A REVIEW OF ‘FLIGHTS OF LOVE’ BY BERNHARD SCHLINK
I must admit, reading Berhard Schlink’s 2000 short story collection, Flights of Love, that I was torn between two extremes. The first pole was the deservedly successful novel, The Reader. Schlink is at his best when writing a story that has political or at least social overtones. The danger is that his writing can degenerate into novels of ideas, not novels of character. He is, in fact, not at his best at creating vivid characters. But one of the protagonists in The Reader, Hanna Schmitz, is indeed vividly portrayed and her story illustrates the mess Germans got themselves into with fascism. Here good ideas and a good story are felicitously combined. The other extreme was the review I read of Schinck’s latest novel, The Weekend. Although I haven’t yet read it, the reviewer, Ian Buruma, panned it as a dull, lifeless novel of ideas. My impression was he might indeed be right. After reading this collection of short stories, however, I am pleased to say that my opinion of "Flights of Love" is much closer to the first pole than to the second.
I recently read an article that states that although the German economy is doing much better at the moment than the American, the Germans remain a somewhat pessimistic people. Though I tend to eschew broad generalizations, there is some truth to this. (The upside to this is that Germans tend to tackle serious themes in their art, and are, to a greater degree that other cultures, more prone to consider art to be more than mere entertainment. It is undoubtedly true that some of the most profound works of art--especially in music--have been written by Germans or Austrians.) Schlink, indeed, is almost always serious. But the stories also entertain and make you think, a winning combination.
First of all, I’m not sure the English title is the best translation. (I read the book in the original German.) In German, “Liebesfluchten,” means “Aligning Love” --in other words, the attempt to realign oneself to, or to reconnect with, love. It has nothing to do with the similarly written German word, die Flucht, or, flight. Each story has something to do with a mostly futile attempt to find love, especially to rekindle a love that has grown cold. They have nothing to do with emotional soaring, as the English title implies.
The theme of the book is the extreme difficulties one faces in the attempt to find happiness, some of which are indeed made worse by egotism and inordinate desire.
I enjoyed all the stories, but especially was moved by the first story, The Woman with the Lizard, and one of the last, the Son. One has to do with the Nazi past of the protagonist’s father. A painting in his father’s study, The Woman with the Lizard, turns out to the work of a Jewish artist who was active in Germany during the Weimar Republic. The artist tried to flee Nazi Germany when it was too late--the war had already begun. He tried to escape into France through Strasbourg, where the protagonist’s father was a Nazi judge. The painter was never heard from again and the painting wound up in the father's study. What exactly happened? We never find out, and that’s the master stroke of the story. It reflects the silence of the protagonist’s father’s generation regarding their and their country’s terrible history. The mother insinuates that her husband had sex with the wife of the painter, who presumably did everything she could to save herself and her husband. Some of the father’s Nazi past becomes public, although we are not told exactly what he is accused of; he loses his job and eventually succumbs to alcoholism. At the end, after the father’s death, the protagonist asks his mother whether the father came home and raped her. The mother denies it, and cries in desperation. She is an emotional cripple, and we suspect, that the father was guilty of horrendous crimes. What a dreadful silence poisons the family! The silence is so thick that is never penetrated--The holes that remain in the story line reflect the holes in the family members' lives. At the end,the protagonist burns the painting. The implication perhaps is that it is deadly to keep such a past alive--the best thing is to start anew. Not so easy! One recalls Wiesel’s statement that the next worst thing to being born of parents who perished in the Holocaust is to be born of parents who made it possible. This is a German story at its best; it is well written and gets one to think.
The other story I especially liked was The Son. The protagonists of all the stories are mostly successful as professionals and failures in the art of life, and this one proved to be no exception. I found it very moving. A German peace maker, one of the “twelve apostles of peace” is sent to a rebellion-torn Spanish-speaking country to negotiate a peace between rebels and the military. They were supposed to be taken on the first day, by jeep, to a provincial capital. They do not make it. They spend the night at a church ruined by fire, presumably during the current civil war. Germans love their symbolism and the ruined church obviously refers to the impossibility of finding transcendence in the modern world, but the symbol is not presented in a heavy-handed way and fits in the plot organically. War is raging around them; the guard outside the church is shot. The protagonist, referred to as the German and never by name, thinks of his son, a doctor. He loves his son deeply; the danger around him makes him think of what’s important in life. The problem, as in many of the stories, is that the protagonist never acts as forcibly as he feels. He considers himself to have been a failure as a father. He recalls a vacation with his son, when his son was small, which was abruptly ended by his former wife and her new husband. He defers to the courts but knows love in this case demanded stronger action. Now, so many years later, he phones his son and tells him he cares for him a lot, something he was always too shy to say. His son, embarrassed, says he must return to work and to call when he gets back home. Another failure! And there are more. The situation in the unnamed country turns very serious; the German is given a pistol. It is taken from him by a drunken colleague who, afraid of the danger, tries to force the officers to turn back. Some more subtle symbolism: the German has a pistol, a phallic symbol, but is not a man of action--it is taken from him. The gun fires and the German is mortally wounded. He dies, thinking of his son who will never know his father’s last loving thoughts. It is a very poignant tale that has two morals: 1) it’s later than you think and 2) stop thinking all the time and act. It is a tale that is both evocative and beautifully told.
The other five stories are all well worth reading. Even if his latest novel is a bad as Ian Buruma thinks it is, we judge authors on their successes and not on their relative failures. Two Gentlemen of Verona is not the first thing that comes to my mind when thinking of Shakespeare. Schlink is certainly no Shakespeare, but is still, at his best, an essential read.
Thomas Dorsett
