NORMAN MANEA
189
NM: That book wasn't meant as some kind of di sse rtati on, nor as an
exhaustive study of the socia l compl ex ity of dictatorships. An ambiti o us
didactic "model" was not intended . The tragicomic is found, I believe,
in many forms of tyranny, and in huma n beha vior genera ll y. That's a lso
why it rightly belongs to literat ure.
Anyone who has lived under the di sas trous spell of Great Authority
is closer to the clown, the etern a l a ll y of the unfortun a te man. My ten–
dency to sarcasm a nd abs urdity was reinforced by the grotesq ue th a t
has a lways had me under its spe ll , even before the publication of
The
Apprenticeshi1J Years of Augustus the Foo l
(1979), a subvers ive collage
of essays, letters, diary entri es, a nd fragments from the socialist press . It
presents history as a circus, the individua l as a tragicomic being, human
fate as burlesque syn thes is. The clown, the childish knight of farce, hops
over th e graves in which so ma ny futile illusions and sighs ferment. The
human tragedy engulfs an even grea ter tragedy: comedy-the thick,
grotesq ue mask ; th e li ght, idi o tic laughter; the aggressive, diaboli ca l
laughter; a nd the wise laughter.
Shou ld Hitler's apparentl y irrationa l hatred of Jews be attributed to
his irritatio n with Jewi sh la ughte r? Such an "a necdotal abstraction" is
not to be dismissed, even if it simplifies the "socia l complexity" of
ational Socia li sm. We ca n eas il y imagin e such a "key," among many
others, to understanding the tragicomic of Hitler's psyche: the Great
World Leader's fury at the horde of the "i nferior race," hi s demo ni c ene–
mies, clowns without a sta te, flag, or army, having only despair and
irony ! A handful of
sch lemiels
who come together to underm ine his
author ity? We ca n imagi ne a hyster ica l Hitler, obsessed by the image of
Jews la ughing at him, determined to avenge himse lf against their
unbearable mockery an d show them th a t "he who la ughs last, la ughs
best, " as Ron Rosenbau m a rgues in hi s book
Exp laining Hitler: The
Search for the Origins of His Evil.
Cou ldn 't the frenetic joy ove r th e bloody deed describe an essential
aspect of the arroga nt White C lown?
It
is impossible to forget Hitl er's
face, contorted by one la st triumphant grin, impossible to forget the joy
with which so ma ny Nazis committed their crimes.
And no t just the Nazis. And not only in the twenti eth century.
As I ha ve sa id, I believe that blasphemy and carnival have gone hand in
hand throughout history. Under dictatorship, blasphemy is ubiquitous. In
today's capita listic consumer democracy, blasphemy loses its meaning,
except in the wings.
It
en ters the main stage only in the form of sudden car–
nivalized sca ndal. In the global ma rket of cacophony, only the scandalous
ga rners a hearing. But nothing is scandalous enough to be memorable.
