Tuning
I am gratefully discovering the work of Stefan Andres (1906-70), whose carefully codified fiction from the 30s and 40s evokes the experience of life under totalitarianism while carefully, but audibly, upholding an ideal of inalienable freedom. His complex novella from 1943, ‘We Are Utopia‘, recounts a scene from the Spanish Civil War. Two men from opposite sides meet during a decisive night of battle. One is a renegade priest; the other is an officer with a heavy conscience. The conversation between them is equilibrated with consummate skill, showing ability, and will, to go beyond stereotype. The ex-priest is alert to a deeper, more existential layer in the officer’s trouble. He asks: ‘Were you never happy?’ Andres describes the response: ‘”Happy?” Don Pedro spoke the word and listened to it the way a musician attends to the tone from a tuning fork.’
Many of us need to hear that tone afresh, to retune our aspirations by it.
