I absolutely love the book The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera of which this particular section earned my extra attention.
Milan Kundera, in describing a writing by Thomas Mann:
"...Thomas Mann wrote a naively entrancing story about death: in that story death is beautiful to all those who dream of it when they are very young, when death is still unreal and enchanting, like the bluish voice of distances.
A mortally ill young man gets on a train and, descending at an unknown station, enters a town whose name he does not know and rents rooms in an ordinary house from an old woman with a mossy growth on her brow. No, I'm not going to relate what happens then in that rented lodging, I only wish to recall a single trivial occurrence: passing through the front room, the ill young man "believed he heard, in between the thud of his footsteps, a sound coming from next door, a faint, clear metallic tone-but perhaps it was only an illusion. Like a golden ring falling into a silver basin, he thought. . . ."
In the story, that small acoustical detail remains inconsequential and unexplained. From the action's standpoint alone, it could have been omitted without loss. The sound simply happens; all by itself just like that.
I think Thomas Mann sounded that "faint, clear metallic tone" to create silence. He needed that silence to make beauty audible (because the death he was speaking of was death-beauty), and for beauty to be perceptible, it needs a minimal degree of silence (of which the precise measure is the sound made by a gold ring falling into a silver basin).
(Yes, I realize you don't know what I'm talking about, because beauty vanished long ago. It vanished under the surface of the noise- the noise of words, the noise of cars, the noise of music- we live in constantly. It has been drowned like Atlantis. All that remains of it is the word, whose meaning becomes less intelligible with each passing year.)"
The noise he describes is metaphoric. I think what Kundera is trying to get across is that in the time of his works, people were getting increasingly deaf to their beauty around them. I suppose it was set in a period of industrialization where the pace of life has increased so rapidly it is difficult to appreciate simple things such as the setting of the sun or the dawn of a new day. How true is Kundera when he says that "All that remains of it is the word (beauty), whose meaning becomes less intelligible with each passing year."
I read in the writings of another author (and I unable to recall the name), which likened to Kundera, describes how in the 21st century the advent of portable music players has made the symptoms of how people are increasingly indifferent to their surroundings obvious. How often have I seen and how convenient it is now, for anybody to listen to their iPod and become indifferent to the cries of the weak who are struggling to make ends meet; I recall a old granny who often appears near my home, victimized by the perpetrator called time, and to whom attempts to retain the minimal of what is barely recognized as pride by selling tissue papers along the street, flirting between the thin line between begging and selling something of significant value and whose presence is barely visible much less her tears she carry.
A gold ring falling into a silver basin. Isn't that what we really need?
Milan Kundera, in describing a writing by Thomas Mann:
"...Thomas Mann wrote a naively entrancing story about death: in that story death is beautiful to all those who dream of it when they are very young, when death is still unreal and enchanting, like the bluish voice of distances.
A mortally ill young man gets on a train and, descending at an unknown station, enters a town whose name he does not know and rents rooms in an ordinary house from an old woman with a mossy growth on her brow. No, I'm not going to relate what happens then in that rented lodging, I only wish to recall a single trivial occurrence: passing through the front room, the ill young man "believed he heard, in between the thud of his footsteps, a sound coming from next door, a faint, clear metallic tone-but perhaps it was only an illusion. Like a golden ring falling into a silver basin, he thought. . . ."
In the story, that small acoustical detail remains inconsequential and unexplained. From the action's standpoint alone, it could have been omitted without loss. The sound simply happens; all by itself just like that.
I think Thomas Mann sounded that "faint, clear metallic tone" to create silence. He needed that silence to make beauty audible (because the death he was speaking of was death-beauty), and for beauty to be perceptible, it needs a minimal degree of silence (of which the precise measure is the sound made by a gold ring falling into a silver basin).
(Yes, I realize you don't know what I'm talking about, because beauty vanished long ago. It vanished under the surface of the noise- the noise of words, the noise of cars, the noise of music- we live in constantly. It has been drowned like Atlantis. All that remains of it is the word, whose meaning becomes less intelligible with each passing year.)"
The noise he describes is metaphoric. I think what Kundera is trying to get across is that in the time of his works, people were getting increasingly deaf to their beauty around them. I suppose it was set in a period of industrialization where the pace of life has increased so rapidly it is difficult to appreciate simple things such as the setting of the sun or the dawn of a new day. How true is Kundera when he says that "All that remains of it is the word (beauty), whose meaning becomes less intelligible with each passing year."
I read in the writings of another author (and I unable to recall the name), which likened to Kundera, describes how in the 21st century the advent of portable music players has made the symptoms of how people are increasingly indifferent to their surroundings obvious. How often have I seen and how convenient it is now, for anybody to listen to their iPod and become indifferent to the cries of the weak who are struggling to make ends meet; I recall a old granny who often appears near my home, victimized by the perpetrator called time, and to whom attempts to retain the minimal of what is barely recognized as pride by selling tissue papers along the street, flirting between the thin line between begging and selling something of significant value and whose presence is barely visible much less her tears she carry.
A gold ring falling into a silver basin. Isn't that what we really need?
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