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Conspirators
Book by Bernstein, Michael Andre
- GenresFiction
Paperback
Published January 19, 2006
8 people want to read
About the author
Michael André Bernstein
9 books11 followersMichael André Bernstein was Professor of English and Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Guggenheim Fellow, and winner of the Koret Israel Prize who made prolific contributions to the field of literary criticism. His novel, Conspirators, was selected as one of the three finalists for the 2004 Reform Jewish Prize for fiction, was named one of the 25 best novels of the year by the Los Angeles Times, and was shortlisted for the 2004 Commonwealth Writers' Prize.
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July 7, 2024
A truly remarkable novel and before anything else I should clarify that this is not a historical 'thriller' involving spies and anarchists a la forgettable twaddle like 'The Man from St. Petersburg' by Ken Follet or even fine novels like 'The Birds Fall Down' by Rebecca West, 'Death of a Schoolboy' by Hans Koning or 'The Curilof Affair' by Irene Nemirovsky. This can only, and has been, compared to 'A Man Without Qualities' by Robert Musil (please see my footnote *1 below) as a portrait of the empire of Austria-Hungary on the eve of World War I and the conflicts over change amongst the empires classes and nationalities.
"...although their country boasted some of the finest political minds in Europe...they had to admit that as far as their governance was concerned, the Empire seemed to abhor clear definitions...It was far from democratic...(but) it could no longer be described as entirely aristocratic...and as each class became less certain about the boundaries of its power, the areas of friction between them increased. But so too, it was often affirmed, did the areas of cooperative contact, contradictions that only meant that the administration of the Empire had now joined theology as one of the unfathomable mysteries that more and more impenetrable studies were being written..." (page 128-29 in my edition)
This is a brilliant exposition of the position of the Austro-Hungarian empire though that position might also be understood via nomenclature. Hungary was the 'Lands of the Crown of Saint Stephen', or 'Transleithania' while the other half of the empire was known as 'Lands Represented in the Imperial Council', or 'Cisleithania'. The 'Austrian' empire' didn't actually exist between 1867 and 1918 (when it did, briefly, come into existence when the last emperor, Karl, was trying to save the collapsing Habsburg inheritance). The component lands and peoples of Austria-Hungary, the Habsburg lands, the Austrian empire, Cisleithania and Transleithania, however you refer to them, all had different relationships with the emperor who was the only unifying force and this is important to understand when reading 'Conspirators' because it is a story from a land even more lost in the mists of time then the 'Austrian' empire, Galicia (or the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria with the Grand Duchy of Kraków and the Duchies of Auschwitz and Zator as it was then referred to). Once part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, swallowed up by Marie Teresa during the partition of Poland ("She cries, but she takes" was Frederick II of Prussia's caustic but accurate observation) it was part of Poland after WWI but after WWII it was divided between Poland and Ukraine. The important thing to remember is that whatever Galicia was before WWI was eviscerated (please see my footnote *2 below).
The story of 'Conspirators' is a story not simply unique to the Austrian empire but unique to the Kingdom of Galicia. It would be totally different if set in Bohemia, Hungary or Bosnia-Herzegovina because in Galicia the story, although about class and nationality as it would be elsewhere, involves a nationality without a nation, the Jews. Mr. Bernstein's brilliant, and witty, portrayal of the Jews of Galicia is awe inspiring:
"...The close conjunction of Passover and Easter had presented (observant Jews) with a serious theological dilemma. Card playing was strictly forbidden among them; indeed it served as the very archetype of 'goyishe naches', foolishness in which gentiles delight and on which they unaccountably waste so many precious hours. Twice a year, though, at Christmas always and at Easter, whenever it did not overlap with Passover, the rabbis not only permitted but actively encouraged their congregation(s) to spend the entire night playing cards as a sign of their disdain for the heretical religion that had sprung up from among them only to become their greatest persecutor." (from page 457 in my edition.)
This same observational genius is not confined to the Jews, Bernstein is equally wonderful on the great aristocratic pillars of the empire. Towards the end of the book he describes a member of one of the great princely families a Hohenlohe-Schillingsfurst who dresses up in a set of his families antique set of armour (please see my footnote *3 below) to participate in 300 anniversary celebration:
"...The Count-Governor was convinced that as soon as the people caught sight of the squat figure (of Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst), made up like an extra from the Imperial Opera House, a torrent of laughter was sure to break out, and the ceremony would be overwhelmed by the kind of public humiliation tat was nearly as dangerous to the government as revolutionary violence. To his amazement, though, it was Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst who seemed to inspire the unstinting admiration of the spectators. At every stage along the parade route he was greeted with loud applauses (sic) and shouts of "Hurrah!" in appreciation of his willingness to dress for his part without holding anything back. The moment people caught sight of him, the cheers began, and they swelled in volume until they mastched anything heard by his ancestors on their way back into the capitol victorious from the battlefield."
All this is a roundabout way of saying that what this novel is about is less important than what it has to say. It dissects not simply the Austro-Hungarian empire, but revolutionary movements, disaffected young men, intellectual currents ranging from anarcism to zionism and the world of the 'wonder rebbe'. This is a brilliant novel, I am sure it was a work of love and many years of gestation (unfortunately Michael Bernstein died from a virulent cancer before he could write another. It is well worth searching out the various tributes to him on Google). It might be said that it is too long but like Mozart being told he had written too many notes one can only respond 'what would you cut?' and of course it is impossible to single out anything as superfluous.
*1 I want to make clear that I have not read all of Robert Musil's unfinished masterpiece. I did, way back in the 1980's, own the 3 volume Picador paperback edition and read a chunk of volume one. I never found time to read them all and eventually lost them like all the books of my youth. The intention to read them remains though I am running out of time. Musil, like Proust and Joyce is, I believe, one of those 20th century door stop novelists that we are all aware of and familiar with to a greater or lesser degree but which few of us have actually read in their entirety.
*2 Although an odd thing to do I can't help recommending you read the chapter on the kingdom of Galicia in 'Vanished Kingdoms' by Norman Davies. Not only for greater understanding of 'Conspirators' but for a better understanding of understanding a huge range of literature by the likes of Joseph Roth and many others.
*3 Although irrelevant to this review I can't help mentioning a similar scene near the culmination of the film 'If' by Lindsay Anderson.
"...although their country boasted some of the finest political minds in Europe...they had to admit that as far as their governance was concerned, the Empire seemed to abhor clear definitions...It was far from democratic...(but) it could no longer be described as entirely aristocratic...and as each class became less certain about the boundaries of its power, the areas of friction between them increased. But so too, it was often affirmed, did the areas of cooperative contact, contradictions that only meant that the administration of the Empire had now joined theology as one of the unfathomable mysteries that more and more impenetrable studies were being written..." (page 128-29 in my edition)
This is a brilliant exposition of the position of the Austro-Hungarian empire though that position might also be understood via nomenclature. Hungary was the 'Lands of the Crown of Saint Stephen', or 'Transleithania' while the other half of the empire was known as 'Lands Represented in the Imperial Council', or 'Cisleithania'. The 'Austrian' empire' didn't actually exist between 1867 and 1918 (when it did, briefly, come into existence when the last emperor, Karl, was trying to save the collapsing Habsburg inheritance). The component lands and peoples of Austria-Hungary, the Habsburg lands, the Austrian empire, Cisleithania and Transleithania, however you refer to them, all had different relationships with the emperor who was the only unifying force and this is important to understand when reading 'Conspirators' because it is a story from a land even more lost in the mists of time then the 'Austrian' empire, Galicia (or the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria with the Grand Duchy of Kraków and the Duchies of Auschwitz and Zator as it was then referred to). Once part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, swallowed up by Marie Teresa during the partition of Poland ("She cries, but she takes" was Frederick II of Prussia's caustic but accurate observation) it was part of Poland after WWI but after WWII it was divided between Poland and Ukraine. The important thing to remember is that whatever Galicia was before WWI was eviscerated (please see my footnote *2 below).
The story of 'Conspirators' is a story not simply unique to the Austrian empire but unique to the Kingdom of Galicia. It would be totally different if set in Bohemia, Hungary or Bosnia-Herzegovina because in Galicia the story, although about class and nationality as it would be elsewhere, involves a nationality without a nation, the Jews. Mr. Bernstein's brilliant, and witty, portrayal of the Jews of Galicia is awe inspiring:
"...The close conjunction of Passover and Easter had presented (observant Jews) with a serious theological dilemma. Card playing was strictly forbidden among them; indeed it served as the very archetype of 'goyishe naches', foolishness in which gentiles delight and on which they unaccountably waste so many precious hours. Twice a year, though, at Christmas always and at Easter, whenever it did not overlap with Passover, the rabbis not only permitted but actively encouraged their congregation(s) to spend the entire night playing cards as a sign of their disdain for the heretical religion that had sprung up from among them only to become their greatest persecutor." (from page 457 in my edition.)
This same observational genius is not confined to the Jews, Bernstein is equally wonderful on the great aristocratic pillars of the empire. Towards the end of the book he describes a member of one of the great princely families a Hohenlohe-Schillingsfurst who dresses up in a set of his families antique set of armour (please see my footnote *3 below) to participate in 300 anniversary celebration:
"...The Count-Governor was convinced that as soon as the people caught sight of the squat figure (of Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst), made up like an extra from the Imperial Opera House, a torrent of laughter was sure to break out, and the ceremony would be overwhelmed by the kind of public humiliation tat was nearly as dangerous to the government as revolutionary violence. To his amazement, though, it was Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst who seemed to inspire the unstinting admiration of the spectators. At every stage along the parade route he was greeted with loud applauses (sic) and shouts of "Hurrah!" in appreciation of his willingness to dress for his part without holding anything back. The moment people caught sight of him, the cheers began, and they swelled in volume until they mastched anything heard by his ancestors on their way back into the capitol victorious from the battlefield."
All this is a roundabout way of saying that what this novel is about is less important than what it has to say. It dissects not simply the Austro-Hungarian empire, but revolutionary movements, disaffected young men, intellectual currents ranging from anarcism to zionism and the world of the 'wonder rebbe'. This is a brilliant novel, I am sure it was a work of love and many years of gestation (unfortunately Michael Bernstein died from a virulent cancer before he could write another. It is well worth searching out the various tributes to him on Google). It might be said that it is too long but like Mozart being told he had written too many notes one can only respond 'what would you cut?' and of course it is impossible to single out anything as superfluous.
*1 I want to make clear that I have not read all of Robert Musil's unfinished masterpiece. I did, way back in the 1980's, own the 3 volume Picador paperback edition and read a chunk of volume one. I never found time to read them all and eventually lost them like all the books of my youth. The intention to read them remains though I am running out of time. Musil, like Proust and Joyce is, I believe, one of those 20th century door stop novelists that we are all aware of and familiar with to a greater or lesser degree but which few of us have actually read in their entirety.
*2 Although an odd thing to do I can't help recommending you read the chapter on the kingdom of Galicia in 'Vanished Kingdoms' by Norman Davies. Not only for greater understanding of 'Conspirators' but for a better understanding of understanding a huge range of literature by the likes of Joseph Roth and many others.
*3 Although irrelevant to this review I can't help mentioning a similar scene near the culmination of the film 'If' by Lindsay Anderson.
Displaying 1 of 1 review