Translated material
Ode to Joy
Irina Golovinskaya
English Booker winner in 1998 on our book market
English Booker winner in 1998 on our book market
Ian McEwen. Amsterdam.
M.: Publishing house "Nezavisimaya Gazeta", 1999
Ian McEwen's book, which instantly became fashionable, is definitely worth reading. Firstly, it is interesting to compare “our” Booker laureates and “theirs”. Secondly, the sympathies of readers and critics do not often coincide.
The book is structured according to the laws of music: in “Amsterdam” all the signs of sonata form are evident (it’s not for nothing that the main character is Clive Linley, a composer). And the most interesting thing is to watch how the musical outline is superimposed on the plot (career collapse and mutual destruction of the heroes). There are many key words and concepts in the novel that seem to hint at what will happen to the characters next: Beethoven, Holland, euthanasia, ode to joy, sick, crazy, he has no place on earth. And the most important of them is music. The main theme, a secondary theme, as well as various melodies and motifs - everything is stated in the exhibition. And rest assured, everything will come together to a powerful ending.
The narrative, which begins as a psychological novel - the funeral of a mutual friend, meeting old friends, rain and belated regrets - at some point jumps off decent literary rails and begins to develop like a cartoon about some Beavis and Butt-head. The change occurs after Lynley enters into a strange agreement with her friend Halliday about mutual euthanasia if their lives are threatened by an illness leading to loss of dignity and disintegration of personality. But the absurd logic is justified by inner music - this is how fate knocks on the door.
Beethoven's theme of fate, as expected, appears three times in the book, becoming more and more loud, distinct and menacing. Obeying its sound, innocent toponyms - Amsterdam and Holland - turn into synonyms for the place of execution.
Somewhere in the middle of the story, to get his symphony off the ground, Clive Linley makes a trip to the Lake District. Neither his trip itself, nor the fact that he accidentally saw a criminal there, whom the police have been looking for for a long time, would seem to have nothing to do with the storyline. This is a side topic, and it was developed in a completely different way - cinematic. McEwen departs from his usual restrained style of presentation and weaves a whimsical pattern. He seems to be giving instructions to the cameraman: “A shaft of light falling on a fern corrected the reputation of brown paint, scorching it with yellow and red.”
The climactic moment, when composer Clive Linley walks through the hills and tries to compose music while watching a woman in blue cross a valley, is written out with careful script planning. A little later, the same woman will call for help, fighting off the rapist, and Linley, who is two steps away, will run away from her screams - in order to have time to record the wonderful melody that has just been born. He will write it down with an unwavering hand, accompanied by the cries of a woman in blue, because now this melody is most important: “So much depended on it; a symphony, a celebration, his reputation, an ode to joy for the lamented century.”
Gracefully and serenely woven into a sentence, Schiller's "Ode to Joy" from the finale of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony will come back to haunt the story when the brutal truth comes out. Namely: Linley, diligently and inspiredly composing a symphony commissioned by some authoritative committee, which was supposed to “sound like an elegy to a bygone century” (a hint at all sorts of pomposity and worldwide madness due to the millennium), in fact, in the words of a drunken music critic, simply “ ripped Beethoven off like a stick." And the finale - on a blue eye - made a Beethoven ode.
The deeper the hero’s creative crisis, the less inclined he is to face the truth. Linley goes in the opposite direction of the truth - he begins to suspect that he is a genius. He is looking for someone to compare himself with. Finds a couple of names - Shakespeare, Purcell. "But there was no Beethoven." It was not because by this moment Mr. Linley himself had become Beethoven - in that simple and vulgar sense, as others become Napoleons or Caesars.
When the main characters have already killed each other, when the automythology of the characters has been debunked, when the theme of creative madness and creative impotence has been worked out and completed, readers are treated to a code that is cheerful and creepy in its vulgarity: threads of intrigue stretch to the offended husband of the deceased common mistress, with whose funeral it all began .
The circle is closed, and you can start all over again.