Category: novel

From man to bug – a surreal portrait

Franz Kafka: Die Verwandlung (English title: The Metarmorphosis) ISBN 80-85938-46-4 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ A classic of German literature, the first book by Kafka that I read, a bizarre experience. It took me some time to identify the lack of self-esteem of the main character, Gregor Samsa, a man transformed without any apparent reason into a bug, as the central theme along with the sudden change of relationships within a family triggered by an singular and surreal event. Throughout his entire life, Kafka was  totured by a feeling of inferiority, unsure  about his talent, his choices in life, even unsure about his own right to live. This novel, like most of his works, has strong autobiographic traits.

The brutal change of the status of Samsa – from active to helpless, from respected to perceived as a nuisance – and the fact that Samsa gradually resignates, accepts his own decline and becomes indifferent towards others is for me a useful reminder to periodically check how I perceive others: as a means or as an end in itself. The human psyche becomes easily unhinged, man quickly looses his inhibition and disregards accepted norms of social behaviour.

A violin piece, played by Samsa’s sister is one of the few things that triggers a positive emotion in Samsa, and the surreal character of the plot fits well with Arnold Schönberg’s music, his String Quartet No. 3 Op. 30:

A democratic revolution – all notes are equal

Sailing south with a mysterious woman

Allard Schröder: Der Hyrograf ISBN 978-3-86648-262-3 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ This novel from a Dutch author gave me a lot of pleasure! 24 hours and I was done, but I would have read on for a few hundred additional pages. The setting of the novel and Schröder’s dry, detached descriptive style reminds me of Thomas Mann and his early novels. A German marine scientist in his late twenties sails to Valparaiso shortly before World War I. On board he meets a woman with a mysterious past and an even more mysterious future. He falls in love. At the same time the longer the voyage takes the more his faith in his former convictions and the merit of his noble descent give way to a certain nihilsm. Both transformations drive the story forward, and the end is a reverence to the main character of Thomas Mann’s “Magic Mountain”. Beautiful!

Speaking about Thomas Mann, this is the time and place to point you toward’s Franz Schubert’s piano cycle “Winter Journey”, philosophy set to music, echoed by Schröder’s novel:

Wandering to the point of no return


Jihad and the disenchanted youth

Fikry el Azzouzi: Wir da draussen ISBN 978-3-8321-9829-9 ⭐️ The plot is rather straightforward: A Moroccan immigrant living in Belgium and experiencing social exclusion turns to drugs, sex, violence, crime and finally jihadism. All would have been well if the author had explored the deeper emotions of the main character or gone to the roots of the young man’s disenchantment. Instead he delivers a honest description of a human condition as it has been described many times before – nothing new there. The story remains superficial, predictable and without much interest. The best one can say is that el Azzouzi’s vulgar language is appropriate to the brutality of the subject. It remains nevertheless a 100 percent disappointment.

Since this book did not inspire me at all, I cannot provide a link to any appropiate classical music. I have no such music.

The horror of face-to-face contacts

E. M. Forster: The Machine Stops ISBN 978-0-141-19598-8⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ What a timely novel, I would say if that novel hadn’t been written in 1928. Instead Forster wrote a prescient book. He anticipated social networks, a service based economy, the ever growing dependency on machines, a fully transparent life and the degeneration of man’s social abilities – things we endure every day a little less than 100 years later. In Forster’s world men live in underground cities in small rooms and “the Machine” provides everything: contact to others living in an identical environment, food, books, music, medical assistance etc.

Face-to-face contact has become something bordering the obscene and parental duties are considered to end with the birth of the child. Thus says “the Machine” which is worshipped through a book of rules for all contingencies. Reading this novel now gives me awkward feeling when I reflect some of my daily interaction with others. What a deep thinker Forster was besides being a brilliant novellist!

The subject of the novel made the choice for a matching composer easy: Dmitry Shostakovich. Of course. He was a contemporary of Forster albeit he lived under the Communist rule while Forster lived in the capitalists’ capital, London. As for the piece to match the mood of the novel, something a little unhinged like the String Quartet No. 11, may be appropriate:

The mockingbird sings his defiant tune in F minor

Confronting death, fear and guilt


Isabelle Autissier: Soudain, seuls. ISBN 978-2-253-09899-7 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ A man and a woman decide to escape their daily routine and embark on a sailing trip through the Atlantic. A natural reserve in the vicinity of the Falkland island lurs them into a day trip with fatal consequences. A sudden storm prevents their return from that remote island to the boat. The boat with all their equipment sinks in the storm and they are stuck. They confront hunger and they fight for physical survival. They confront themselves, their past, their lack of future and fight to survive mentally. They taste brutality, merciless, hopelessness and the deepest fear possible: fear of themselves. One dies of privation, the other is tortured by guilt and shame. A powerful book written by an experienced French sailor and navigator. A fantastic read!

Linking the deep impression that these book made upon me was not too difficult. No “tragic” symphonic work, but rather an intimate piece of chamber music, Franz Schubert’s String Quartet No. 14 in D minor “Death and the Maiden”:

Composing while death is knocking on the door