Kingdoms Of This World And The Failure Of Secular Democracy

BELA BARTOK'S OPERA Bluebeard's Castle is among the most satisfying operas written in the 20th century, one which has little dramatic action in it, a cast of two and only one set. It's action consists of Judith, the new wife of Bluebeard, opening seven mysterious locked doors and commentary on what's inside them as things grow ever more sinister, it is Judith's choice of husband revealed in the evil and ruthlessness behind his reign over a vast and physically beautiful country.  The extent of that is revealed in what might be the most glorious music in a modern opera, the opening of the fifth door that reveals its beauty in glorious, huge major tonality chords and, in some of the most effective stagings, little more than blazing light.  

But within a couple of minutes, even that is revealed to be sinister as Judith changes mode to comment on the disturbing clouds that cast blood colored shadows on the beauty revealed there.

Listening to an old recording in glorious mono, issued by Bartok records, it occurred to me that, especially at that high point of the opera that the whole thing could stand as a contrast to the scene in the Gospels where Satan tempts Jesus with increasingly grand offers, including possession and rule of the whole Earth if he will serve him instead of God. Though I doubt that's what Bartok or his librettist Bela Belazs had in mind.  Maybe there is someone who knows of a comment one or the other made about that.

The opera can be seen as a great allegory on the history of non-egalitarian and so anti-democratic governments which are still the majority, perhaps almost all of the of governments in the world.  And that is certainly including many a so-called democracy such as that in the United States which is not equal and, so, is no democracy.  I doubt any country which does not have a Constitution written in the 20th century comes close to that no matter what habits of civic piety we are indoctrinated in permits us to believe.  And it is closer than an allegory of the temptation of all of us to give them our allegiance and lead us to share in the evil done by power, by governments and rulers and other forces of the world.  Judith doesn't flee, she doesn't cut his head off as the great heroine of the Book of Judith did, a book which I grew up with (complete with gruesome and so absorbing old-master picture reproduction) in the Catholic canon of my youth, a book which didn't make it into some other canons of scripture.

In fact I think that's almost certainly what is behind it, given the political situation in Hungary where the composer and librettist lived and were part of the intellectual scene.  I've never seen that made clear in any production I've seen, the one I saw live or the ones I've seen filmed or staged for filming. Of all of the producer-director imposed meanings placed on it, I've never seen that one.   I've never read any commentary on it that gave that indication, though I will admit, I've never really studied it from that aspect.  If that was what Bartok and Belas had in mind, they reveal the perils of using theatrical allegory to make that point because I'd been listening to the opera, at least once every few years for a long time and that thought lay undeveloped in my thinking for most of that time.

The sad end for Judith when her last illusions about her new husband are killed, that she joins his previous wives in their undead tomb, revealed in the last door, is the common lot for almost all of us as we give in to the ruling regime, the economic one, the political one, the intellectual one, one of the social milieus that we are born into or choose which operate under those.   We almost all choose to live with those instead of against those, especially those imposed by others who have given in to one or another of them, accepting the evils done by them.  All of us are Judiths to one extent or another, perhaps a few real saints excluded.

It is the story of today's Russia under Putin, something which I'm sure must have relevancy for the opera as conceived by the composer and librettist, considering the role that the Leninists and, soon, Stalinists had in menacing countries contiguous with and near to the Soviet dictatorship.  I doubt much of anything among the intellectuals in those smaller countries is free of that danger as well as those internal to it. Bartok and Belazs had domestic fascists to contend with, as well.

If the Republican-fascists win the elections in the fall, if the Republican-fascist majority on the Supreme Court continues unstopped, it will increasingly be relevant for here.*  The Constitutional order of the United States has proven itself to be unsustainable if the goal is egalitarian democracy instead of some pretty evil level of gangster rule, gangster rule, especially in regard to People of Color, Women and members of targeted minorities, has and always will be the result of governance under it.  The heady prospect of us reforming it in the great Civil Rights movements of the 19th and 20th centuries was a worthwhile try but the mechanisms of government and the corruption of elections more than just made possible but facilitated by the Constitution and the judicial rulings made allegedly under that guaranteed those reforms would be turned back by the extension of American apartheid in the late 19th and most of the 20th century and the now ripe return of American apartheid, the nationalization of Women's bodies, the arming of fascist terrorists and, no doubt, actual armies which will seize power, and in countless other ways.  See my footnote for more.  We are only slightly behind Russia under Putin, for lots of America, Black People, other People of Color, Women, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD SCHOOL CHILDREN! only the details separating us are different, not the lived reality.  

The story of Jesus's temptation and his rejection of it seems to me to be far more significant than it might seem when it comes up in the lectionary, one which, read in that context, is far more important for all of us than I, personally, ever realized before listening to the opera and thinking about it that way.  I doubt I'll ever hear Bartok's music or hear that Gospel reading again without thinking of it in terms of my own inadequate resistance to the evils of power and commerce and those required by various subsets requiring acquiescent acceptance to it. Jesus rejected it and the physical comforts to begin his ministry which ended in his state murder.  

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I wish I had a good recording of the opera in English translation that was comprehensible and close to the meaning of the original and musically workable.  I've turned around from the stand I used to have against vernacular translation of opera to where I think it's more damaging to it if its intended audience can't understand the dramatic action.  It is theater, after all.  

That's one thing I realized from listening to radio dramas in which the spectacle is entirely listener provided, those in French and German which I've tried lose a lot in the original.  Especially when the author wrote them in vernacular speech.  I wish I could find good English language productions of some of those, especially one of the most famous ones, The Man At The Door by Wolfgang Borchert, which is a remarkable piece of work.  


*  The total impotence of the benevolent, perhaps, majority of Americans to even protect school children from the damned Supreme Court, the gun industry, Republican-fascists and their army of armed goons, and in a hundred other ways has certainly and finally proven the total failure of secular-would-be liberalism and, even more so, the secular left.  

The sooner liberals and would-be leftists face the fact that the 18th century "enlightenment" is over, the sooner we can move on to something that might save us because the secular-constitutional order of the United States and the culture of secularism is what got us here.  Christians must name the fascist heresies what they are and they will have to fight against them no matter what the luke-warm muddle of secularism has lulled them into believing on that account because there is nothing else that will resist it.  Marxism certianly can't and it never should have been mistaken to even want to do that.  There is no secular alternative that has or ever will.  If you think there is one, name it.  

If there were no private schools, if the children of the rich had to send their children to public schools assigned to those on a random basis so they could not recreate the elite prep-school systems at public expense, if the Supreme Court members had their children or grandchildren at the risk they have created for all children in public schools, the entire line of "Second Amendment" rulings by the Republican-fascists would never have been made.  The Republican-fascist order is a certain result of the permission of the private sector to segregate themselves into safety.  We will always suffer that until we have, by law, abolished that self-created safety for them and those they purportedly love.

The Congress, if Democrats should prevail, should remove protections for themselves and the Supreme Court so those robed thugs can't hide from the results of their own rulings.  No law made by the court, no ruling by them, should leave them less vulnerable than they leave school children, in school or on the street or in their homes.  That vile building, constructed during Taft's corrupt time as Chief Justice, built with fascist-supplied marble, is the Bluebeard's Castle of American democracy.