Resumo de The Aesthetics Of Resistance

In a museum in Berlin
in 1937, three young communists ? the unnamed narrator and his friends Coppi
and Heilmann ? contemplate the Pergamon Frieze. They walk back to Coppi''s
apartment, where they continue their debates about art and politics along with
his parents. The narrator then returns to his own apartment and talks to his
father ? or remembers conversations with him ? about his experiences as an
activist; they have taken different sides in the divide between Communists and
Social Democrats. While waiting to go to Spain to fight, the narrator tries
to help a retarded Jewish man being beaten by teenagers.

And that''s pretty much the entire foreground story in Part I of The
Aesthetics of Resistance; it could be fitted into half a dozen pages. This
is just a framework, however, on which Weiss hangs panoply of artistic and
political and historical debates and monologues. A stunning description of the
Pergamon Frieze. A reanalysis of Heracles as a revolutionary. A discussion of
the narrator''s family''s books and the problems facing workers trying to study
and appreciate art. A study of how painting broadened its subject material to
include peasants and workers, and of the extent to which bourgeois art is
relevant to socialists. An account of the brief-lived socialist republic of Bremen. Debates over cooperation between
Communists and Social Democrats, readiness for revolution, and the Moscow
Trials. A critical analysis contrasting Kafka''s The Castle and
Neukrantz'' Barricades in Wedding.

Part II, with the narrator in Spain, proceeds similarly, though
with more in the foreground. A brief account of crossing the border into Spain is followed by an excursus on Gaudi''s
Sagrada Familia and travel from Barcelona to the
headquarters of the International Brigades at Albacete. Because of some medical training
the narrator ends up working in hospitals at Cueva and then Denia, under Max
Hodann.

There are some details of hospital administration and the management of
peasants and patients, and Hodann''s ideas about sexual hygiene and freedom get
a mention, but the story is dominated by debates over how tightly Party
discipline must be enforced. Looming over this is the recent suppression of
anarchists and independent Marxists (and the killing of Andrés Nin) and the
existence of a United Front with socialist and bourgeois parties. There''s one
set piece debate at a meeting of leaders ? Hodann, Ilya Ehrenburg, Willi
Bredel, and Karl Mewis, among others ? and a chilling, understated climax when
one of the narrator''s too outspoken colleagues is taken away by the military
police.

There''s no direct account of battle. This is approached indirectly, through
conversations with the journalist Nordahl Grieg and the historian Lindhoek,
working on a history of the Thälmann brigade; they face the challenge of
reporting and writing during an undecided struggle. Listening to the radio, in
the same weeks they and the narrator follow the perilous military situation of
the Republic, the trial of Bukharin in Moscow,
and the German incorporation of Austria.
A letter from Heilmann returns the narrator to the myth of Heracles; while the
International Brigades are being disbanded he looks back to Phocaea,
the ancient Greek colonies and mines in Spain,
and the history of Spain
down to the present. And, as the narrator prepares to leave Spain, he and a
friend Ayschmann explore Picasso''s Guernica and paintings by Delacroix and
Géricault and Goya; he also looks back at some of the paintings his father
educated him with, contrasting the work of Menzel and Koehler. Abstractions in The Aesthetics of Resistance are grounded in the
specifics of the narrator''s experiences or in analysis of individual artworks
and books; and the narrator''s limited knowledge and personal perspective are
consistently maintained. Fascism is an ever-present menace, but remains in the
backgrounseum, triumphant Nazi propaganda on the
radio, Franco''s armies pressing in on the Spanish Republic.
Similarly with the communist hierarchy: there''s only a glimpse of the
International Brigades'' leader André Marty, the prosecutors in the Moscow
Trials, or the military police.

A fifty page introduction by Fredric Jameson sets Weiss in the context of
post-war German literature, provides details of his life and background, and
offers a sometimes abstruse theoretical analysis. For most novels such an
introduction would be overkill, but here it seems appropriate.

Elements of The Aesthetics of Resistance are autobiographical: Weiss
was of the same generation as his narrator, his parents also left Czechoslovakia for Sweden (though they were bourgeois
rather than working class), and he too was mentored by Hodann. Weiss was not a
communist as a youth, however ? his late conversion to Marxism came in the
1960s ? and he didn''t fight in Spain,
so his narrator is perhaps a vision of himself as he might have been. The
artistic explorations also reflect a mature sophistication; they are not
plausibly those of a twenty-year old, working class autodidact or not. The
other characters are mostly historical figures, but fictionalized: a glossary
provides some brief biographical information on the more prominent of the many
that appear.

It''s an extraordinary achievement, with its sustained stylistic virtuosity
and integration into narrative of art criticism, politics, and history. But The
Aesthetics of Resistance is not a novel which will command a wide
audience. This is not because of Weiss'' style, which is much easier to read
than initial impressions might suggest. The problem is that the work demands an
interest, preexisting or nascent, both in the politics of left wing parties and
movements in pre-WWII Germany
and Europe and in the relationship of
socialism and art, especially pictorial art.

Those who are prepared for that, or willing to be challenged, will find
plenty in The Aesthetics of Resistance. It might perhaps inspire an
interest in the Spanish Civil War, or open up new perspectives on painting.

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