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Weltanschaung

Among my summer reads was Jonathan Littell's intimidating novel The Kindly Ones (Les Bienveillantes, the Well-Meaning, in translation by Charlotte Mandell). Even at 984 pages, it was well worth the time, although most of that was at bedtime with a night light, a propped-up pillow, a Chihuahua under the covers beside me, and an interfering cat on my chest. It's a wonder I didn't have nightmares, given the subject matter of Littell's novel. Well, maybe not so much the subject matter, but rather the steady spectacle of shootings, gassings, beatings, rapes, bombings, bodily fluids,¹ homosexual dalliances, much wine and cognac drinking, and beautiful Aryan women whose names begin with the letter "H."

The narcissistic memoir is certainly violent and turbulent, but it is moved forward by a steady undercurrent of rationalism and belief in the Nazi Weltanschauung. This isn't to say that there aren't some strange surprises, such as an amazing nose-biting scene in the last chapter, but such events only add to this clever treatment of an ugly period of modern history. In the eyes of Dr Maximilien Aue, legal scholar and SS officer, his Führer leads by precisely expressing the spirit of the the German people, the Volk, and fulfilling the goals of the Weltanschauung. We know how it ends, but the novel goes a long way to helping us understand just how it is that Aue can declare: "I live, I do what can be done, it's the same for everyone, I am a man like other men, I am a man like you. I tell you I am just like you!"

1.  As for the bodily fluids, I can't wait for someone else to point out how the protagonist's behavior at his twin sister's house closely resembles a disturbing performance-art display by the Viennese Actionist Günter Brus in 1968, which led to his arrest and imprisonment. See the 2006 art show Primal Secretions: A Günter Brus Retrospective: "In his Aktionen after 1967, Brus pushed himself to further physical and mental extremes as he analyzed his own body and its functions, while colleagues such as Hermann Nitsch and Otto Muehl concentrated on the role of the body in the construction and analysis of psycho-dramas. Symbolism was generally dispensed with in the performances, as Brus publicly urinated, defecated and cut himself with a razor-blade, for example. The first of these Aktionen to be performed in public, Citizen Brus Looks at his Own Body, was performed in Aachen and Düsseldorf in 1968; in June of the same year his Art and Revolution, performed at Vienna University, led to his arrest and a six-month prison sentence for degrading the symbols of the State."