JOSEPH FRANK
263
This question had become acute for her because she had recently read
a novel describing the trial and execution of the German army officers
who had attempted to assassinate Hitler. Ironically entitled
The Very
Rich Hours of Count von Stauffenberg-thus
evoking late-medieval and
Renaissance celebrations of the peaceful pursuits and glories of roy–
alty-the book had finally revolted her to the core. "All was going well
enough until she came to the chapters describing the execution of the
plotters." The horrifying and repugnant details employed here showed
these more or less aged notables being stripped physically of any shred
of human dignity and being mocked and taunted by their executioner
with the most revolting particularities ("how the shit would run down
their spindly old-man's legs"). This was more than she could endure;
reading such pages made her "sick with the spectacle, sick with a world
in which such things took place, until at last she pushed the book away
and sat with her head in her hands."
The word that came to her mind at this point was "obscene," and she
had determined to object to the generally accepted opinion that the use
of such material was necessarily desirable. Was she then in favor of cen–
sorship? Not at all in the usual sense-that is, of some external author–
ity setting limits to what could or could not be portrayed. But, inwardly,
she had now come to question the belief, indigenous to Western culture
as a whole, that "unlimited and illimitable endeavor" was unquestion–
ably beneficial, and the accompanying conviction "that people are
always improved by what they read." Furthermore, she is not at all sure
that "writers who venture into the darker territories of the human psy–
che always return unscathed." What troubles her above all is that, while
appalled and repelled by the book, she had not been able to push it
away entirely.
It
had resisted her feelings of revulsion and disgust, and
she feared that some of the "absolute evil" it depicted had, as it were,
also infected her: "she felt, she could have sworn, the brush of Satan's
hot, leathery wing."
Coetzee depicts the inner debate of his feminine alter ego with all the
insinuating subtlety of his talent; but he does not allow her conclusion
to remain unchallenged. Indeed, after she expresses such ideas in her
paper, a member of the audience arises to contest her point of view.
Moreover, Coetzee undermines her even further when she recalls that,
in her own work, she had no more spared the feelings of the reader than
the author she is now reproving. For she had "shown no qualms about
rubbing people's faces in, for instance, what went on in abattoirs.
If
Satan is not rampant in the abattoir, casting the shadow of its wings
over the beast ... where is he?" Those familiar with Coetzee's writings
