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Lädt ... Conversation with Spinoza: A Cobweb Novelvon Goce Smilevski
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Prizing ideas above all else, radical thinker Baruch Spinoza left little behind in the way of personal facts and furnishings. But what of the tug of necessity, the urgings of the flesh, to which this genius philosopher (and grinder of lenses) might have been no more immune than the next man-or the next character, as Baruch Spinoza becomes in this intriguing novel by the remarkable young Macedonian author Goce Smilevski. Smilevski's novel brings the thinker Spinoza and his inner life into conversation with the outer, all-too-real facts of his life and his day--from his connection to the Jewish community of Amsterdam, his excommunication in 1656, and the emergence of his philosophical system to his troubling feelings for his fourteen-year-old Latin teacher Clara Maria van den Enden and later his disciple Johannes Casearius. From this conversation there emerges a compelling and complex portrait of the life of an idea--and of a man who tries to live that idea. Keine Bibliotheksbeschreibungen gefunden. |
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Google Books — Lädt ... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)891.81936Literature Literature of other languages Literature of east Indo-European and Celtic languages West and South Slavic languages (Bulgarian, Slovene, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Serbo-Croatian, and Macedonian) Bulgarian and other South Slavic languages Macedonian Macedonian fictionKlassifikation der Library of Congress [LCC] (USA)BewertungDurchschnitt:
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The novel is divided into several sections, but really splits into two parts – a shorter, earlier section where Spinoza gives an overview of his whole life and a longer section after, where he describes several important scenes in depth. Both parts are quite good. The first half moves along quickly, giving the outlines of Spinoza’s life – parents forced to flee Portugal, his mother dies, he’s forced to abandon his training as a rabbi and work in the family store, meets one mentor Van den Enden and his daughter Clara Maria, is excommunicated from the Jewish community, publishes one treatise, works on his masterpiece until his death. This narrative is very engaging and at times funny – Clara Maria has a dog named Jesus and there’s a ridiculous cameo by Louis XIV.
The second section focuses mostly on three events – the death of his mother and two encounters, one with Clara Maria and the other with a student of his, Johannes Casearius. In all three, Spinoza is threatened with emotions. His mother’s death he immediately puts out of mind, but it comes back later on. His painful rejections of Clara Maria and Johannes demonstrate the difficulty of the focus only on philosophy. In general, the portrait of Spinoza here contrasts with the generic image of him as an ascetic – he’s constantly lonely, wracked with doubt, masturbates and thinks about sex, and, despite his ideas reconciling the body/soul divide, always seems to be engaged in a war between his desires and ideas.
The book has a somewhat obsessive, repetitive tone. It ends and begins in the same manner – intentionally – and with the replay of scenes and repetition of Spinoza’s philosophy, there’s something of a closed feel. This works well as, of course, Spinoza is dead and in general there’s often a tendency to look back on the past and obsess over it and relive it. It also fits with the subtitle of A Cobweb Novel; a cobweb is compared to a labyrinth and the tree of life as a way of looking at things and it’s noted that a web has infinite exits and entrances and every point can be a center. There’s a nice afterward where the author discusses why he chose Spinoza and some of the bits that were wholly fictitious. ( )