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Alfred Döblin’s The Murder of a Buttercup and Other Stories – a Review

Alfred Döblin’s The Murder of a Buttercup is a collection of short stories written by the German writer during his early career, from 1904-11, and published in English in the book Bright Magic. I read them largely because they all fall within the time period of the German paper I’m taking next year – is there any other reason to read anything? – and because unlike, say, Robert Musil’s stories of this period, the stories collected in The Murder of a Buttercup are rather more straightforward and approachable. They are, that is, stories as well as experiments, however full they are of modernist flourishes. Döblin himself is one of the better-known German modernists, albeit one whose lifetime’s work has been reduced down to a single book – Berlin Alexanderplatz – just as Ivan Goncharov in Russia or William Makepeace Thackery in Britain have been reduced to Oblomov and Vanity Fair for the casual reader.

A photo of Alfred Döblin, the author of The Murder of a Buttercup — Alfred Döblin, a German writer whose work has more or less been reduced down to his novel *Berlin Alexanderplatz*, was born in 1878 and worked as a doctor before becoming a full-time writer. *The Murder of a Buttercup* was his first collection of stories.

Whether or not that seems fair in Döblin’s case I hope to venture an early answer to at the end of this review. Before then I’ll go over a few of the stories themselves, alongside their general themes. For, whether good or not, they are certainly interesting for their modernist impulses. All translations are by Damion Searls.

The Rejection of the World – “The Sailboat Ride”

The first story in The Murder of a Buttercup is the plainly titled “The Sailboat Ride” and it is itself one of the most straightforward tales here. It details a relationship between a Brazilian man, Copetta, and a woman he meets at the beach at Ostend in Belgium. Copetta is, at forty-eight, already conscious of his age. In Paris, before the story begins, he’s spent weeks in hospital, expecting to die only to ultimately recover. Far away from home, he hopes to sample European culture. But his attention is taken by a woman he meets. After seeing her three times in one day he begins to question the assumptions underlying his life. He sends her a note before destroying both his wedding ring and his pictures of his children.

When they meet, they go for a ride into the sea on a sailboat. They are wild and restless in their passion, but in time Copetta’s mood worsens. She tries to comfort him, but without success. At last a wave comes that bears him away. She is found by the authorities, drifting on the sea – Copetta’s suicide was premeditated, and he had already sent them a telegram to warn them. But the story does not end here. Now we follow the woman as she heads to Paris and tries to stave off her grief through sexual liberation. “She denied herself to no one”. But this does not bring her the deep pleasure she is after. A year later she sends a message to Ostend: “To Mr Copetta Ostend Hotel Estrada expect me tomorrow noon. Wire reply requested.”

She returns. Her mother has died in the interim, but the news has no effect on the woman. She is filled with bliss – her madness is complete. She pretends that Copetta is alive and writes him a message, then one morning she steals a rowboat and heads into the sea. There she meets “Copetta” again. From out of the waves “a dark shape” appears. He joins her on the boat, but his body is crusted with shells and ruined. He tries to ward her off with an ambiguous wave of his arm, but she does not retreat. As they are united in intoxication and pleasure, they turn young once more, and in that moment they are both at last swept under the waves.

Meanings and Themes in “The Sailboat Ride”

“The Sailboat Ride” is a good introduction to many of the general themes of The Murder of a Buttercup. First among these is a turning away from the world. In the Modernist period many artists rejected the stodgy social conditions of the environment in which they worked. Emotions and characters that otherwise would not grace the printed page now rose to prominence and without condemnation on the part of their creators. In “The Sailboat Ride” we have Copetta’s infidelity and also the open female sexuality of the woman. Döblin’s narration in The Murder of a Buttercup is at timeshighly sensual, and this story is filled with hip-on-hip contact, mussels, and other overt and covert sexually charged emotions and symbols.

A painting of Nietzsche by Edvard Munch. — Friedrich Nietzsche, destroyer of past values and builder of new ones, is a big influence on modernism in general, and Döblin in particular. It was he who first challenged the foundations of our culture and society, revealing how flimsy these foundations really were. Painting by Munch.

Of course, within the story both man and women are punished for their desires – Copetta’s inability to deal with socially-conditioned guilt no doubt leads to his suicide, while the woman faces condemnation for forgetting her mother and dancing with so many men. But what matters is that that at the story’s conclusion they turn their backs on society and find bliss. The sea, intoxication (a motif that directly speaks to Nietzsche’s Dionysian world in The Birth of Tragedy), allows them to come together at last, at the cost of their demise. And it’s hard to read the final moments as anything other than triumphant.

“Astralia”: Another Retreat from the World

A rejection of the world can come in many forms, and though death and suicide are common in The Murder of a Buttercup there are other retreats here. In Astralia we find a scholar, Adolf Götting, whose escape comes in the form of mysticism. As the fin-de-siècle mood in Europe worsened towards the outbreak of the First World War, and with organised religion dying, many turned to cults and mysticism to try to find a suitable faith.

The scholar of Astralia has his own mystic group, convinced that the Redeemer will soon return. They meet and drink, and drink a lot. When Götting leaves the tavern one evening he has no boots, nor hat nor coat. He thinks he is transformed into some kind of prophet, and the mockery he receives on the street only confirms his delusions. When he returns home, he treats his wife badly for not being part of his group, but when she continues to fuss about his dress and state of dishevelment he eventually breaks down: “Oh, don’t laugh…. Please, please don’t laugh. Oh, I beg you, I’m begging, beg-ging….”. The retreat fails, Götting is left a fool. Society has been too strong for him to escape.

“The Murder of a Buttercup” – Religion and Rationality

There is a tension in The Murder of a Buttercup not only between society and the self, but also between an extreme rationality and irrationality. Both Nietzsche (e.g. Beyond Good and Evil) and Max Weber (in his lecture “Science as Vocation”) warn against adopting a hyper rationalist viewpoint of the sort that was at the time coming into vogue. While on the surface science offers a lot of explanations, Nietzsche saw a wholehearted belief in science as just a continuation of the Christian world view, and as such one ultimately tending towards nihilism and a devaluation of all things. Meanwhile, Weber added that although science answers a lot of questions, nonetheless its answers are very often based on presuppositions (even today), meaning that most “facts” are nonetheless ultimately contingent. Once we start questioning what underpins them we can devalue the world that way too.

What matters, then, is to leave a little bit of irrationality in yourself instead of veering between hyper-rationalism and irrationalism. There are many characters in The Murder of a Buttercup who seem unable to do this. The most memorable on is Michael Fischer, the hero of “The Murder of a Buttercup” itself. This is an extraordinarily strange tale. On a walk in the mountains Fischer, the head of a firm in the city, attacks and dismembers a buttercup that had managed to slow him down. Fischer is a rational man, if cruel. But the murder of a buttercup is all that is necessary to lead him down the road to madness. A few moments after killing the flower he sees himself, committing the act again. A dislocation has taken place between the old Fischer and the new.

As he continues walking, guilt for the “murder” begins to eat away at him, including a fear of social repercussions – “What if someone saw him, one of his business colleagues or a lady?”. Fischer tries to control himself the same way he controls his firm. In his mind he even seems to refer to himself as a “firm”. But he is unable to win out, and images of death and decay, of the “plant corpse”, continue to eat at him. Alongside another emotion – pleasure. A kind of sexual enjoyment was to be had in murdering the plant, a “gentle lasciviousness”.

Once Fischer gets over his guilt he feels “liberated”. But back in the city this guilt returns. He finds himself crediting the buttercup money to try to buy back his peace, he makes offerings to it. He is unable to win out – he ends up crying at all the beauty in the world, beauty that his guilt is ruining. He only moves on when he takes a new buttercup home from the mountains. He lavishes attention on this one out of spite for the old one. “Never had his life passed so cheerfully” we are told. Eventually, he disappears into the forest, “laughing and snorting loudly”. His madness is complete.

Modern Anxieties in The Murder of a Buttercup

Döblin’s Berlin grew extremely rapidly in the final years of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. The city and business underpin Fischer’s power and confidence. But the foundations are flimsy. There is a moment in the story where he thinks “Nobody would make a fool out of him, nobody”. Though he tries to live rationally, he gains more enjoyment from an imaginary war with a buttercup than from his entire business career. His final retreat into the forest, like Copetta and the woman’s in “The Sailboat Ride”, is a firm rejection of society and social constraints. And like theirs, it is marked by a feeling that illicit, sexual pleasures and desires and more valuable than socially constrained ones, even as those same desires have fatal consequences. Fischer’s story is also similar to “Astralia” by means of its preoccupation with religious concerns.

In “Astralia” there was an attempt to replace organised religion with a kind of mystical cult; in “The Murder of a Buttercup”, however, it is the absence of religion that is the focus. Without a god to turn to, the question of how to expiate his guilt torments Fischer incessantly and seems to be a great contributor to his eventual madness. Looking at the story through Nietzsche seems like a good approach. Guilt, of course, is a Christian emotion in Nietzsche’s view. It makes us uncomfortable acting in a way that benefits ourselves by encouraging us to think about others and external, heavenly, judgement. It is thus the hallmark of a slave-morality. Fischer lives in a godless world, but he is still hamstrung by a Christian moral system, leaving him in the double bind of feeling a bad emotion but being unable to deal with it.

He doesn’t know he is free, and that ignorance comes to destroy him.

Conclusions

There are a few other interesting stories here, including “The Wrong Door”, with its amusing play on our ideas of fate, and the coldly rational and brutally misogynistic “Memoirs of a Jaded Man”. But space and attention are at a premium and I had better wrap things up. I liked a lot of the ideas and concerns that Döblin voices in The Murder of a Buttercup. In some sense his stories, with their mix of the supernatural and irrational alongside the rational and concrete, reminded me of Borges’ work. But Borges manages in three or four pages what Döblin needs several more to do, and I’m not sure the latter’s work is better for the extra space.

A painting of Döblin in a jagged, modernist style. — Modern anxieties alone are not enough for good fiction, at least in my book. The stories in *The Murder of a Buttercup* are intellectually interesting, but not always gripping. Portrait of Döblin by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.

It doesn’t help that his stories are rarely gripping, and there were a few times when I was left confused about what was actually happening. These aren’t instances of modernist flourishes – when Döblin’s language gets weird, it can be fantastic and beautiful – instead, these are times when he could probably simply have done with an editor. In the end, I’m left with mixed feelings. These tales are the work not of a talented author, but of someone who has everything they need to become one given time and the right circumstances. As with Isaac Babel’s Red Army Cavalry, and Platonov’s Soul and Other Stories, I can’t help but feel that the intellectual side of Döblin’s stories overpower their weaker and less gripping plots. And unfortunately, while it makes him easy to write essays about, it doesn’t really make him enjoyable to read.

But I hope his mature work, when I get around to it, will change my mind.

Have you read any Döblin? Does he get better? Leave a comment and let me know.

Thomas Mann’s Gladius Dei and the Challenge of Modern Art

I confess I’ve never really gotten the hype with Thomas Mann. Or rather, the moment I start reading him I’m usually left either disappointed or confused. I blame his reputation. German students like me flock to read him but soon find they spend more time in the dictionary than the stories themselves. Death in Venice is a particular pain to understand the language of, and that’s not even half the battle of making sense of that tale. Nonetheless, once I read it in English (the poor Cambridge academics who supervise me are doubtless shaking their heads in disappointment) I found it rather enjoyable, and intellectually challenging too. Nevertheless, due to the arcane rules of Cambridge examinations I can’t talk about Death in Venice next year, though Mann himself remains on the syllabus. Looking for alternatives, I turned to “Gladius Dei”, hoping it would have something interesting to say.

“Gladius Dei” – I was attracted by the title, meaning “the sword of God” – is not nearly as action-packed as its title suggests. And nor is it as focused on the past as the Latin hints at either. Instead, it shows the clash between modern art and the sensibility that drove it with the older ideas that once justified artistic creation but which, in 1902 (the time of the novella’s composition), had very much fallen out of fashion. It is the tale of one man, Hieronymus, and his struggle against modernism as a whole.

Translations are from David Luke’s Death in Venice and Other Stories.

Introduction: Munich, the Fallen City

“Munich was resplendent.” “Gladius Dei” begins with a description of Munich, and Munich in some way is the main character of the novella. The German Jugendstil, their Art Nouveau, was at the height of its popularity in the city at the time the novella was written. From the very first paragraph, listing “festive squares” and “colonnades” and “fountains” we are immersed into this world of art. We meet the people, particularly women, who live in the city – as types, rather than as people. They are all relaxed and indolent. There is no rush about them.

Then we are taken into “the elaborate beauty-emporium of Herr M. Blüthenzweig”, where artistic reproductions and books are all on display, ranging in topic from the very modern to the classical. And here there is the first sense that art and its creation are not done in isolation, but influenced by consumers and their tastes – “among all this the portraits of artists, musicians, philosophers, actors and writers are displayed to gratify the inquisitive public’s taste for personal details.”

Next, we meet the key reproduction, which forms the focal point of the novella – but we don’t learn what it is in the novella’s first part. Instead, we are introduced to it through (literal) framing – “there is a large picture which particularly attracts the crowd: an excellent sepia photograph in a massive old-gold frame”. The frame is significant – its age contrasts with the contents, which are “sensational” and highly modern, promoted by “quaintly printed placards” and “this year’s great international exhibition”. Ironically, like the citizens of the novella, we are shown modern art by means of its popular reputation rather than its particular contents.

The narrative then moves back onto the street from its focus, completing the framing of the central picture. The final paragraph discusses the popularity of the art while returning to the novella’s opening words. “That it should continue so to thrive is a matter of general and reverent concern; on all sides diligent work and propaganda are devoted to its service; everywhere there is a pious cult of line, of ornament, of form, of the sense, of beauty… Munich is resplendent.” Though “Gladius Dei” ends its first part with the same words that begun it, here the tone is changed. From the purely celebratory beginning, now there is something seedy about the art – hinted at by words like “propaganda” and “cult”. It is this tension and seediness that the centre of Mann’s tale hinges upon.

Hieronymus and the Madonna

With the second section of “Gladius Dei” we are introduced to Hieronymus, whose name, reminding me of the artist Bosch, immediately conjures up images of the past. Against the brightness of resplendent Munich we are told that “when one looked at him, a shadow seemed to pass across the sun or a memory of dark hours across the soul”. He is inscrutable, but we are told he resembles a portrait in Florence of a monk who also raged against the world. In this way, Mann connects the present anger of Hieronymus with a historical precedent, that of the priest, Girolamo Savonarola. The two of them also share the same name.

A painting of Girolamo Savonarola, a priest who shares many characteristics with Hieronymus in Gladius Dei — Girolamo Savonarola, the Dominican priest who shares a passionate hatred of modernity with Hieronymus, alongside some physical features too.

Hieronymus first goes to a church on the Ludwigstrasse to pray, and then he comes across the art house of Blüthenzweig. Going inside, he sees the reproduction first mentioned in part 1 of “Gladius Dei”:

“It was a Madonna, painted in a wholly modern and entirely unconventional manner. The sacred figure was ravishingly feminine, naked and beautiful. Her great sultry eyes were rimmed with shadow, and her lips were half parted in a strange and delicate smile. Her slender figures were grouped rather nervously and convulsively round the waist of the Child, a nude boy of aristocratic, almost archaic slimness, who was playing with her breast and simultaneously casting a knowing sidelong glance at the spectator.”

This is sacrilege. A holy image turned lustful – “ravishing”, “sultry”, and the “knowing sidelong glance” all suggest that the glorification inherent in such a choice of subject has taken a back seat. Hieronymus overhears two young men discussing the painting, neither of whom respects its religious subject matter. “She does make one a bit doubtful about the dogma of the Immaculate Conception” one says. But they inform the reader that the painting has been bought by the Pinakothek Gallery and that its artist is being feted around the city. Their language is almost comically cultural, as if – to use the modern phrase – they are a bunch of posers. I would be surprised if this was not exactly what Mann has in mind. Hieronymus, meanwhile, finishes looking at the painting, and leaves, ending part 2.

Part 3 is only a page long, but it describes Hieronymus’ struggles to rid himself of the image of the sexualised Madonna. At last, however, “on the third night” he receives what he perceives to be a command from God, and decides that he must go and protest the display of such a work of art. And now the story approaches its climax.

Action and Inaction – the Bloodless Climax of Gladius Dei

Part 4 begins as Hieronymus heads onto the street, filled with righteous rage. “It is God’s will”, he thinks to himself, echoing the cries of “Deus Vult” that launched the first crusades. Outside the weather has begun to worsen, and a storm appears to be approaching. He reaches Blüthenzweig’s shop and goes inside, seeing evidence all around him for the spiritual decay of humankind. For example, there is a “gentleman in a yellow suit with a black goatee” who has a “bleating laugh” – both the laugh and the goatee suggest something animalistic about him. Coming across Blüthenzweig as he’s finalizing a transaction Hieronymus hears him call it “most attractive and seductive”.

Blüthenzweig is a capitalist, an art dealer with little appreciation for art itself. That is Hieronymus’ interpretation anyway, as he claims the dealer despises him “because I am not able to buy anything from you.” Meanwhile, Hieronymus is entirely concerned with the non-monetary value that art has. Is it good for the spirit, or not? In the case of the Madonna, he sees it as actively pernicious – “vice itself.” Blüthenzweig rejects this immediately – “The picture is a work of art… and as such it must be judged by the appropriate standards”. The painting has been bought by the gallery and is universally acclaimed. Both Blüthenzweig and Hieronymus have their own idea of what the “appropriate standards” are, but Blüthenzweig’s idea is marked by a focus on the external – acclaim – while Hieronymus’ is internal – “the spiritual enrichment of mankind”.

Hieronymus does not let Blüthenzweig convince him. He cries of hell, of the torments of purgatory. Beauty is a lie used by the representatives of Jugendstil to avoid considering the health of the soul. Instead, art ought to be “the sacred torch that must shed its merciful light into all life’s terrible depths, into every shameful and sorrowful abyss”. It must be about compassion, not beauty. Hieronymus demands that Blüthenzweig burns the reproduction, which naturally he does not have any interest in doing. He calls in Krauthuber, one of his workers, to throw Hieronymus out of the shop. Krauthuber is “a son of the people, malt-nourished, herculean and awe-inspiring” and with “heroic arms.” He represents, it seems to me, a sidestepping of the Christian view of art that Hieronymus represents towards the Classical, where art, especially if one takes Nietzsche’s view, was all about advancing the spirit and glorifying it.

Just not in the Christian sense of the spirit or glorification. Alone on the street, Hieronymus falls into madness, surrounded by the markers of a depraved age – “carnival costumes”, “naked statues”, and “the busts of women”. He sees them all piled into a pyramid and set to flames. It is here, as the novella ends, that he quotes Savonarola, who had had a similar vision of God’s vengeance, “Gladius Dei super terram… Cito et velociter” – “behold there is the sword of God above the Earth, fast and swift”. He has achieved nothing for his madness, but perhaps Hieronymus succeeded in saving his soul. Who can say?

Theories of Art and the Modernism of “Gladius Dei”

By the time that Mann is writing “Gladius Dei” Hieronymus’ view of art was well out of date. Even in the 19^th century, art had already become popular, its form and content determined by market forces – think of Dickens in England during that time, or Dumas in France. That’s not to say that lofty goals had departed from artistic endeavours, but rather that they were often secondary to the need to feed oneself and one’s family, especially as artistic production became democratised and a new generation of writers and artists who were not aristocratic in background came to prominence.

But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to see where Mann sits in all this. Though in “Gladius Dei” he shows the vapid banality of Blüthenzweig and his customers, Hieronymus is a ridiculous figure too. The contrast between the violence of the novella’s title and the ultimate lack of action and change seems to mock Hieronymus’ hopes to change society’s relation to art for the better. Likely, Mann sits somewhere in the middle – he respects Hieronymus’ love for the spiritual mission for art, while acknowledging the historical forces that make this view secondary, and indeed challenging to hold. The old values, in a world where “God is dead”, simply aren’t reliable anymore.

It’s also worth considering how the form of “Gladius Dei” reflects modernism in its composition. For one, there’s Mann’s ambivalence towards all of his characters, so that it’s not clear who is worth supporting, if anybody. Then there is also the satirical use of religion (just like the Madonna itself) and its language when Hieronymus thinks God is commanding him to defeat Blüthenzweig and the reproduction. It’s clear that Mann doesn’t think Hieronymus is really hearing God or want the reader to think so either. The inconclusiveness of the novella’s conclusion is also, in its own way, modernistic. We are given no guidance – it’s not even clear if we should pity Hieronymus. All, I think, that is clear is that the Jugendstil movement and the Christian artistic sensibility of Hieronymus are both inadequate in Mann’s view. But what is good art – Mann’s ideas on that are impossible to work out.

A photo of Thomas Mann in 1905 — Thomas Mann in 1905, three years after “Gladius Dei” was completed. I’m not sure how far I approve of the coldness of his writings. Intellectualism alone is not what I’m after as a reader.

Conclusion

Personally, I’m closer to Hieronymus than Mann is. Not in the sense that I think literature and art should be about fulfilling a Christian message, but rather that I do think there should be a strong message in them about the value of humanity. A literature must be affirmative, glorifying our lives and life itself in all their complexity, whether good or bad. This is the secret to Tolstoy’s greatness. Mann doesn’t care enough about people for that. In this, he reminds me a little bit of Isaac Babel, another writer who is much more intellectual than emotional. It can make stories that are thought provoking, but terribly cold…

I thought “Gladius Dei” was ok. I mean, it’ll be easy to write about it next year once I’m back at Cambridge. But the measure of a book’s value isn’t how easily I’ll be able to ram it into an essay. I’ll keep reading Mann, but I hope one day I’ll understand where he keeps his heart locked away. Irony just doesn’t cut it for me – our own world is too ironic, too dispassionate, already. The solution to an ironic and dead world isn’t acceptance, but a conscious search for meaning and value, like Kazantzakis managed in Report to Greco. But perhaps I’m asking too much.

If you’ve read “Gladius Dei” and have an opinion on it, why not drop by the comments and let me know what you thought?

The Day of Judgement by Salvatore Satta – Old Dreams

Salvatore Satta’s The Day of Judgement is a wonderful book, as warm and pleasant as the hills and valleys of Sardinia it takes as its setting. More than that, it is a classic, without a shadow of a doubt. I enjoyed last week’s Satantango more, but as much as I loved it, it is a book destined for people who read, more than people who live. If I go around the country homes of my friends the books that I find there will not be by Joyce, or Woolf, or Beckett, but rather Austen, Hardy, and Kipling. These latter group are no better or worse than the first, but they bring with them a prose that is simple, clear, and a vehicle for their books’ plots, instead of anything deliberately striving to be more. They are not, in a primary sense, experimenters. And one day, perhaps, they may be joined on their shelves by Salvatore Satta’s The Day of Judgement too.

A Classic, for Better or Worse

Pots and pots of ink have dried up in trying to explain what a literary classic is. With The Day of Judgement I simply had a feeling, as I was reading, of something ineffable, indescribable. It had, I would say, a certain bearing about itself. The book is not long, but it carries itself like an elder statesman. This may be in part because Salvatore Satta started writing it when he was almost seventy, after a long career as a jurist. There is no sense of rushing or urgency about the pages, no matter what the author himself felt as he was writing them. It is a book of anecdotes, of spilling digressions, written by an old man about his home. And – and this is what is so rare in our times, when modernism, modern science, and worst of all the horrors of the Second World War, broke that particularly Victorian self-assurance that let us preach what we believed without self-question – it has the gravitas and casual wisdom of someone who has lived, and wishes to share their experience with others. Whether you like him or not, it reminds me of Steinbeck at his best.

Salvatore Satta (1902-1975) was a jurist of note during his life. When he began writing *The Day of Judgement* he was almost seventy. It is the fruit of a lifetime’s worth of wisdom and love.

Chronicle of a Town

To call this a novel is wrong. It is more a chronicle than a novel, or perhaps a story in Benjamin’s sense. Its heart is the town of Nuoro, in central Sardinia, and Don Sebastiano Sanna Carboni, a nobleman who lives and works there. For a period of perhaps twenty years his life and the life of his village is followed and recounted by the narrator, an older man trying to remember and record his past. Each chapter focuses on a different aspect, place, or person from among the village’s seven thousand. We meet schoolteachers, priests, swindlers, shepherds, and learn about making wine, or about the potential origins of the village, or the design of the houses. Moments such as electrification of street lamps, or the first arrival of radical political ideas, are recounted with tenderness and honesty. But as the book progresses, and the world itself “progresses”, there come about ever more challenges to this once so isolated mountain village, and its way of life.

A “Truth” to Challenge – the Themes

Through the way that the old man recounts his “truth” The Day of Judgement further gains the regalia of a true classic. Because of its structure, with each chapter detailing a different event, or the struggles of a different man or woman, there is an extraordinary thematic variety within these pages. The conflicts between husbands and wives, between fathers and sons, between nobles and the lower orders, between conservatives and socialists, between individuals and the state, between the church and the common man, between teachers and students, are all described. Each side is given its say, and in such a way that I can already sense that this is one of those books which like a seed grow with time and the experiences of their readers. One day I may well support the fathers, instead of the sons, even if today that is not entirely the case. The “truth” of the narrator doesn’t mean a domineering world view, but rather a series of suggestions and opinions which can be challenged or accepted, but are not meant by any stretch of the imagination to be absolute.

Progress – What Good is it?

Part of this comes from the fundamental tension at the heart of the book – between the desire for progress and the inherent conservatism of humankind. I don’t think Satta himself truly knew where he lay in this battle – and this is part of the book’s greatness. Though the narrator himself at one point says that “there is nothing I detest so much as the past”, the evidence of the book tells a different story. The “Day of Judgement” of the book’s title refers not only to the fate of humankind before God in some strands of Christian theology, but also to the role of the writer here. Satta’s narrator admits that he is reviving the dead of his own past and history, from the early twentieth century and a little before, and making them give an account for themselves before the reader. And we are supposed to judge for ourselves whether these men and women, living in the village, have lived their lives badly or well. The narrator can only show us who they were – the rest is up to us.

Nostalgia for a World now Lost

A plaintive nostalgia pervades the book. A longing for a world which was only Nuoro, or at least a world which ended at the sea. Nuoro is a place, for Don Sebastiano, “where there was room for everyone” and the way that the book goes through each of the characters and professions, the very nature of the book’s ordered structure, formally reflects a stability and certainty about life and one’s place in it. Yet there is also an occasional lyricism too, notably in chapter V’s lavish description of making bread, which has “all the solemnity of a ritual”, and then later on when discussing “the pagan mystery” of the vineyard. Here the prose itself takes on the same magical quality of its subject matter, and it’s hard not to want to be there yourself, hard at work on the fields or kneading dough.

Picture of houses in Nuoro — Nuoro today. Perhaps not that much has changed, after all

Through work there comes a sense of community and continuity. People visit each other, sit and play cards together or simply chat in a way that is alien to much of the modern world with its hustle and bustle. It is from a time before time, before precision. It is a stasis of a positive sort, which is differentiated from the present most strikingly by the hope of parents that their children will live (as Don Sebastiano hopes) just the same life as their parents – that they may be just as lucky in having such a good life, instead of eternally striving after a better one. It ties in with the religious argument in the work – that we should see the blessedness of our own lives, rather than in their potentiality.

The Sympathy of a Great Soul

It is his unbounded sympathy, too, that shows Satta as an earnest writer. He cares for all of his characters, from the grimiest urchins to the nobles like Don Sebastiano. It means that whenever progress seems almost inevitable, he is always willing to show kindness towards those it does not benefit, such as the canons who are forbidden to ring the church bells for the beginning of school by a new arrival from outside of the town. The cessation of the bells is one of the saddest moments of the book, because it represents a huge loss of pride and self-respect for the canons. With the ending of the bells’ song, there is also a hidden but no less important loss for the townsfolk of a part of their identity, and when we are told that “the bell rope hung sadly above Ziu Longu’s bench, like the rope after a hanging”, it’s hard not to think that the image is supposed to call to mind the small death inside their souls too.

What Does Modernity Mean?

What modernity means is a loss of the sanctity of the world, a loss of music, a loss of community. It means problems, for “Problems, of whatever kind, arise when the simple, humble certainties of life begin to fail”. Alongside the loss of the bells, another poignant image of the end of street lighting in the village. Before the introduction of electricity, a man would go around lighting the oil lamps, one by one. Behind him, we are told, would follow the town’s children, playing a game between them of trying to catch as many of the spent matches as possible. It is a stupid, childish game, but what it means is community.

Electrification “was destiny itself” but that hardly stops it from being a force for the destruction of the sacred past. The narrator once again deploys a characteristically reticent phrase for when the lights first turn on all at once: for the town “in some mysterious way felt that it had entered history”. It is up to us, again, to decide whether history means good or ill. But it’s hard to avoid the ominous note that creeps into the prose. “The north wind had risen, and the bulbs hanging in their shades in the Corso began to sway sadly, light and shadow, shadow and light, making the night-time nervous. This had not happened with the oil lamps”.

Tragedy of the Present: the Invention of Politics

With modernity also comes politics. Sardinia, on the periphery of Italy, has never been historically important, and Nuoro, at its centre, even less so. But one day, the narrator says, the younger generation started reading Avanti!, a radical socialist paper, and politics arrived in the village. The old certainties of life – that people stayed in their social positions and jobs, that there was a kind of harmony between all walks of life – suddenly begin to be questioned. People, told of inequality, begin to believe in it, and conflicts that had not even been conceivable a hundred years earlier, now take pride of place. Whether they are rightly motivated or not is less important here than the fact that they undermine the conservative feeling of the world as organised and correct as it is. They suggest change where hitherto it wouldn’t even have been a concept.

Politics is all well and good in theory, but in practice something else happens. The movement is co-opted by a certain Don Ricciotti, a man who feels that Don Sebastiano has done him wrong by buying Riccioti’s father’s house at auction when the latter was dealing with bankruptcy. Using his talent for giving speeches Ricciotti is able to gain a sizable support base in the town, just as elections are coming up. He hopes to use the power of office to force Don Sebastiano to return to him the house that he considers his by right. In these speeches, Don Sebastiano is targeted by name as one of the swindlers who is oppressing the poor, hardworking citizens of Nuoro, though there is no evidence elsewhere in the book that this is the case. The story serves as a grave indictment of the dangers of populism, wherever it may be found, and it is only by luck and hard work that ultimately Ricciotti’s efforts are thwarted. Perhaps what Satta wants to say here is that the world would be better off without politics, and the manipulation and deceit that seemingly has to come with it.

Picture of Landscape by Nuoro — The countryside around Nuoro. Much may be lost, but the landscape so beautifully evoked by Satta still remains almost untouched.

The Problems of the Past I – Woman’s Place

Yet for all this uncertainty, for all this scepticism towards the various changes in his own life, the narrator cannot turn his back on the future, and neither does he blind us to the acute problems of the past. Perhaps the most fully fleshed out character, and the most tragic, of the story is Don Sebastiano’s wife, Donna Vincenza. She is described as intelligent, but the society that she is in massively restricts her freedoms: she’s barely even allowed outside of her own house. The chapters centring on her life are filled with gloom and despair, and she is repeatedly described as “trapped”. The lives of the other women are no better. Those who engage in prostitution, for example, are forced to go to another village to give birth or otherwise deal with illegitimate offspring. The implications reveal a misery and disquiet underlying the apparent peace of the past. It is a man’s peace only.

Problems of the Past II – the Dark Side of Stasis

And it is not only the women who suffer here. The darker side of stasis is sometimes revealed when The Day of Judgement touches upon poverty. The book is not critical of poverty per se, and certainly not overly critical about the rigid social classes found within Nuoro which likely perpetuate it, but there are moments when the beautiful, structured façade of Sardinian life in the book suddenly shows its cracks. The moment that struck me most strongly was one of morbid horror. Near the end of the book the summer’s weather becomes unnaturally violent with strong winds and as a result a plague sets in among the fields of the countryside. The lands of almost everybody are left severely damaged – everybody’s lands except those of Don Sebastiano, that is.

When he goes to inspect his fields he meets the peasants who have been looking after them, and they are eager to explain to him why they are undamaged. But to his dismay and disgust they reveal that it is all due to a crucified dog and left hanging on the door of their hut. Don Sebastiano is left speechless and full of rage. The superstitions which at other times make for proof of the magic of the past are now transformed into something monstrous and unnerving. When the peasants then mention a problem with the peasants of the neighbouring farm, Don Sebastiano tells them to sort it out among themselves. And they do, with an axe in the dead of night. The book reminds us that for all the good things that have undoubtedly been lost with progress and time, much has been gained too. The end to the mindless violence, black superstition, and the rise of modern medicine are all things to be rightly praised.

Conclusion – The Judgement

Salvatore Satta did not finish The Day of Judgement, but the ending is in no way abrupt – instead, it finishes on an elegiac note that ties the whole work together. The chronicler could well have reckoned up every single soul of Nuoro’s then seven thousand, and no doubt would have, had they lived that long, but we should be grateful for all the pages that we have. It is a beautiful, lovely, and kind book that stands to my mind for everything the best literature can be. It is exciting, hopeful, and timeless. Read it again and again. I know I will.

For more about the ambiguous development of modernity in rural communities, have a look at my thoughts on Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo.

Picture of Salvatore Satta is in the public domain

Picture of Nuoro houses by Max.oppo [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]

Picture of Landscape around Nuoro also by Max.oppo