I've wanted to read this long book for a long time, ever since seeing the black and white trailer for the all-star movie, which Katharine Anne Porter supposedly hated. It would be interesting to see what Hollywood did with Simone Signoret (La Condesa, a drug addict) , Vivien Leigh (Mrs. Treadwell, a frustrated American divorcee who bashes a drunk who mistakes her for a prostitute with a sharp high heel) and Elizabeth Ashley (Jenny Darling, a flaky artist) in the lead female roles. Almost everyone else is an incipient Nazi, who express their anti-Semitism at every opportunity, ad nauseam. That, in fact, pretty much describes my reaction to this doorstopper: Porter skillfully populates her allegory with viviv characters who symbolize the forces that erupt into World War II, but they're more types than people. Still, the quality of Porter's observations, particularly those regarding the European view of America, continue to resonate more than half a century later.
“Civilization,” he said, with blunt contempt, “let me tell you what it is. First the soldier, then the merchant, then the priest, then the lawyer. The merchant hires the soldier and the priest to conquer the country for him. First the soldier, he is a murderer; then the priest, he is a liar; then the merchant, he is a thief; and they all bring in the lawyer to make their laws and defend their deeds, and there you have your civilization!” (Herr Hansen, a Communist Swede)
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“The condition of Jewishness offers to the Western, more especially the Christian, mind an endless study in spiritual and moral contradictions, together with a mysterious and powerful emotional and psychological cohesiveness. Nothing can equal the solidarity of the Jew when attacked from the outside, by the heathen, as they say; nothing can exceed the bitterness of their rivalries in every field among themselves. I have asked many in all scholarly seriousness and philosophical detachment, “Tell me, please—what is a Jew?” and not one of them has been able to give me an answer. They call themselves a race, yet that is absurd. They are just a tiny fragment of a branch of the white race, like ourselves!” (Herr Professor Hutten, a member of the German bourgeoisie easily coopted by Hitler)
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He must not for a moment admit discouragement. After all, this was only another woman—there must be a way, and he would find it. He thought with some envy of the ancient custom of hitting them over the head as a preliminary—not enough to cause injury, of course, just a good firm tap to stun the little spirit of contradiction in them. (Herr Rieber, a sexist cartoon who might as well be wearing a brown shirt)
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The Captain, whose favorite composer was Schumann, and who admitted no dance but the true Viennese waltz to his graces, felt his ear and his nervous system being most impudently imposed upon; for there was, no doubt about it, something strange in those savage rhythms that moved the blood even against all efforts of the will; indeed, he recognized it for what it was, the perpetual resistance of the elemental forces of darkness and disorder agains the very spirit of civilization—that great Germanic force of life in which Science and Philosophy moved hand in hand ruled by Christianity. Gazing downward, he despised these filthy cattle, as he should; yet, viewing the scene as a whole, he could not but admit there was a kind of shapeliness and order in it; not even his rightly censorious eyes could find any real harm, other than the harm of allowing such people any liberties at all; and harm of some sort was naturally, constantly latent in any human situation.
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Dr. Schumann admitted, but only to himself, that if hyenas were beautiful and could sing and dance, he would forgive them for being hyenas. But would they ever forgive him for being human? And then, who was he to presume to offer forgiveness even to the least of God’s creatures. And what indeed was he? He loved La Condesa because she was perverted, strayed, a taker of drugs, a woman who lived outside religion, outside law, outside morality, who was beautiful, willful, and he had no doubt, a born liar. In what way had he tried to help her? He had subdued her, caged her, shut her off from those ambiguous students—even at moments half believing the scandals about them that seeped like filth under the surface of the ship’s talk; not by any medical means or by human sympathy, but by abuse of his power, and by using against her the vice that most harmed her—drugs.
Dr. Schumann faced an aspect of his character he had not suspected until that hour. He had lived on flattering terms with the delusive wickedness of his own nature; comfortable in the doctrine that no man may be damned except with his own consent, and that man’s desire for redemption is deathless as his own soul; and when he does evil he knows what he is doing. How could he have wronged that unhappy creature so, when he had believed he meant only to help and comfort her? He was so horrified his words of denial took shape, sound, he could hear himself speaking within his skull. “No,” he was saying, “I did not harm her, I did what I could in an emergency. Father Garza assured me that what I have done was not wrong. That I must treat her severely as a responsible doctor towards an incorrigible patient . . . ‘Otherwise in one way and a dangerous way you are yielding to her seductions,’ Father Garza said”
He was not consoled or reassured, and knew that he could never be by any means he was able to imagine now. She was a burden on his conscience he was condemned to carry to his death.
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They exchanged one or two universal if minor truths—pleasure was so often more exhausting than the hardest work; they had both noticed that a life of dissipation sometimes gave to a face the look of gaunt suffering spirituality that a life of asceticism was supposed to give and quite often did not. “Both equally disfiguring,” said Freytag. “The real sin against life is to abuse and destroy beauty, even one’s own, for that has been put in our care and we are responsible for its well-being—“
Mrs.Treadwell turned her dark blue eyes on him in faint surprise. “I never thought of that,” she said. “I just thought beauty was a phase of living and would pass with everything else in time—“
“Maybe,” said Freytag, “but that is not the same as hurrying to kill it, do you think?”
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. . . “Will you look at that nasty dwarf,” she said, as the champagne was being poured. “Why are such horrors allowed to live?”
“That is a great question,” said Herr Rieber, beaming at her and mounting one of his favorite subjects. “As publisher, my aim is to direct the minds of my readers to the vital problems of our society. I have lately got a doctor to begin a series of articles, very learned, very scientific, advocating the extermination of the unfit at birth or as soon as they prove themselves unfit in any way. Painlessly, of course, we really wish to be merciful to them as well as to everyone else. Not only defective or useless infants, but the old as well—all persons over sixty or sixty-five, perhaps, or let us say whenever they lose their usefulness; in bad health, exhausted, a drain upon the energies of the gifted, the young and strong of our nation—why should we handicap them with such burdens? The doctor is preparing to present this these, with the strongest arguments, examples and proofs drawn from medical research and practice and sociological statistics. Jews too, of course, and then all persons of illegitimate mixtures of race, white with colored of any kind—Chinese, Negroes . . . all such. And for any white man convicted of serious crime—well, as for him,” he twinkled mischievously, “if we do not put him to death, at least the state shall make certain he does not bring any more of his kind into the world.”
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The Captain was fascinated by American gangster films full of gunfights, raids on night clubs, wild motor chases between police and bandits with screaming sirens and spouting machine guns; abductions, roadside murders, bullet-ridden bodies streaming blood sprawled about the streets, with only now and then at long intervals a lone gangster being led to the death chamber in the last scene. He now entertained himself with dreaming, as he sometimes did, that he was turning one of those really elegant portable machine guns on a riotous mob somewhere, always from a splendidly advantageous position, swiveling it in a half circle, mowing them down in rows. At this point there was some confusion in his mind, though not enough to interfere with the enjoyment of his fantasy; for though he could not imagine himself as being on any side except that of established government, he had in fact noticed that it was nearly always the gangsters who were shown operating the machine guns. There was no good reason why this should be so, and it was a state of affairs which could only exist in a barbarous nation like the United States. It was true that all the Americans were devoted to crime and criminals, to indecent dancing and drug-taking in low Negro jazz cellars, a debased people who groveled in vice, and left their police to depend mostly on tear gas bombs, or hand grenades or revolvers, all more awkward and less effective than machine guns. Even supposing that an American policeman might possibly be an honest man, though very unlikely, why put him at such a disadvantage. If it had not been for the constant gangster warfare among themselves, killing each other off in great numbers, they might easily have taken the country over entirely, years ago! But it was common knowledge that American gangsters and police were in close partnership, one could not thrive without the other. The leaders on both sides divided the power and the spoils, and they took in everything, from highest government posts to labor unions to the gayest night clubs and even the stock market, the food crops—yes, and the international shipping, God knows!
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