What do you think?
Rate this book
The Aesthetics of Resistance #3
The Aesthetics of Resistance, Volume III: A Novel
A major literary event, the publication of the final volume of Peter Weiss’s three-volume novel The Aesthetics of Resistance makes one of the towering works of twentieth-century German literature available to English-speaking readers for the first time. Weiss’s crowning achievement, The Aesthetics of Resistance spans the period from the late 1930s to the end of World War II, dramatizing antifascist resistance and the rise and fall of proletarian political parties in Europe.
Volume III, initially published in 1981, teems with characters, many of whom are based on historical figures. It commences in May of 1940, as the narrator’s parents flee Nazi forces in Eastern Europe and reunite with their son in Sweden. While in Stockholm, the narrator and other Communist activists living in exile struggle to build structures in the German underground. The story then follows Communist resistance fighter Charlotte Bischoff as she is smuggled to Bremen on a freighter. In Berlin, she contacts the narrator’s friends and joins the Red Orchestra resistance group. Soon, the Gestapo cracks the underground group’s code, arrests a number of its members, and takes them to Plötzensee Prison, where most of them are executed. Featuring the narrator’s meditations on paintings, sculpture, and literature throughout, The Aesthetics of Resistance demonstrates the affinity between political resistance and art. Ultimately, Weiss argues that we must look to art for new models of political action and social understanding.
Volume III, initially published in 1981, teems with characters, many of whom are based on historical figures. It commences in May of 1940, as the narrator’s parents flee Nazi forces in Eastern Europe and reunite with their son in Sweden. While in Stockholm, the narrator and other Communist activists living in exile struggle to build structures in the German underground. The story then follows Communist resistance fighter Charlotte Bischoff as she is smuggled to Bremen on a freighter. In Berlin, she contacts the narrator’s friends and joins the Red Orchestra resistance group. Soon, the Gestapo cracks the underground group’s code, arrests a number of its members, and takes them to Plötzensee Prison, where most of them are executed. Featuring the narrator’s meditations on paintings, sculpture, and literature throughout, The Aesthetics of Resistance demonstrates the affinity between political resistance and art. Ultimately, Weiss argues that we must look to art for new models of political action and social understanding.
- GenresFiction
296 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1981
2 people are currently reading
165 people want to read
About the author
Peter Weiss
202 books115 followersPeter Ulrich Weiss was a German writer, painter, and artist of adopted Swedish nationality. He is particularly known for his play Marat/Sade and his novel The Aesthetics of Resistance.
Weiss' first art exhibition took place in 1936. His first produced play was Der Turm in 1950. In 1952 he joined the Swedish Experimental Film Studio, where he made films for several years. During this period, he also taught painting at Stockholm's People's University, and illustrated a Swedish edition of The Book of One Thousand and One Nights. Until the early 1960s, Weiss also wrote prose. His work consists of short and intense novels with Kafkaesque details and feelings, often with autobiographical background. One of the most known films made by Peter Weiss is an experimental one, The Mirage (1959) and the second one - it is very seldom mentioned - is a film Weiss directed in Paris 1960 together with Barbro Boman, titled Play Girls or The Flamboyant Sex (Schwedische Mädchen in Paris or Verlockung in German). Among the short films by Weiss, The Studio of Doctor Faust (1956) shows the extremely strong link of Weiss to a German cultural background.
Weiss' best-known work is the play Marat/Sade (1963), first performed in West Berlin in 1964, which brought him widespread international attention. The following year, legendary director Peter Brook staged a famous production in New York City. It studies the power in society through two extreme and extremely different historical persons, Jean-Paul Marat, a brutal hero of the French Revolution, and the Marquis de Sade, for whom sadism was named. In Marat/Sade, Weiss uses a technique which, to quote from the play itself, speaks of the play within a play within itself: "Our play's chief aim has been to take to bits great propositions and their opposites, see how they work, and let them fight it out." The play is considered a classic, and is still performed, although less regularly.
Weiss was honored with the Charles Veillon Award, 1963; the Lessing Prize, 1965; the Heinrich Mann Prize, 1966; the Carl Albert Anderson Prize, 1967; the Thomas Dehler Prize, 1978; the Cologne Literature Prize, 1981; the Bremen Literature Prize, 1982; the De Nios Prize, 1982; the Swedish Theatre Critics Prize, 1982; and the Georg Büchner Prize, 1982.
A translation of Weiss' L'instruction (Die Ermittlung) was performed at London's Young Vic theater by a Rwandan company in November 2007. The production presented a dramatic contrast between the play's view on the Holocaust and the Rwandan actors' own experience with their nation's genocide.
http://literaturkritik.de/public/reze...
http://literaturkritik.de/public/reze...
Weiss' first art exhibition took place in 1936. His first produced play was Der Turm in 1950. In 1952 he joined the Swedish Experimental Film Studio, where he made films for several years. During this period, he also taught painting at Stockholm's People's University, and illustrated a Swedish edition of The Book of One Thousand and One Nights. Until the early 1960s, Weiss also wrote prose. His work consists of short and intense novels with Kafkaesque details and feelings, often with autobiographical background. One of the most known films made by Peter Weiss is an experimental one, The Mirage (1959) and the second one - it is very seldom mentioned - is a film Weiss directed in Paris 1960 together with Barbro Boman, titled Play Girls or The Flamboyant Sex (Schwedische Mädchen in Paris or Verlockung in German). Among the short films by Weiss, The Studio of Doctor Faust (1956) shows the extremely strong link of Weiss to a German cultural background.
Weiss' best-known work is the play Marat/Sade (1963), first performed in West Berlin in 1964, which brought him widespread international attention. The following year, legendary director Peter Brook staged a famous production in New York City. It studies the power in society through two extreme and extremely different historical persons, Jean-Paul Marat, a brutal hero of the French Revolution, and the Marquis de Sade, for whom sadism was named. In Marat/Sade, Weiss uses a technique which, to quote from the play itself, speaks of the play within a play within itself: "Our play's chief aim has been to take to bits great propositions and their opposites, see how they work, and let them fight it out." The play is considered a classic, and is still performed, although less regularly.
Weiss was honored with the Charles Veillon Award, 1963; the Lessing Prize, 1965; the Heinrich Mann Prize, 1966; the Carl Albert Anderson Prize, 1967; the Thomas Dehler Prize, 1978; the Cologne Literature Prize, 1981; the Bremen Literature Prize, 1982; the De Nios Prize, 1982; the Swedish Theatre Critics Prize, 1982; and the Georg Büchner Prize, 1982.
A translation of Weiss' L'instruction (Die Ermittlung) was performed at London's Young Vic theater by a Rwandan company in November 2007. The production presented a dramatic contrast between the play's view on the Holocaust and the Rwandan actors' own experience with their nation's genocide.
http://literaturkritik.de/public/reze...
http://literaturkritik.de/public/reze...
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
December 6, 2020
Treći i završni deo „Estetike otpora” nastavlja sa bildungsom glavnog junaka, proletera i antifašiste, na njegovom putu da postane pisac. I ovde su, kao i u prethodna dva dela, razmatranja o umetnosti – od problema reprezentacija stvarnosti u umetničkom delu do pitanja stila – dati zajedno sa političkim dilemama i debatama evropske levice za vreme Drugog svetskog rata. Međutim, u trećem delu imamo jedan važan rascep koji donekle menja oblik čitave trilogije – glavni, neimenovani junak, dat kroz pripovedanje u prvom licu, postepeno u narativu biva zamenjen pripovedanjem u trećem licu o Šarloti Bišof, članici tajne komunističke antifašističke organizacije Rote Kapelle. Ovakva promena menja i način na koji istorijski događaji uplovljavaju u narativ. Dok u većem delu trilogije istorijski događaji dolaze u formi glasina, nepotpunih izveštaja, otežani meditavnim razmatranjima junaka u izdvojenim prostorima radničkih stanova, bolnica i izbegličkih soba, tek sa pripovedanjem u trećem licu o sudbini članova Rote Kapelle počinje direktnije pripovedanje o istorijskim događajima (reprezentacija istorije jeste stari problem otvoren u istorijskim romanima, pa se moram opet pozvati na Stendala i „Parmski kartuzijanski manastir” ali ovog puta na Fabrisove nedoumice da li je uopšte i video Bitku kod Voterloa.). Vrhunac tog susreta sa istorijom jeste opis, na deset strana, izvršenja smrtne kazne nad herojskim otporašima, za koji je Zebald napisao da mu nema ravnog u književnosti, a sa čime se u potpunosti slažem. Jedno od onih intenzivnih čitalačkih iskustava, posebno u kontrastu usporene i pasivne atmosfere beskrajnih razgovara i meditacija u ostatku trilogije.
Vajs nekad nema milosti prema svojim čitaocima, pogotovo u nizanju imena (nemam pojma kako bih knjigu pročitao da ne postoji internet), ali su baš te knjige, koje traže aktivni odnos prema njenoj formi i sadržaju, one koje nas najviše i obogate. Jedna od onih knjiga, koju kada završiš, poželiš da je pročitaš iznova jer imaš osećaj da je toliko bogata da si mnogo toga propustio i da bi je drugi put savladao sa većom veštinom. Razmišljajući o tome kako da se o emancipatorskim borbama pripoveda u budućnosti, Šarlot Bišof (a kroz nju, čini mi se, i sam Vajs) ističe da se o tome ne može pričati kao o pustolovinama, niti bi trebalo da pažnju slušaoca/čitaoca drži napetost priče, već svest da se ti događaji tiču njih. A emancipatorsku ideju će već svako morati da pronađe ponaosob za sebe i u sebi.
Hvala Slobodanu Damnjanoviću na prevodu i hvala Kontrastu na izdavanju ove trilogije. Najdraža knjiga pročitana u 2020. godini.
Vajs nekad nema milosti prema svojim čitaocima, pogotovo u nizanju imena (nemam pojma kako bih knjigu pročitao da ne postoji internet), ali su baš te knjige, koje traže aktivni odnos prema njenoj formi i sadržaju, one koje nas najviše i obogate. Jedna od onih knjiga, koju kada završiš, poželiš da je pročitaš iznova jer imaš osećaj da je toliko bogata da si mnogo toga propustio i da bi je drugi put savladao sa većom veštinom. Razmišljajući o tome kako da se o emancipatorskim borbama pripoveda u budućnosti, Šarlot Bišof (a kroz nju, čini mi se, i sam Vajs) ističe da se o tome ne može pričati kao o pustolovinama, niti bi trebalo da pažnju slušaoca/čitaoca drži napetost priče, već svest da se ti događaji tiču njih. A emancipatorsku ideju će već svako morati da pronađe ponaosob za sebe i u sebi.
Hvala Slobodanu Damnjanoviću na prevodu i hvala Kontrastu na izdavanju ove trilogije. Najdraža knjiga pročitana u 2020. godini.
June 28, 2025
Reading all three volumes (all available now in English for the first time as of this year so there's really no excuse anymore) is one of the great reading experiences you can indulge in. One of the great European novels of all time, no doubt in my mind. This final volume is in many ways the culmination of every thread laid out in the previous two: discussions of art, the politics of the avant garde, and the narrator's newfound commitment to his aesthetic project (following his brief apprenticeship of sorts with Brecht in the previous volume) reads like a process of development. In this sense the novel is a political bildungsroman, which charts a particular process of acculturation and socialization of the self as part of a system of others. But Weiss is not interested in identity which acts as a prism through which you engage with yourself; the struggle is evaluating yourself as a socially reproducible position.
This is a novel somewhat of despair but also of great revolutionary optimism, of resisting the pull of nihilistic oblivion, earnest working class militants who believe in the coming utopia of the future which of course depends entirely on their collective self-sacrifice for those who might be born generations after their demise. There is and always will be psychic continuity, however, between us and these martyrs of yesteryear: it is in art, which memorializes not only our experiences but the contradictions in these experiences. These objects, like Picasso's Guernica, survive their creator's world, manufacture a collective experience of historical time and in themselves behave as signs and symbols of the passage of such time. The more things change, etc. I highly recommend all three volumes of this novel, a true modernist work, a novel for our times
This is a novel somewhat of despair but also of great revolutionary optimism, of resisting the pull of nihilistic oblivion, earnest working class militants who believe in the coming utopia of the future which of course depends entirely on their collective self-sacrifice for those who might be born generations after their demise. There is and always will be psychic continuity, however, between us and these martyrs of yesteryear: it is in art, which memorializes not only our experiences but the contradictions in these experiences. These objects, like Picasso's Guernica, survive their creator's world, manufacture a collective experience of historical time and in themselves behave as signs and symbols of the passage of such time. The more things change, etc. I highly recommend all three volumes of this novel, a true modernist work, a novel for our times
June 1, 2025
“How could what we were experiencing, I asked myself, be delineated in such a way that we could recognise ourselves in it. The form would be monstrous.”
the form would be monstrous.
what, in the darkest wandering of our failures, in the worldwide depredation of despondency and paralysis, in the disfigured twilit world that remains of crushed revolts, exhumed revolutions, the heaps of our dead that occlude the sun, the catastrophe, the catastrophe, the catastrophe, remains of the future for which we fight? the question –– how do we prefigure a world to eclipse the monstrous suffering of capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, and the genocides wreaked in their wake and do so as wounded as we are by these totalities that form, shape, constrain all human life to our alienation from what we could be? how do we honestly attest to our responsibility for our failures, our responsibility for the massacres, executions, mass disappearances of life that only could have happened because of our failure, because of our death-drenched labyrinthine deception and defeat, when all the fighters that fought with weapons forged of hope and utopia vanished in prisons, torture, and silence, unable to leave behind a message for the outside world draped in flames? how do we remember? how do we reignite the past? how do we fight? how do we win?
this question is an aesthetic question –– a question that unfurls from how does a worker recognize their existence as a worker, as a being for which there may be dignity only if we negate the totality of the world that shapes us into a hand that wields the hammer on the anvil, the needle on the cloth, only if we fight for our own abolition, a question that expands into the remarkable consciousness of those crawling in the dust and the rubble taking up arms in a web of dreams who once they’ve committed themselves to the cause of liberation hold onto it never to abandon it even past death, a question that ruptures the world, because the totality must cease to be a totality for it to even be posed, but we can pose it only in a wounded way, only ever partially, intimately, whispered in code in safe houses, dark alleys, dungeons, in the slight awakening awareness that we’ve found something, that we’ve left something behind, all of our words are from the vocabulary of the enemy, all of the forms that are available to apprehend the atrocity of history and the endless, aimless, far-flung future, belong to the butchery of the enemy, how do we speak from the wound? how do we act from within loss? how do we shape our experiences so we can recognize what we could be within them, that is, so that we can fight? the form will have been monstrous.
the abyssal moon hanged over the massacre would shed light on the answer:
However, the most important thing was not that there were forces at work seeking to butcher people in massive numbers, but that there were some who had set about working to thwart these deeds; and the remarkable thing about that was not that they could scarcely be heard, that they were so inconspicuous, but that they existed at all, that they had evaded the persecutions, that they hadn’t fallen into the enemy’s traps, that they were able to communicate with each other and found secret ways of coming together to hatch their plans. The crucial factor was not that at this moment, hundreds were tumbling into a ditch, because with that, they had already become useless; but that a few of them had managed to organize and form small cells, which were now to be expanded. What was important, the thing that outweighed everything else, was not the constant shattering and crumbling, but the effort of persevering amid the droning, screaming, and wheezing. Time and again, the piles of rubble had to be pushed aside to create tiny spaces in which to move, and this could never seem pointless, even when the avalanches started up again and the ground trembled, because then the forces of annihilation would already have gotten to you, would already have forced you to your knees. You had to tell yourself that conditions had never been as favorable as they were right now, that no losses could prevent us from defeating the enemy.
the form would be monstrous.
what, in the darkest wandering of our failures, in the worldwide depredation of despondency and paralysis, in the disfigured twilit world that remains of crushed revolts, exhumed revolutions, the heaps of our dead that occlude the sun, the catastrophe, the catastrophe, the catastrophe, remains of the future for which we fight? the question –– how do we prefigure a world to eclipse the monstrous suffering of capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, and the genocides wreaked in their wake and do so as wounded as we are by these totalities that form, shape, constrain all human life to our alienation from what we could be? how do we honestly attest to our responsibility for our failures, our responsibility for the massacres, executions, mass disappearances of life that only could have happened because of our failure, because of our death-drenched labyrinthine deception and defeat, when all the fighters that fought with weapons forged of hope and utopia vanished in prisons, torture, and silence, unable to leave behind a message for the outside world draped in flames? how do we remember? how do we reignite the past? how do we fight? how do we win?
this question is an aesthetic question –– a question that unfurls from how does a worker recognize their existence as a worker, as a being for which there may be dignity only if we negate the totality of the world that shapes us into a hand that wields the hammer on the anvil, the needle on the cloth, only if we fight for our own abolition, a question that expands into the remarkable consciousness of those crawling in the dust and the rubble taking up arms in a web of dreams who once they’ve committed themselves to the cause of liberation hold onto it never to abandon it even past death, a question that ruptures the world, because the totality must cease to be a totality for it to even be posed, but we can pose it only in a wounded way, only ever partially, intimately, whispered in code in safe houses, dark alleys, dungeons, in the slight awakening awareness that we’ve found something, that we’ve left something behind, all of our words are from the vocabulary of the enemy, all of the forms that are available to apprehend the atrocity of history and the endless, aimless, far-flung future, belong to the butchery of the enemy, how do we speak from the wound? how do we act from within loss? how do we shape our experiences so we can recognize what we could be within them, that is, so that we can fight? the form will have been monstrous.
the abyssal moon hanged over the massacre would shed light on the answer:
However, the most important thing was not that there were forces at work seeking to butcher people in massive numbers, but that there were some who had set about working to thwart these deeds; and the remarkable thing about that was not that they could scarcely be heard, that they were so inconspicuous, but that they existed at all, that they had evaded the persecutions, that they hadn’t fallen into the enemy’s traps, that they were able to communicate with each other and found secret ways of coming together to hatch their plans. The crucial factor was not that at this moment, hundreds were tumbling into a ditch, because with that, they had already become useless; but that a few of them had managed to organize and form small cells, which were now to be expanded. What was important, the thing that outweighed everything else, was not the constant shattering and crumbling, but the effort of persevering amid the droning, screaming, and wheezing. Time and again, the piles of rubble had to be pushed aside to create tiny spaces in which to move, and this could never seem pointless, even when the avalanches started up again and the ground trembled, because then the forces of annihilation would already have gotten to you, would already have forced you to your knees. You had to tell yourself that conditions had never been as favorable as they were right now, that no losses could prevent us from defeating the enemy.
August 27, 2025
Perhaps I will have more thoughts to come, but I will keep it brief.
Weiss has accomplished something truly special in the realm of "historical fiction," and has done it in such a way as to open the historical to the futurity of its writing and to its concurrent reading in waves across generations. There has been no greater book I have yet read that elucidates the struggle within the loose frame of twentieth century Marxism and antifascism, that probes its contradictions, that animates its human actors, that historicizes its roots in the past and in the literary and the plastic arts.
If you have had any doubts through volumes one and two as to whether this book was going anywhere or whether it were even possible for Weiss to pull off an ending for a book that at times begins to sprawl so widely that it feels like a world, I promise you that it is worth making it to the end of volume 3. I am glad I waited for the trilogy to be translated completely so that I could read it as a single uninterrupted work. It is a book I will think about for the rest of my life.
Weiss has accomplished something truly special in the realm of "historical fiction," and has done it in such a way as to open the historical to the futurity of its writing and to its concurrent reading in waves across generations. There has been no greater book I have yet read that elucidates the struggle within the loose frame of twentieth century Marxism and antifascism, that probes its contradictions, that animates its human actors, that historicizes its roots in the past and in the literary and the plastic arts.
If you have had any doubts through volumes one and two as to whether this book was going anywhere or whether it were even possible for Weiss to pull off an ending for a book that at times begins to sprawl so widely that it feels like a world, I promise you that it is worth making it to the end of volume 3. I am glad I waited for the trilogy to be translated completely so that I could read it as a single uninterrupted work. It is a book I will think about for the rest of my life.
April 13, 2025
Harrowing, overwhelming, dense, inspiring, essential. And with a twist in its tail wherein Weiss insists upon its status as a novel, not nonfiction in disguise.
May 27, 2025
"What appeared to us so often as the impossibility of art, of literature, was in reality the prerequisite for the work that made life possible." (40)
"We were always talking about proletarian culture, but when I ask myself now what we meant by it, then it seems to me as if we were closest to it when we set off on our bikes into the Spandau Forest, or headed to Lake Tegel, when we were sitting in paddle boats, participated in the gymnastics club, and, how can I put it, it was fun, it spurred us on, like how finding the key to an artwork can provide a sense of release. In that sense, art is a bit like letting a deep breath out of your body." (82)
"There was a sculptor among us, whose oeuvre was not large, and a writer, whose poems and novels will not go down in the history of literature." (200)
"I'm content to know that I never did anything other than what I believed was right, even though at this moment, what's right is once again growing blurry." (201)
"and what was on the stamp that John Sieg had inserted into the cut-out section on the bottom of his little suitcase. She had often set this briefcase down on a street corner, on a train platform, and when she continued on her way, the ground would read wehrt euch, resist. A small phrase that was quickly washed away before reappearing on other stones. The day she found out about Sieg's death, she had rushed around the streets with the little suitcase right through the night. Wehrt euch, she had pressed onto the pavement, inking up the stamp time and again, leaving the imprint of wehrt euch all around the city, hardly even looking over her shoulder, as if she had wanted to get caught as well." (224)
"We were always talking about proletarian culture, but when I ask myself now what we meant by it, then it seems to me as if we were closest to it when we set off on our bikes into the Spandau Forest, or headed to Lake Tegel, when we were sitting in paddle boats, participated in the gymnastics club, and, how can I put it, it was fun, it spurred us on, like how finding the key to an artwork can provide a sense of release. In that sense, art is a bit like letting a deep breath out of your body." (82)
"There was a sculptor among us, whose oeuvre was not large, and a writer, whose poems and novels will not go down in the history of literature." (200)
"I'm content to know that I never did anything other than what I believed was right, even though at this moment, what's right is once again growing blurry." (201)
"and what was on the stamp that John Sieg had inserted into the cut-out section on the bottom of his little suitcase. She had often set this briefcase down on a street corner, on a train platform, and when she continued on her way, the ground would read wehrt euch, resist. A small phrase that was quickly washed away before reappearing on other stones. The day she found out about Sieg's death, she had rushed around the streets with the little suitcase right through the night. Wehrt euch, she had pressed onto the pavement, inking up the stamp time and again, leaving the imprint of wehrt euch all around the city, hardly even looking over her shoulder, as if she had wanted to get caught as well." (224)
October 26, 2025
My (dear beloved) wife may have a degree in Political Science from USC but I have read Peter Weiss!
What do I mean by that?
I don't know, I am just trying to be witty I guess, but the last few weeks have been a more thorough political education for me (a 55 y/o middle-class PMC-milieu born downwardly mobile freelance artist) than my High School years with a fantastic leftist teacher and his quite confrontational (to the curriculum) focus on specifics of the Nazi era.
Anyways, I quote page 246, towards the very end, in the German edition because Weiss' deep, granular, relentless investigation into the role of art and culture in dark times is an incredible inspiration to me: "As long as the will to resist exists, culture also exists. In silence, in conformity, culture vanishes; there remains only ceremony and ritual. Even if, given the overwhelming odds, only a few hundred remain in rebellion, this still proves the existence of a culture."
We live in times of ceremony and ritual again. Arguably I was raised in that a-political framework of ceremony and ritual of Western Germany (the good Germany ...) and I am just realizing it now ...
I want to read this book again and again and look up the biographies of the fascinating (real life!) protagonists, their struggle for unity, their unfortunate but also inevitable missteps in strategy against the Nazis, I want to immerse myself again and again in this world from almost 100 years ago, written when I was a toddle, so I can learn about the one I am in now, as an adult!
What do I mean by that?
I don't know, I am just trying to be witty I guess, but the last few weeks have been a more thorough political education for me (a 55 y/o middle-class PMC-milieu born downwardly mobile freelance artist) than my High School years with a fantastic leftist teacher and his quite confrontational (to the curriculum) focus on specifics of the Nazi era.
Anyways, I quote page 246, towards the very end, in the German edition because Weiss' deep, granular, relentless investigation into the role of art and culture in dark times is an incredible inspiration to me: "As long as the will to resist exists, culture also exists. In silence, in conformity, culture vanishes; there remains only ceremony and ritual. Even if, given the overwhelming odds, only a few hundred remain in rebellion, this still proves the existence of a culture."
We live in times of ceremony and ritual again. Arguably I was raised in that a-political framework of ceremony and ritual of Western Germany (the good Germany ...) and I am just realizing it now ...
I want to read this book again and again and look up the biographies of the fascinating (real life!) protagonists, their struggle for unity, their unfortunate but also inevitable missteps in strategy against the Nazis, I want to immerse myself again and again in this world from almost 100 years ago, written when I was a toddle, so I can learn about the one I am in now, as an adult!
May 24, 2025
‘When things are beyond rational comprehension…that’s the very time we must apply our reason. It’s our only weapon’. —Trotsky in Exile
The Pergamon Altar is the occasion for the unnamed narrator of The Aesthetics of Resistance (1981) — a cipher for the novel’s author were his origins self-consciously proletarian rather than bourgeois — to reflect, along with his comrades in an underground anti-fascist movement, on the contradictions between the ruling class and a caste of technocrats cultivated and secured relative to a then-emerging social order of domination based on private property. At issue is how a working-class intelligentsia in the present should relate to cultural forms clearly marked by aristocratic ideals. The altar is a work of military triumphalism, built in order to consolidate Eumenes II’s monarchical authority and also exerted an influence over Nazi architecture. The comparison is striking and indicative of the ways in which Weiss’ understanding of capitalism is essentially Banajian. Passages which describe the rise of capitalism emphasise the role of merchants, seafarers and colonists. There is more continuity than differentiation between different forms of oppression legible in the works of European art across which the novel moves, whether feudal, capitalist, financial, imperial or state.
continues: https://aonchiallach.substack.com/p/p...
The Pergamon Altar is the occasion for the unnamed narrator of The Aesthetics of Resistance (1981) — a cipher for the novel’s author were his origins self-consciously proletarian rather than bourgeois — to reflect, along with his comrades in an underground anti-fascist movement, on the contradictions between the ruling class and a caste of technocrats cultivated and secured relative to a then-emerging social order of domination based on private property. At issue is how a working-class intelligentsia in the present should relate to cultural forms clearly marked by aristocratic ideals. The altar is a work of military triumphalism, built in order to consolidate Eumenes II’s monarchical authority and also exerted an influence over Nazi architecture. The comparison is striking and indicative of the ways in which Weiss’ understanding of capitalism is essentially Banajian. Passages which describe the rise of capitalism emphasise the role of merchants, seafarers and colonists. There is more continuity than differentiation between different forms of oppression legible in the works of European art across which the novel moves, whether feudal, capitalist, financial, imperial or state.
continues: https://aonchiallach.substack.com/p/p...
August 23, 2025
Sobbed through the last pages
December 31, 2025
3.76
I did like some of the more personal things here in volume III, so I’m rounding up.
Glad I read those, glad it’s over.
I did like some of the more personal things here in volume III, so I’m rounding up.
Glad I read those, glad it’s over.
January 7, 2026
Amongst the best novels I have ever read. Soul crushing ... in a good way.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews