A Poem by John Updike (and a weak German translation)

Fine Point
December 22, 2008

Why go to Sunday school, though surlily,
and not believe a bit of what was taught?
The desert shepherds in their scratchy robes
undoubtedly existed, and Israel's defeats -
the Temple in its sacredness destroyed
by Babylon and Rome. Yet Jews kept faith
and passed the prayers, the crabbed rites,
from table to table as Christians mocked.

We mocked, but took. The timbrel creed of praise
gives spirit to the daily; blood tinges lips.
The tongue reposes in papyrus pleas,
saying, Surely - magnificent, that "surely" -
goodness and mercy shall follow me all
the days of my life, my life, forever.


Feinschrift
22. Dezember 2008

Warum zur Sonntagschule gehen, unwillig,
und ohne das zu glauben, was man hörte?
Die Hirten in den groben Kleidern gab's
doch zweifellos, und Israels Niederlagen -
der Tempel in seiner Heiligkeit zerstört
durch Babylon und Rom. Und dennoch,
die Juden hielten ihren Glauben und gaben
ihre Gebete weiter und krause Riten,
von Tisch zu Tisch. Und Christen lachten drüber.

Wir lachten und wir nahmen. Das Tamburin des Preises
gibt dem Alltag Geist und Blut den Lippen.
Urworte auf Papyrus erfrischen die Zunge,
daß sie sagt Gewiß - groß, dieses „gewiß" -
Gutes und Barmherzigkeit werden mir folgen
mein Leben lang. Mein Leben. Für immer.


John Udpike lived from March 18, 1932 until January 27, 2009.
His last poetry book Endpoint was published these days.
An Audio Book read by Charles McGrath will follow,
samples can be heard in the New York Times.

Proceed to Extraction

"We must proceed to extraction," says the dentist to Thomas Buddenbrook*, and he answers "Very well, proceed, then”. The operation fails. The tooth is broken, before it is brought out, and the Senator dies shortly afterwards from the effects.

It went incomparably better with me today. The friendly and skilful Doctor Reitz got the back tooth out in almost no time and in only one piece, under a strong local anaesthesia. He also cleaned the part of the bone where the dead root had permanently inflamed the body and caused disorder.

I am sitting right now, three hours after surgery, almost pain-free in my house and am already planning what kind of meal I will mash in the mixer.

In the last few days the idea had frequently occurred to me that I could do like the Senator and decease after the operation. Those are the thoughts that torment people who read too much.


* In Thomas Mann’s novel „Buddenbrooks“. Original: „Wir müssen zur Extraktion schreiten“, sagte er nach einer Weile und erblich noch mehr. „Schreiten Sie nur“, sagte der Senator und schloß die Lieder noch fester.

Among immigrants, being an immigrant myself

For Erkan Saka’s sake who kindly put a link to this new blog I should add a little detail to my latest post: the quarter where my immigrant great-grandfather started his business in 1898 and where he lived until his death in 1939 is now one of the centers of the local Turkish population*. So I use to tell my children that our people were the first Turks in town.

I sometimes talk to my Turkish friend Necattin, whose father came to Cologne around 1965 about our mutual experience of being offsprings of immigrants. He of course denies that I am his equal, because my great-grandfather “only” immigrated within Germany. But he listens well when I tell him that my great-grandfather walked two days from his village 60 miles south of here, whereas it took Necattin’s father only three hours with Türk Hava Yollarι from Ankara.

The history of the worldwide migration from village to town is still unclear to most of us. Why did they all walk out from the beauty of a rural setting into the ugliness of modern cities? I am sure that the reasons why my great-grandfather and Necattin’s father went must have been pretty similar. I will try to find out more about both men.

*somewhat around 10% of the 120.000 inhabitants of Remscheid

John Updike (1932 - 2009)

He was in an old-fashioned sense my favourite author because he could narrate the world so that you could understand it. It was a limited world, Updikeland inhabited by the American middleclass, people much alike among each other. But it was a world into which you happily stepped in with every new book and to which you became easily familiar.

Despite of its peculiarity and limitations, this world was closely related with my own world, similar to Tolstoy's world with its aristocratic houses standing high above but being inhabited with people like me.

Updike was very explicit and detailed in sexual things. If I ever had met him I would first of all have asked him, why. But I imagine that he would have told me about the old tradition of the Realists, to whom he and Balzac, Flaubert, Dickens, Tolstoy, Fontane and Thomas Mann belonged. All of them were very much concerned about their credibility and all were working hard to be accepted as trustworthy by the reader. The credit would often depend on whether the furniture in the living room was correctly described before the hero of the novel would enter.

So Updike used the events in the bedroom instead of the furniture in the living room and proved his correctness to the reader through his detailed knowledge. At least this is my theory.

By the way, there was nothing like the Tragedies of the bedroom, which Tolstoy, suffering a lot in this respect assumed behind all the tragedies of mankind. Updike reports a lot of sins, but most of the time there is amazingly even more grace, so that sin must not necessarily cause tragedy. This has certainly to do with Updike’s lifelong confession that he was a Christian.

As a young man he found a simple formula* for his faith:

1. If God does not exist, the world is a horror-show.
2. The world is not a horror-show.
3. Therefore, God exists.

This may not suffice to build a dogmatic structure upon, but you can try this rule of three occasionally as a household remedy in case the existence of God will appear questionable.

Whether this approach is sufficient to get into heaven is a different question. Everybody wishes for John Updike that he was well received up yonder after his death on January 27, 2009.

According to Catholic understanding, the Protestant Updike could have taken advantage of his second wife's testimony. She said about the man who smiles friendly on most of the photos, that he is the most good-hearted man in the world.

This is how I want him to remember.



* quoted from his autobiography, "Self-Consciousness" of 1989, published by Knopf, page 230

From The Hague II (Vermeer)

According to the explanations given in the exhibition from which I have reported yesterday, there is a lot of politics in Vermeer's Gezicht op Delft. The Nieuwe Kerk in the right part of the screen (here a part of the painting) was deliberately brought into the light, while the left half of the screen is still overshadowed by a cloud of rain.

The Nieuwe Kerk was painted, so the exhibition says in that special light because of its importance to the royal family. The church is, in fact still today one of the largest churches in Holland and the burial place of the Dutch royal family. Most recently, Prince Claus von Amsberg was buried here, in 2004.

We read this kind of political theory and remember the lesson unfolded a thousand of times: the equality of politics and art. It is repeated over and over again by educative radio programs and television broadcasts. Since Napoleon told Goethe that Politik ist unser Schicksal (politics is our fate) art is subordinated to politics.

We hope there will one day be a new Willy Brandt (Die Schule der Nation ist die Schule, the school of the nation is the school) telling us that fate is our fate. Life means to love, to be loved, to eat, drink, sleep, and - did not Mozart say so? – to shit a warm shit. All this forms the basis for a personal fate, a destiny, never influenced by politicians.

From Vermeer’s standpoint as an artist, the placement of the church into pure sunlight and the decision to leave the roofs on the left side in the draining rainwater, has many plausible reasons. The church with its yellow walls sparkles most beautifully in the bright sun, whereas the roofs shine wonderfully salmon, since the rain has wetted them and the light falls a little subdued on them.

What can be known about Vermeer's plans for the picture is that he has painted the church much lower than it realy was. A bolt broke the top of the tower, later in 1872, it was replaced thereafter by an even higher tower, which today measures 109 m. Vermeer wanted to paint the city skyline as an almost uniform band and has therefore pressed down the existing towers and has bended the gate on the right side towards the side of the screen.

Nothing of this has to do with politics.


Marcel Proust lets his poet Bergotte die at the sight of the painting, in a Paris exhibition. Bergotte’s last look goes to a small piece of wall, right next to the gate, in the bright half of the screen, at the edge of the painting.

His dizziness increased; he fixed his gaze, like a child upon a yellow butterfly that it wants to catch, on the precious patch of wall. "That's how I ought to have written," he said. "My last books are too dry, I ought to have gone over them with a few layers of colour, made my language precious in itself, like this little patch of yellow wall.

Rendre ma phrase en elle-même precieuse, comme ce petit pan de mur jaune.

And then Bergotte dies, mumbling repeatedly petit pan de mur jaune avec un auvent, petit pan de mur jaune.

Little patch of yellow wall, with a sloping roof.

From The Hague I (Rembrandt)

A stone's throw away from the court, where we fight for to the right to use the Dutch holiday house of my sisters and brother as tweede Woning (second dwelling) there is the famous museum "Mauritshuis". According to Marcel Proust, it contains the most beautiful painting in the world, Vermeer's View of Delft (photography on top). Facing a negative ruling from the court, we find some consolation, at least for our eyes visiting this wonderful painting with its play of light and shade, sun and rain.

The upper floor of the Mauritshuise displays a special portrait gallery these days. The paintings stem from the 17th Century, the rich and powerful period of the Dutch, their Golden Eeuw (Golden Age). The prosperity and self-consciousness of the people back then has advanced portrait painting and brought forth countless masterly works.

The most successful portraitists of these times were Rembrandt and Frans Hals. If you stand in front of the lively picture of an elderly businessman and his wife (I add a clipping, the man's name is Jan Rijcksen) whom Rembrandt has painted just as if he had surprised the couple through his appearance, you can get an idea how startled people must have been to find themselves reproduced in such a lifelike form.

I wonder for a moment whether Jan Rijcksen did agree with his portrait. I am almost sure he did. Perfectly sure is that at least the children and grandchildren of the family Rijcksen in later years would watch the painting and say "that was him!"

In spite of these qualities Rembrandt's style often remains an enigma to me. It is so little photographical, so foggy and in some details so vague, sometimes even so blurred that the images often appear as if looked upon through a veil. The style gets even more mysterious in some paintings when you walk closer and take a longer look. You will find confirmed what you have noticed at a first glance only intuitively: sections with accurate details alternate with others that look carelessly drawn and done with the left hand.

Two images at the beginning of the exhibition particularly catch one’s eye in this respect. They give a hint at a possible solution of the riddle.

The first one shows Rembrandt in a small self-portrait as a young man whose face is painted sharply and precisely in only a few parts. Other regions look like outside the range of depth - so for example the right part of the face (seen from the viewer) and nearly all of the hair. They are in the shade and therefore are only dimly visible.

Next to the self-portrait there is a bigger painting, also a self-portrait in which Rembrandt wears a fine hat with feathers. The hat is painted in exact details. Rembrandt with the hat turns to the viewer over his shoulder. He looks a little critically at the viewer, captured alive in an instantaneous pose, just as if the viewer had surprised and even annoyed him. The reproduction here is a little brownish, the colors of the original are much better.

Below the precisely painted feather hat the face again looks peculiarly vague in some parts. The red-blond mustache hangs somewhat disorganized over the mouth. I have looked at the mustache several times to find out whether the lips can be seen through the beard or not, and whether the lips are open, as you might imagine if you watch them from a certain angle.
Miraculously, you can't tell, even after a long and repeated glance. The critically looking face seems to say: don’t look at me all the time, you know already well enough who I am!

Maybe here is an approach to Rembrandt's paintings: they do not want to be looked at for long, not as a map, whose details you study slowly and gradually. They want to catch the lively impression, exactly as it arises in the eye and brain of an observer, all in a fraction of a second. The recommendation for the viewer seems to be: look - and then immediately turn away! And you've got the whole impression.

Of course it is not forbidden to stay longer in front of a Rembrandt painting like in front of every other painting, watching all its details. Each picture in the world invites us to be read exactly. But the viewer of a Rembrandt should not expect to learn much about the details of the portrayed face. He should not wait for the second glance on pores and pimples, which he might have missed at first sight. He should learn instead what "first sight" really means, learn something about seeing itself.

He will understand the mystery of the depth of field, discovered long times before the first knowledge of the optical laws. He will see the interaction between eye, brain and heart in the second when they all share this moment of the first sight, a brilliant concert of all participating senses.

In one of the paintings Rembrandt has the golden embroidery on the fine red cloak of a noble Lord done careless and with only a few yellow square strokes. One might for a moment suspect that the portrayed man, Jan Six did not completely pay the price and therefore had to accept the delivery of an only half-finished painting.

But if you look at the thoughtful, somewhat absent and yet intense look of Jan Six, you will guess that a meeting with him would make you perceive the embroidery just as vague as in the image. His gaze catches his counterpart.

Another painting shows a younger man with the still unfinished face of an only half grown-up adult. You will soon forget the face and perhaps remember only its red nose and red cheeks. The man is portrayed as a person of fresh air. The viewer is surprised to see how little one learns about this face. He will keep his look instead on the wonderfully and precisely painted leather collar of the man’s robe. With its reinforcements and rivets it seems to be part of a wearing armor or even a harness of a horse.

I assume that in former day one could recognize the man's profession by this doublet with the collar that he wears. Maybe he had a special task as policeman or a soldier. In any case, Rembrandt certainly did not offend him through the preciseness of the collar and the blurredness of the face. After all, the man or his friends paid a lot of money for the painting. There must be something deeply correct in Rembrandt’s observation that the collar says more about the man than his face.

Rembrandt painted pictures of a first, holistic impression and so remains singular among the colleagues of his era that usually tried to work out much more photographic paintings.

If you finally see Rembrandt in his self-portraits as an old man, a second veil is laid over the details of the painted face: the veil of charity. You feel the drama of a late life of bitterness, setbacks and extinguished passions. Like the other paintings these images, too are perfectly true despite of the details they are lacking. Maybe the viewer would be even hurt by the power of these details. Fortunately there is the veil and not all of the pain is disclosed.

Even through the veil the ravages of old age are clear enough to see. If there is something that
can make them bearable, it is the memory of the light that has appeared in this man's life, and his unique ability to let his paintings radiate that light.