Bottom's Dream discussion

This is my 2nd Arno after The Egghead Republic. Anybody else read this one? Any comments?

There was actually a theater performance based on this short novel. From the website:

based on the short novel by Arno Schmidt
SCHWARZE SPIEGEL | BLACK MIRRORS
Directed by Kathrin Herm
Théâtre National du Luxembourg
Opening Date 08-06-2023

After the brilliant stage adaptation of Bernward Vesper's The Journey, the latest collaboration of Théâtre National du Luxembourg with the critically acclaimed Viennese theater collective tangent.COLLABORATIONS once again deals with a great outsider of 20th century German Literature: Arno Schmidt. At the beginning of the 1950s, at a first peak of the Cold War, the author poetically and powerfully drafts the dystopia Black Mirrors, disturbing and fascinating at the same time. He paints the picture of our planet after a nuclear strike: apparently only one person has survived. Thrown back on himself, he works his way through the remnants of humanity and his existence. "Energy is a matter of luck": on his bicycle, the protagonist, who is writing a kind of chronicle, moves through rubble landscapes and nature like a cowboy in a Western, "windbag of the highest order, capable and unapologetic of any absurdity."

Schmidt's story is a striking rediscovery, a sparkling, masterly work of Literature. In Kathrin Herm's stage version of Black Mirrors in a set by award-winning set-designer Mirjam Stängl, Aleksandra Ćorović and Jan Plewka embark on an abysmal, sensual, musical and humorous trip without a return ticket that you should not miss.

First paragraph from Dark Mirrors, a mathematical Look over Arno Schmidt's fence Published: Aug 2016 --- Author: noted as Theodor --- Website: The Peacock's Tail - Essays on Mathematics and Culture

Roaming through the post apocalyptic scenery of Lüneburg Heath in northern Germany, Arno Schmidt’s hero hasn’t met a single soul in five years. The thermonuclear world war that erupted sometime in the mid-fifties between the U.S.A. and the Soviet Union has left the world in ruins and only a few isolated individuals, as the story’s protagonist assumes at some point, are “still nomadizing about”, separated by very large, often contaminated, wastelands. “Dark Mirrors” (1951) is a pessimistic story written mostly in first person narrative, in a diary-like manner, often becoming an inner monologue, bearing the unmistakable mark of Schmidt’s own personality and world views. “The primo motore of it all“, of all evil in the universe, according to Schmidt, is Leviathan, the evil creator, the god-tyrant and predatory monster who created the world in his own image and evilness and for whom the hero of “Dark mirrors” felt “so hate-full, that I raised my rifle, aimed it toward heaven: and through his Leviathan’s maw gaped ten thousand nebulae: I’d like to pounce on the dog!“. In such a world, where Good is unhuman, unnatural and undivine, and contrary to reason, man like “a machine, a mere tool” allows himself to be “used and misused by strange hands […] especially when pressed together in great masses“. Schmidt lets his Crusoe-like alter ego of the “Dark Mirrors” clearly admit it: “if they only had listened to Malthus and Annie Besant; but by 1950 things had gone so far that the earth grew by 100000 every day: one hundred thousand!! I looked contentedly through the black pine stalks: good that it had turned out this way!” The image of the solitary man who gathers his robes about him in defense as he is pressed in by “the bustling, hand-rubbing mob from all directions […] with their hissing, lecherous, paned faces, pointing with mocking, metal-soiled fingers” (“Enthymesis”, 1949), is repeated many times in Schmidt’s writings and in “Dark Mirrors” this man is for once free to roam unperturbed in a much desired solitary utopia where houses, shops, libraries are left almost intact and the mob is removed. “Still small communities left. – The individuals, unaccustomed to the harsh life and raw disease, will quickly die out […] Eventually […] tiny groups may pave the way for a repopulated earth; but that will take – well – let’s hope a thousand years. And that’s all to the good!” For Schmidt’s hero that was a much despised humanity, where the mob had no vision and no higher ideals: “Boxing, soccer, the lottery: how those legs did run! – Very big when it came to weapons! – What were a boy’s ideals: auto-racer, general, world-champion sprinter. A girl’s: film star, ‘creator’ of fashion. The men’s: harem owner and manager. The woman’s: car, electric kitchen, to be addressed as ‘milady’. The old codgers’: statesman –“. Reason, Science, Culture, Morality, all these were left to a tiny enlightened elite who lived in parallel: “Culture!?: one in a thousand passed culture on; one in a hundred thousand created culture!: Morality?: Hahaha!: Let every man prove his conscience and say he wasn’t ripe for hanging long ago!” Therefore the artist “should thumb his nose at the taste and niveau of the public“.

Second paragraph from the above essay that appeared on the website - The Peacock's Tail --

It is not a surprise that reading Schmidt’s works is a kind of struggle as, apart from the avant-garde, experimental means of narration and even his peculiar use of language and spelling (rendering much of Schmidt’s work, just like Joyce’s, virtually untranslatable), the author seems to be asking from his readers to do their homework first, in History, in Literature, in Philosophy, in Theology and, quite often, in Mathematics, in order to approach his texts. In Schmidt’s “religion”, morality and pure reason, as expressed by Mathematics, coincide: “[…] no form of stupidity, vice, or wickedness can be invented, whose illogicality or perniciousness has not long ago been proved just as rigorously as any theorem of Euclid: and nevertheless! Notwithstanding, human beings have kept on spinning about in the very same circle of stupidity, error, and abuse for several thousand years, growing no wiser either through their own experience or that of others […]” (“Dark Mirrors”). Though Schmidt had not received any formal mathematical education, he displayed keen amateur interest in Mathematics and for some years, while employed in a textile factory as a stock accountant, he even worked privately in compiling tables of logarithms with ten correct digits, a rather futile, tedious and unrewarding occupation. Schmidt’s writings are abundant with allusions and direct or indirect references to Mathematics with concepts, theorems, even formulae, explicit puzzles, problems and proofs: these sometimes impenetrable mind games, certainly not at the taste of the vast public, serve as another technique in building his artistic ramparts. But beyond that, clearly reflecting his personal philosophy, one can sense in his writings an atmosphere of admiration and reverence towards the Arts, Mathematics and Science in general, contrary to the contempt displayed towards the great leaders, warriors and conquerors: “Who can only be great?” notes Philostratus in “Enthymesis” (1949). “Artists and Scientists! Nobody else! And amongst them, the humblest is a thousand times greater than the great Xerxes”.

I just did post my review of Dark Mirrors under the German title - Schwarze Spiegel.

I agree with you that Schmidt expects us to be well read before reading him!

Arno is language-literature rich, for sure. After a quick sampling of a few of his novels, I think my next one will be Scenes from the Life of a Faun.

We're enjoying watching your progress!