To The Hermitage by Malcolm Bradbury, author of the acclaimed The History Man http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world - 10 out of 10

 

To The Hermitage by Malcolm Bradbury, author of the acclaimed The History Man http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world

10 out of 10

 

 

Malcolm Bradbury has written some wonderful books, among them The History Man http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/06/history-man-by-malcolm-bradbury.html and To The Hermitage has history again at the center, where we have quite a large number of characters participating in a remarkable saga, from Denis Diderot – the one that has left posterity papers, treatises, notes, manuals on almost any conceivable subject, from trade, politics to philosophy, creating cities, universities, parliaments – to Catherine the Great – Empress Autocratix, a very complex figure, perhaps the most advanced leader of her age, and not just of that time, a protector of the philosophers, buyer of a massive gallery of art, builder of The Hermitage and so much more – Voltaire, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and a paraphernalia of characters appear in these pages, diva, diplomat, carpenter, trade unionist, professors, and maybe some alter ego of Malcolm Bradbury himself…

 

Two stories develop in parallel, with the narrator travelling first to Sweden and from there to Sankt Petersburg, during the clash between Boris Yeltsin and the reactionaries that wanted to bring back the old communist regime – which is now in many ways back in top form, under the new despot and czar, Putin the invader of Ukraine, the bloody killer that executes his opponents and/or puts them in jail, as is the case for valiant Alexei Navalny, in the manner of Ivan the Terrible – and one important segment of the narrative will have us witness what is happening in Moscow, using the lens of the media covering the events.

With the war in Ukraine and the atrocities committed by Putin and his bands of killers, it seems inappropriate to read an opus that takes part in Russia, for the most part, and indeed, this could well be the reason why I have enjoyed this novel less than the brilliant, hilarious Rates of Exchange http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/04/rates-of-exchange-by-malcolm-bradbury.html which happens in Slaka, not the USSR, and is often cathartic, but from The Hermitage, we can learn so many things about the Russians.

 

Among the intakes would be the look at their history, the fact that they have had so many tyrants, lunatics and sadists really, ruling over them, and this is a people that has seen so much abuse, torture, assassinations, famine, poverty and suffering that this explains in so many ways their attitude, the adoption of a defeatist approach, which we could understand by looking into a book by the co-founder of positive psychology, Martin Seligman, that explains how we can be optimistic, Learned Optimism http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/07/learned-optimism-by-martin-seligman.html but also what happens in the opposite situation – Martin Seligman had worked with dogs in special circumstances, where the animals were given a poor treatment, then allowed to escape the enclosure and it was discovered that those that had been exposed to shocks and had had no way to get out would show Learned Hopelessness to the degree that when they had the chance, they did not exit, because they had become hopeless, and on the contrary, the ones with a chance to get out when things were bad, had a different reaction.

 

It seems that the Russians have been trapped for centuries and have Learned Hopelessness on a  massive scale and we see that in To The Hermitage, wherein Denis Diderot travels to Sankt Petersburg, just like the story teller, and we experience with them the majesty of the city, we are awed by her Serene Imperial Majesty, who can be so progressive, but also cruel, when she orders the execution of so many that oppose her…the book is an ode, an homage to the great Philosopher, the one that gave some extraordinary insight into the art of acting, said that there is a ‘paradox that great actors display most passion when they invest the least, already he has invented Method acting’ – the way I remember it, from when I have read it some forty years ago is that Diderot gives the example of the amateur who tries to tell a crowd about something that has happened and though he is passionate, he does not find echo for his rendering, while somebody who is cerebral and detached would provoke much more emotion in the audience, so it is better not to use ‘the heart’, but the brain and it is wrong to say ‘oh, such good performance, he had his heart into it, he, she or they actually’

Then we have some fabulous takes on life versus art and a one liner assessment of philosophy, in art versus literature, Malcolm Bradbury writes about how what happens in books is so much more exciting than life – in his jocular manner, he puts in two exceptions, Beckett and Kafka – and if we couple this analysis with the pronouncement of Umberto Eco – those who do not read have just one life, while readers have five thousand, this being immortality backwards – then we reach the conclusion that reading is the best possible choice, we reach not only immortality by reading – presumably the magnum opera, the crème de la crème, nec plus ultra Russians, Tolstoy, Gogol, Chekhov, Dostoyevsky, but also Proust, Malamud, Kingsley Amis and so many more – but we are also in the Zone, we have reached Nirvana, Catharsis, Eudaimonia, Glasperlenspiel, Flow as described by the other co-author of positive psychology, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the zenith we reach when certain conditions are met, we are focused on the activity, we have clear goals, nothing else matters, time becomes fluid, we get constant feedback and we are in control and we have reached Maximum Joy in various forms - "The joy of the thinker- he has found the treasure of wisdom, he is enraptured"- http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/10/flow-by-mihaly-csikszentmihalyi-this-is.html

 

Denis Diderot has long sessions with the monarch in Sankt Petersburg, where the present despot had started, but one cannot help but wonder at the immense difference between Catherine the Great, so liberal and advanced almost two hundred and fifty years ago, especially when compared with the vicious murderer they now have in the Kremlin, for he has no tolerance for a different point of view, while the czarina could have a dialectical dialogue with the Great Philosopher, and accept when the latter expressed an opinion she disliked…it is true that the Age of Enlightment would end up in the bloody revolution of 1789, but so much of what Diderot, Voltaire and the other luminaries would represent a dramatic, fundamental change

Some favorite quotes are here…

Conceptual means we have not thought about it much, but we are cool, and something will happen to which we can add the name art. Postmodern means guess what, we managed to get a corporate sponsor to pay for it ...music aka silence in Sweden orchestra. Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life. As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality. Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…Kant shows we never know anything with pure objectivity, Schopenhauer proves it's not mind but will we think with, then comes Kierkegaard and the leap in the dark  - no way of knowing being from nothingness…Followed by Nietzsche and the complete triumph of the irrational…Soon comes Heidegger and the collapse of all metaphysics…Then Wittgenstein and the whereof we cannot speak let us be silent…Michel Foucault and the total loss of the subject…Reason has gone the same way as religion....all we know is that cosmos is chaos, moving at fantastic speed toward an explosive and senseless destination no one can understand, it gets there and blows up or turns into anti matter…Diderot on Tristram Shandy, craziest, wisest and greatest of all books ' Sterne turned into Diderot, who turns into Mozart...he also turns into Proust and Joyce, Beckett and Nabokov