Imaginary

Fictional Narratives

In a sense, Hugo tells us, two people who are romantically involved face the obstacle of spiritual separation:

Marius and Cosette were in the dark as to one another. They did not address each other, they did not salute each other, they did not know each other; they saw each other; and like stars of heaven which are separated by millions of leagues, they lived by gazing at each other. [Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (1862), Volume IV – Saint-Denis; Book Third – The House in the Rue Plumet, Chapter VI, "The Battle Begun".]

The father too experiences a kind of separation:

Old and eternal Mother Nature warned Jean Valjean in a dim way of the presence of Marius. Jean Valjean shuddered to the very bottom of his soul. Jean Valjean saw nothing, knew nothing, and yet he scanned with obstinate attention, the darkness in which he walked, as though he felt on one side of him something in process of construction, and on the other, something which was crumbling away. Marius, also warned, and, in accordance with the deep law of God, by that same Mother Nature, did all he could to keep out of sight of "the father." Nevertheless, it came to pass that Jean Valjean sometimes espied him. Marius' manners were no longer in the least natural. He exhibited ambiguous prudence and awkward daring. He no longer came quite close to them as formerly. He seated himself at a distance and pretended to be reading; why did he pretend that? Formerly he had come in his old coat, now he wore his new one every day; Jean Valjean was not sure that he did not have his hair curled, his eyes were very queer, he wore gloves; in short, Jean Valjean cordially detested this young man. [Victor Hugo, Les Miserables (1862), Volume IV – Saint-Denis; Book Third – The House in the Rue Plumet, Chapter VII, "To One Sadness Oppose a Sadness and a Half".]

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind-stone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.  External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often "came down" handsomely, and Scrooge never did. [Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (1843), Stave I: "Marley’s Ghost".]

Novels and stories:

• Joyce Carol Oates, Sourland: Stories (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2010), “begins and ends with stories featuring graphic and violent sexual encounters, and the tangle of tales that lie in between explore emotional, physical and sexual hazard in all its forms.”
• Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks (1901): “In the distinction between these two brothers we see decadent perverted types of the Dionysian and Apollonian. This distinction plays its way throughout the novel and is originally made by Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche believed that there were two strong forces in culture, the Apollonian and the Dionysian. Apollo stands for order and rationality whereas the Dionysian is representative of music, chaos and passion.”
• John Wray, Godsend: A Novel (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2018) A central character’s “blankness was surely intentional on Wray’s part. It universalizes, in some ways, Aden’s inchoate longing for meaning. Yet it also made me consider Donald Barthelme’s question, in his short story 'A Shower of Gold': 'How can you be alienated without first having been connected?'”
• Benedict Wells, The End of Loneliness: A Novel (Thorndike Press, 2019): “At the heart of the novel are three disparate siblings who are packed off to boarding school after their parents die in a car crash.”
• Caryl Phillips, A View of the Empire at Sunset: A Novel (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2018): “Caryl Phillips proudly upholds her standards in this austere, evocative investigation of a life caught “somewhere between colored and white.” It is a novel of acute psychological empathy and understanding.”
• Ben Lerner, The Topeka School: A Novel (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2019): “Adam’s faithlessness can no longer be written off as cosmopolitan neurosis. It is instead a symptom of a national crisis of belief, in which structures of understanding crumble and 'regimes of meaning collapse into the spread.'”
• Roddy Doyle, Life Without Children: Stories (Viking, 2022): “. . . Stories of Life in Lockdown”.
• Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, The Discomfort of Evening: A Novel (Graywolf, 2020): about the loss of a child; “The title refers to the point in the evening when cows begin to low and call for relief, their udders heavy with milk. The story is about painful repletion of another kind, and of solace that never arrives.”
• Bryan Washington, Memorial: A Novel (Riverhead Books, 2020): “a Young Gay Couple Is Divided by Race, Class and Culture”.
• Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts: A Novel (Knopf, 2021): “. . . the pain of the narrator’s isolation feels extremely real . . .”
• Sarah Moss, The Fell: A Novel (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2022) “inspired” by the COVID-19 pandemic: “They’re all temporarily stuck at home in the Peak District, in the north of England, eating awkward dinners with relatives on Zoom, avoiding the dishes or grumbling internally over one another’s bathroom etiquette. Kate’s agonized decision to break her mandatory 14-day quarantine and head out for a walk provides the book’s central drama.”

Poetry

Music: Composers, artists, and major works

Gustav Mahler, Symphony No. 6 in A Minor, “Tragic” (1905) (approx. 79-93’), “remains an unsettling enigma. Completed in 1905 at one of the happiest times in the composer’s life (he had married Alma Schindler in 1902 and they already had two young daughters), the Sixth Symphony is Mahler’s most dark and terrifying work.” Three thuds from a large mallet represent three tragedies in Mahler’s life. “. . . Alma’s memoirs suggest that Mahler . . . outlined his own undoing in Symphony no. 6. This occurs in the finale, where the composer  . . . described himself and his downfall or, as he later stated, the the downfall of his hero: 'It is the hero on whom the three blows of fate fall, the last of which fells him as a tree is felled.'” Alma “confessed that when Mahler first played it through for her, they both wept that Mahler identified the sixth with the circumstances of his life cannot be denied. He candidly admitted that the symphony is the sum of all the suffering that he was compelled to endure at the hands of life.” Mitropoulos in 1955, Kubelik in 1968, Barbirolli in 1968, Horenstein in 1969, Tennstedt in 1983, Inbal in 1986, Bernstein in 1988, Thomas Sanderling in 1996, Herbig in 1999, Gielen in 1999, Rattle in 1999, Tilson Thomas in 2001, Jansons in 2002, Abbado in 2004, and Zander in 2012 conducted top recorded performances.

Mahler, Symphony No. 7, sometimes called “Lied der Nacht” (Song of the Night) (1905) (approx. 77-91’): of this symphony, Leonard Bernstein observed: “The minute we understand that the word Nachtmusik does not mean nocturne in the usual lyrical sense, but rather nightmare—that is, night music of emotion recollected in anxiety instead of tranquility—then we have the key to all this mixture of rhetoric, camp, and shadows.” “As paradoxical as it may sound, this symphony does not open the heavens for its composer but rather demonstrates the problems that arise in the collision of the individual with the totality of existence. Fichte’s priority of the ego, transformed into precariousness.” This symphony has remained Mahler’s most difficult to interpret and understand. Bernstein in 1965, Klemperer in 1968, Horenstein in 1969, Tennstedt in 1987, Abbado in 1994, Boulez in 1995, Chailly in 1995, Tilson Thomas in 2005 and Kirill Petrenko in 2021 conducted top recorded performances.

Ludwig van Beethoven, Piano Sonata No. 8 in C minor, Op. 13, “Pathétique” (1798) (approx. 18-21’): “This sonata is characterized by the very short development and its tragic first movement.” “The key of C minor – often a perfect vehicle for tragic, deeply emotive music – is Beethoven’s key of choice here . . .” Top recorded performances are by Schnabel in 1930, Rubinstein, Gilels, Rudolf Serkin in 1945, Richter in 1958, Horowitz in 1963, Gould in 1967, Kovacevich in 1973, Goode in 1993, Brendel in 1994, and Schiff in 2006; and live performances by Annie Fischer and Zimerman.

Claude Debussy, Pelléas and Mélisande (1902) (approx. 155-165’) (libretto), from the play of same name by Maurice Maeterlinck, presents a tragic story of lovers parted; they die and life’s woes pass to the next generation. “In his play, Maeterlinck shows us that 'nothing can change the order of events; that, despite our proud illusions, we are not master of ourselves, but the servant of unknown and irresistible forces, which direct the whole tragic-comedy of our lives. We are told that no man is responsible for what he likes and what he loves-that is if he knows what he likes and loves-and that he lives and dies without knowing why.” “Characters speak casually while the forces of nature drag them to the bottom. The forest swallows the hunter, the ring symbolizing fidelity and stability drops into a bottomless well.  We are drawn to a dark cave and later to the deep vaults of the castle. Characters strive to see sunlight or even moonlight as the darkness swallows them. We hear the sea in the distance, the great water that swallows everything. Even Mélisande’s beautiful long hair descends from the balcony to drown and ensnare Pélleas in delirious, irresistible, and forbidden love.” “Despite its full length, the plot is brief, incidents few, characters simple, setting vague. In keeping with Maeterlinck’s symbolist creed, the whole tale unfolds with inexorable logic. Golaud, a hunter, finds Mélisande in a forest and brings her home, where her attraction to his brother Pelléas ripens as Golaud’s jealousy swells. Golaud slays Pelléas, fatally wounds Mélisande, and is left to ponder the inexplicable meaning of it all, as Mélisande’s newborn takes her place in the cycle of life.” Performances with visuals are conducted by Boulez, Langré, and Andrew Davis. Best recorded audio-only performances are conducted by Truc in 1928 (46’), Désormière in 1941, Inghelbrecht in 1951, Ansermet in 1951, Ansermet in 1964, Baudo in 1978 ***, Karajan in 1978, Abbado in 1991, Casadesus in 1996, and Roth in 2022.

Other compositions:

• Thomas Larsen writes that Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, 11 (1936) (approx. 8-9’) "captures the sorrow and pity of tragic death." [Thomas Larsen, The Saddest Music Ever Written: The Story of Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings (Pegasus, 2010), p. 7.] It can also be heard more broadly.
• Giuseppe Verdi, La Forza del Destino (The Force of Destiny) (1861) (approx. 155-170’) (libretto): on how we are all at the mercy of everything around us. However, “a single, unfortunate happenstance drives characters to lifetimes of incomprehensible behavior.” “Don Alvaro (tenor) – an Incan prince in disguise – accidentally kills his girlfriend Leonora’s (soprano) father, the Marquis of Calatrava. He throws down his gun, which promptly goes off and shoots the old man, who hangs onto life just long enough to curse his daughter.  Don Carlo di Vargas, her brother (baritone), vows to find both her and her lover, and kill her.  Leonora puts on a monk’s robe and becomes a hermit living in a cave.  We don’t see her again until the end.” Excellent performances are conducted by Walter in 1943, Molinari-Pradelli in 1955, Mitropoulos in 1960, and Sinopoli in 1987); and performance with video conducted by Gergiev at Mariinsky (Part 1; Part 2).
• Henryk Górecki, Lerchenmusik, Recitatives and Ariosos for clarinet, cello and piano, Op. 53 (1986) (approx. 43’)
• Aleksandr Glazunov, Le Chant du Destin (Song of Destiny), Op. 84 (1907) (approx. 19’)
• In his String Quartet 15 in E-flat Minor (1974) (approx. 34-40’), Dmitri Shostakovich wrote every movement “in the same extremely difficult key of E-flat minor” and forced “the players to spend time with their fingers on the ‘black’ keys (in piano parlance) . . . to give the music an aura of greater fragility and vulnerability . . .” [Gerard McBurney, from the notes for this album]
• Shostakovich, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, Op. 29 (1932) (approx. 165-175’) (libretto), is a story of marital unhappiness, prison and death, and “a cry for help – a plea for personal freedom, and for the rights of the individual to be respected.” “The title character, a childless merchant’s wife, Katerina Izmailova, lives grimly in a grim burg. . . . To escape her surroundings, and to enact vengeance on her besotted, cheating husband, Katerina takes Sergey, a laborer at a flour mill, as her lover after he sexually assaults her.” Here is an excellent audio-recorded performance conducted by Rostropovich in 1979; and part 1 of a performance with video conducted by Jansons in 2006 *** (Part 1; Part 2).
• Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Pique Dame (The Queen of Spades) (1890) (approx. 170-195’) (libretto), is about the luck and unluck of life: “The opera is the story of a (literally) haunted man, Herman, who is addicted to gambling and to discovering the secret three cards that will supposedly win him a fortune.” Here are audio-recorded performances conducted by Melik-Pasheyev in 1950, Fedoseyev in 1989, and Gergiev in 1995; and a performance with video conducted by Simonov in 1983.
• Pēteris Vasks, String Quartet No. 1 (1977, rev. 1997) (approx. 18’); String Quartet 3 (1995) (approx. 27’); String Quartet No. 4 (1999) (approx. 29-35’): these three works are full of conflict and anxiety.
• Alfred Schnittke, Concerto for Piano and String Orchestra, 136 (1979) (approx. 23-25’): the protagonist-piano stands alone in a sea of anxiety. “The juxtaposition of . . . seeming tonality, a blanket of soft harmonies against an almost grating dissonance makes for an interesting soundworld, one that Schnittke uses to great effect.”
• Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Flute Concerto (1989) (approx. 15’): the music evokes a bird trying to escape and hide from predators (first movement), then survive (second movement).
• Walter Piston, Flute Concerto (1971) (approx. 15’)
• George Frideric Händel, (Il delirio amoroso) (The Delirium of Love), HWV 99 (1707) (approx. 36-40’) (lyrics begin at p. 7): “. . . Chloris dreams that she descends, Orpheus-like, into Hades to bring back the deceased Thyrsis, who never requited her love when he was alive. He rejects her even in Hades, but she generously takes him to the Elysian fields anyway.”
• Grigori Frid, Piano Quintet, Op. 72 (1981) (approx. 30’): the work reflects Frid’s life in Stalin’s Soviet Union.
• Nils Henrik Asheim, Grader av hvitt (Degrees of White) (2007) (approx. 18’): the music accompanies a “confessional text, (which) is spoken by a woman who is speaking to us as she freezes to death”.
• Sergey Rachmaninoff, Trio élégiaque 1 in G Minor (1892) (approx. 12-15’): “Rachmaninoff had a precarious and emotionally fraught childhood. His father dissipated the family fortune and they had to move several times, his sister died in a diphtheria epidemic, and his parents separated.”
• Anthony Iannoccone, “Waiting for Sunrise on the Sound” (1998) (approx 11-12’), is “framed around the composer’s dream recollection of terrifying boat experiences as a child, and his fear of the unknown. The fear results from sudden summer storms encountered while the composer was out fishing as a young boy.”
• Eric Whitacre, “The Sacred Veil” (2019) (approx. 55-57’) (lyrics) is a story in music and lyrics about a mournful walk toward inevitable death. The widower/poet Charles Anthony Silvestri writes: “This work features a series of poems written about my relationship with my late wife Julie, her battle with ovarian cancer, and the grief I experienced as a result of her passing in 2005.” Whitacre and Silvestri speak about the work here.
• Evan Ware, Symphony No. 1, “The Quietest of Whispers” (2014) (approx. 30’): the title “carries the connotation of the silence that envelops the victim, unable to speak out as a child and later confronted with the silence that society imposes (although to be fair, the scandals of Catholic priests embroiled in abuse charges indicates that society no longer forces victims to hide their secret). . . These 'whispers' are interrupted by music of wrenching violence, letting the other shoe drop, as it were. Jangling episodes follow, sometimes underpinned by a powerful percussive dread.”

With a vocal style reminiscent of Archie Roach, Kutcha Edwards sings of vulnerability. His albums include:

• “Circling Time” (2021) (48’) – Edwards writes: “In telling my story, I believe I’m telling my family’s story. Within the structure of family there are members whose role it is to protect country. For others it’s to protect the memories such as photos. I believe I have been given the responsibility to protect my family’s Songline . . .”
• “Blak and Blu” (2012) (46’), “is all about the search for reconnection to past, family and culture. Born into an Aboriginal community on the banks of the Murrumbidgee River in New South Wales, Kutcha is among those displaced by the Stolen Generation. This is Kutcha's soul, his culture and his pain.”

Other albums:

• Gary Burton, “A Genuine Tong Funeral” (2016) (44’): according to the liner notes for the album, this “is a dramatic musical production based on emotions towards death . . .”
• Peter Whelan, Tara Erraught and Irish Baroque Orchestra, “The Trials of Tenducci: A Castrato in Ireland” (2021) (66’): “The soprano castrato Giusto Ferdinando Tenducci, born in Siena around 1735, led a life that was colourful even by the standards of his profession. Jailed for debt on more than one occasion, he held a magnetic appeal to women, an attraction that led to a notorious scandal when he married a young pupil in Dublin.”
• Kristina Fialová, “Lady Viola” (2021) (56’): an elegiac tone characterizes this album and the works on it.
• Arooj Aftab, “Vulture Prince” (2021) (52’): recorded after her brother’s death – her sadness is palpable.
• Natsuki Tamura, “Summer Tree” (2022): High-pitched, abrasive and ominous sounds signify hostile forces – insects, microorganisms – attacking a magnificent tree, which struggles to survive.
• Lakiko, “What to Do, How to Live?” (2023) (42’) is a meditation on life, shaped by the Bosnian diaspora, featuring the artist’s mournful voice and her cello.

Music: songs and other short pieces

• Simon and Garfunkel, “Bleecker Street” (lyrics)
• Simon and Garfunkel, “Sounds of Silence” (lyrics)
• Miloš Karadaglić, “Sound of Silence”
• Disturbed, “The Sound of Silence”
• Acker Bilk, “Stranger on the Shore”
• Franz Schubert (composer), “Der Alpenjäger” (The Alpine Huntsman), D. 524 (lyrics): a young man thinks of his “distant beloved / Who remains at home”.
• Mary-Chapin Carpenter, “Come On, Come On” (lyrics)
• Franz Schubert (composer), “Der Jüngling am Bache” (The Youth by the Brook), D. 30 (1812) (lyrics)
• Franz Schubert (composer), “Leiden der Trennung” (The Sorrow of Separation), D. 509 (1816) (lyrics)
• Franz Schubert (composer), “An die Entfernte” (To the Distant Beloved), D. 765 (1822) (lyrics)
• Franz Joseph Haydn, “A Pastoral Song”, Hob. XXVIa:27 (lyrics)

Visual Arts

• Paul Delvaux, Loneliness (1956)
• Salvador Dali, Tristan and Isolde (1944)
• Paul Dalvaux, The Conversation (1944)
• Edward Hopper, Nighthawks (1942)
• Edvard Munch, The Lonely Ones (1935)
• Salvador Dali, The Invisible Man (1932)
• Salvador Dali, Loneliness (1931)
• Rene Magritté, untitled (1926)
• Edvard Munch, Separation (1896)

Film and Stage

• Persona, an exploration of a relationship between two women, testing which, if either, is the caregiver; their spiritual pain only intensifies when they seemingly trade identities
• L’Avventura, a film that finds “a place in our imagination – a melancholy moral desert,” “exploring states of feeling and breakdowns in human connection”
• Breathless (1961), about alientation in “the tough underbelly of modern metropolitan life.”
• Les Cousins (1959), a French wave film pervaded by “a deep cyncism that is expressed in absolute hedonism and a maudlin wish for death”
• The Crying Game, about how other people may not be who we think they are, and how we all are trapped, somewhat, in who we really are
• In a Lonely Place: the filmmaker’s “haunting work of stark confessionalism” explores alienation in several dimensions through one character
• Little Vera: an alienated teenager
• Klute: stalked by one of her customers, a prostitute “is forced to reconsider her detached urban life”
• Memories of Underdevelopment: a would-be Cuban dissident is blocked from acting on any of his ideas
• Midnight Cowboy: American decadence, a la 1960s New York chic
• Rebel Without a Cause, a 1950s view of alienated youth in the United States
• Red Desert (Il Deserto Rosso), about a young woman suffering from depression
• River’s Edge, a study of contemporary alienation
• The Mother and the Whore (La Maman et la Putain), about three lost souls in a romantic triangle in France during the sexual revolution of the 1960s
• Accattone (The Producer) (The Scrounger): a seemingly emotionless film about the spiritually lost
• Leap Year (Ano Bisiesto): the lovers’ “sexual synchronicity may derive from very different places and be headed toward very different goals”