Ooo you meanie, Peter. I'm sure Heiner is devastated up in that
poet's Valhalla, where everyone drinks all the time and finds out
that they all agreed, after all.
"Brittle" isn't a word I associate with Muller; he ends that
particular interview by a statement about survival as a better
revenge than suicide, and I think he was a bit tougher than a merely
febrile intellect. I like those interviews because they're
provocative (not all are as grumpy as that particular one) and often
full of extremely acute perceptions, although the politics is
somewhat out of date now. He's good at a kind of savage irony that
comes out of the deep trauma of the German war experience (which
marked him deeply - his wife committed suicide because of it). Maybe
he shows an essentially European seriousness, I don't know.
But I'd recommend his plays to anyone - they're essential reading,
even if you don't like them, especially things like Hamletmachine.
Best
Alison
>On Tue, 27 Nov 2001, david.bircumshaw wrote...
>
>>But too
>>there is an element, a strong element, of something like autism, of being
>>willy-nilly unable to grasp what others take for granted, of being thrown
>>back on one's own resources because you can't understand the jabber of easy
>>understanding, its smoothtalk comprehension and comfortable categorisation.
>
>Well, that was one of the possible interpretations I pondered, but I
>rejected it on the grounds that it's an *ability* to be able to refuse
>to grasp what others take for granted, rather than an inability.
>
>And autism isn't the same thing as stupidity, though it may appear so
>from some perspectives.
>
>I'm glad Candice doesn't think I'm stupid. Sometimes I am, though.
>
>I'm afraid Alison's posting of the interview extract has made me agree
>that Heiner isn't stupid. He has that brittle, self-regarding cleverness
>that's only tolerable in Oscar Wilde. I have already struck him off my
>dinner-party invitation list.
>
>I liked the Pasternak quote though.
>
>Best,
>--
>Peter
>
>http://www.hphoward.demon.co.uk/poetry/
--
Alison Croggon
Home page
http://users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
Masthead
http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/
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