The Aesthetics of Resistance, Volume II

The Aesthetics of Resistance #2

by Peter Weiss

A major literary event, the publication of the second 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. The crowning achievement of Peter Weiss—the internationally renowned writer best known for his play Marat/Sade—The Aesthetics of Resistance spans the period from the late 1930s to World War II, dramatizing antifascist resistance and the rise and fall of proletarian political parties in Europe.

Volume two, initially published in 1978, opens as the unnamed narrator finds himself in Paris after having retreated from the front lines of the Spanish Civil War. From there, he moves on to Stockholm, where he works in a factory, becomes involved with the Communist Party, and meets Bertolt Brecht. Featuring the narrator's extended meditations on paintings, sculpture, and literature, the novel teems with characters, almost all of whom are based on historical figures. Throughout, the narrator explores the affinity between political resistance and art—the connection at the heart of Weiss's novel. Weiss suggests that meaning lies in embracing resistance, no matter how intense the oppression, and that we must look to art for new models of political action and social understanding. The Aesthetics of Resistance is one of the truly great works of postwar German literature and an essential resource for understanding twentieth-century history.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Novels, German Literature, Politics, Germany, Literature

336 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Peter 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...

Reviews

[Brodolomi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Od svih impozantnih epizoda u ovom „kolariću, paniću, pletemo se samiću” svega i svačega romanu izdvajam jednu od poslednjih, gde glavni junak pomaže Bertoldu Brehtu da spakuje svoju biblioteku u sanduke pred begom zbog moguće invazije nacista na Švedsku, u koju su se krajem tridesetih izbegli mnogi levo orijentisani intelektualci. Ajde što je ona maestralno napisana, nekako se već do kraja drugog dela navikneš da je Vajs majstor, nego što te diskretni patos epizode baš dirne, iako si negde već oguglao na sav taj čemer iz knjige. Možda najubedljivija počast ličnoj biblioteci ikada napisana. Dok se kataloški nižu naslovi spakovani u sanduke, „taj neviđeni metež” različitih knjiga, žanrova, „svetova utvara, aveti i divljih snova”, gde se jedan autor nalazi pored autora sa kojim ništa ne deli (ako sam ja dobro izbrojao Vajs na osam stranica nabraja preko 200 autora), Breht odjednom zaboravlja na strah izbeglištva. Iako je do tada paničio, dok skida knjige sa polica, predao se čitanju, voljan da pomoćnicima objašnjava šta ga vezuje za svaku od njih i da citira omiljene delove. Svi ga opominju da požuri, ali njega to ne sprečava da, recimo, ispriča da voli Kafku zato što se nije brinuo da li će knjiga imati kraj, ili da teoretizuje kako samo „fragmenti u sebi nosi obeležja autentičnosti zato što je najbliži unutrašnjem funkcionisanju stvaralačkog čina, čina koji se poklapa sa disanjem, sa prostom činjenicom postojanja i koji izražava kratkotrajnu fazu proživljenu u svesti”. Lična biblioteka je entitet u koji je upisana unutrašnja biografija vlasnika. Knjige otvaraju put u slobodu i saveznici su u borbi protiv nepijateljskih sila. Breht može pred tajnim agentima sa nalogom za premetačinu da se kurči i da stoji ispred knjiga „kao da hoće da ih zaštiti svojim telom”, može i da ih gađa primercima Agate Kristi i Rejmonda Čendlera. Ali, ispade da je estetika otpora, koliko mi se čini, u osnovi estetika koja podrazumeva nemoć i poraz. Nekoliko stranica kasnije, drugi tom se završava rečenicom: „Levo, na zgradi Nemačke ambasade na Blaziholmenu, i desno, ne nemačkim teretnim brodićima u luci, lepršale su zastave sa kukaskim krstom. A Breht se prolazeći preko mostića do broda odjednom skokljao, pa su ga dok se peo na brod pridržavali, gotovo nosili”. Iako mi je ostao još treći tom, mislim da ovaj završetak sa Brehtovim padom lepo sumira jedan vrlo važan deo koncepcije Vajsove ideje otpora – pružanje otpora, ali bez izgleda na pobedu. Možda je to bio i Vajsova motivacija da piše ovakav ep natovaren ogromnim ideološkim teretom u vreme kada se na tu vrstu levih ideologija nije gledalo blagonaklono. Mora da je imao svest da piše veliki roman, ali i da piše knjigu koju niko neće čitati, barem ne u to vreme.

[Griffin Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

600+ pages in, we have traversed three years to arrive at April 1940. The final volume will take us thru 1945 in some 270 (what I must assume to be brutal) pages. This volume read as a classic second-volume-of-a-trilogy, not as strong as the first, doing the setup for the third, but now I know why historically a medieval peasant uprising in Sweden spelled the inevitable undoing of the possibility for Communist revolution there some 480 years later. Social Democracy is the pressure valve that undoes all that built up gas of ferment—or as it's put succinctly somewhere in vol 1 in the mouth of the anarchists, the reformist tendency of Social Democracy: "would lead at most to a socializing of poverty."

[Differengenera · Rating 5 out of 5]

reviewed this for the marx & philosophy review of books https://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/revi...

[Donald]

Wonderful book with gut-wrenching debates over the socialist left. The discovery of method and the importance of history, of sifting and sorting perspectives. Adventures into art and history that swirl around. Lunatics feeling around in the dark but with the highest stakes possible.

[Rhys · Rating 5 out of 5]

"he [Brecht? the narrator? the author?] seemed to set to work drafting a dramatic epic that could do justice to the continual bifurcations and ruptures, the contradictions and ambiguities of the events."

Love the layers in this book. Don't love the wait for the third volume to be translated and published.

[jq · Rating 5 out of 5]

"then I heard shrill laughter from Brecht, he had kept the officers from getting at his manuscript folders, Steffin had opened some of the covers, Branting had said he vouched for the fact that the sheets contained exclusively aesthetic texts; yes, screamed Brecht, almost sobbing, beautiful poems, songs, chiseled prose. Indecisively, the police officers strutted around for a while between the tables before heading off. The detective novels, cried Brecht, you've forgotten the detective novels, rushing up the steps to the little mezzanine where he slept, jumped down with stacks of the cheap, dog-eared books that he liked to read in the evening, tore open the window, threw them after the police, and there they lay in the garden, Wallace, Doyle, Christie, Chandler, Carr, Carter, Quentin, Sayers, and all the rest, lying in the puddles and the moldering leaves." (301)

[michal k-c · Rating 5 out of 5]

Going to reserve some thoughts and maybe writer a longer review when I finish volume 3. Have to say though that Weiss’ capability for art writing is up there with the very best, the close reading of Géricault’s Wreck of the Medusa has an energy and dynamism lacking from a lot of contemporary art crit / writing. Upsetting ending to this volume, to say the least.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book will make you smarter.

[Matt T · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly important work for anyone on the left who wants to understand the history of proto-communist struggle, the Soviet tragedy, and how communism might or might not intersect with parliamentary politics today. Weiss, like John Berger, is the master of radical political readings of art which, for want of a better word, ‘enriches’ our aesthetic experience.

[draxtor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just astonishing what Weiss does here! I finally - at age 55 y/o - understand the broad appeal of fascism across national borders.
Highlight here the unnamed protagonist's time in Sweden and the (fictional) interactions with Bertolt Brecht and his attempts to synthesize what is happening in the 1941 in a (failed) play about Engelbrekt Engelbrektsson !!! Just fantastic how Weiss paints one of the greatest writers (IMHO) here as both of course committed to the cause but also realizing perhaps how limited art (literature, theatre) is to enlighten the masses, how Brecht is aware of his stature and how he commands his "minions" etc.

The great Willi Münzenberg is portrayed as well, I had to interrupt reading the novel to look him up and be amazed of the bravery and - again - commitment to freeing the working class but alas conflict with the "motherland" of the revolution i.e. its bearded leader at the time and his people resulted in as we well know a LOT of deaths and betrayals and Weiss does NOT shy away from showing in excessive detail (without a dogmatic point of view) how the Communist Party in the Soviet Union leading up to WWII has failed to continue a revolution that would benefit the global proletariat.

The tone if this volume is most definitely a somber one and I suspect it gets more depressing in volume 3. Facts of course are (were!) that destruction and death won and only a small handful of activists tried to fight it!

Oh boy ... if everyone read this huge doorstopper (all three volumes) then I think in 2025 we had the ability to look at things in a more comprehensive fashion than if we'd continue to doomscroll.
Alas as one Silicon Valley douchebag named Marc Andreessen once said: "Thank God for Oxycontin and video games ....."
:(

[Harris]

A great continuation of the first volume. Here we encounter the Louvre and Brecht's studio. This volume is less exciting than the first, but the stories about Engelbrekt and political struggles in 19th century Sweden exemplify Weiss's goal to restore narrative and continuity to us in the postmodern age.

Walter Benjamin says that “discontinuity must be the regulative idea of the tradition of the ruling classes (essentially the bourgeoisie), continuity that of the oppressed classes (the proletariat).” Weiss succeeds in recreating continuity.

Hopefully it won't be too, too long before the third volume is translated.

[Ryan Saunders · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is truly a book like no other. Through discussions and in-depth commentary on art, (visual art, literature, even unfinished works that Weiss boldly takes it upon himself to complete) it becomes clear that this novel is a magnum opus.

I came away knowing at least 70% more about the struggles of the Left leading up to World War II than I did before reading it.

Volume II is where the novel really takes shape. The writing feels more organized, more controlled. Every sentence gleams with clarity and precision.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

I continue to be amazed by this novel. Its deep committment to rank-and-file, working-class politics, to revolutionary pluralism, to collective self-education, and to the possibility of truly communist forms of art and criticism is genuinely inspiring. The way in which it inserts the reader into the history of European anti-fascism and proletarian struggle is like nothing else. I think I'll be coming back to The Aesthetics of Resistance for the rest of my life.

[Fred · Rating 5 out of 5]

A strange masterpiece, despite - or perhaps because of - the lengthy passages on Swedish peasant revolts in the 1430s and disputes between Swedish communists and social democrats in the 1920s and 30s. Eager for the third volume, due out in 2025.

[Rachel Kowal · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book continues to have its moments. For me, they are few and far between, but I've read volume III is the one that most resembles a novel, so won't that be fun?

In all seriousness, it has been good to read and discuss this in a group.