Compass by Mathias Énard

Author:Mathias Énard [Énard, Mathias]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Contemporary, Fiction
ISBN: 9780811226639
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 2017-02-28T00:00:00+00:00

2:50 A.M.

I’m angry at myself for being so cowardly, cowardly and ashamed, fine I’ll get up, I’m thirsty. Wagner read Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation in September 1854, just when he was starting to imagine Tristan and Isolde. There is a chapter on love in The World ais Will and Representation. Schopenhauer never loved anyone as much as his dog Atma, a Sanskritish dog with the name of the soul. They say that Schopenhauer named his dog as sole heir, I wonder if that’s true. Gruber might do the same. That would be amusing. Gruber and his mutt must be sleeping, I can’t hear anything upstairs. What a curse insomnia is. What time is it? I don’t much remember Schopenhauer’s theories on love anymore. I think he separates love as illusion linked to sexual desire on one hand and universal love, compassion, on the other. I wonder what Wagner made of it. There must be hundreds of pages written on Schopenhauer and Wagner and I haven’t read any. Sometimes life is hopeless.

Love Potion, Death Potion, Mort d’amour, dead of love.

Maybe I’ll make myself a little herbal tea.

Goodbye sleep.

Someday I’ll compose an opera that will be called Schopenhauer’s Dog — it will be about love and compassion, Vedic India, Buddhism, and vegetarianism. The dog in question will be a music-loving Labrador its master takes to the opera, a Wagnerian dog. What will the dog’s name be? Atma? Günter. That’s a nice name, Günter. The dog will be a witness to the end of Europe, to the ruin of culture and the return of barbarism; in the last act Schopenhauer’s ghost will rise from the flames to save the dog (but only the dog) from destruction. The second part will be called Günter, the German Dog and will recount the dog’s journey to Ibiza and its emotions upon discovering the Mediterranean. The dog will talk about Chopin, George Sand, and Walter Benjamin, about all the exiles who found love or peace in the Balearics; Günter will end his life happy, under an olive tree, in the company of a poet whom he will inspire to write beautiful sonnets about nature and friendship.

So that’s what it is, I’m going crazy. I’m going completely crazy. Go make yourself a herbal tea, a muslin sachet that will remind you of the dried flowers of Damascus and Aleppo, the roses of Iran. Obviously the rejection that night in the Baron Hotel still burns after several years, despite how tactful she was, despite everything that occurred afterward, despite Tehran, and all the journeys; of course I had to confront her gaze the next morning, her embarrassment, my embarrassment: you were thunderstruck, you fell from the clouds, she had uttered the name Nadim, and the veil was torn apart. Selfishly, I cold-shouldered him during the following months and even years — jealous, jealous, it’s sad to say, wounded pride, what a stupid reaction. Despite my veneration for Nadim, despite entire evenings spent listening to him play,

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.