Re: Desinvolture et al.

[Wahe@aol.com]

John King wrote (06.05.1997) :

<< However, I'd like to turn back to the letter to FGJ cited by Armin Mohler
in
 "Die Schleife" which Bertil used to start the discussion on desinvolture. At
 the risk of being pedantic, I'd point out that this incident took place in
 Hannover, and not Berlin. One interesting aspect of this letter is the way
 in which EJ treats the incident as a performance and passes judgement on
 both sides in aesthetic terms - the mob and the police lines are referred to
 as Kuenstler. Significant, I feel. Where is the desinvolture here? In the
 figure of EJ writing to his brother. It is a trope which has been well
 documented in criticism of his war writing - the transformance of the
 dangerous into the aesthetic is a strategy of psychic self-preservation
 deployed to keep the threatening at bay by distancing it from the self. (Cf.
 the Anarch who struggles to preserve this distance and thus himself from
 corruption). Bertil's second text from "Das Abenteuerliche Herz" backs this
 reading up - desinvolture as divine armour. Much of J's writing is precisely
 that - stand offish, concerned to observe and order into a coherent symbolic
 system. Desinvolture seems to be deployed as a strategy in that endeavour
 but also as a reaction to its failure to contain the world.
 
 Just some thoughts, >>
 
Let us please discuss the term *Desinvolture* further - '>the transformance
of the dangerous into the aesthetic...< is actually what every good writer
does, and not only with the dangerous - was the situation told of in the
letter really a dangerous one for the author ? The highlighted sentence at
the end

>D a s  G a n z e
h a t t e  e t w a s  z u g l e i c h  A e r g e r l i c h e s
u n d  E r h e i t e r n d e s, w i e  w e n n  
D i l e t t a n t e n  s i c h  m i t  u e b e r l e g e n e n
K u e n s t l e r n  e i n l a s s e n.>

describes the situation as a meeting of 'dilettants' (the mob) and 'artists'
 (police and army) in respect to the art of war or battle - the author on the
side of the well trained, prepared and armed (machine guns) party not really
having anything serious to fear
from the demonstrators.

What about the story of the child taking the apple from _abenteuerliches
Herz_ - I still see *Desinvolture* rather as an attidude expressed in acting
than as a permanent state of mind - I must admit I first understood  Bertil
Haggman's question wether the mob showed Desinvolture in the anecdote by
tempting to attack the professionals, hence my comment. I now see it was
meant the writer showing D.
transforming the witnessed event into the aesthetic realm. I'm not so sure
about that and still take D. for an attribute persons in power can be found
gifted with, visible if their actions find instant acceptance and nobody asks
for legitimation or doubts it.

The 'divine armour' of man is 'Heiterkeit'  (serenity ?), D. being a strain
or an offspring reaching into the historic world, housed by the nobility but
more to do with grace than will-power.

EJ in the trenches of WW one as described by himself reminds of a kind of
aesthetic James Bond (allow the connection), doing cold blooded and
emotionally undisturbed the right thing and thus beeing able to reflect his
observations and produce literature for us. It would be interesting to
examine wether there are more records of front-soldiers of the time in a
similar state of mind or not - I could imagine he was not the only one of the
like. Maybe someone already researched in this direction.

Walter Hedderich
Wahe@aol.com