Two weeks ago I finished (with great satisfaction, and I recommend it to those who are willing to take chances with a slightly modified literary form) John Berger's 1972 novel, G.
G. is set in pre-First World War Europe, and its protagonist, named "G.", is a Casanova-like lover of women who gradually comes to political consciousness after misadventures across the continent. We're not invited to care about the philandering hero so much as grapple with the historical and philosophical reflections that Berger pegs to his pan-European escapades.
Rich and privileged, G. is free to travel. He was conceived four years after the death of Garibaldi in 1886, born in Paris, raised by an aunt and uncle in England. The events of European history swirl around G., counterpointing our view of his personal destiny. History in this book is often a matter of crowds, of Garibaldi's ragged army entering Naples in 1860, or the rioting workers in the streets of Milan in 1898, or the crowds of Bosnian nationalists, Italian Irredentists and Hapsburg soldiers in the streets of Trieste in 1915.
Part of the power and fascination of “G.” comes from this mixture of historical detail and sexual meditation—for at the intersection of G. and history is Berger's attitude toward heroism. G. is neither the public romantic Garibaldi, nor is he a private romantic like his friend Chavez, who in 1910 [was] the first man to fly over the Alps.
Sexuality is central to G., but in this book the timeless moment of sex must always be considered within the context of history. It was a piano-playing governess [who] awakens the lust that proves the keynote in a series of fragmented episodes set during the years before the first world war.
After the above summaries, what I really wanted to share with you are a couple of passages from the novel, which is what I usually do on this blog, right?
Observe.
"Slowly they lie back until their heads touch the counterpane. In this movement backwards she slightly anticipates him.
They are aware of a taste of sweetness in their throats. (A sweetness not unlike that to be tasted in a sweet grape.) The sweetness itself is not extreme but the experience of tasting it is. It is comparable with the experience of acute pain. But whereas pain closes anticipation of everything except the return of the past before the pain existed, what is now desired has never existed.
From the moment he entered the room it has been as though the sequence of their actions constituted a single act, a single stroke.
He bends his head to kiss her breast and take the nipple in his mouth. His awareness of what he is doing certifies the death of his childhood. This awareness is inseparable from a sensation and a taste in his mouth. The sensation is of a morsel, alive, unaccountably half-detached from the roundness of the breast--as though it were on a stalk. The taste is so associated with the texture and substance of the morsel and with its temperature, that it will be hard ever to define it in other terms. It is a little similar to the taste of the whitish juice in the stem of a certain kind of grass. he is aware that henceforth both sensation and taste are acquirable on his own initiative. Her breasts propose his independence he buries his face between them.
Her difference from him acts like a mirror. Whatever he notices or dwells upon in her, increases his consciousness of himself, without his attention shifting from her."
And then there's more...
[This piece involves the character of Beatrice, G.'s second cousin/governess to whom G.'s mother had sent him to England to grow up. She had lived in South Africa for a short while during the Boer War.]
"In Pietermaritzburg [South Africa]
she saw a loyal Dutchman (loyal to the Queen) beating his kaffir servant. As he beat him he made a noise in his throat like a laugh. His mouth was open and his tongue was between his teeth. His passion was such that he did not wish to stop until he had annihilated the body he was beating: yet however hard he beat it, he could not annihilate it. From this arose the necessity of his cry which resembled a laugh. His expression was like that of a small child deliberately shitting itself. The servant, absolutely silent, hunched himself against the blows.
She could not explain her feelings to herself. There is an historical equivalent to the psychological process of repression into the unconscious. Certain experiences cannot be formulated because they have occurred too soon. This happens when an inherited worldview is unable to contain or resolve certain emotions or intuitions which have been provoked by a new situation or an extremity of experience unforeseen by that worldview. "Mysteries grow up within or around the ideological system. Eventually these mysteries destroy it by providing the basis for a new worldview. Medieval witchcraft, for example, may be seen in this light.
A moment's introspection shows that a large part of our own experience cannot be adequately formulated: it awaits further understanding of the total human situation. In certain respects we are likely to be better understood by those who follow us than by ourselves. Nevertheless their understanding will be expressed in terms which would now be alien to us. They will change our unformulated experience beyond our recognition. As we have changed Beatrice's."
Paragraphs one through four are courtesy of The Guardian, Wikipedia, and The New York Times. Paragraphs of text (in Times Roman font) are quoted directly from the book, G. A Novel, by John Berger. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980.
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