January 21, 2012 at 12:40 P.M. "Errors" inserted in this work since my previous review will now be corrected. On January 20, 2012 I received among my print items a bus ticket confirmation for "Jorge A. Cisneros" heading to Washington, D.C., "go-to-bus" (New Century -- Antai Tours). This confirmation may be important to the individual who could have visited my sites, perhaps, for some reason or on behalf of some public official who shall remain nameless. I cannot understand why I would receive this person's -- or whomever is using this name's -- print out from my blog site: e-mail JAC@NYU.Edu and 347-852-4692. Publish America? Can you explain the cybercrime at my sites, Jorge?
July 22, 2010 at 11:08 A.M. A word was deleted from this essay and "errors" were inserted. I will struggle to make all necessary corrections.
August 5, 2009 at 1:58 P.M. A new "error" was discovered in this text which is not found in previous versions of this essay-review. Perhaps this newly inserted "error" explains the intrusions into my computer over the past several days, vandalisms of writings, and my continuing inability to access my home e-mails. Senator Menendez, can you shed any light on these mysteries?
March 16, 2009 at 8:50 A.M. "Errors" inserted, once more, and corrected.
March 15, 2009 at 3:13 P.M. More "errors" inserted and corrected.
January 15, 2009 at 8:55 A.M. I am unable to access my MSN Group, Critique. I was just obstructed in efforts to reach that site. I believe these obstructions and harassments are content-based and involve state action emanating from New Jersey or Florida.
Efforts at unilateral prior restraints on political speech are highly suspect under First Amendment law and should be prohibited. This is especially true when the governmental actor seeks to act surreptitiously, secretly, while disclaiming responsibility, publicly, for such actions or for the deliberate targeting of hostilities against a person who is politically designated for destruction. The contents of the speech that is suppressed, or whether officials agree with those opinions, is irrelevant to the offensiveness of censorship and psychological torture.
January 3, 2008 at 12:42 P.M. Three attempts to change the photo in my "Welcome" message at Critique were obstructed. Access to my e-mails is still compromised by hackers. I will try throughout the day to regain access to my sites in order to write.
December 22, 2008 at 5:47 P.M. Three attempts to access my e-mail have been unsuccessful due to obstructions. I will continue to try throughout the evening and tomorrow to delete e-mails from my hotmail account and to regain access to my group. Any essays or other writings vandalized during this period of obstruction will be corrected as quickly as possible. (See "What is it like to be tortured?" and "Censorship and Cruelty in New Jersey.")
My review of "Che" will be coming up, along with more profiles of New Jersey judges and their unusual sex lives. ("Deborah T. Poritz and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey" and "Jaynee LaVecchia and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.")
December 22, 2008 at 4:58 P.M. I was just obstructed in efforts to access my hotmail account. This usually means that "errors" are being inserted in my writings. My MSN e-mail account is still compromised by hackers. I will do my best to access my account and continue to write. ("Nihilists in Disneyworld.")
Unrelenting attacks against this review-essay (which is upsetting to Cubanazos) have resulted in numerous defacements of the text at MSN. I was just prevented from accessing my e-mails, again, while several more essays have probably been vandalized by Miami's champions of freedom and democracy, with the assistance of politicians in New Jersey as well as Florida, assistance which is probably obtained for a small fee. I will struggle to correct the damaged texts.
December 21, 2008 at 12:20 P.M. Public violations of federal criminal laws prohibiting conspiracies to deny civil rights are added to other underminings of the U.S. Constitution by New Jersey attorneys and judges. (See "Does Senator Menendez Have Mafia Friends?" and "Senator Bob, the Babe, and the Big Bucks.")
The Reader, (2008), The Weinstein Company, Stephen Daldry (director), David Hare (script), Kate Winslet (Hannah), Ralph Fiennes (Michael), Bruno Ganz (Law Professor). 4 Critics Choice Award nominations. Golden Globe and Oscars are sure to follow. Bruno Ganz in a quiet and underappreciated performance deserves a nomination. Kate's Oscar arrives at last.
http://www.theparistheatre.com/ (Great Manhattan movie theater, right next door to the Plaza Hotel.)
Bernhard Schlink, The Reader (New York: Vintage, 1997), excellent translation by Carol Brown Janeway.
Friedrich Schiller, Letters On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1795), reprinted as On the Aesthetic Education of Man (New York: Dover, 2004), p. 110.
"The Last of Marilyn," Vanity Fair, December, 2006, at p. 138. (Kate and Marilyn are associated in this magazine.)
"Isn't She Deneuvely? -- Profile of Kate Winslet," Vanity Fair, December, 2006, at p. 272. ("I know they are judging.")
There are surprising parallels between Ms. Winslet's screen persona and several of the great, iconic American cinematic images of women and femininity. Ms. Winslet's ability to be both American and British is suggestive of a fascination in her work with London theater culture and the magic of Hollywood. Winslet's screen power is derived from the fusion of these styles, combined with genius at understanding human frailty and portraying that frailty, honestly and bravely -- I know this is paradoxical -- but that frailty is also as a kind of strength. Comparisons: Melanie Griffith, Marilyn Monroe, Meryl Streep (The French Lieutenant's Woman), Halle Berry, Bette Davis (Of Human Bondage), Carole Lombard and Julie Christie (Darling), Jane Fonda in Klute.
I. "The only way you can become complete is with love."
Last night I wished to see the "Holiday Tree" at Rockerfeller Center. I've always hated the crowds and avoided the Christmas theatrics. For some reason, I wasn't bothered by the overflowing river of people on the sidewalks. Fifth Avenue was packed with affluent shoppers, many of whom wore coats that must cost more than the entirety of my worldly possessions. Also, it is always heartening to hear the laughter of children. Dozens of languages are spoken in a city filled with tourists from everywhere on the planet. I like that complexity and theatricality of the city. New York wears pearls and evening gowns at this time of the year.
The smell of chestnuts roasting and pretzels on carts owned by street vendors -- whose English vocabulary already includes all of the curse words that I know -- ensures that it is that special time of the year when a $2.00 pretzel goes for $4.50. Nevertheless, I am glad that I saw the big tree before standing on line for 45 minutes, freezing my unroasted chestnuts, to experience the most beautiful film of the year, so far.
May we have an Oscar for Kate, please? Yeah, we got it! After all, Ms. Winslet's genius is long overdue for the ultimate Hollywood recognition. At the Plaza Hotel, a horse drawn carriage trotted by when a little girl from England (or Connecticut?) said: "Look mommy, a pony!" My daughter would have added: "Can I take it home?"
This movie is a pony that you may take home. I will draw on a number of sources referred to in this rich cinematic text that recalls a literary work on which it is based that was featured in Oprah's book club. Thank goodness for Oprah getting people to read, even if the reading choices are not always mine. This book is certainly literature. My review-essay will begin with a discussion of the plot; I will comment on the cinematic allusions and literature evoked in the work; the jurisprudential discussion is very important and not examined in the American reviews that I have seen; philosophical-aesthetic and theological references will also be examined within the post-Holocaust German intellectual conversation and beyond. I will offer my assessments by way of conclusion.
Attacks on my computer may damage this essay. I will do my best to continue writing. I cannot say how many attacks have been launched against my text at this point. Saddest of all is the orchestrated media silence in America in response to mafia corruption, theft, rape, assaults and public violations of civil rights. If I were a resident of another country -- especially an Islamic society -- then New York media would be up in arms at these atrocities. When it comes to criminal censorship in New Jersey or the Upper West Side of Manhattan no one is troubled at all.
Book and film are attempts to examine questions of German guilt, responsibility, possibilities of justice and redemption for humanity in the aftermath of the Shoa. We are faced with the unaswerable experience of tragedy as well as the equally unavoidable human yearning for meaning and justice. The whole of German culture and civilization is brought to bear upon the examination of these questions. This is to suggest that Western and global civilization must be drawn into the exploration of motives and interrogation after such evil.
August 5, 2009 at 1:35 P.M. a new "error" was discovered and corrected in the foregoing paragraph. Curiously, this "error" is not found in earlier versions of this essay. It is important for people to understand the conditions in which these essays and reviews are written.
This dilemma of meaning against tragedy is examined, for example, in Susan Neiman's recent exploration of evil in Western thought, in the work of Edith Wyschogrod, also by Eva Hoffman, one thinks of Primo Levi and William Styron's Sophie's Choice. This is the theme of George Steiner's best work. I suppose the most obvious reference is Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus (art's healing power is explored in that novel through the metaphor of syphilis, which is symbolic of Nazism); the works of Gunther Grass; and also the parables of justice of the Sweedish-German playwright, Friedrich Duerrenmatt.
The great Romantics in German literature and their hopes are offered to readers and film viewers along with the pain. Lessing, Schelling, Schiller -- all are specifically alluded to in the movie. The Letters On the Aesthetic Education of Man is surely a sub-text of this work. This may be even more true of Schelling's Clara. Schiller's Don Carlos (together with Verdi's tribute Opera, Hannah is akin to Elizabetta) and Schiller's late play Die Jungfrau von Orleans (1801) provide analogies to this author and the film-makers. "Hannah" or "Hanna" are equally acceptable, by the way, or "Hana" in the book and film The English Patient. Persons object to my spelling of this name for some reason. Time to insert another "error"?
Before turning to my evaluation of the film, I find it necessary to say something about a review of this movie which appeared recently in The New York Times.
I read the Times every day. Movie reviews are often good, sometimes not-so-good. Rarely, is a movie review in the "newspaper of record" monumentally, dismally, unforgivably awful and insulting -- insulting not only to the artists whose work is reviewed, but also to the intelligence of the readers of this periodical.
Manohla Dargis' so-called "review" entitled: "Innocence is Lost in Postwar Germany," in The New York Times, November 10, 2008, at p. C1 is an example of an article which should be embarassing to all of us. Whoever wrote this review -- whatever may be the person's "real" name -- he or she should never write a review of any complex work of art: " ... she orders the boy out of his clothes and into the tub, before opening a towel and her legs to him." ("Jorge A. Cisneros?")
This sentence is typical of the level of "sensitivity" and moral awareness brought to the task of assessing this complex and profound film on the part of a writer capable of numerous constructions such as this: " ... A woman (Ms. Winslet) materializes, as if from nowhere ..." As opposed to materializing from somewhere? Ms. Winslet's achievement, as an artist, for which she received the Oscar award was not to "open her legs."
This literal translation into English of Cuban slang amounts to calling Ms. Winslet a "whore." I will not remain silent nor will I refrain from returning this "compliment" to the person (or persons) responsible for it -- whose real target may have been elsewhere. To insult Ms. Winslet in order to hurt another woman would be like injuring a child in order to hurt her father. ("Does Senator Menendez Have Mafia Friends?")
Hannah says: "The only way a soul can be complete is with love." Michael (David Kross) is a fifteen year-old who becomes sick on a German street in 1958. He is assisted by a woman called Hannah (Kate Winslet), whose mystery is at the heart of the film narrative as it is central to the philosophical-political enigmas we are expected to confront. Hannah ushers Michael into her apartment and life. She cares for him, invites him to bathe and makes love to him. Hannah later washes the young man's body in a gesture of cleansing, atonement and worship that is clearly Christian-inspired.
Like Jesus washing the feet of the apostles, Hannah is engaged in an act of penance and devotion in worshipping the young man's body. The close up of Hannah's scarred and damaged feet at the end of the film suggests Christ's suffering that is shared even by the worst sinners. We see enormous pain in Hannah's eyes and guilt -- a guilt we do not understand, initially -- then we realize that these events are taking place after the Holocaust. We appreciate that this blasted condition of her psyche must relate to those years of colossal tragedy.
There was no "innocence" for Germany to lose after the Holocaust. This is a wounded and haunted woman. Hannah is clearly forlorn, drained, pained and deprived of understanding, even as she visibly yearns for human connection.
I wonder whether Nydia Hernandez, Esq. "knows" Manohla Dargis? Sadly, more "errors" have been inserted and corrected in March, 2010.
Hannah's reaching out to this boy is a revelation of vulnerability and hope for the future. It is not a scene -- nor are any of the scenes of love-making -- designed or intended to be primarily or at all erotic or seductive, much less prurient. They are about desperation and unfulfilled hunger for love and beauty in a poor woman's life.
Ms. Winslet's moments of weeping, as she listens to vocal music in a small country church during a rural outing, is almost unbearable evidence of human "homelessness in the world." (Holderlin) We are immediately aware of all that has been denied to this woman as well as to so many other women. "Please read to me ..." she says. This moment on film -- when Hannah is fully clothed and in a church -- is the instant of true nakedness for Ms. Winslet's character.
Hannah's hopes are not entirely obliterated, nor is she (in my opinion) denied redemption, because while she is incapable of loving anyone -- despite her best efforts, and as she is denied all beauty -- Hannah is worthy of being loved by Michael, himself flawed and striving for self-improvement. This love is the beauty that she receives as his gift. Michael hopes (through his daughter) to come to terms with history, both his own and humanity's painful history. Michael's vocation for the legal profession is about the concern with justice. No one person can atone for the Holocaust. A few coins in a tin can are not about absolution for Auschwitz. This gesture by Hannah concerns her own efforts at meaning and redemption made possible by the gift of affection, respect, even a kind love born of compassion provided to her by Michael.
The early scenes establish a relationship with The Summer of 42, a classic American movie seen by me as a very young man, in which death and loss are displaced by a young woman into a single act of love with (and for) a boy. The boy serves as a substitute for the young woman's husband killed in World War II, to whom she is able -- through this surrogate -- to say goodbye and, because it is her choice, to accept the loss of one future in order to begin upon another.
The film was controversial in 1972, because a deliberate sexual act became a woman's attempt to fathom the mysteries of love and death, classic themes of the Sturm und Drang movement. Especially important to this Romantic literary craze were Schelling's essays on Shakespeare, essays to which allusions are also made in Mr. Schlink's novel.
"What Schiller terms the 'aesthetic modulation of the psyche' in fact denotes a project of fundamental ideological reconstruction. The aesthetic is the missing mediation between a barbaric civil society given over to pure appetite, and the ideal of a well-ordered political state: 'if man is ever to solve that problem of politics in practice he will have to approach it through the problem of the aesthetic, because it is only through Beauty that man [or woman] makes his way to freedom [which is loving].' ... "
Terry Eagleton, "Schiller and Hegemony," in The Ideology of the Aesthetic (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), p. 106.
II. "There is no divine law, but we disobey it at our peril."
Michael becomes a law student and finds himself invited to "witness" the trial of a German war criminal, who turns out to be the woman he now knows as Hannah. Hannah's conviction results from her unwillingness to acknowledge exclusion from the world of literacy -- that is, of poetry and song, "I sing of arms and the man" (Homer) -- which is quite different from admitting not being able to read, which would have bothered her much less. To acknowledge that she could not read would have meant exclusion from literature and beauty's one warm embrace in her hard life. Such an admission would amount to a surrender of her humanity and hopes for redemption.
A promotion for efficiency is really termination from employment because Hannah will not abandon the illusion of membership in literacy, even at the cost of her position or her life. Montgomerry Clift's interrogation by Maximilian Schell in Judgment in Nuremberg is on screen at this moment, overlapping with this film: " ... Was my mother feeble-minded?" The photograph of the Jewish victim's mother that he carried in his pocket was proof of the continuing existence of beauty and meaning as the German-Jewish world ended: "It is not true what you say ... She was not feeble-minded!"
This termination involves the loss of yet another uniform for a woman who served the "Thousand Year Reich" because it was a job, her so-called "duty," nothing more. Hannah was fully in conformity with the laws of her society, if not with justice. Justice is perhaps impossible. Hannah's penal sentence is a result of legal incompetence and stupidity, together with the search for scapegoats: "She wrote the report!"
Hannah's response is directed at the judge: "What does it matter who wrote the report?" Hannah is quite correct. Germany wrote the report. Humanity is responsible for its contents. Hannah wants Michael to believe that she can live in his world. Hannah knows that she cannot live in that world of normality, goodness and beauty. Michael is incapable of what one must do in such a situation in order to make it possible for Hannah to live in a human condition. Make one world out of Michael's love that includes Hannah and her victims, himself and his child. Take off the legal robes and leave the briefcase, Michael, then join Hannah at the defendant's table. See Hannah Arendt, "On Humanity in Dark Times: Thoughts on Lessing," in Men in Dark Times (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1968), pp. 3-31. ("Let each man say what he deems truth, and let truth itself be commended unto God.")
This world-making power that we all have is called the language of "love." With love, the paradoxes of justice are resolved. Dietrich Bonhoeffer's "Tegel Theology" is my immediate source. An illustration of spiritual generosity is provided by Lena Olin's magnificently retrained and dignified performance at the conclusion of the film. The words "beauty" and "suffering" blend into the idea of "love-as-freedom." Michael in this narrative -- whether literary or cinematic -- is a "stand-in" for the Friedrich Schiller who wrote On the Aesthetic Education of Man. (Please notice my MSN name.)
Hannah's almost sexual encounter with Kant and Hegel (when she touches the books on the shelves) in Michael's family library leads to a crucial scene from the novel that is left out of the movie:
"Once we went to the theater in the next town to see Schiller's Intrigues and Love. It was the first time Hanna had been to the theater, and she loved all of it, from the performance to the champagne at intermission. I put my arm around her waist, and didn't care what people might think of us as a couple, and I was proud that I didn't care. At the same time, I knew that in the theater in our hometown I would care. Did she know that too?"
The Reader, p. 72.
Michael could not speak his love, as Germany could not speak its guilt. I suggested the importance of Schiller, consider Letter XXIII:
"It is therefore one of the most important tasks of culture to subject Man [humanity] to form even in his purely physical life, and to make him aesthetic as far as ever the realm of Beauty can extend, since the moral condition can be developed only from the aesthetic, not from the physical condition. If Man is to possess in each individual case the faculty of making his judgment and his will the judgment of the human species, if from every limited existence he is to find the way through to an infinite one, out of every dependent condition to be able to make the leap forward to self-dependence and freedom, he must take care not to be at any moment merely individual, serving merely the natural law. If he is to be ready and able to rise out of the narrow circle of natural ends to rational ends, he must already have practised himself for the latter while he was already the former, and have already realized his physical determination with a certain freedom that belongs to spiritual nature -- that is, according to laws of Beauty."
Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man, Letter XXIII, p. 110 (1795).
To love a woman is a creative act of transcendence for which great art prepares us. Loving a woman is journeying from nature (sex) to romance (eros).
Bruno Ganz's law professor suggests that "the state has to do with law, not justice." Wings of Desire is clearly one predecessor of this movie. To Kill a Mockingbird is another. Nuremberg was about the opposite proposition. There are such great evils that legal indifference and sophistry are diminished to irrelevance by them. Law includes -- and must do so -- an understanding of justice as an essential value that is transcendent of particulars. There was no existing positive law that allowed for the Nuremberg Trials. Humanity recognized that a moral abyss had appeared in history with the Holocaust. The very idea of law had been rendered absurd by legitimation of Nazi regulations and actions. The officials responsible for Auschwitz had to be punished. The suffering and pains of victims had to be accepted as a gift by the German people and all of humanity.
German women who pointed to "Hannah" ("Hannah" Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem is signaled for the audience in the courtroom scene), only to assuage their own guilt, are no different from Michael weeping in the audience (for this is Greek tragedy in a kind of legal theater). Michael is unable to rise and sit next to Hannah, which is what I hope that I would do in that situation -- without condoning or excusing her actions -- whatever they were. This act of loving solidarity is what I think my life is about. Kenosis. ("The Soldier and the Ballerina.")
Whatever tortures and murders this poor woman was responsible for were the sins of her nation and of all humanity reflected in her deprived condition and conduct. Hannah's sin ("it was my job!") is our collective indifference to suffering and rule-mongering. I give some money and recognition to a homeless New Yorker because he is -- in his universal humanity -- the women and children I love. That stench that assails our nostrils when we talk to such a destitute man is the residue of society's indifference and culpability for his plight. Indifference and cruelty stink. We punish ourselves when we punish those guilty officials. ("Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" and "Senator Bob, the Babe, and the Big Bucks.")
The capacity for beauty along with starvation for learning is reflected in Hannah's eyes. This starvation results from denials of education in exchange for a uniform. Hannah's true uniform is the coldness of Michael's family. Germany's sanitized legal procedures amount to a critique of Western culture combined with a return to Romanticism's double-bind: Fitche's words burn in the mind: Frey seyn ist nicht; frei is der Himmel. ("To be free is nothing; to become free is very heaven.")
Germany and humanity must become "free." This is only possible with recognition and love. Hence, we receive this film and book that are intended to provide solace for suffering. Given the opportunity to leave prison, Hannah commits suicide. Hannah's real prison is the darkness to which she was consigned in childhood by a society that denied her an education and put a uniform on her, making her a slave to enslave others, murdering her spirit so that she could murder others. Humanity survives in her final recognition of genuine "duty" with acceptance of grace and kindness from Michael.
No wonder the "Cubanoids" don't like this review and continue to deface the text with impunity. Censors are always Nazi-like monsters who can only bring suffering and oppression to any nation unwise enough to receive them. ("American Hypocrisy and Luis Posada Carriles.")
The words read to her on tape by Michael escort her to that literary landscape where beauty and gentleness are real, rescuing her fragments of broken humanity, gathering them up in song and beauty, as flowers offered to the dead. Literature is the "Forest of Arden." Mr. Schlink may say: "I sing of arms and a woman -- of the feminization of war and atrocity in the rubble of civilization."
"Failure is nobler than success. Self-immolation for a cause is the thing, not the validity of the cause itself, [Think of Himmler and Bonhoeffer,] for it is the sacrifice undertaken for its sake that sanctifies the cause, not some intrinsic property of it. These are the symptoms of the Romantic attitude. Hence, the worship of the artist" -- we see Lessing's plays, references to Schiller, Schelling's overtures to Clara, the name of Goethe on a blackboard -- "whether in sound, or word, or colour, [sic.] as the highest manifestation of the ever-active spirit, and the popular image of the artist in his garett, wild-eyed, wild-haired, poor, solitary, mocked-at; but independent, free, spiritually superior to Philistine tormentors."
Isaiah Berlin, "Preface," to H.G. Schenk, The Mind of the European Romantics: An Essay in Cultural History (New York: Doubleday, 1969), p. xvii.
I should acknowledge that someone I love has German ancestry (also, Jewish heritage, I believe) and that there are members of my family with a German name. These issues of German identity and guilt are personal, for me, also philosophical. It is also true that "Menendez" is a converso name that can be traced to Jews forced to convert to Christianity in Spain by the Inquisition. Not everyone is happy to make this discovery. I am sure that Sam Mendes will be delighted, as I am, to learn this historical fact. We have Jewish ancestry. Perhaps Harvey Weinstein will donate a yamulke to Mr. Mendes for purposes of celebration.
Mr. Fiennes is weary and weighted with responsibility for emotional cultivation to offset intellect. Christian wisdom without the trappings of myth provides solace. High German culture also creates "respect for individuality, for the creative impulse, for the unique, the independent, for freedom to live and act in the light of personal, undictated beliefs and principles, of undistorted emotional needs, for the value of private life, of personal relationships, of the individual conscience, [and] of human rights." Ibid.
This brings us to theology and the resolutions of our legal questions:
"In Traps, the best of [Friedrich Duerrenmatt's] novels, a travelling salesman's car breaks down. An elderly man, a former judge, puts him up for the night. There is a dinner party. The guests are a former prosecutor, a former defense attorney and a former executioner. During one of Duerrenmatt's better dinners (six lavish courses), they play a game. The salesman, a very ordinary opportunist, is put on trial for the murder of his predecessor in the firm. The predecessor died of a heart attack, but actually the salesman could have been -- indeed was, as the trial progresses -- morally responsible. The old men are devotees of crime, for it is 'crime which makes justice possible.' In a mad drunken scene, they convince the salesman that 'he had killed because it was only natural for him to squeeze somebody else out.' ["What would you have done?" -- Hannah asks her judge.] ... they sentence him to death -- a sentence he finds eminently just. Then, as final turn of the screw, though Duerrenmatt has prepared us for the salesman's execution at the hands of the old men, the salesman hangs himself in expiation, much to the surprise of the old men."
Gore Vidal, "In the Shadow of the Scales: Friedrich Duerrenmatt," in Rocking the Boat (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1962), p. 187.
Duerrenmatt concludes (by way of Vidal) as does Mr. Schlink:
"There is no divine law but we disobey it at our peril. Put simply: we are responsible for our acts even though there is no God."
This is to discover that God is. Why assume a distinction between God and the logic of moral survival? The "metaphysics of morals" (Kant) and "social understanding of freedom" (Hegel) is a revelation of part of what we mean by God:
"If man is to survive in a non-human universe of which he is a trifling part, the idea of justice must be maintained, for without justice there is chaos, as Duerrenmatt shows most plainly in [his works.]"
Ibid.
It is fitting that fascists continue to deface this essay. For this essay is a defense of the exact opposite of what fascists believe. They may be expected to continue to seek to destroy this work and its author, with the assistance of government resources and technology in New Jersey. I will continue to resist such efforts. I will continue to write. The possibility of redemption and love preserves or rescues our humanity and elevates this film from the category of absolute tragedy to that of redemptive morality tale. George Steiner writes:
"Where consequence is strict, the tragic absolute solicits suicide. It does not admit of the rationality of therapy [or] discourse, be it philosophic or aesthetic. It does not look to pragmatic amelioration. Why write plays (paint pictures, compose symphonies) if perception entails a stringent nihilism. Only nothingness is acquitted of the fault, of the error of being ('nothingness' is obsessive in the text of King Lear; annulment is a pivot in Beckett's parables). ..."
"Absolute Tragedy," in No Passion Spent (London & New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), p. 129.
Redemption is possible and (perhaps) achieved in Mr. Schlink's vision. This is a result of future-orientation, recognition, respect for everyone's suffering, allowance for speech, the power of words. Hannah's slow, heroic, mastery of her few written words is devastating evidence of Ms. Winslet's artistic genius. Genius is Ms. Winslet's unblinking willingness to stare Hannah's humanity (and thus, her own) in the face. Ms. Winslet does the opposite of what the German women in the movie do, all too easily. Ms. Winslet sits with Hannah at the defendant's table. I do too. This is without excusing anything this character may have done. We are all guilty. We are all redeemed.
Ms. Winslet's portrait of Hannah compares with a Velasquez portrait of his most "ordinary" servant, or a Rembrandt self-portrait that is reflected in a mirror -- a self-portrait painted by fading candle light symbolizing the vanishing life of the subject and of the viewer of the painting. In fact, Ms. Winslet's canvas must be a little of both, portrait of self and other.
Perhaps this is the deepest lesson to take from The Reader: Categories of self and other, "That" and "I," must be unified with recognition and love. Totalitarians will always seek to deny words and understanding to their victims. For this reason, I will continue to struggle against censorship, silencing, and denials of words to me along with others -- mostly women -- who have been denied so much more in life:
" ... aspects of the 'I' as subject of experience and agent, and aspects of the ways in which different 'I's form a 'We,' so establish a condition of the intelligibility of expressions of facts about the 'I,' together [affecting] what a full account of reality must comprise. Setting out those Kantian, Schopenhaurian and Wittgensteinian insights is a very difficult enterprise, and I make no claim to have carried it out. My remarks are advisedly gnomic. They merely set out the parameters for a complete and successful metaphysics of the kind that this [work] has been concerned with."
D.W. Hamlyn, "Persons and Personal Identity," in Metaphysics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 218.
Kate Winslet and the character of "Hannah" will now become one for millions of people all over the world. These characters and this film -- as a single work of art -- will be one with you, the audience member, for the rest of your life. This is the only way that Michael, Hannah, Germany or you become free -- by loving. Loving allows persons to accept and unite with the suffering of others. "In the unity of the Holy Spirit ..."
