Reviews for Henrik Ibsen

The average rating for Henrik Ibsen based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-10-31 00:00:00 MANUEL GARCIA SORIA DAVIS Has any writer had as adventurous a life as Cervantes?  First of all, he was at the legendary Battle of Lepanto. Yes, you heard me right. And there, by all accounts, he was very heroic. Hit three times by harquebus fire, he was struck twice in the chest and once in the left hand. Luckily, his armor deflected the chest wounds, but his left hand was permanently damaged during the battle. His maimed hand earned him the nickname, "El Manco de Lepanto." His heroic service that day got him several letters of commendation; one being from his "serene highness" Don Juan himself. Unfortunately, these letters were on his person when he was captured by the dreaded Barbary pirates and taken to Algiers. His new master, believing him to be a man of great value because of these letters, set his ransom to an exorbitant amount of money, thereby ensuring he stayed a captive for five years, most of which he felt hopeless for ever being ransomed! Returning home, I wonder if he didn't struggle with trying to fit back into life there. It can be very hard coming home after an intense period abroad because things that you once thought as being "obvious" or "natural," no longer feel that way and you find yourself questioning everything. Cervantes clearly does this in a different way by basically pitting all manner of preconceived notions and narratives against each other--constantly calling into question the act of storytelling itself. Is Don Quixote mad or is the world mad? Are all those notions held by people in various times and places somehow "real" or are we all not bewitched like actors playing parts in a wondrous play?  María Antonia Garcés is one of my intellectual heroes. And her book, Cervantes in Algiers is revelatory. Evoking Freud, she discusses the way that in some people trauma is actually bypassed in the mind: it is not experienced directly and instead is registered in the psyche as a kind of memory of the event that patients or survivors return to again and again, neurotically trying to process what happened to them. Of course, many people have traditionally processed traumatic events by revisiting them in art -- and Cervantes indeed seems to return again and again to issues of captivity and broken narratives. For what is trauma but a deep interruption? Falling through the cracks of one's own life is how I used to put it until I read María Antonia Garcés' book. For trauma is an interruption of life, like a broken thread (el roto hilo de mi historia). And Cervantes himself uses the language of tying up the broken thread in his telling tales. As a former captive of Columbian guerrillas, María Antonia Garcés is is very compelling. This is an award-winning book for good reason. The opening chapters on the history of Algiers and the Barbary pirates is very interesting. I don't think I have ever read this history before and aftre going through her two opening chapter twice, I learned so much. This book is very dear to me. Eye-opening on the history of the time, you will learn more than you imagine on Cervantes life. But, I would add, it is what she has to say about the life-saving grace of literature and about trauma that moved me tremendously.This is an interesting article on her work from BBC culture... and I am posting at 3Quarks Daily tomorrow on it as well

Review # 2 was written on 2019-03-11 00:00:00 Carlo Spoon Why I Should Have Read Cecily Before I Wasted My Life Reading "Why You Should Read Kafka Before You Waste Your Life" OK, I admit it; I judged this book by its cover, seduced by the catchy title - and because I haven't read any Kafka for some 40 years and I keep meaning to return to him. This bio (for that's what it is - Hawes doesn't ever say what you should not waste your life doing) is written in a breezy present-tense style, an attempt to generate some tension by continually foreshadowing events in Kafka's life, and most irritatingly, calling him "our hero". It claims to show, with lots of italics that K was a happy, well-balanced post-Habsburg lad with a lusty sex life. This is supposedly in direct contrast to everything that has ever been written about Kafka. This is of course nonsense. I'm sure the fact that Kafka was not necessarily a terminal depressive has been noted (and even if he had been, he would surely have had short periods of cheerfulness, as indicated by photos which prove (prove!) he was not gloomy and haunted all the time). On p.128 Hawes says with the air of having discovered a fundamental truth, "Of course this isn't to say that Kafka didn't feel isolated. You can feel horribly alone in a crowded party." No shit, Sherlock. 'No shit' was my frequent reaction throughout this book. For example, on being told earnestly (p.212) that justice in early 20th century Europe was nothing like our current processes and people really could be arrested for nothing! Yes readers, The Trial and The Castle really can be read as satire! Then there is K's sex life. Hawes says, teasingly, on p.8 "... we'll see what two entire generations of scholars have never shown to Kafka's readers ... pictures that, when I first saw them, made me rub my eyes". Yes, K was obsessed with porn! Hawes must have led a very sheltered life because he devotes many pages to it, even though it is little more than Aubrey Beardsley-style erotica. In any case it would hardly have been exceptional in a time when there were so few other sanctioned outlets for sexual drive. And it turns out on p.58 that "Kafka's porn is no real secret". Sigh. Apparently some scholars have maintained that Kafka was a virgin so Hawes goes to great lengths to prove otherwise. But it is clear that K was one tortured and mixed-up kid when came to women. (For a way more enjoyable read, see the delightful vignette in 1913: the year before the storm.) Another argument is one I'm not really familiar with - that Kafka foresaw the fate of the European Jews. Again, this seems like a straw-man argument as many insightful writers could see by the early twenties that once again Jews were going to be blamed for Germany's problems, even if they could not have known the terrible outcome. I have a feeling that this is perhaps a particularly academic obsession that Hawes is railing against, though he never provides any evidence to back up any of his claims. OK, on p.130 we get to K's famous letter to his father. What can you make of this syllogism? K's letter to his father is full of blame concerning barriers to his becoming an artist; Hitler wrote a similar self-serving essay about his artistic ambitions; "So if Hitler wrote like that about his father ..." [sic] ... no, no, no! Hawes is not suggesting that Kafka was anything like Hitler! Why would you think that? He just means ... err, I'm not sure what exactly; but he does tell us, again very earnestly, that family life was different back then, and the Father really was the head of the household. No shit. So there all these "K-myths", but I am pretty sure most are a figment of Hawes's imagination, and he does a terrible job of demolishing them. And as he imples later in the book, it doesn't matter! There is no question that Kafka must have been a tortured character, it comes across clearly in his writing and letters. Isn't that enough? So stop it, James, you're being tiresome; go back to your little paddling pool of academia.