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Thursday, September 13, 2007
Thomas Mann, fanboy
Thomas Mann and a friend came out of a movie weeping copiously - but Mann narrates the incident in support of his view that movies are not Art. “Art is a cold sphere."
Quoted approvingly in Wimsatt and Beardsley, “The Affective Fallacy”.
So let’s take as premise 1 that Mann held to the high ground, culturally - was somewhat of a high culture purist, if you will. (Some might go so far as to say he was a snob about the cinema.)
Now, from Thomas Mann’s (1926) introduction to Frans Masereel’s The Passionate Journey:
Recently, a film magazine published abroad asked me if I thought that something artistically creative could come out of the cinema. I answered: “Indeed I do!” Then I was asked which movie, of all I had seen, had stirred me most. I replied: Masereel’s Passionate Journey. That may seem an evasive answer, since it is not a case of art conquering the cinema but of cinema influencing art. At any rate, it involves a meeting and fusing of two arts - the infusion of the aristocratic spirit of art into the democratic spirit of cinema. What has hitherto been purely a pleasure of the senses is here intellectualized and spiritualized. And if movies are usually nothing but pure sensation, without art, here we have an artistically produced film of life, a human life lived in art and spirit, a dedicated life, if you will. The pious “block-book” of olden days has here developed into a stimulating and entertaining movie. As a matter of fact, Masereel is very fond of the cinema and has even written a scenario himself. He calls his books “Romans en images” - novels in pictures. Is that not an accurate description of motion pictures?
Yes - before we had McCLoud’s “juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer”; before ‘continuing picture sequences’ and ‘comic magazine features’; before Will Eisner’s A Contract With God gave us ‘graphic novels’; before Dandy Don Duffbeer’s Bazaar Heroes ‘graphic reads’ (see under the fold) ... but well after the Bayeux Tapestry ... there were ... Masereel’s ‘Novels in Pictures’! And Thomas Mann was a fanboy.
Well, I don’t mean to rub it in. But it’s a nice example of framing. I suspect that, had he felt the ‘graphic novel’ emerged not out of the ‘pious block-book’ but the mass cult pulp comic book, Mann’s praise of Masereel might have been more qualified.
I’ve only recently discovered Frans Masereel myself. If you are unfamiliar, you can find all the woodcuts for Die Stadt (’the city’) here. Sadly, the quality of the gifs is not good. But you get the idea. (Here’s the mainpage of that site. You can see other stuff.)
If your appetite is whetted, Dover Books has published a very nice, inexpensive edition of The City
The City, unlike many other Masereel works, isn’t really narrative, hence is rather falsely advertised as a ‘graphic novel’ (as the Dover folks have, indeed, done). The epigraph is from Walt Whitman: “This is the city and I am one of the citizens. Whatever interests the rest interests me ...” As Mann writes: “Seldom has raciness so blended with conviction as here in the contrast between a fundamentally old and traditional technique and the sharpness and contemporary boldness of the things it expresses. Masereel has produced a volume of woodcuts called The City - in its hundred illustrations he has mirrored our entire civilization as seen by his penetrating and pitying eye. He has depicted the brutal fantasy of modern life, grotesque and horrible in its inexorable vulgarity.”
From Dave Sim and Gerhard, Guys; I crib it from Douglas Wolk, Reading Comics. Which is great, may I say.
Comments
If YOU’RE like ME, you’ve often wondered, “Why is it that READS always have PICTURES on ONE page and WORDS on the OTHER?" Well, we here at DANDY DON DUFFBEAR’S BAZAAR HEROES aren’t just WONDERING about it—we’re DOING something about it! “And what is THAT?" you might well ask…
Just this: WE’RE putting words AND pictures TOGETHER on each and every page of DANDY DON DUFFBEER’S BAZAAR HEROES, effectively DOUBLING your READING AND VIEWING PLEASURE with EACH issue. Sounds GREAT, doesn’t it? NOW…
please take a moment to put on your DANDY DON DUFFBEAR’S BAZAAR HEROES PAPER HAT while I....
” but well after the Bayeux Tapestry “
And Trajan’s Column. Not to mention Rodolphe Topffer.
The City is a panoramic masterpiece. I was given an old German hardback of it for Christmas last year, and I kept reading and rereading, trying to find or invent a narrative in it. The representations of smoke are particularly fine, I think.
What do you make of Lynd Ward?
I actually just ordered some Lynd Ward. I look forward to making something of it.
Thanks for mentioning Masereel. It’s possible, though, that Masereel’s work (and Eisner’s) do not represent “graphic novels” produced today.