Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano (1947): singular experiences

2018 ◽  
pp. 118-135
Author(s):  
Steven Earnshaw
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Main Character ◽  
World War ◽  
Malcolm Lowry ◽  
Day Of The Dead ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Under The Volcano

Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano places the committed drinker, in the form of ex-Consul Geoffrey Firmin, in the Mexican ‘Day of the Dead’ festival, so that the main character encounters ‘hell’ in physical and spiritual dimensions. The novel is technically innovative in its aim to register the subjective experience of the Existential drinker: Geoffrey Firmin’s world is constructed through a highly-individualised, expressionistic symbolism, a mid-century representation of the modern, alienated self, abandoned and suffering despair in a Godless world – the latter made evident by the novel’s attention to the rise of totalitarianism, which forms the backdrop to the events here on a day close to the onset of World War II. There is discussion of the novel’s difficulty and form, and a comparison of some aspects of the novel with Kafka’s The Trial, and how these relate to representation of the Existential drinker.

The Naked, the Dead, and the Machine: A New Look at Norman Mailer's First Novel

PMLA ◽  
1972 ◽  
Vol 87 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-277
Author(s):  
Randall H. Waldron
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
The Novel ◽  
World War ◽  
Structural Pattern ◽  
Sherwood Anderson ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Modern Experience ◽  
Central Characters ◽  
Oriented System

In spite of the marked degree to which twentieth-century art and literature have reflected the influence of mechanization on modern experience, the dominant tone of American literary treatments of the machine remains one of tension. Particularly apparent in the novel, this tension functions as a central conflict in books by Norris, Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, Steinbeck, Hemingway, Faulkner, and others. It is most evident in novels about World War II, when mechanization, industrialism, and statism reached their violent zenith, and is nowhere better illustrated than in Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead. A structural pattern that reveals the army as the epitome of the machine in a society that is universally mechanistic, a symbolically pivotal clash between the natural organic world and the invading machine, and imagery and style drawn from the substance and language of the machine world, all combine to form a total metaphoric environment in which the central characters personify and articulate the opposing values of the machine-oriented “system” and the will to individual integrity. Thus the function of the machine as a controlling metaphor in American World War II novels is underlined and clarified by the informing centrality of that metaphor in the first really significant, probably the best, and certainly the most imitated of those novels.

The Living and the Dead: The Rise and Fall of the Cult of World War II in Russia.

1996 ◽  
Vol 101 (1) ◽  
pp. 216
Author(s):  
Lynn Mally ◽  
Nina Tumarkin
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War ◽  
The Dead

scholarly journals Thomas Mann - Gennem krigens sygdomme mod en ny humanisme

2018 ◽  
pp. 47-64
Author(s):  
Rasmus Navntoft
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Nobel Prize ◽  
Nobel Prize Winner ◽  
Thomas Mann ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Main Character ◽  
World War ◽  
Major Work ◽  
New Humanism

The German author and Nobel Prize winner Thomas Mann (1875-1955) perceived World War I as a moral battle against the civilization project rooted in the European enlightenment. Like many other German intellectuals of that time, Mann stresses an opposition between the concept of culture and that of civilization – this conflict is seen as inherent in the European soul – and defends Germany’s right to remain a culture that does not evolve into a civilization. The concept of culture can contain irrational features such as mystical, bloody and terrifying teachings, whereas civilization is characterized by reason, enlightenment, skepticism and hostility towards passion and emotion. In his major work The Magic Mountain (1924) however, Mann tries to overcome this opposition and displays, through the metaphors of the text, that a new humanism is dependent upon a mystical and completely illogical balance between culture and civilization. The main character of the novel does not succeed in finding this balance. But, nonetheless, Mann continues to see the possibilities of a new humanism through this perspective in order to point out a humanistic hope in the shadesof two European world wars.

scholarly journals Moving Lightly over the Earth

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanni Spissu
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
The Novel ◽  
World War ◽  
Unemployed People ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Ethnographic Observation ◽  
The Future ◽  
Specific Meaning ◽  
The Town

In the novel The Rings of Saturn (1995), the German writer W. G. Sebald recounts his solitary journey to the town of Suffolk (UK) at the end of his years, while he also reflects on some of the dramatic events that shaped World War II and his personal memories. In this work, he takes on a particular narrative tactic defined by the interaction between the text and images that creates a special type of montage in which he seems to draw from cinematic language. I argue that, drawing on Sebald’s work, we can imagine a form of ethnographic observation that involves the creation of a cinematic map through which to explore the memories and imagination of individuals in relation to places where they live. I explore the day-to-day lived experiences of unemployed people of Sulcis Iglesiente, through their everyday engagement with, and situated perceptions of, their territory. I describe the process that led me to build Moving Lightly over the Earth, a cinematic map of Sulcis Iglesiente through which I explored how women and men in the area who lost their jobs as a result of the process of its deindustrialization give specific meaning to the territory, relating it to memories of their past and hopes and desires for the future.

scholarly journals Ciało, trup, śmierć w utworze Götz i Meyer Davida Albahariego

2019 ◽  
Vol 168 ◽  
pp. 553-564
Author(s):  
Sabina Giergiel
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Novel ◽  
World War ◽  
City Center ◽  
Independent State ◽  
The City

Body, corpse and death in David Albahari’s Gotz and MeyerThe article investigates the broadly understood record of Jewish death that emerges from the text of the Serbian prose writer David Albahari. Emphasizing the dominance of economy in the Nazi system, the author indicates those procedures described in Albahari’s book which justify such an assessment e.g. human reification, the body as debris, technical syntax used by German officials. Additionally, these considerations on death representation are supplemented with an endeavor to establish the Belgrade dwellers’ attitude towards the fortunes of the Jews. According to the author, the novel explicitly marks the spatial opposition enclosure vs. opening, the camp vs. the city center that is reinforced by the river, which during World War II divided the capital into Zemun belonging to the Independent State of Croatia, also the place where the camp was situated and Belgrade’s Serbian center. This demarcation intensifies the victims’ feelings of separation and loneliness, at the same time enabling the capital’s dwellers to occupy a comfortable position of bystanders.  Telo, mrtvac, smrt u romanu Gec i Majer Davida AlbaharijaRad se bavi vidovima smrti u romanu Gec i Majer Davida Albaharija. Pokazuje mehanizme koje potvrđuju opštepoznatu činjenicu da je u nacističkom sistemu dominirala ekonomija. U te mehanizme se ubrajaju, između ostalih: reifikacija čoveka, tretiranje tela kao otpada i tehnička leksika koju upotrebljavaju nemački funkcioneri. Analiza uključuje i pokušaj odgovora na pitanje kakav je bio odnos stanovnika Beograda prema sudbini Jevreja. Istraživanje pokazuje prostornu opoziciju zatvoren i otvoren prostor, logor i centar grada. Nju naglašava reka koja je za vreme Drugog svetskog rata delila srpsku prestonicu na Zemun, gde je bio smešten logor, a koji je pripadao NDH, i srpski centar Beograda. Ova granica je vezana za osećaj separacije i usamljenost žrtava, s jedne starne, i udobnost i bajstander-efekat stanovnika prestonice, s druge strane

Oil For the Lamps of China: Alice Tisdale Hobart’s Dark Novel of American Capitalism and Chinese Revolution

2013 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-78
Author(s):  
Sherman Cochran
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Chinese Culture ◽  
The Novel ◽  
World War ◽  
Chinese Revolution ◽  
American Capitalism ◽  
American Corporation ◽  
Standard Oil Company ◽  
Oil Company

Among American works of fiction about China before World War II, Alice Tisdale Hobart’s Oil for the Lamps of China (1933) was second only to Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth (1931) in influence and sales. Hobart’s novel, evidently set during the Northern Expedition of 1926-28, also inspired a Warner Brothers film by the same name in 1935. Unlike the film, Hobart’s novel did not give a boosterish picture of American capitalism. In portraying the leading character, Steven Chase, a field agent for an American oil firm in China, Hobart drew on the experience of her husband, a field agent for Standard Oil Company. Her husband, like Chase, was callously fired after loyally serving the company and adapting to Chinese culture and protecting company property from anti-imperialist mobs. The novel is memorable for its vivid characterizations of Americans and Chinese working for an American corporation in China and for its dark view of American capitalism and Chinese revolution.

Austrians into German Soldiers: The Integrative Impact of Wehrmacht Service on Austrian Soldiers during World War II

2007 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
pp. 160-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas R. Grischany
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
National Consciousness ◽  
World War ◽  
German Armed Forces ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Army Service ◽  
German Reich

In March 1983, germany annexed the Republic of Austria, incorporating it into the Greater German Reich. Thereafter, about 1.2 million Austrians eligible for military service were draft ed into the German armed forces: the Wehrmacht. Although we know where largely Austrian contingents fought in World War II, little is known about what, if anything, set them apart from their Reich German comrades. Nor do we know much about their attitudes, their “mindset,” or their subjective experience of military service and war.1 Because we know so little about the attitudes of Austrian soldiers in the Wehrmacht, and since army service—in contrast to membership in the SS or NSDAP—was largely mandatory, it is still possible to argue that Austrians were unwilling soldiers, sacrificed in a war that was not theirs, and that discrimination by foreign rulers fostered an Austrian national consciousness.

scholarly journals Offervilje. Om ret og rimelighed blandt venner og fjender og om at komme og dømme levende og døde i Max Kestners film "I am Fiction"

2013 ◽  
Vol 28 (70) ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise Brix Jacobsen ◽  
Henrik Skov Nielsen ◽  
Rikke Andersen Kraglund
Keyword(s):  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Publishing House ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Artistic Collaboration ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The One ◽  
Alleged Victim

Louise Brix Jacobsen, Rikke Andersen Kraglund & Henrik Skov Nielsen: “Selfsacrifice. On Right and Reasonableness among Foes and Friends, and on Judging the Living and the Dead in Max Kestner’s film I am Fiction”In 2011, the performance artist Thomas Skade-Rasmussen Strøbech lost a lawsuit against his former friend and collaborator Helge Bille Nielsen and the publishing house of Gyldendal. This led to a debate about copyright, freedom of expression, identity, and the line between fiction and reality. In 2008, Nielsen or Das Beckwerk published the novel The Sovereign where Strøbech – seemingly without his knowledge and apparently against his will – is the main character. About a year after losing the lawsuit Strøbech and film director Max Kestner gives his version of the events before, during, and after the trial in the film I am Fiction (Identitetstyveriet). This article analyzes I am fiction in order to show how the film on the one hand outlines Strøbech’s version of the events as a story about a victim but on the other hand undermines this version with humor and irony and points towards an artistic collaboration between alleged victim and villain.

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