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| Sunday, 6 November 2005 |
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Arts Remembering Thomas Mann by Aditha Dissanayake "This was love at first sight, love everlasting, a feeling unknown, unhoped for, unexpected, in so far as it could be a matter of conscious awareness, it took entire possession of him, and he understood with joyous amazement, that this was for life". Who else but Thomas Mann could write a sentence like that, prescribing with such precision the quintessential emotions of a man in love? And who else but Thomas Mann could so pithily describe the constitution of the artist as "What (people) in their innocence cannot comprehend is that a properly constituted, healthy, decent man never writes, acts or composes"?. Born on July 06, 1875, having published his first book at the age of twenty-two and been awarded the Nobel Prize in 1929 for his first major work, 'The Buddenbrooks', he died in Zurich on August 12, 1955, leaving behind him an impressive collection of books ranging from 'The Magic Mountain' to 'Joseph and his Brothers', from 'Death in Venice' to 'Dr. Faustus'. Ranging in tone from macabre comedy to tragic grandeur, Mann's stories reflect his pre-occupation with the cultural and political destiny of Germany and its place in Europe and the rest of the world. But, even though he was seen as the most political of all Hitler's intellectual opponents, Mann surprisingly, never wrote a single straightforward political novel. The closest he ever came to writing one was in 'Mario and the Magician'. In the story called 'The Black Swan' in which a middle aged woman falls in love with a young American officer and believes herself to have miraculously conceived; he encompasses with great dexterity, into a brief compass the wide themes of love and death, sexuality and disease, illusion and reality. As Daniel Johnson says in his introduction to 'Thomas Mann' Collected Stories', "Manns stories are uneven in quality, but there is much to learn from and enjoy in almost all of them". But who was Thomas Mann? Was he the most prominent German writer of the 20th century? Was he Goethe's successor? Or was he just "simply an artist"? Be there at the Goethe Institute, Colombo on November 7, 8 and 9 to participate in the programme on Thomas Mann, presented by Dr. Asoka de Zoysa, Senior Lecturer, Department of Modern Languages, University of Kelaniya, to find out the answers. November 07: Introduction to Thomas Mann's life and works through the film documentary, Thomas Mann - a life, Directed by Axel Bornkessel, 1995, 44 min. col. November 08: "Death in Venice". Directed by Luchino Visconti, 1971, 130 min. col November 09: Magic Mountain, Directed by Hans W. Geissendorfer, 1982, 146 min. col. Seizing the 'Present Moment'
"We may analyse but we cannot control the rotation of this earth, the occurrence of noon and night, the flowing experience of childhood, teenage, adulthood and thereafter death", says Kumara. "It is something that is beyond the control of any science. Likewise, a painting too is a part of the natural flow; something that changes from moment to moment. It cannot be identified with scientific knowledge research or reason." The exhibition continuers till November 07. |
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An
exhibition of paintings titled "Present Moment" by Vasantha Kumara is now on
at the Lionel Wendt Art Gallery. Emphasising the importance of "here and the
now", Kumara says that to him a picture exists from one moment to another.
What matters is neither the past nor the future but the "present moment".
