"Again it occurred to him that Tereza was a child put in a pit-daubed bulrush basket and sent downstream. He couldn't very well let a basket with a child in it float downa stormy river!" (p.10 at the bottom)
What is the significance of this specific reference? (Why "little Moses"?)
And how does Tomas's reaction to Tereza relate to the idea of heaviness? He sees her as a (heavy) responsibility and falls in love with her -- therefore heaviness is good?
"How many ancient myths begin with the resuce of an abandoned child! If Polybus hadn't taken in the young Oediupus, Sophocles wouldn't have written his most beautiful tragedy!" (11).
Do you feel that the "abandoned child" could be referring to Tomas as well as to the child that he is currently ignoring? What in the text suggests this?
Also, I thought it was interesting how Oedipus (a character who loves his mother) is mentioned here, wheras Tomas is described as having no connection with his family members. What do you think about this mentioning? Could Tomas actually be seeking connection; does he maybe miss his family? Is this foreshadowing? How does this idea of "family" connect with lightness and heaviness?
"We believe that the greatness of man stems from the fact that he bears his fate as Atlas bore the heavens on his shoulders." (33).
Yet later, Tomas remarks that "the love story of his life exemplified not...It must be so, but rather...It could just as well be otherwise" (35). I think this relates back to Tomas's heavy responsibility, Tereza, and how he only happened to stumble upon this fate/path. At the end, "all [Tomas] felt was the pressure in his stomach and the despair of having returned." Perhaps this heaviness, which seems negative here, is actually something positive for "only what is heavy has value," (33)?
Is Tomas running away from the responsibility/fate he bears? (If we are going by Beethoven's philosopy.)
"In the days when [Tereza's mother] had had nine suitors kneeling around her ifn a circle, she guarded her nakedness apprehensively, as though try8uing to express the value of her body in terms of the modesty she accorded it. Now she had not only lost that modesty, she had radically broken with it" (p. 46)
Tereza's mother's relationship with her body seems to follow the story of Medusa. Medusa, originally a beautiful young woman, was desired and courted by many suitors. But before she could be married, Poseidon found her worshiping in the temple of Athena and ravished her. Athena was outraged at her sacred temple being violated, and punished Medusa by turning her beautiful tresses into snakes and giving her the destructive power to turn anyone who looked directly at her into stone.
Is there anything to this comparison I'm making? The idea that a beautiful woman has sex and is then ruined by the consequences of it is obviously pretty universal.
Hah-lo! I'm going to try to make it short(er than usual), but I'll probably fail:
What is the purpose of Hercules' broom, which is referenced multiple times throughout Part 3? Hercules does not traditionally have a broom during the Twelve Labors or at any point in his life, so why the broom? Is it just a symbol of ultimate strength, emphasizing Franz's weakness and Sabina's strength, which eventually transfers over to Franz as he is able to admit his lies?
"The bowler hat was a motif in the musical composition that was Sabina's life. It returned again and again, each time with a different meaning, and all the meanings flowed through the bowler hat like water through a riverbed. I might call it Heraclitus' ("You can't step twice into the same river") riverbed" (88). Although I think that the parenthetical is a Heraclitian idea relating to the uniqueness of this moment between Tomas and Sabina, Heraclitus was a philosopher who believed in the unity of opposites. Does this suggest that unity of opposites is what Tomas and Sabina were able to achieve, unlike Sabina and Franz (after all, they needed a short dictionary of misunderstood words, their vocabularies never came together; it was too late)?
Finally (this last one isn't really mythological or philosophical):
"Between the whores' world and God's world, like a river between two empires, stretches an intense smell of urine" (108-109).
This sentence, which stands alone as a paragraph confuses me on multiple levels. Is this a division between spirituality and physicality? Religion and love (heaviness) vs. sex with no strings attached (lightness)? At the end, Franz does mention that his love for Sabina is like a religion, but she on the other hand is cursed with "the unbearable lightness of being." Is one world supposed to win, or are they both doomed to sit beside the smell of urine? Why the comparison to two empires? Is this the Ebro River separating Carthage and Rome? Which world is Rome (they win the battle at Ebro), and which has to go crawling back to Carthage?
I am posting a comment about part 2. I think that there is a lot in your comparison, Julia. In this novel so far, sex has been corrupt and ugly--with the female body being disregarded and degraded (Tomas's "Strip" command). I have another point about Tereza's mother: When her mother was a child, her father compared her to Raphael's Madonna. I'm not sure if this is mythic, but it is certainly an allusion to another person's work. The painting has layers of contrast--it has heavy curtains hanging over clouds, which the people in the painting are standing on, and it brings together the space in the painting and the real space in front of it. The first contrast is interesting to us because it contains lightness and heaviness. It seems as if Tereza's mother does not bring together both entities, but rather began with one and ended with the other. She first was enveloped by the heaviness of her beauty and her future. Later in life she cast off the burden of wanting to be admired and successful in marriage, and then she was all lightness, walking around naked and not caring about her appearance or future at all.
I think that the book is trying to say that uniting both lightness and heaviness, rather than only choosing one, is the only way to attempt happiness in life. The painting, which was the epitome of perfection to be compared with, unites them both. Tomas may seem like a character who unites light and heavy (with his marriage and affairs); however, he does not unite them. He keeps them separate. Then here's the weird part: Tereza suggested bringing them together by having her join in with his affairs. That can't be the solution that the author is trying to get at. So how does this work? Is there any "right" way to handle life?
8 comments:
"Again it occurred to him that Tereza was a child put in a pit-daubed bulrush basket and sent downstream. He couldn't very well let a basket with a child in it float downa stormy river!" (p.10 at the bottom)
What is the significance of this specific reference? (Why "little Moses"?)
And how does Tomas's reaction to Tereza relate to the idea of heaviness?
He sees her as a (heavy) responsibility and falls in love with her -- therefore heaviness is good?
"How many ancient myths begin with the resuce of an abandoned child! If Polybus hadn't taken in the young Oediupus, Sophocles wouldn't have written his most beautiful tragedy!" (11).
Do you feel that the "abandoned child" could be referring to Tomas as well as to the child that he is currently ignoring? What in the text suggests this?
Also, I thought it was interesting how Oedipus (a character who loves his mother) is mentioned here, wheras Tomas is described as having no connection with his family members. What do you think about this mentioning? Could Tomas actually be seeking connection; does he maybe miss his family? Is this foreshadowing? How does this idea of "family" connect with lightness and heaviness?
"We believe that the greatness of man stems from the fact that he bears his fate as Atlas bore the heavens on his shoulders." (33).
Yet later, Tomas remarks that "the love story of his life exemplified not...It must be so, but rather...It could just as well be otherwise" (35). I think this relates back to Tomas's heavy responsibility, Tereza, and how he only happened to stumble upon this fate/path. At the end, "all [Tomas] felt was the pressure in his stomach and the despair of having returned." Perhaps this heaviness, which seems negative here, is actually something positive for "only what is heavy has value," (33)?
Is Tomas running away from the responsibility/fate he bears? (If we are going by Beethoven's philosopy.)
"In the days when [Tereza's mother] had had nine suitors kneeling around her ifn a circle, she guarded her nakedness apprehensively, as though try8uing to express the value of her body in terms of the modesty she accorded it. Now she had not only lost that modesty, she had radically broken with it" (p. 46)
Tereza's mother's relationship with her body seems to follow the story of Medusa. Medusa, originally a beautiful young woman, was desired and courted by many suitors. But before she could be married, Poseidon found her worshiping in the temple of Athena and ravished her. Athena was outraged at her sacred temple being violated, and punished Medusa by turning her beautiful tresses into snakes and giving her the destructive power to turn anyone who looked directly at her into stone.
Is there anything to this comparison I'm making? The idea that a beautiful woman has sex and is then ruined by the consequences of it is obviously pretty universal.
Hah-lo! I'm going to try to make it short(er than usual), but I'll probably fail:
What is the purpose of Hercules' broom, which is referenced multiple times throughout Part 3? Hercules does not traditionally have a broom during the Twelve Labors or at any point in his life, so why the broom? Is it just a symbol of ultimate strength, emphasizing Franz's weakness and Sabina's strength, which eventually transfers over to Franz as he is able to admit his lies?
"The bowler hat was a motif in the musical composition that was Sabina's life. It returned again and again, each time with a different meaning, and all the meanings flowed through the bowler hat like water through a riverbed. I might call it Heraclitus' ("You can't step twice into the same river") riverbed" (88).
Although I think that the parenthetical is a Heraclitian idea relating to the uniqueness of this moment between Tomas and Sabina, Heraclitus was a philosopher who believed in the unity of opposites. Does this suggest that unity of opposites is what Tomas and Sabina were able to achieve, unlike Sabina and Franz (after all, they needed a short dictionary of misunderstood words, their vocabularies never came together; it was too late)?
Finally (this last one isn't really mythological or philosophical):
"Between the whores' world and God's world, like a river between two empires, stretches an intense smell of urine" (108-109).
This sentence, which stands alone as a paragraph confuses me on multiple levels. Is this a division between spirituality and physicality? Religion and love (heaviness) vs. sex with no strings attached (lightness)? At the end, Franz does mention that his love for Sabina is like a religion, but she on the other hand is cursed with "the unbearable lightness of being." Is one world supposed to win, or are they both doomed to sit beside the smell of urine? Why the comparison to two empires? Is this the Ebro River separating Carthage and Rome? Which world is Rome (they win the battle at Ebro), and which has to go crawling back to Carthage?
I am posting a comment about part 2. I think that there is a lot in your comparison, Julia. In this novel so far, sex has been corrupt and ugly--with the female body being disregarded and degraded (Tomas's "Strip" command).
I have another point about Tereza's mother:
When her mother was a child, her father compared her to Raphael's Madonna. I'm not sure if this is mythic, but it is certainly an allusion to another person's work. The painting has layers of contrast--it has heavy curtains hanging over clouds, which the people in the painting are standing on, and it brings together the space in the painting and the real space in front of it. The first contrast is interesting to us because it contains lightness and heaviness. It seems as if Tereza's mother does not bring together both entities, but rather began with one and ended with the other. She first was enveloped by the heaviness of her beauty and her future. Later in life she cast off the burden of wanting to be admired and successful in marriage, and then she was all lightness, walking around naked and not caring about her appearance or future at all.
I think that the book is trying to say that uniting both lightness and heaviness, rather than only choosing one, is the only way to attempt happiness in life. The painting, which was the epitome of perfection to be compared with, unites them both. Tomas may seem like a character who unites light and heavy (with his marriage and affairs); however, he does not unite them. He keeps them separate. Then here's the weird part: Tereza suggested bringing them together by having her join in with his affairs. That can't be the solution that the author is trying to get at. So how does this work? Is there any "right" way to handle life?
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