?
3. What is significant about the way Gropius wanted to link the arts and the crafts (or "applied arts")? The Bauhaus, as he points out, resulted from just such a merger. Was it political to do this?
4. In Schlemmer's Bauhaus manifesto, how does he portray the cultural crisis of the age? How was an art school supposed to respond to that?
5. Why, according to Benjamin, does fascism (by which he means also Nazism) make the political aesthetic? What does that mean? Why, from a Marxist-leftist point of view, is that a bad thing?
6. How are the tasks of the modern artist or writer in the USSR and Nazi Germany, as presented by Zhdanov and Hitler, different? What deeper differences between the two regimes do these differences reflect?
7. How are the tasks of the modern artist or writer in the USSR and Nazi Germany, as presented by Zhdanov and Hitler, similar? What broad concerns about culture do the two regimes seem to have in common?
And now, some questions from Group 9:
1. In Adolf Loos’ article “Ornament and Crime,” he wrote that ornament was “produced by criminals.” What do you think he meant by this? How could ornamentation be “criminal” towards art, economy, and health?
2. What were the chief aims and beliefs of Muthesius and Van de Velde concerning the artistic disposition of the members of the Werkbund? What, if anything, did they agree on within the “Werkbund theses and antitheses?”
3. Whose main viewpoint, Muthesius's or Van de Velde's, would most likely satisfy the artistic demands of Hitler and his House of German Art?
4. Given the era in Weimar when the Bauhaus was established, how were the artistic beliefs of the Bauhaus representative of erecting a "cathedral of Socialism"? In what ways did the Bauhaus provide a direct political commentary? (Schlemmer, pg 69)
5. In Werner Graeff’s document, “The new engineer is coming,” what was the impact of the Bauhaus movement on artistic expression during that period of time? In Graeff’s eyes, how did the blurring lines between art, architecture, and design help turn artists into “engineers?”
6. What did Zhdanov interpret Stalin to mean when he claimed Soviet literature writers were, "the engineers of human souls?" How did he explain the context of socialist realism in Soviet literature? (Pg 225)
7. What was Hitler’s vision for the art that should be displayed at the opening of the House of German Art? How does this vision enhance nationalistic feelings, as well as propagandist motives, that were both beginning to run rampant in Germany at this time?
8. What did Hitler feel the purpose of art was in regards to the portrayal of the German people? How did Hitler’s beliefs create schisms between the artistic community and the Nazi regime in regards to creativity and freedom of expression during this time?
9. Adolf Hitler, in his speech at the opening of the House of German Art, is quoted as saying, “the artist does not create for the artist, but for the people!” How could this curtailing of artistic expression possibly have benefited Hitler’s motives as well as the German people at this time?
1. Why are Loos's (offensive) observations on "primitive" peoples and criminals relevant to a discussion of modern architecture? Is this just provocation? What else is at stake?
2. The German Werkbund (see more here) was an association of artists, craftsmen, and industrialists who sought to create new ways of collaborating in order to forge a modern, national style in everything from furniture and silverware to architecture. What are the core concerns behind van de Velde's objections to Muthesius's vision for the Werkbund?
3. What is significant about the way Gropius wanted to link the arts and the crafts (or "applied arts")? The Bauhaus, as he points out, resulted from just such a merger. Was it political to do this?
4. In Schlemmer's Bauhaus manifesto, how does he portray the cultural crisis of the age? How was an art school supposed to respond to that?
5. Why, according to Benjamin, does fascism (by which he means also Nazism) make the political aesthetic? What does that mean? Why, from a Marxist-leftist point of view, is that a bad thing?
6. How are the tasks of the modern artist or writer in the USSR and Nazi Germany, as presented by Zhdanov and Hitler, different? What deeper differences between the two regimes do these differences reflect?
7. How are the tasks of the modern artist or writer in the USSR and Nazi Germany, as presented by Zhdanov and Hitler, similar? What broad concerns about culture do the two regimes seem to have in common?
And now, some questions from Group 9:
1. In Adolf Loos’ article “Ornament and Crime,” he wrote that ornament was “produced by criminals.” What do you think he meant by this? How could ornamentation be “criminal” towards art, economy, and health?
2. What were the chief aims and beliefs of Muthesius and Van de Velde concerning the artistic disposition of the members of the Werkbund? What, if anything, did they agree on within the “Werkbund theses and antitheses?”
3. Whose main viewpoint, Muthesius's or Van de Velde's, would most likely satisfy the artistic demands of Hitler and his House of German Art?
4. Given the era in Weimar when the Bauhaus was established, how were the artistic beliefs of the Bauhaus representative of erecting a "cathedral of Socialism"? In what ways did the Bauhaus provide a direct political commentary? (Schlemmer, pg 69)
5. In Werner Graeff’s document, “The new engineer is coming,” what was the impact of the Bauhaus movement on artistic expression during that period of time? In Graeff’s eyes, how did the blurring lines between art, architecture, and design help turn artists into “engineers?”
6. What did Zhdanov interpret Stalin to mean when he claimed Soviet literature writers were, "the engineers of human souls?" How did he explain the context of socialist realism in Soviet literature? (Pg 225)
7. What was Hitler’s vision for the art that should be displayed at the opening of the House of German Art? How does this vision enhance nationalistic feelings, as well as propagandist motives, that were both beginning to run rampant in Germany at this time?
8. What did Hitler feel the purpose of art was in regards to the portrayal of the German people? How did Hitler’s beliefs create schisms between the artistic community and the Nazi regime in regards to creativity and freedom of expression during this time?
9. Adolf Hitler, in his speech at the opening of the House of German Art, is quoted as saying, “the artist does not create for the artist, but for the people!” How could this curtailing of artistic expression possibly have benefited Hitler’s motives as well as the German people at this time?
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Woolf asks if Shakespeare had had a sister...what then?
Portrait of Virginia Woolf, by her sister Vanessa BellShakespeare's Sister from "A Room of One's Own" (1929)
It would have been impossible, completely and entirely, for any woman to have written the plays of Shakespeare in the age of Shakespeare.
Let me imagine, since the facts are so hard to come by, what would have happened had Shakespeare had a wonderfully gifted sister, called Judith, let us say. Shakespeare himself went, very probably - his mother was an heiress - to the grammar school, where he may have learnt Latin - Ovid, Virgin and Horace - and the elements of grammar and logic. He was, it is well known, a wild boy who poached rabbits, perhaps shot a deer, and had, rather sooner than he should have done, to marry a woman in the neighborhood, who bore him a child rather quicker than was right. That escapade sent him to seek his fortune in London. He had, it seemed, a taste for the theatre; he began by holding horses at the stage door. Very soon he got work in the theatre, became a successful actor, and lived at the hub of the universe, meeting everybody, knowing everybody, practicing his art on the boards, exercising his wits in the streets, and even getting access to the palace of the queen.
Meanwhile his extraordinarily gifted sister, let us suppose, remained at home. She was as adventurous, as imaginative, as agog to see the world as he was. But she was not sent to school. She had no chance of learning grammar and logic, let alone of reading Horace and Virgil. She picked up a book now and then, one of her brother's perhaps, and read a few pages. But then her parents came in and told her to mend the stockings or mind the stew and not moon about with books and papers. They would have spoken sharply but kindly, for they were substantial people who knew the conditions of life for a woman and loved their daughter - indeed, more likely than not she was the apple of her father's eye. Perhaps she scribbled some pages up in an apple loft on the sly, but was careful to hide them or set fire to them. Soon, however, before she was out of her teens, she was to be betrothed to the son of a neighboring wool-stapler. She cried out that marriage was hateful to her, and for that she was severely beaten by her father. Then he ceased to scold her. He begged her instead not to hurt him, not to shame him in this matter of her marriage. He would give her a chain of beads or a fine petticoat, he said; and there were tears in his eyes. How could she disobey him? How could she break his heart? The force of her own gift alone drove her to it. She made up a small parcel of her belongings, let herself down by a rope one summer's night and took the road to London. She was not seventeen. The birds that sang in the hedge were not more musical than she was. She had the quickest fancy, a gift like her brother's, for the tune of words. Like him, she had a taste for the theatre. She stood at the stage door; she wanted to act, she said. Men laughed in her face. The manager - a fat, loose-lipped man - guffawed. He bellowed something about poodles dancing and women acting - no woman, he said, could possibly be an actress. He hinted - you can imagine what. She could get no training in her craft. Could she even seek her dinner in a tavern or roam the streets at midnight? Yet her genius was for fiction and lusted to feed abundantly upon the lives of men and women and the study of their ways. At last - for she was very young, oddly like Shakespeare the poet in her face, with the same grey eyes and rounded brows - at last Nick Greene the actor-manager took pity on her; she found herself with child by that gentleman and so - who shall measure the heat and violence of the poet's heart when caught and tangled in a woman's body? - killed herself one winter's night and lies buried at some crossroads where the omnibuses now stop outside the Elephant and Castle.
That, more or less, is how the story would run, I think, if a woman in Shakespeare's day had had Shakespeare's genius.
But for my part, I agree with the deceased bishop, if such he was - it is unthinkable that any woman in Shakespeare's day should have had Shakespeare's genius. For genius like Shakespeare's is not born among labouring, uneducated, servile people. It was not born in England among the Saxons and the Britons. It is not born today among the working classes. How, then, could it have been born among women whose work began, according to Professor Trevelyan, almost before they were out of the nursery, who were forced to it by their parents and held to it by all the power of law and custom? Yet genius of a sort must have existed among women as it must have existed among the working classes. Now and again an Emily Bronte or a Robert Burns blazes out and proves its presence. But certainly it never got itself on to paper. When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Bronte who dashed her brains out on the moor or mopped and mowed about the highways crazed with the torture that her gift had put her to. Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman. It was a woman Edward Fitzgerald, I think, suggested who made the ballads and the folk-songs, crooning them to her children, beguiling her spinning with them, on the length of the winter's night.
This may be true or it may be false - who can say? - but what is true in it, so it seemed to me, reviewing the story of Shakespeare's sister as I had made it, is that any woman born with a great gift in the sixteenth century would certainly have gone crazed, shot herself, or ended her days in some lonely cottage outside the village, half witch, half wizard, feared and mocked at. For it needs little skill in psychology to be sure that a highly gifted girl who had tried to use her gift for poetry would have been so thwarted and hindered by other people, so tortured and pulled asunder by her own contrary instincts, that she must have lost her health and sanity to a certainty. No girl could have walked to London and stood at a stage door and forced her way into the presence of actor-managers without doing herself a violence and suffering an anguish which may have been irrational - for chastity may be a fetish invented by certain societies for unknown reasons - but were none the less inevitable. Chastity has then, it has even now, a religious importance in a woman's life, and has so wrapped itself round with nerves and instincts that to cut it free and bring it to the light of day demands courage of the rarest. To have lived a free life in London in the sixteenth century would have meant for a woman who was a poet and playwright a nervous stress and dilemma which might well have killed her. Had she survived, whatever she had written would have been twisted and deformed, issuing from a strained and morbid imagination. And undoubtedly, I thought, looking at the shelf where there are no plays by women, her work would have gone unsigned. That refuge she would have sought certainly. It was the relic of the sense of chastity that dictated anonymity to women even so late as the nineteenth century. Currer Bell, George Eliot, George Sand, all the victims of inner strife as their writings prove, sought ineffectively to veil themselves by using the name of a man. Thus they did homage to the convention, which if not implanted by the other sex was liberally encouraged by them, that publicity in women is detestable. Anonymity runs in their blood....
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