Should people be defined by their victimhood?
By Phil Hall
Fraulein Else is the name of the novella Arthur Schnitzler wrote in 1924. It was a forerunner of Joyce's stream of consciousness writing and it incorporated some of the pschosexual ideas of Freud. It's about a young girl of 19 who lives in Vienna and is cornered into stripping for a roue by her mother. The father is having financial problems and the man will help the girl's father if she obliges by undressing in front of the rich man.
There are some parallels with Else Steinhardt, my great aunt. Else was roughly the same age as the character in the novella at the time it was published, and she probably moved in the same circles as Schnitzler, as a young opera singer. Moreover,though Else's face lacked classical proportions, she was beautiful, attractive, flirtatious and overtly sexual. In the pictures Else is arch. She licks ice creams, sits on men's laps and embraces the naked statues. In other pictures she is dressed in loose, flowing clothing or swimwear or "hot pants" and there is an open and self-aware expression on her face.
Richard Steinhardt, her brother, dedicates a picture of them both, taken in the '20s to her with the words (in English): "To the prettiest girl I know." Certainly not to "the most chaste girl I know".
Else's father was an important journalist, the foreign editor of the Neue Freie Presse, but he was also profligate, like the father in Fraulein Else. And even if there was no explicit connection linking the fictional fraulein with the real one, (though there may have been), then the story of the novella must have echoed within within Else's circle. Coincidence.
In going through the family letters and photographs I realise how little the tragedy at the end of Else's life should define her. The rapist doesn't shouldn't be allowed to define the life of the person they rape. The victim's life should not be defined by the Hutu mass murderer and Else should not be defined by Auschwitz. That's letting the devil create meaning. And when we look for meaning in his devilish work of mayhem in destruction we do not find it. Instead of looking at the rich lives cut short, the murderer sucks at our attention. But why did you do that father, mother, teacher bully, robber? Poor you. Poor perpetrator that must have been so disturbed and they turn with their crime our attention to their psychological make up. So that we worry about Demyanuk and Schicklegruber's motives and forget about the rich lives and the potential of the people they killed, the murdered Kafkas, Einsteins, Wittgensteins and Hanna Arendts.
But Arendt is right about the banality of evil. Look about you. There is bound to be a psychopath near you who would happily join in in with mass murder. Some embittered and unfeeling zombie shell of a human, blaming their desolation on another race, another culture, another sex, another species. These people are less real. They are scripted. They are common. They are the least interesting. Schicklegruber the tramp, mumbling about Germanness. Pregnant with hate. The world is full of these unrealised people, these Schicklegrubers. When I contacted the Prague Jewish museum about Else's mother, my great grandmother, I was maudlin and the letter I got in reply was salutary. It was an admonition. The story of the Prague Ghetto is not the story of the Nazi persecution, we had a thriving community here. And this is the point. The story of the people of Gaza is not merely their suffering, it's their humanity in spite of their suffering and when people become refugees and make a life elsewhere, if they can, they leave their suffering behind them. They don't allow their persecutors to create meaning out of their persecution.
But, increasingly, I can imagine Else, in the amazing interwar period in Red Vienna, thoughtful, often post-coital, a woman feeling free for once. Feeling free of a tyrannical father, a father nostalgic for the Hapsburg empire, free of history and racial identity - flourishing. The mystery of sexuality that we all explore, that Else explored, finding life enhancing meaning deep inside it, as we all find meaning in it.
And that and friendship and laughter and triviality and sadness and all the rest was at the heart of Else's life. Her best friend and cousin Paula, her doting little brother Richard, her intellectual brother Arthur and their circle of friends in Vienna. The love of her mom and the regretful love of her father - his bubble of pomposity popped and left behind the man and his life. He died in the Prague Ghetto on 8th March 1941.
Else had the opera.
She wanted to become an opera singer and she did (actually she sang operettas) and she had support and help to do so and by the time the Nazis banned all Jewish actors and singers and directors from the stage, though she was not celebrated, Else had built up quite an impressive repertoire.
Her last performance in Vienna was in 1937 in an Operetta by Strauss. She kept her cuttings and her calling cards and photos - I have them here - and her repertoire typed up, which she took to Paris in 1938 to give to theatre directors there, in order to find work.
And I'll type it up as it is on paper, to celebrate her. Copy from the paper, yellower now, with the faded d's.
Repertoire: Else Steinhardt
__________________________
Opernsoubrette, Lyrische Sangerin u. Operettensangerin.
______________
Graf V. Laeheins: Angele
Friearike: Friearike (?)
Fruhlingsluft: Emilie
Geschiedene Frau: Jana
Berzen im Sehnee: Margaret
Fortunios Liea: Marie
Abentenei in Tunis: Marion
Die Goldene Mule: Ketlerein
The last two items were handwritten, and I had trouble reading the handwriting, so I could have transcribed them incorrectly.
[And, if I may remark: The people who tried to erase Else and others will not succeed if we can help it. A little example: Google "Weiner Sängerin" (Viennese Singer) and this ARS NOTORIA article comes in 1st place. Keep this in mind and perhaps there is somone who you may decide should be celebrated too, and get top billing on Google through ARS NOTORIA. Just be careful to choose the right title for your blog as this is what the search engines pick up.
Is there a poet, an artist, a revolutionary that you feel you would like to celebrate? Write about them on ARS NOTORIA.]
Comments
Of course I mean all of the above to be taken in your intellectual stride, re-reading it, it sounds harsh, when it is nothing of the sort....it is gentle, wide eyed praise.
In fact I have intellectualized what you mean i something I've just written.
http://xuitlacoche.blogspot.com/2010/01/daydreaming-love-and-gratitude.html
Did you know that Trotsky was in Vienna in this period, from 1907 to 1914 and while he was there he hung out at the cafe Central with everyone else, my great grandfaher too, and played chess and wrote articles for Ukrainian and Russian newspapers on art and the theatre and felt the need to write something on eros when a young Russian said.
Why does nothing you Marxists say chime when it relates to the beauty and the joy of the sex act. This was the time of Freud after all. And Trotsky's answer was to the effect that Marxist thinkers like him didn't "do" sexuality and psychology.
But then of course that's probably the main thing the French school of Marxists ended up doing.
And why keep top yourself topped up on good strong traditional beer if it is not to be able to exist on the edge of the liminal world where our thoughts and emotions and perceptions cohere?
I envy musicians.
What do you think of the music of Pablo Milanes, Mercedes Sosa, Victor Jara and Silvio Rodriguez. I love their music. If you have a moment, listen to Silvio Rodriguez singing about comandante Che Guevara.
Playa Giron
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oM11gPChxbw&feature=related
los últimos sucesos en la poesía, quisiera preguntar – me urge – ,
¿Qué tipo de adjetivos se deben usar para hacer
el poema de un barco, sin que se haga sentimental,
fuera de la vanguardia, o evidente panfleto,
si debo usar palabras como Flota Cubana de Pesca, y Playa Girón?
Compañeros de música, tomando en cuenta
esas politonales y audaces canciones, quisiera preguntar – me urge – ,
¿Qué tipo de armonía se debe usar para hacer
la canción de este barco con hombres de poca niñez,
hombres y solamente, hombres sobre cubierta?
Hombres negros y rojos y azules,
los hombres que pueblan el Playa Girón.
Compañeros de historia, tomando en cuenta
lo impacable que debe ser la verdad, quisiera preguntar – me urge tanto- ,
¿Qué debiera decir? ¿Qué fronteras debo respetar?
Si alguien roba comida y después da la vida, ¿Qué hacer?
¿Hasta dónde debemos practicar las verdades?
¿Hasta dónde sabemos?
Que escriban, pues, la historia, su historia, los hombres del Playa Girón.
I'll do a translation of it on my own blog.
Brother poets, taking on board all
the recent developments in poetry, then I must ask - I have to - what kind of adjective does one use to write a poem about a boat, without being sentimental, without being experimental or preaching,
do you think I should use words like like Cuban fishing fleet or Playa Giron.
Brother musicians, listening to these audacious and polytonal songs, I'd just like to ask, I have to,
What kind of harmony should one use to write a song about a that boat and its men with childhoods cut short - just ordinary men - on its decks?
Black men, red men and blue,
The men who live on Playa Giron.
Brother historians, understanding the truth is implacable, but I'd like to ask, I really must
What should I say? What limits should I establish
If someone steals food and then gives life What should we do about that?
How far should we practice these truths?
How much do we know?
Write then, if you can, the story of the men, of Playa Giron.
Silvio Rodriguez (My translation)
Phil, how true this is and what a universal application this has. How a person comes to be a victim should not be allowed to define their life and their worth. I'm just learning about that myself. So thanks for the words which help to serve as a reminder.
(Came here through a search result on "rape" in case you were wondering)