Milorad Pavić 1929-2009

It goes to show just how out of it that I have been with work and other seasonal madness (including two feet of snow in Washington D.C.) that I somehow missed the death of one of Serbia's most innovative and provocative writers: Milorad Pavić.

Pavić's greatest work was Dictionary of the Khazars -- a novel written in the form of dictionary entries that purported to retell a mythical Khazar polemic in which Christian, Jewish and Muslim divines debated before the Emperor of the Khazars, who would then decide to which religion he and his people would convert.

The book is clearly an allegory about the divided religion and culture of Yugoslavia, but its playfulness and panache make it a terrific reading experience even if you know little or nothing about Yugoslavia. In particular, Pavić's pastiches of the writings of various medieval and Renaissance holy books is devilishly delightful.

Pavić's other works took equally novel forms: crossword puzzles, tarot cards. Much of his work has been translated into English. He's definitely worth exploring if you are a fan of fictive innovation.

I had the privilege of meeting Pavić on two occasions, when he cheerily signed books for my friends and seemed absolutely delighted to hear that he had a substantial readership in English.

Read the excellent obituary in today's New York Times here.

Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Anti-Semitism

Over at Ibishblog, my good friend Hussein Ibish has a fascinating post about The Merchant of Venice, The Jew of Malta and whether either or both plays are anti-Semitic.

I'd encourage you to read his argument in full, especially since I have had the privilege of discussing this a few times with Ibish as he's wrestled with his interest in this question.

The literature on The Merchant of Venice is voluminous, of course, so I would like to add a few thoughts on The Jew of Malta.

For me, the prologues (published in their entirety in the Penguin Classics editor of The Complete Plays) are the key to bolstering Ibish's argument that:

Marlowe's play is simply cynical, misanthropic and deeply antireligious. He holds all cultures, civilizations and religious traditions in equal contempt and in that sense, I think it is perfectly impossible to describe the Jew of Malta as anti-Semitic. It's anti-everything.

It can't be put much more simply or clearly than in "The Prologue Spoken At Court":

We pursue
The story of a rich and famous Jew
Who lived in Malta. You shall find him still,
In all his projects, a sound Machevill;
And that's his character.

Machevil, of course, gets his own speech in the actual Prologue to the play proper, and the framing device for the play is laid out quite clearly:

Albeit the world think Machevil is dead,
Yet was his soul but flown beyond the Alps;
And, now the Guise is dead, is come from France,
To view this land, and frolic with his friends.
To some perhaps my name is odious;
But such as love me, guard me from their tongues,
And let them know that I am Machiavel,
And weigh not men, and therefore not men's words.
Admir'd I am of those that hate me most:
Though some speak openly against my books,
Yet will they read me, and thereby attain
To Peter's chair; and, when they cast me off,
Are poison'd by my climbing followers.
I count religion but a childish toy,
And hold there is no sin but ignorance.
Birds of the air will tell of murders past!
I am asham'd to hear such fooleries.
Many will talk of title to a crown:
What right had Caesar to the empery?
Might first made kings, and laws were then most sure
When, like the Draco's, they were writ in blood.
Hence comes it that a strong-built citadel
Commands much more than letters can import:
Which maxim had Phalaris observ'd,
H'ad never bellow'd, in a brazen bull,
Of great ones' envy: o' the poor petty wights
Let me be envied and not pitied.
But whither am I bound? I come not, I,
To read a lecture here in Britain,
But to present the tragedy of a Jew,
Who smiles to see how full his bags are cramm'd;
Which money was not got without my means.
I crave but this,--grace him as he deserves,
And let him not be entertain'd the worse
Because he favours me.

This is a moral universe turned upside down -- a seething pot of lies, conspiracy and power politics in which nothing is as it seems, where the moral rule of the universe is Machevil's amorality. Those who rule this world speak not of him and keep their knowledge. Those who seem the most religious are, in reality, his greatest adherents. I think these Prologues bolster Ibish's case: The Jew of Malta is not anti-Semitic, but a screed against the common hollowness and hypocrisy of all the Abrahamic faiths.

Remember Remember: Gunpowder Plot as Early Modern Terrorism?

Today is November 5th, and many of us know what that means. Guy Fawkes Day. Gunpowder Plot. 1605 and all that.

But were the plotters (right, in a contemporary engraving) terrorists -- especially in the sense that we know that term?

The Folger Institute held a terrific seminar on that topic four years ago -- one that I was lucky enough to attend as a reporter.

I wrote this article about it for The Chronicle of Higher Education. It used to be free -- and live on my links column to the right of this post. But CHE changed up its website and put everything that once was free back behind the paywall.

No worries, however. At least for a few days. That temporary link lets you read it. Happy bonfires and fireworks, everyone.

Dusan Makavejev: The Last Yugoslav

So the article about Yugoslav filmmaker Dusan Makavejev that I have been promising since July has finally been published in the print and web versions of this week's edition of The Nation.

Though I had to scrunch and smoosh to get it all in, I'm pretty happy with the piece. In particular, I was happy to get a chance to talk about a few things:

(1) The brilliance of Makavejev's first three feature films -- Man Is Not a Bird, Love Affair -- Or the Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator, and Innocence Unprotected -- which have been recently been rereleased for the first time on DVD as a set by Criterion.

Because they had not been released previously on DVD when I had to write the piece, I had to buy all three movies online as used VHS tapes. That alone should tell you how valuable this new collection is in tracing the arc of Makavejev's art.

(2) A chance to make the argument that WR: Mysteries of the Organism is a more audacious and satisfying film than Sweet Movie, which is a much more notorious though less intellectually adventurous film. I was also delighted to remind readers of Makavejev's trenchant critique of the absurd priapism of the American combination of violence and capitalism -- something that critics who have been transfixed by Makavejev's stinging critique of communism in that film usually omit or elide.

(3) An opportunity to reevaluate Makavejev's last full-length feature, Gorilla Bathes at Noon -- and argue for its excellence as a film and as a portrait of the exhaustion at the end of the Cold War that so animates WR and Sweet Movie. Particularly viewed on the cusp of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Gorilla Bathes at Noon is -- as I mention in the article -- a "portrait of Berlin as a filthy, cold and abandoned siege line of the Cold War." It is criminal that this film has not been released on DVD. I can only hope that my piece might urge that possibility on someone who can do it.