Philadelphia’s Mural Arts project keeps Philly’s streets dynamic, and on October 3 the project tipped its hat to the role the city has played in the movies with the unveiling of Marian Bailey’s “Films Shaped by a City” in the Sansom Street rear of the Film Society Center at 1412 Chestnut Street. “The mural includes many films and film related organizations that have impacted filmmaking, film presentation and film-related training in Philadelphia,” reads the description at the Mural Arts web site.
Rocky and the usual suspects receive due recognition, although “[the] exclusion of certain movies from the mural is likely to start some arguments,” Stephen Silver wrote in an article for the Inquirer. I personally was happy to see the inclusion of my favorite Philadelphia film, Elaine May’s 1976 Mikey and Nicky, which captures the desolation and frustration you could find on Philadelphia streets at the time. So hats off to the folks who put the mural together.
Finally, I am grimly amused at the announcement that the Philadelphia Museum of Art has paid a small fortune, I believe, to the Brooklyn-based marketing firm Gretel for a rebranding effort that included a new logo — “Our main objective was to ‘come down the steps’ by putting the museum in dialogue with its community, which is and always has been the city itself,” Gretel’s Ryan Moore said in a masterly demonstration of the bleedin’ obvious– but maybe the most apparent change was a new name. As Gretel’s web site has it:
Along the way, the museum’s name shifted to what much of the city had already called it: Philadelphia Art Museum. It’s simple, casual and approachable. In short: PhAM.
In true City of Brotherly Love fashion, however, Philadelphia magazine’s Victor Fiorillo yesterday suggested another possibility: “The Philadelphia Museum of Art is now the Philadelphia Art Museum or, well, PhART.” I’ll bet he wasn’t paid for it, either. Me, I hope PhART is the one that sticks.
Stefan Zweig (left) and Joseph Roth in Ostend, 1936.
Joseph Roth’s 1932 novel The Radetzky March chronicles three generations in the life of a family in the Austro-Hungarian Empire from 1859 through 1916, and like many Austrian novels and memoirs of the period, it’s also a chronicle of dissipation and collapse. Joseph Trotta, an infantry lieutenant and the son of a Slovenian peasant, manages somehow to save the life of a befuddled Emperor Franz Joseph I on the battlefield, taking a bullet himself in the process; hailed as a hero, he reads about his exploit ridiculously exaggerated in a children’s history book and insists to the Emperor during a private audience that the record be corrected:
“Listen, my dear Trotta!” said the Kaiser. “The whole business is rather awkward. But neither of us comes off all that badly. Let it be!”
“Your Majesty,” replied the captain, “it’s a lie!”
“People tell a lot of lies,” the Kaiser confirmed.
“I can’t, Your Majesty,” the captain choked forth. …
“My ministers,” Franz Joseph began, “must know what they’re doing. I have to rely on them. Do you catch my drift, my dear Trotta?” And after a while. “We’ll do something. You’ll see!”
And Franz Joseph does something; the story is indeed expunged from the children’s book, though not until the story has become legendary among Austrian schoolchildren. It’s all downhill from there.
Over the years, The Radetzky March has become a kind of companion novel to Stefan Zweig’s memoir of the same period, The World of Yesterday, published posthumously in 1942, with some interesting and important differences. Zweig’s memoir looks westward from Vienna and is peopled by intellectuals, artists, and writers; Roth’s novel instead looks eastward, especially to the Moravian and Galician frontiers, and is peopled by unimaginative civil servants, soldiers, and the middle-class bourgeoisie and the peasantry. Zweig himself is a pacifist and a political progressive, admiring Erasmus as the standard-bearer of humanism; Roth once characterized the Strauss march as “the Marseillaise of reaction,” Marjorie Perloff reported in her chapter about the book in her fine Edge of Irony. And of course, as Jewish writers, both Zweig and Roth offer portraits of Jews in both regions: the assimilated Jews of Vienna for Zweig, and the unassimilated Jews of Galicia for Roth.
Though superficially a realistic novel traditional in style, The Radetzky March is also a fabric woven of metaphors and symbols. Roth painstakingly describes the manners and morals of the period in a language both poetic and musical, especially as both begin to disintegrate as nationalism — Roth’s bete noire as well as Zweig’s (read Zweig’s condemnation of nationalism here) — threatens the uneasy stability of the empire on the eve of the First World War (indeed, the narrator is fond of describing the disintegration of dead bodies); painted portraits of both the elder Trotta, the Hero of Solferino, and Franz Joseph occur and recur through the narrative; and of course the march itself, heard in a variety of situations, both exterior and in the minds of the characters.
Like other great Modernist novels such as Ulysses and Remembrance of Things Past, The Radetzky March transcends its time and setting. The decay of private and public behavior and conceptions of honor is, I would hope, a continuing tragedy for all of us (though Roth at the end of the book provides hope for honor and redemption, in an ironic echo of the Hero of Solferino’s own unsuspected courage); in an episode when the civil authorities call out the military to suppress a public demonstration late in the book, there are disastrous consequences. And Roth is no mere nostalgist. He sees bluntly and clearly, as his experience as a journalist must have taught him. His reportage rings true as an eyewitness to this decay.
The Radetzky March covers three generations of a family; I am only three generations on myself from my own Galician peasant forebears who themselves were Austrian citizens at the time, which may be why I’ve reacted to the novel as deeply as I have. Affinity, you know; I wrote more about it here. And some other things never change, either. In 2005, translator Michael Hofmann wrote an appreciation of Roth for the Guardian. “I don’t have a favourite chapter in The Radetzky March … , or even a favourite sentence,” he says. “However, I have always been moved by the majestic paragraph of (frankly) authorial commentary at the beginning of chapter eight.” Perhaps it’ll move you too; here’s Hofmann’s translation:
In the years before the Great War, at the time the events chronicled in these pages took place, it was not yet a matter of indifference whether a man lived or died. When someone was expunged from the lists of the living, someone else did not immediately step up to take his place, but a gap was left to show where he had been, and those who knew the man who had died or disappeared, well or even less well, fell silent whenever they saw the gap. When a fire happened to consume a particular dwelling in a row of dwellings, the site of the conflagration remained for a long time afterwards. For masons and bricklayers worked slowly and thoughtfully, and when they walked past the ruins, neighbours and passers-by alike recalled the form and the walls of the house that had once stood there. That’s how it was then! Everything that grew took long to grow; and everything that ended took a long time to be forgotten. Everything that existed left behind traces of itself, and people then lived by their memories, just as we nowadays live by our capacity to forget, quickly and comprehensively.
The focus is on the world of Austrian classical music —created by countless geniuses who worked in Austria and performed by the orchestras and soloists that we bring to your ears every day.
On the day of the fundraiser, there will be interviews in the morning with art historian Sabine Haag [former director of the Kunsthistorisches Museum] and young soprano Amelie Hois. Lawyer and former politician Irmgard Griss [former President of the Austrian Supreme Court] will be asking questions about Austria, the land of music … and in the afternoon the Carinthian Singing Community will be visiting the studio live in Vienna! There will be spoken contributions and music from Eva Stubenvoll, the director of the Musikverein Graz, Dr. Michael Nemeth, and many more.
If you listen at the right time, you might even hear a few words from yours truly.
I’ve written before about radio klassik Stephansdom, but it occurs to me that I should probably let you know a little more about what you’ll be supporting. rkS is a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week over-the-air radio station in Austria at 107.3 FM in Vienna and 94.2 FM in Graz. Thankfully, it’s also streamable over a variety of methods, including via the web. Its weekly programming features a variety of daily magazines and musical programs (including three full operas every week at 8:00 pm Vienna time) and live masses from the Stephansdom itself every Sunday, along with other spiritually-nourishing programming. The fine Sunday Musica Sacra program (at 1:00 pm Eastern time) bridges the religious and musical offerings, and the daily CD des Tages features the best of recent releases. Get to know the delightfully personable and knowledgable on-air talent here. You can download both the weekly and the opera schedules here. You can also request your favorite recordings to be played on Sunday’s Wunschkonzerthere.
Originally supported and funded by the Archdiocese of Vienna (hence the religious programs), the unique radio klassik Stephansdom now depends on the support of its listeners for its continued health. That means you. So brush up your German and make a contribution to radio klassik Stephansdom this Spendentag. Then tune in and enjoy the show.
I was just finishing up work yesterday when I turned on radio klassik Stephansdom and got something I didn’t think I needed. On a special broadcast to recognize the 50th anniversary of the death of Hans Swarowsky, the Vienna radio station presented a restored recording of the conductor’s St. Matthew’s Passion by Johann Sebastian Bach. I treasure my CD of John Eliot Gardner’s recording, but Swarowsky’s 1967 performance with the Wiener Symphoniker and the Wiener Akademie Kammerchor was absolutely stunning. You can listen to it yourself here. (For those of you whose German is a little rusty, just click on “Sendung nachhören.”)
radio klassik Stephansdom’s September Spendentag is coming up in just a few days and you’ll read more about it then, but the very fact that rkS will present a recording like this without commercial or other interruption — all three hours of it — is one of the many things that make rkS special. You needn’t wait until September 18 to donate, either. I wrote more about radio klassik Stephansdom here.
If in the next few months you hear the sound of grim laughter on New York sidewalks, it’s because three plays by the legendary grim laugher Samuel Beckett will be presented on Manhattan stages this fall.
First up is a production that I must admit I find a stroke of genius: Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, of Bill and Ted fame, will be putting Vladimir (Winter) and Estragon (Reeves) through their paces in a Broadway production of Waiting for Godot. Starting previews this Saturday night, Jamie Lloyd’s production runs through January 2026, and good luck getting tickets for this one. Everything that I’ve read about this production suggests that the staging will be pretty straight-forward, but I’ve also heard rumors that the set itself — a tree, a mound — will also feature a distinctly non-Beckettian element. We shall see. Melena Ryzik spoke to the actors and the director in this New York Times profile.
Further downtown, Krapp’s Last Tape at NYU’s Skirball Center will throw its “strong white light” on the excellent Stephen Rea starting on October 8 for a limited engagement that ends on October 19. Directed by Vicky Featherstone for the Barbican, this production follows on the Irish Rep’s presentation of F. Murray Abraham in the same role last season. Collectors of Krapps will want to add this one to their galleries too. (If you’re new to this, you can start your own collection with Harold Pinter’s 2006 performance at the Royal Court Theatre.)
Later in October, Beckett enthusiasts will take the subway to the Irish Arts Center in Hell’s Kitchen (appropriate, this) for Beckett’s grimmest and most difficult tragicomedy, Endgame, in a production by Beckett expert Garry Hynes and the Irish theater company Druid. No big names here (with the exception of Hynes’), but it may not be a surprise to find this the most promising of the three. It opens on October 22 and runs through November 23.
It seems that Sam Beckett is newly new again in these fraught times. See you at the theatre.