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Literature of impasse: A comparative analysis of Joseph Roth’s Radetzkymarsch, Giorgio Bassani’s Gli Occhiali d’Oro and Henri Fauconnier’s Malaisie Jacobus Wilhelmus Otto Snyman Dissertation delivered in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD in Comparative Literature in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Stellenbosch Supervisor: Dr M.C.K. du Toit March 2013 Stellenbosch University http://scholar.sun.ac.za For Freddie and to my late parents Stellenbosch University http://scholar.sun.ac.za Table of Contents Declaration ........................................................................................................... 1 Acknowledgements ............................................................................................... 2 Abstract ................................................................................................................ 4 Opsomming .......................................................................................................... 5 INTRODUCTION..................................................................................................... 6 CHAPTER I: LITERATURE OF IMPASSE ................................................................... 17 1.1 Ernest Gellner and the search for cohesion ................................................ 25 1.2 Mendacity ................................................................................................. 35 1.3 Degrees of Impasse.................................................................................... 39 1.4 Ichfindung or the Finding of the Self .......................................................... 45 1.5 Anthropology vs History ............................................................................ 51 1.6 Gellner and coming to grips with modernity .............................................. 58 1.7 Power relations and the quest for an Open Society .................................... 61 1.8 The appeal of transcendence and moral order ........................................... 65 CHAPTER II: THE MODERNIST DILEMMA IN ROTH, BASSANI AND FAUCONNIER .... 69 2.1 Individuality, Identity and Selfhood ........................................................... 77 2.2 Modernism: A case study of Joseph Roth’s Radetzkymarsch, Giorgio Bassani’s Gli occhiali d’oro and Henri Fauconnier’s Malaisie as literature of impasse ...... 87 2.3 A modernist trajectory .............................................................................. 103 2.4 Patriarchy and Modernism ....................................................................... 110 2.5 The “Disdain” for Modernity ..................................................................... 123 2.6 Radetzkymarsch, Gli occhiali d’oro and Malaisie as symptoms of trauma and impasse ......................................................................................................... 129 2.6.1 The Ontological Quandary of the Protagonists ................................................... 134 Stellenbosch University http://scholar.sun.ac.za 2.6.2 The Terror of the Void ......................................................................................... 137 CHAPTER III: IMPASSE IN THE TEXTS ................................................................... 144 3.1 Radetzkymarsch – impasse as personal tragedy ........................................ 147 3.2 Bassani – Defying impasse ........................................................................ 174 3.2.1 Tragic dénouement: Human nature as the battleground of Utopia ................... 212 3.3 Malaya – Exploring utopia; living a contradiction ...................................... 220 CHAPTER IV: THE PERSONAL AND THE POLITICAL – SECULARISATION, BETRAYAL AND MENDACITY IN RADETZKYMARSCH, GLI OCCHIALI D’ORO AND MALAISIE .... 255 4.1 Psychological impasse .............................................................................. 278 4.2 Carl Joseph in Radetzkymarsch ................................................................. 284 4.3 The io narrante and Fadigati in Gli occhiali d’oro ....................................... 288 4.4 The Allure of Escape: Malaisie .................................................................. 293 CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................... 301 BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................... 312 Works cited .................................................................................................... 312 Works consulted ............................................................................................ 325 Stellenbosch University http://scholar.sun.ac.za DECLARATION I, the undersigned, hereby declare that the work contained in this dissertation is my own original work and that I have not previously in its entirety or in part submitted it at any university for a degree. Signature: Date:18/02/2013 Copyright © 2013 Stellenbosch University All rights reserved 1 Stellenbosch University http://scholar.sun.ac.za ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS So many are those to whom I owe a debt of gratitude: those who have helped me in this arduous endeavour – those who have been bored to tears with my mental meanderings on this topic, but who have also, through conversations and insights, helped me to formulate some of the ideas contained in this dissertation. Firstly, on a practical level, I wish to thank the University of Cape Town for the generous leave the University, as my home institution, has granted me. In particular, I wish to thank Professor Clive Chandler and Professor David Wardle of the School of Languages and Literatures who supported me in my various leave applications over the years to do the necessary research in Italy, Austria, Hungary, Singapore and Malaysia and who allowed me time to confer with Professor Mike Hanne of the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Without their support I would not have been able to attend the various conferences and seminars in Penang, Singapore and Wellington, New Zealand, which, over time, enabled ideas to distil. In Italy, I should like to thank the staff of the Fondazione Giorgio Bassani, in Codigoro, near Ferrara, who gave me every assistance in accessing their copious holdings. I should like to thank the staff of the Fondazione Giorgio Bassani, in Codigoro, near Ferrara who also gave me every assistance in accessing their copious holdings, and so to the staff at Rhodes House, Oxford, the National Library of Singapore and the Singapore National Archives for the material relating to colonial Malaya. In Malaysia, I should like to thank Dr Mohamad Rashidi bin Mohd Pakri and Dr Nazima Versay Kudus, of the Universiti Sains Malaysia. It was through Nazima’s studies of the hill stations of colonial Malaya that I was introduced to Henri Fauconnier and it was Mohamad Rashidi who introduced me to Fauconnier’s contemporary, Sir Hugh Clifford. It was through their generosity in sharing their knowledge during my sojourns in Penang and in the effortless conversations that I began to acquire an understanding of the nuances and complexities of colonial literature in 1930s Malaya. In this regard I should also like to remember with fondness my late cousin, Marita (Babs) Keeling (née Tasker), who made me, as a child, aware of Malaya, recounting her time in Malaya in the 1930s and her escape from Singapore on the eve of the Japanese invasion in 1941/42. I should also like to thank my colleagues in German, in particular Ms Brigitte Selzer and Professor Gunther Pakendorf who gave me free reign to teach one of my favourite authors, namely Joseph Roth, and who gave me every support in enhancing my background in German literature. So too, in the same vein, I should like to thank my former colleagues in Italian, namely Dr Giuseppe Stellardi and Dr Guillaume Bernardi, who introduced me to Giorgio Bassani, and to the late Nelia Saxby who over many years encouraged me and gave full support to Bassani being on the teaching programme. I should also like to thank the students to whom I 2 Stellenbosch University http://scholar.sun.ac.za taught Bassani’s texts, who, with their incisive questioning, forced me, regularly, to re-evaluate my reading of Bassani’s works. I should also like to mention, with due thanks, a remarkable individual, Dr Carsten Wieland, who first introduced me to the works of Ernest Gellner, both in conversation and through his study entitled Nationalstaat wider Willen. To Drs Jörg Hennig and Cristina Pizzini, who gave me every support imaginable during my various sojourns in Italy (thus enabling me to spend time in Ferrara) I owe a debt of profound gratitude for their warmth and generosity. My gratitude also goes to Mrs Sue Beele and Ms Marcelle Holt who marshalled all the leave and funding applications over the years, to bring this project to fruition. A debt of heartfelt gratitude goes to my supervisor, Dr Catherine du Toit, of the Humanities Faculty of the University of Stellenbosch, who had the courage to take me on as a student and who supervised this project, often under trying circumstances, for both parties. Her superhuman patience with a “senior student” has been accompanied by a welcome candour, discipline, depth of knowledge and insight, and an attention to detail from all of which I have personally benefited enormously. To her, again, and especially, my heartfelt thanks. 3 Stellenbosch University http://scholar.sun.ac.za

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