Forum / International diplomacy and literary precedent
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strannikovSep 14, 10:16amI did not read President Putin's column in the Times but couldn't help but hear of its contents down here in the provinces, a circumstance perhaps owing to which I only latterly thought about Putin's slighting references to "American exceptionalism".
The exchange perhaps illustrates that Putin has read Dostoevsky's CRIME AND PUNISHMENT at least one time more than has Obama: because Raskolnikov is the very image of "the exceptional man".
We know this, courtesy of Joseph Frank, et al., because while Mikhail Bakhtin points out that while the germ of C&P can be located suitably in Poe's "Tell-Tale Heart" (a story Dostoevsky translated for his ephemeral journal TIME), Frank and Konstantin Mochulsky point out that FMD fleshed out Raskolnikov by incorporating features of the celebrated French murderer Lacenaire.
(This perception is borne out in two other [cinematic or cinema-poetic] sources: Carne's CHILDREN OF PARADISE and Bresson's PICKPOCKET. The former prominently illustrates the figure of Lacenaire himself, and the scintillating portrayal shows a man indeed possessed of the infatuation of "exceptionalism", which he is intelligent enough to see will lead him inevitably to the scaffold and a very close shave. The latter is usually regarded as Bresson's adaptation of C&P and includes the Raskolnikov-Porfiry cat-and-mouse exchange with the Porfiry character baiting and extracting from the criminal Michel his views on "exceptionalism": Michel is never naïve enough to think that he cannot one day be tripped up or else trip himself up.)
I cannot claim Putin for a Dostoevsky scholar but I assume he's consulted the novel more closely than I've consulted his op-ed piece. Still, the honest assessment and rebuke of "exceptionalism" has been a hallmark of Russian literature for over 150 years. (The east European perspective on exceptionalism can also be glimpsed in Wajda's DANTON, where Gerard Depardieu's title character unburdens himself to Robespierre in an unguarded moment that "the exceptional man is superior to the masses", again, with predictable result.)
It's been a long while since I read Poe's "Tell-Tale Heart", but while the narrator might have exhibited a high regard for his abilities, I don't recall that he specifically boasted of his own exceptional status: maybe Poe can be credited here with an otherwise hidden sense of restraint.
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Frankie SaxxSep 14, 10:47am
While Putin may have intended a slight, the cultural context would, I think, be lost on many Americans. In general, Americans don't mind being called "exceptional."
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Sam RasnakeSep 14, 01:49pmAs an aside - I do like Carne's work, but I find Bresson's works - and most any of his films will do - to be brilliantly made. He has, I think, only a handful of peers. I find the ending to Pickpocket to be amazing - given Bresson's low-keyed and restrained style. And it's fresh every time I view it. I think that's part of his genius.
Really pleased to find Bresson in this thread.
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Ann BogleSep 14, 02:43pm -
strannikovSep 14, 03:04pm
Ann: for the link: bolshoi spasibah!
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XXXXSep 14, 03:16pm
And because the supermarket near my house sells apples means its management has obviously been inspired by the book of Genesis.
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Frankie SaxxSep 14, 04:32pm
Biblical supermarkets are the worst. The worst.
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stephen hastings-kingSep 15, 01:57pmI have been tracking the Syrian revolution as a political matter and have been somewhere between disappointed and depressed by the fatuousness of most of the opposition to some kind of action. This essay provides a neat summary of the grounds for that:
http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/14157/sleeping-with-the-enemy_the-global-left-and-the-no
Personally, I oppose the military action that's been proposed because it is a bad idea, a bad plan. Exclusive reliance on air power to blast apart infrastructure that is concentrated around Damascus, for example, where many of the 4.25 million internally displaced refugees are concentrated, seems to me likely to weaken but not damage the Assad security forces (the central problem), which is likely to lead to an increase in the violence. Meanwhile, the groups that are trying to actually carry on the revolution find themselves confronting a two front conflict, with the brutality of Assad's forces on the one hand, and largely foreign jihadi groups, the interests of which are radically opposed to those of the revolutionaries, on the other. And there has not been a serious political process underway that might open onto other alternatives. That may be changing over the past days, but it's hard to know.
So while I enjoyed the inter-textual take on Putin's almost entirely disengenuous op-ed piece (the canard about the rebels gassing themselves, buried in the center of the piece, for example...no discussion of the brutality of the Assad forces for example), I have trouble with the aestheticization that accompanies it.
Here's documentary short that is worth your consideration:
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James Lloyd DavisSep 15, 02:57pmAn excellent documentary. One of many documentaries to come out of that war.
I don't understand how people cannot be moved, I don't get why those who can help choose not to do so, even for the reason of pacifism.
The United States' military spending accounts for 39% of the world's total expenditures. That's not 'defense' spending, it's insanity. If Americans don't want to be the world's policemen, then we need to stop building the world's police force.
Until that happens, if we have the means to do so and we choose not to act in places like Syria, Darfur, all the lonely places in the world where chaos and institutionalized murder reigns, then we deserve the world's contempt.
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