Black Milk - Elif Shafak [93]
“Wait a minute,” I object. “I want no such thing.”
But he doesn’t listen to me. “My wish is your command, remember,” he whispers, as if to himself. Then he stretches out his manicured nails and pulls the members of the Choir of Discordant Voices out of me, one by one.
The first to get caught is Milady Ambitious Chekhovian.
“What do you think you are doing, mister?” she admonishes him as he holds her by the nape of her neck and forces her into the box. “I have important things to do! Let go of me!”
Next comes Little Miss Practical. I would have expected her to follow the course of least resistance and surrender, but apparently she finds swearing more practical. Smoldering with anger, she yells, “Yo, who do you think you are? You moron! Get your hands off me!”
“Please don’t bother, I will go where I need to go,” says Dame Dervish as she walks with dignity into the box.
“Poton, darling, why the rush? Why don’t we talk first tête-à-tête? Just the two of us. May I call you Potie?” says Blue Belle Bovary, pouting her lips, tilting her head to one side, trying to use her feminine wiles to get herself off the hook. Despite her best efforts, she, too, is sent into the box.
“But I have lentil soup on the stove, you cannot arrest me now,” begs Mama Rice Pudding.
Finally comes Miss Highbrowed Cynic. “You call yourself ‘Lord’ and you think you represent the black sun of melancholy. But you seem to have forgotten that that sun is not solely a destructive force. As Julia Kristeva said, ‘melancholy is amorous passion’s somber lining.’”
“Ughh?” asks Lord Poton, sounding seriously confused, but he tucks her into the box anyhow.
So it is that all six members of the Choir of Discordant Voices find themselves trapped in a lockbox. The silence in the house is disconcerting.
“At last we are rid of the Thumbelinas!” says Lord Poton, the sweetness in his tone contradicting the sharpness of his glance. “They are all gone.”
“Yeah, they are,” I say.
“From now on there will be no one around to yammer at you. You will hear only my voice. Isn’t that great?”
I try to join his laughter, but it just doesn’t pass through my throat.
Quickly I assess the new situation: centralization of authority under a dictator, the suppression of alternate voices via violence, systematic usage of propaganda, absolute obedience to the leader . . . All the signs are here. Political scientists have widely analyzed the connection between fascism and economic depression. In my case, there is a connection between fascism and psychological depression.
Now I know that after oligarchy and martial law, after monarchy and anarchy, the days of fascism have arrived.
Womanhood as an Incomplete Narrative
Today Lou Andreas Salomé is less remembered as an author and intellectual in her own right than as the colorful and controversial woman behind several powerful men of letters. She is portrayed as the mysterious muse who inspired Rilke, Nietzsche and Freud to look more closely at womanhood and feminine creativity. Such descriptions, though no doubt intriguing, do not do justice to Salomé’s vision or versatility. In her time she was a famous author, which makes it hard to understand why her novels have been so widely forgotten today. In addition to fiction and plays, she wrote contemplative essays on a wide spectrum of topics such as Russian art, religious philosophy, theater and eroticism.
Born and raised in St. Petersburg, Salomé grew up with five brothers and was much loved and pampered by her father. As a child she had a special gift for telling stories, though she found it difficult to abandon her imaginary characters afterward. She felt guilty for leaving them. This tendency to blame herself for things for which she was not responsible would continue to haunt her throughout her entire life.
Salomé arrived in Zurich in 1880, only nineteen years old. She was beautiful, brilliant and dauntless. Almost instantly she was drawn to the avant-garde circles where she met Europe’s leading scholars and artists.