V--2nd, Chapter 11 p.324 A room is all that is the case/: Faust

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

In my reading the whole first paragraph is already an "actual Faust 
allusion". After the three intros
(Zueignung, Vorspiel auf dem Theater, Prolog im Himmel) the Faust 
tragedy of Goethe begins with
Faust's famous monologue that takes place in a room which is described 
as "narrow". What now
follows is a tremendous confession (sic!) starting with the sentences:

"Habe nun, ach! Philosophie, Juristerei und Medizin, und leider auch 
Theologie durchaus studiert,
mit heißem Bemühn. Da steh' ich nun, ich armer Tor, und bin so klug als 
wie zuvor!"

Roughly: Now I have, urghh, studied philosophy, the law and medicine 
and, unfortunately, also
theology, really really going for it. Now I'm here, an indigent fool, as 
stupid as before.

Like Benny Profane who didn't learn anything from his experiences in the 
novel V, Heinrich Faust
didn't learn anything from all his academic studies.

Or like the protagonist in Thor Kunkel's last novel somewhere says:
I know too much and so I don't know anything properly.

Kai

On 16.11.2010 13:49, Mark Kohut wrote:
> "It takes no more than a desk and writing supplies to turn any room into a
> confessional."
>
> So, what is he confessing? is this another Henry Adams-like autobiographical
> confession by one
> Fausto?
>
> Fausto.....gonna get to the actual Faust allusion soon, meanwhile,,,,,
>
> The room is inert. p. 325 "The facts call up emotional responses, which no inert
> room has ever showed us."
>
> Unlike that lived-in, loved-in room in CofL49 which "knew"...
>
> An inanimate room, so to allude?...If this is an extended portrait of a writer
> metaphor, then the writer
> inhabits a carpetless, unadorned room.....death-like to write??
>
> Anyone want to gloss the way it is described via all those coordinate
> directions?
>
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