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onebizarrekai · 3 years

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I think that lucia di lammermoor is one of my new favorite operas not just because of the mad scene but because the opera makes no sense whatsoever

there are literally so many plot holes in the libretto. there are so many unexplained facets of the narrative, unresolved arcs, dialogues that mandate copious creative liberties, things that only happen off-stage, and some unsolvable problems that can only be fixed by cutting things or directing things a certain way. there’s so much nonsense it’s actually hilarious. if you read the source story of the bride of lammermoor the opera diverts quite a bit, but the bride of lammermoor is actually even worse, so let’s put that to the side.

let’s just start from the beginning of the opera, paraphrasing as much as possible. lucia’s evil brother, enrico, is the first lead to greet the stage, minutes after his goony normano. normano tells enrico the tale of how enrico’s archenemy, edgardo, saved the life of lucia, and he reluctantly admits that they are now in love with each other and are secretly meeting up all the time. enrico flips his shit and sings about how he’s going to kill edgardo or whatever. bide the bent (aka raimondo, but schirmir really said bide the bent, whatever the hell that means) exists and does priest stuff because he’s a priest. by the way, there’s this whole thing about how the ashton family (aka lucia and enrico) are protestant and edgardo is catholic and that’s why they hate each other and that’s why there’s a priest.

anyway they all leave, and then lucia and alice enter. lucia is, naturally, waiting for her illegal boyfriend: edgardo. she is very scared because enrico is a piece of shit and wants to kill her boyfriend. alice is like “yo man this is a bad idea” and lucia is like “where’s edgardo” but lucia is also perturbed by something else. she has a ghost story to tell about this nondescript fountain and tells alice about the girl who was killed by her lover at this fountain, and then suddenly goes like “by the way the ghost of the dead woman appeared to me” and like wow ok lucia. after singing about all of the water turning to blood in her hallucination, she proceeds to completely change moods and sing about how much she loves edgardo because she is crazy. after all of this, edgardo finally arrives and tells lucia about how he actually has to go to france to do ambassador stuff and disappear for an indefinite period of time. he says that they should finally tell enrico about their relationship. lucia completely shuts him down, and then edgardo cries about how enrico has killed his family and how she’s the only light of his life. they end up deciding to keep their relationship a secret anyway and then vow to marry each other.

act 2, enrico has ordered normano to forge a break-up letter from edgardo to send it to lucia. normano shows up to give it to enrico, enrico summons lucia into wherever he is to tell her that he needs to marry her off to some other guy in order to save their family. lucia is like “but I’m marrying someone else” and enrico is like “oh yeah? read this” and gives her the letter, and lucia naturally breaks down because it’s a big lie about how edgardo has found someone else in france. she cries about it until this big fanfare plays to welcome her new husband, arturo. at this point lucia is singing about nothing except how much death would benefit her right now. enrico leaves after being an asshole for a few more minutes, and then in comes bide the bent to lecture lucia about the invalidity of her previous marital vows. she leaves to change into a wedding gown.

enter arturo, this random loser that enrico wants lucia to marry. his lines are so cliché that he’s probably reading them off a sheet of paper (which is exactly how we staged the production I am currently doing). somehow arturo knows about lucia’s affair with edgardo because those two were actually horrible at being secretive, but also he doesn’t care because he gets to marry a hottie. enrico tells arturo about how lucia’s mother died and that’s why she’s crying about the wedding. lo and behold, lucia enters and she is crying. they hold the wedding right then and there under the Authority™ of bide the bent, enrico forces lucia to sign the wedding documents, and then everyone is like “wait who’s at the door?” and then EDGARDO BREAKS IN and he’s like “EDGAAAAAARDO” and they sing a whole sextet that borders a confusion ensemble except it’s a bel canto tragedy.

edgardo is like “yeah man! it’s my right to be here since I’m engaged to lucia!” and enrico is like “PSH” and bide the bent comes up like “sorry she just signed this Other Marriage Contract” and shows it to edgardo and edgardo is like WHAT and he comes up to lucia like BRUH YOU DONE THIS?? and lucia doesn’t even know what’s happening at this point, she’s just like “yes?? but” and then edgardo takes off his ring and hers and then throws a temper tantrum before he gets kicked out.

behold the wolf’s craig duet, the most stupid and pointless thing in this opera considering what happens later. enrico barges into edgardo’s house and they sing about how they’re going to kill each other and duel at the graveyard. that’s it. there’s probably sexual tension.

after that, there’s a wedding party, except with a Horrifying Twist. lucia goes upstairs with arturo and fucking kills him. having lost her mind, she comes out covered in blood and sings for like twenty minutes in a very impressive manor. she collapses on the floor at the very end.

there’s a random recit right afterwards where enrico, bide the bent and normano briefly talk about lucia losing her mind. while enrico is crying about lucia, bide the bent literally blames normano of all people, who did exactly nothing, for every bad thing that happened to lucia.

the final scene begins at the graveyard. now, I know what you’re thinking. edgardo and enrico promised to duel each other here, right? right! so where the hell is enrico? I dunno, not here. edgardo is here, and he’s crying and stuff about his dead father. he’s very sad and probably wants to perish. a chorus shows up mourning something. edgardo asks about it and no one wants to tell him. bide the bent appears in all his priestliness and tells edgardo that lucia is now in heaven. how did she die? beats me. she died of insanity or something. edgardo has lost the final thing in his life that matters to him, so he decides to “go see her” and stabs himself.

the opera ends.

welcome to lucia di lammermoor. now, some of these plot holes are resolvable through directing. for example, lucia’s insanity is inexplicable in the libretto. nobody is just sad about their boyfriend and commits murder–granted, her first aria had her singing about a ghost and a fountain of blood. why’s she like this, though? she’s probably not ok. so like, some people explain this by making enrico way way worse than just a big liar. in the production that I’m doing, enrico is being depicted as sexually abusive towards lucia, and like, yeah that helps do some explaining. but you know what it doesn’t help? the parts of the opera that normally get cut, like the stupidass wolf’s craig duet that exists for no reason and usually gets cut because it makes no sense. also, the scene right after the mad scene where bide the bent comically blames normano for everything even though it is clearly enrico’s fault and enrico is randomly mourning lucia even though he was horrible to her for the whole opera. unfortunately, when you have companies like the met, which do full operas with no cuts, you get the whole, nonsensical story in its full glory, not to mention the met tends to shy away from taking creative liberties with the directing.

so like, why do I say this opera is a new favorite? well, aside from it being fun to sing, since I’m doing it for the first time, it’s absolutely hilarious to consider who the real mastermind here is, since for some reason, the librettist seems to think that it’s normano. you have to make up so much subtext in this story in order to even make it begin to make sense, so how far can you take it? how much nonsense can you create?

easy mode is assuming the mastermind is enrico. he’s a horrible person. obviously bide the bent accuses normano because he’s trying to divert the blame from enrico, who may or may not kill him if he says the truth. however, enrico does not go to the graveyard to kill edgardo and tie off loose ends (which I personally think he should have). enrico just kind of disappears, honestly, in spite of being the main bad guy.

bide the bent is another viable option. he blames normano to divert attention from himself. he plays the role of the peacemaker between edgardo and enrico during the sextet, but it’s all a sham. the reason bide the bent appears in the final graveyard scene is because he’s the true villain here. he simply took advantage of everyone around him in order to make sure everything went according to plan. enrico’s bs towards lucia, lucia’s insanity, edgardo’s depression, normano loyalty, the whole deal. he wishes to rise in power… perhaps the reason enrico does not show up in the final scene is because bide the bent has already disposed of him.

what if it was edgardo? what if he and lucia devised a plan to create an opening that would allow them to run away? what if arturo was in on it? lucia pretends to murder arturo, pretends to go insane, and the plan was to finally flee with edgardo… but then they were INTERCEPTED. their plan was ruined. lucia was disposed of by the enemy off-stage and it was too late. they claim she died of insanity, but she was killed by normano under enrico’s orders, or whoever else is the designated evil one here.

in the met, for some reason, they decide to have lucia’s ghost come in during the final scene and silently “coerce” edgardo into ending his life, which sounds cool, but it was ridiculous. I just remember the blood bag being in the wrong place so he had to stab himself in the kidney and lucia actually pushed the prop knife in like she wasn’t literally a ghost. there was also a ghost during lucia’s first aria that totally upstaged her. this opens up many stupid doors for directing such as arturo’s ghost returning as well if need be. anyone’s ghost could be there. ghosts canonically exist at the met. arturo could be fortnite dancing during the mad scene.

behold, a terrible take. edgardo is having a secret affair after all, but he’s having an affair with enrico. enrico is enraged when he discovers edgardo’s relationship with his sister because he thought that THEY had a thing. he vengefully tries to break them up by marrying lucia off to arturo. enrico and edgardo sing the wolf’s craig duet as a not-tragic breakup song.

honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone in this goddamn cast was sleeping with each other. the possibilities are endless

during the staging period of the show, we all came up with so many stupid and hilarious ideas that we could stage an entire comedy version of this opera. maybe one day it could happen. maybe…

anyway it’s like midnight and I’m doing my cast’s performance of this opera in two days, and I just drove home a while ago from performance 1 today talking with my family about all of these stupid possibilities, so it’s all on my mind. at least the mad scene is fun to sing

#random stuff #me? going on a comical tangent about opera? more likely than you think #there's a lot of content warnings for stuff here but that's to be expected of opera #honestly I'll lose my mind for real if I have to do this show at face value #enrico isn't evil enough in just the libretto alone #see operas usually have pretty simple stories #and plot holes #but LUCIA #lucia is something else

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causeiwasinlove · 4 years

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all my fics on signofthetmies !

updated last 14 apr 2021 // arranged from oldest to newest (as per posting date)

⁺ ☁⋆ make it with you | COMPLETE (famous harry, non famous louis)

“So many rumors are going around that you’re already making your second album, is this true?”

Harry smiles, “Ehm,” He coughs, obviously teasing. “He’s stalling, folks! Should we take this as a yes?” Nick asks.

Suddenly, someone comes in and hands Nick a cup of coffee, this first thing Harry sees is his tattoos, “Here ya go,” said-someone whispers. Nick grabs the cup and gives the guy a thumbs up and mouths a small “Thank you.”

Harry didn’t realize he was staring until Nick turns around and sees his lips parted a bit. “So?”

“I was going to say I haven’t found any inspiration yet but I think it’s safe to say I will be writing it right after this interview.” He jokes, dimples all out.

or Harry Styles goes to BBC Radio 1 to promote his new self-titled album, plans to take a break for more songwriting. Enter Louis Tomlinson.

⁺ ☁⋆ three for how i love you | COMPLETE (uni au)

Louis writes Harry letters, three letters to be exact. One for each night they spend alone.

Louis sits beside Harry on the bench and puts his leg on top of Harry’s, “Didn’t sleep too well last night.” Louis admits, wearing Harry’s hoodie which he demanded first thing in the morning. Harry wraps his arms around him and presses kisses unto his hair. “I wrote you these,” Louis grabs the letters he wrote and presses it unto Harry’s palm, folded lazily. “Read it? M’kay?”

Louis and Harry are uni students, Harry signs them up for a 3-day retreat, they struggle to sleep alone. Louis has been hiding a ring.

⁺ ☁⋆ drowning in cold water | WIP 10/? (exes to lovers)

“Yeah but, we were so young, Lou.” Harry exasperates.

“Don’t call me ‘Lou’,” Louis rolls his eyes, “and whatever Harry, yeah we were young but you can’t pretend we weren’t willing to give up everything for each other.”

‘Like we still do now’ goes unsaid but Harry swears he hears it.

Harry and Louis dated when they were twenty and twenty-two but broke up. Two years later, everything is unresolved, but everything they left remains the same.

⁺ ☁⋆ loving you is my truth | COMPLETE (high school au, zouis brothers)

Harry looks at him again, he’s just so attractive. He doesn’t know how to help himself. “Oi mate,” Niall holds his jaw, “think you might be drooling, eh?” Harry pushes his hand off and shakes his head, “If you’re crushing on Louis so bad, why don’t you just ask for his number?”

“You really think it’s that easy?”

Well, realistically, it should be, but aside from Harry’s growing crush on Louis Tomlinson, there’s another big problem, he’s Zayn Malik’s stepbrother.

Who is Zayn Malik, you might ask? His best mate.

⁺ ☁⋆ you’ll wait for me only | COMPLETE | Written for BLFF 2020 (alpha harry, omega louis, accidental bonding)

Harry nips at the bondmark on Louis’ neck, Louis’ hands go to his hips, grounding him. He allows himself this, knowing that his Omega needs it too. Harry pulls back, “Go on a date with me.” He rushes out, looking at Louis’ eyes.

Louis laughs and shakes his head. “No, Louis, I’m serious. We’ve bonded for life anyway, might as well try.” Louis looks at him, “You’ve been thinking about this a lot.” Louis points out, Harry nods. “Okay.” Louis says and walks out leaving Harry. “Okay what?!”

_______________________

Prompt 15: Omega Louis is a lawyer that worked on omega rights cases. Alpha Harry is a corporate lawyer. Louis and Harry used to be childhood archenemies, until Louis moved to another school and they never saw each other again. Now, they’re both adults that happen to work in the same place. They behave like children and still share a mutual dislike. Both travel to work together for a case. One night they both bond accidentally. Slowly but surely, they fall in love. Enemies to lovers!

⁺ ☁⋆ i'm at your mercy now (and i'm ready to begin) | COMPLETE (soulmate au, identifying marks — tattoos)

“Does it bother you that people ask about your mark?”

Harry looks at him seriously, he shakes his head. “I prefer to keep it private of course,” Louis nods, “but I guess it comes with the job. You lose all privacy the moment your name is in flashing lights.”

Louis shrugs, “True. There’s always this one thing you keep to yourself though.” Harry frowns, getting the underlying thing Louis is trying to say. “That was your soulmark for you.” He points out.

Louis shrugs, “It’s a soulmark for everyone.” He corrects, “It’s everybody’s personal secret until they choose to share it with someone else.”

Louis Tomlinson writes poetry even in casual conversation. Who would have thought?

where Louis' soulmark was leaked, Harry keeps his private. They're both famous popstars. Louis is waiting for his soulmate, Harry has a feeling it's him but Louis is completely oblivious.

⁺ ☁⋆ no i love you’s, no goodnight’s | COMPLETE (divorce au, established relationship, happy ending)

Louis rubs his back with soap, leaving kisses everywhere because this is the person he chose, the person he’ll spend the rest of his life with, even if it’s just going to be memories. They promised each other everything and that matters even if they separate, they’re always going to have parts of each other.

They bathe each other silently, kissing each other’s shoulders, Louis kisses his knuckles as an apology and a thank you to what his husband did for him. Louis dries them off and grabs clothes for them when they’re done. They head to bed without a single word.

No I love you’s, no goodnight’s.

Harry and Louis deal with the biggest obstacle of their marriage. They fight using all the fight that’s in them.

#mine #larry fics #larry fic rec

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angry-taco-lover · 2 years

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.Really? While they laugh, I will thank the co-writers who helped him make their characterization possible. Slott was damn good plotter and could do characterization, but he heavily favored one over the other when he had to make deadlines and pretend otherwise is revisionism. Black Cat, for example.

People lean too intensely into "BND MJ the terrible". Mary Jane made a few mistakes that should be acknowledged, but she's not an irredeemable person or close to it. Unconditional love should not mean unconditional tolerance. I remember Mary Jane having insecurities and well-earned doubts about their relationship. I also remember him hitting a pregnant MJ in the middle of a breakdown. We all know how Marvel characterized a similar situation with Hank Pym. Peter Parker's choices during civil war are enough of an excuse for a breakup. He unmasked in front of the entire world, putting a target on every person with whom he interacted. Even with the scarce knowledge we have of what the pro-Registration side required, This decision was unnecessary. Next, he takes his family out of the protection of the Avengers after endangering them. Then he had them go on the run with him from the government and the enemies he'd made that were working for the side he now opposed, which resulted in the logical conclusion of May Parker getting shot. If she had pulled through or not, it would logically put the marriage in question since Mary Jane can no longer trust his judgment. MJ isn't only in this marriage to have kids, but she eventually wants them. She knows what it's like to lose her baby to a villain. Aunt May's shooting would be a wake-up call for Mary Jane. It would cause her to rethink whether she could bring a helpless child into the world where her husband might do something so reckless and flip-flop between sides because Peter hadn't fully understood what he was getting into before he did it. I'm not saying she'd think, "Oh, how horrible of you, Peter." I'm saying MJ would respect his morals and stick by Spider-man as a friend, but he'd have to earn that trust back before MJ has Peter as a husband and lover. It would have been an unpopular but logical response to an OOC choice. Marvel didn't divorce the couple because they felt an official split would have aged Peter Parker. The civil war event was so miswritten we don't know what it was even about. Instead, rampant mischaracterization, Nazi metaphors, barely considered civil rights analogies, anti-gun control parallelism, and anti-accountability conceit was hurled around. I'd have liked a story about Peter Parker slowly earning his way back into Mary Jane Watson's life far more than anything we've gotten from Mephisto. Mephisto emboldens writers who think he gives them an excuse enough for butchering these characters, but he is just a symptom of a more deadly disease. Editorial's stance on "Peter the Younger" ruins this damn franchise.

I could probably write a paper on how the Green Goblin was accidentally turned into Spider-Man's archenemy. Choosing to avoid using him only thrust him further into the position.

It wouldn't have made a lousy Elseworld story. It's a good backstory for this guy.

There's not much on Ghost Goblin/Norman Osborn. Osborn could have given up his son for money. Later, when Osborn discovers what he did, he blames the societal expectations that influenced him to make that decision and destroy his entire universe. In the ultimate monkey's paw of situations, Mephisto stops Mayday from ever being born but is killed in that universe by his Rider in revenge. Afterward, the goblin continues destroying universes and Mephistos where Harry Osborn is dead in an omnicidal suicide run, forcing others to take Osborn out because he won't do it himself because the goblin considers suicide the coward's way out—doing this in 616 means the Osborns are not even valuable pawns. Norman's actions brought about what Mephisto wanted to avoid. Harry made it obvious he didn't want to hurt Mary Jane and didn't do much to stop Peter and MJ from getting together.

Mephisto'ssinvolvement is another way of showing their lack of respect for Peter Parker. The retcon is not even using his rogue's gallery. It's outsourcing the villains. It's as if Eobard Thawne were responsible for Joker's fixation or Teth-Adam influenced Lex Luthor. It would be best if you didn't do that with characters like Spider-man.

I can't really judge his behavior in the preview since Spencer established he's a good actor. If Osborn is feeling nothing, it reinforces my opinion that the Arch dynamic causes its holders to lose their personality beyond existing as an extension of their heroes and is fundamentally harmful to the villain who has it. Your threat level usually goes up in proportion to how much your hero is respected, but the cost is often losing character nuance. Before anyone points out Victor von Doom, he avoids this by being written by fanboys, relying on malfunctioning Doombots, ignoring his flaws, and vilifying Reed Richards.

This is far too soon to justify Oscorp. We haven't even explained how Osborn works at Oscorp.

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topmixtrends · 6 years

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This tribute first appeared in the Romanian cultural weekly Observator Cultural, no. 925 (June 7, 2018). It is translated from the Romanian by Philip Ó Ceallaigh.

MY WIFE CELLA and I last saw Philip Roth on Friday, May 18, when we visited him in the Cardiac Ward of New York Presbyterian Hospital. He was very weak and pale; his voice was almost inaudible. We exchanged a few words, looked at each other for a long time, shook hands, and smiled at each other. Back home, I wrote him a message recalling our long friendship and stressed my conviction that even though he was weak and suffering he could bounce back, as I had often seen him do, and that this time he would be equal to the struggle.

Unfortunately I was wrong. As Canetti warned, death is the invincible enemy of man. Philip passed away on the evening of May 22 at the age of 85. The toll that numerous operations had taken on his body was too much even for his extraordinary tenacity and discipline. I remember his exalted shouts one summer, at the swimming pool at his home in Connecticut: “I’m going to live forever! Norman, I’m immortal!”

However, his biographer states that when they signed their contract in 2012, Philip said: “Okay, I’ll help you for about a year, then I’m getting out of here.” He knew what was coming.

If I were to choose one among the many qualities and contradictions that set him apart from his contemporaries, I’d go for his obstinate rejection of banality, of the commonplace, of awareness dulled by the quotidian, where complacency, tribal loyalty, pious or prudent complicity, and collective blindness give birth to monsters. “I had to squeeze the nice Jewish boy out of me drop by drop,” he once wrote. I remember him phoning me from someplace where he was holidaying in the period when he’d give me manuscripts of his work-in-progress and then capture my observations of a tape-recorder. “What are you doing?” I asked him. “It reminds me of the Romanian Securitate…” He replied, “I’m getting old. What can I do? My memory lets me down.”

But it didn’t. Not really. He had a sharp memory, particularly where it came to writing, reading, and literature.

The dilemma he wanted to debate was itself literary, in the manuscript of his masterpiece, Sabbath’s Theater. “The lover asks her partner to swear an oath of fidelity: to never sleep with any woman except her again! How can you reply to such an absurdity? Such impertinence…” We wrestled back and forth with the demand made by the lover, who was, by the way, herself quite libertine. After a while, the author got to the heart of the paradox. “I’ve got it! He asks her to sleep with her darling husband! That’s the condition. He’ll be faithful, if she starts sleeping with her husband. They both know this is no longer possible…”

Nothing should impede the free exercise of the imagination, creative freedom, and the fundamental personal freedom that defies and overcomes the archenemies of creativity. Roth enjoyed the great success of Portnoy’s Complaint, but it also brought a lot of hostility. The novel was considered objectionable on many grounds, but the main accusations against it were that the author was a misogynist and a self-hating Jew and complicit with the most rabid anti-Semitism. His Jewish accusers, besides the non-Jewish anti-Semites, included not only well-known rabbis but also learned as well as literary figures, such as his friend Alfred Kazin. Gershom Scholem, the venerable commentator on the sacred texts of the Kabbalah, made the claim that the novel was even more hate-filled than The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, that sinister, poisonous forgery made by the Tsarist secret police.

If even learned Jews of today forget the Biblical prophets, who are so much a part of the tragic destiny of the Jews by virtue of their searing criticism of human imperfection and the moral weakness of sinners, who are many and everywhere, why should the swelling anti-Semitic mob come as any surprise to us?

Those who got to know Philip, as I was lucky enough to, are well aware how many of his friends were Jews, that he adored his Jewish parents, and that he was always eager to learn something new about the recent and not-so-recent story of that suffering people, of their vulnerability and energy, their sensitivity and stoicism, their tales and humor.

Literature has a premise and potentialities that differ from those of historiography or journalism. It looks at the human tragicomedy using introspection, fantasy, burlesque, and ambiguity, and is anything but a vendor of cheap entertainment or scholarly escapism. We can, for that reason, apply to anti-Semitism the words of a non-Jewish writer, Mark Twain, whom Roth admired, “Jews are just merely human beings,” and that’s bad enough.

Concerning the supposed misogyny in Roth’s books, I witnessed a scene at Bard College. He was the first guest in my “Contemporary Masters” series, followed by Bellow, Saramago, Kundera, Kadare, Cynthia Ozick, Edna O’Brien, Tisma, Tabucchi, Magris, Pamuk, Vargas Llosa, Muñoz Molina, and Tahar Ben Jelloun … I would put a selection of the author’s work on the course, meet with students to review it, and then, the following day, discuss it with the author and the class. I arranged to talk with Philip by phone after my Monday class in order to be prepared for the Tuesday meeting. Everything went perfectly on Monday, even up to the awkward Sabbath’s Theater, where the students agreed that both the male and female protagonists of the novel were equally flawed, vital, passionate, and powerful.

Surprisingly, in the case of I Married a Communist, Philip was not convinced as I was that all was well. He requested that we meet earlier than usual. He appeared with a bulging briefcase containing a massive volume by Rabelais and another relating the Sinyavsky-Daniel Trial, in which the two Soviet dissidents were convicted. The event, an “open class” for the entire college, began peacefully, but during the debate several female students accused the author of creating simplistic, vulgar caricatures of women. The same old male chauvinism! All the female characters were cardboard cut-outs, lacking in life and complexity!

Philip listened quietly and did not interrupt the speech, then took out the Rabelais book, and read a sardonic fragment about human nature, then the dialogue between Daniel and the Soviet prosecutor. The prosecutor notes that although the dissident has disguised his intentions, it was obvious to any attentive reader, and still more to an official censor, that the mental hospital in his work of fiction was a crude metaphor for the Soviet people and the communist regime. “Certainly not! How can you claim that? It’s just a hospital, they’re patients, sick people,” the accused replies. “We know, we’re not as stupid as you think, we’ve read books too, we’re not illiterate!” At this point, Daniel took from his pocket a booklet on which was printed the Statute of the Soviet Writers’ Union. “I’ve got the writers’ constitution here, I’m a member of the Union, and there’s no article that demands that the Soviet writer has to describe only perfect people, immaculate citizens.”

Philip’s intervention didn’t convince the rebels; it provoked them. “What are you saying? Are you comparing us to Soviet censors, to tyranny? Just for expressing objections in a literature class? This is a free country, we are told, a democracy.”

As we were gathering up our papers and books, getting ready to go, a beautiful girl we didn’t know in the front row stood up and approached the lectern. “I’m from Prague, I heard about this class and came along with my American literature professor.” A man in a suit and tie stood up and smiled at us. The girl turned to face her American fellow-students. “And you … you understand nothing! Nothing! Nothing about the emotional and sexual bonds between a man and a woman, nothing about flirtation, shyness, intensity. Nothing about literature — about the code of literature!”

The American girls were dumbstruck, cowed by the wild “Eastern European,” until one of them stood up: “So, you’re from Prague? If that’s how you do things back there in Prague, then good for you, I’m sure it goes down well there. But this is our country!”

If we’re going to discuss misogyny, it would be well to recall Philip’s many female friends, both young and old, who adored him and were with him to the end. In fact, his relationship with the actress Claire Bloom wasn’t transient either. I was around when they belatedly officialized their union by getting married, and when they divorced, and when Claire Bloom’s caustic memoir appeared. The bitter accusations made after the break-up were unjust and wounded Philip deeply. He withdrew to Connecticut like a hermit and didn’t want to see anyone for a time, but he phoned us regularly. Recently I’ve heard that Claire painted an affectionate and admiring portrait of her ex-husband on British TV, saying that the egoism of two artists who were married but both obsessed with their own creativity is easy to understand, that their love was full and memorable, and that the deceased will be remembered as a great modern writer.

Philip Roth does indeed occupy a major place in American and world literature, as many critics have noted, now and in years past. We only need to look at the judgment of a towering spiritual authority such as Cynthia Ozick on the enduring value of The Ghost Writer, The Anatomy Lesson, American Pastoral, Everyman, The Human Stain, and The Plot Against America. The same narrative flair, humor, originality, and acuity are found even in the so-called minor works of this tireless literary craftsman.

Though Roth enjoyed major international acknowledgment, he never won the Nobel Prize. Prizes are given by people and, like people, they are imperfect. Even were the Nobel to be awarded by computer, it would still be imperfect, as there can be no impersonal equation for such a fluid and vast and diverse spiritual territory. And I can’t even say it was a bad thing not to win it! He thereby enters such select company as those other neglected writers — Tolstoy, Proust, Joyce, Kafka, Borges …

A 30-year friendship between writers (a profession of vanity, Camus calls it somewhere), is not very common. But he took care of it in the afterlife too, having written last year to Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College, asking to be allocated a grave at Bard, near my own, so he wouldn’t be bored, as he put it, in the endless “beyond.”

This is why he rests at Bard and awaits me there. It is not, as some press reports claimed, that he wanted a Jewish cemetery. The cemetery at Bard is not Jewish, it is non-denominational and even atheists are buried there, and the funeral that took place on Monday, May 28, was non-religious, in accordance with his instructions. Those that he had selected to speak were not to talk about him, but would each read fragments from his books.

I read from The Dying Animal, the book he dedicated to me in 2001.

But to return to happier beginnings.

Knowing he’d published a collection of East European prose, Writers from the Other Europe, I wrote to him in 1987, from Berlin, where I was living on a DAAD (German Ministry of Cultural Exchanges) grant, following my trials and tribulations in communist Romania. I proposed to him an English translation of an anthology of young writers published at Albatros Publishing House, so that Romania too — the only Eastern European country absent from his anthology — might find its place in the world … He replied promptly, without mentioning my suggestion, asking who I was, what I wrote, what I was doing in Germany. And so, our relationship began.

When my grant ended, I wrote to tell him I didn’t know where I was headed, only that, for the moment, there was no going back. I didn’t want to take any final decision, preferring to await in the West the long-dreamed-of passing of our “most beloved son of the people,” as the national press used to call the dictator. My attempts to obtain another grant in Germany or France failed. He wrote to tell me to look him up if I happened to decide on America. When I got to Washington, he invited me to New York, to Essex House, where he was temporarily living. I suggested we put it off for a while, because I didn’t speak English and was about to start a course in the language for new arrivals. “It doesn’t matter, we’ve got hands, we’ve got eyes, we’ll understand each other.” He wanted me to bring him something translated into English, but all I had was a too-short story called “Proust’s Tea,” published in a magazine in London. “Bring whatever you have.”

I crept into the big hotel, Cella accompanying me. The room was spacious. Our host was sitting on the sofa, feet on the table, smiling encouragingly. I went up to him and handed him the few pages. Silence. “Proust? Proust, you say? I’ve tried to read this writer 20 times and I’ve never got past page 15…” I froze. In Romania I had learned that if you didn’t like Proust, you were outside literature. What was left for me to say to the great American? Nothing. I couldn’t utter a word.

Then another salvo: “Céline, not Proust! Céline is my Proust!” That floored me … I knew Céline was a great writer and an anti-Semite. I’d read him with interest, but I was speechless. I smiled weakly, and sat down on the sofa next to Cella, preparing myself for the next blow. But the conversation became more cordial, allowing for the inevitable language problem. At the end, he wrote some names and addresses and telephone numbers on a sheet of paper. Robert Silver, Rose Marie Morse, Mary McCarthy. “They’re my friends, they speak French, you’ll be able to talk to each other.” Stumbling out of Essex House, I told Cella I’d never call him again. “Enough, I’m done!”

But that first meeting was soon put behind us. The American maestro began to call me weekly, asking how I was doing, if my English was coming along. “Have you anything translated into another language?” I had two books in German. He gave me the address of Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College, who, I understood, was a German speaker. I sent him my books and received an extraordinarily laudatory reply, comparing me to the contemporary German writers I most admired … Then I met Mary McCarthy, who taught at Bard. And she recommended me to Botstein also.

My friend and future German editor at Hanser, Michael Krüger, put me in touch with New Directions Publishing House, which he thought would be the best fit for me. There I met with its director, the cutting and charming Griselda Ohannessian, and her young secretary, Barbara Epler, who would eventually, as Griselda’s successor, publish my complicated novel Captives. I got along perfectly with both my collaborators and was ready to sign a contract when a two-book offer came in from Grove Press.

And so started what the Romanian nationalist press back home called the “the international Jewish conspiracy” of my arrival on the world literary stage (the MacArthur Prize, Guggenheim Foundation Prize, and so on).

When, in 1997, after 11 years of exile in the United States, I accepted Botstein’s invitation to accompany him to Bucharest, where he was conducting two concerts at the Ateneu, Philip supported me. Saul Bellow, who was more knowledgeable about Romania, didn’t think I should go back (“You have enough trouble here as it is, you don’t need the old Romanian problems too”). Philip encouraged me, but made me promise to call him daily from Bucharest (!!!) and to go immediately to Sofia (?), and to fly back to New York if I sensed anything wrong … For me it was like returning as a posthumous tourist. I was on edge, but nobody was aggressive. Cluj and Suceava were enjoyable, apart from the state of my nerves, which made me lose my notebook on the return flight.

My friendship with Philip deepened with time. Each of us marked the life events of the other, and we always celebrated New Year’s Eve together, in our home. At the end of the public celebrations of my 75th birthday at the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York, Philip shouted: “I want something like that too! But not just two days, five!” Once he took me to Newark, where he was born, to see his childhood home and his old high school, the streets, the entire environment. He still felt close to the city. He had a relationship with the local library, and a street was to be named in his honor. As well as attending each other’s literary events, Philip and I visited each other in the hospital as time went on. In more recent years we had had a grim competition for having the greater number of coronary stents: I was winning for a while, but Philip finally took the lead, with 13 stents …

Our friendship endured all kinds of differences between us, perhaps well expressed at the start in the contrasting preferences for Proust and Céline, but the connection was still strong, affectionate, and lasting.

Let’s remember that generous compensation which exile rewarded me with.

In November 2012, Philip announced that he had stopped writing. Clearly, he was tired. Writing, as well as being a profession of vanity, is one that demands great devotion and concentration, and it takes its toll over time. I always teased him by saying that his withdrawal was in fact the subject of another book that he was writing in secret … It wasn’t so. His health was finally failing. At 85, it’s too late to hope for some miracle of rejuvenation.

In Exit Ghost, published in 2007, Nathan Zuckerman, the author’s alter ego, asks: “Who among your contemporaries will be the last to die? Who among your contemporaries is least likely to die? Who among your contemporaries will not only elude death but write with wit, precision, and modesty of his amused bafflement at successfully pulling off eternal life?”

This avalanche of rhetorical questions might indeed be posed by the passing of Philip Roth himself.

In The Ghost Writer, Philip’s captivating short novel that preceeded Exit Ghost by many years, Anne Frank survives and reaches America, and is in love with her college professor. A stunning anticipation of these epic queries, addressing the mumbled questions of old age to a void without voice or memory.

Philip Roth, the great writer, an acute observer of human existence, with all its cruel and burlesque conflicts and contradictions, has left us to face without him our explosive present and uncertain future. His forceful intelligence, his lucid and interrogative conscience, his unshaken devotion to the written page will not be forgotten; all the libraries of our tormented world will remind us of him in our fight for truth and beauty, for ardor and authenticity. Literature — America’s and the world’s — lost one of the most brilliant writers of modernity, an incomparable creative force. In the planetary crisis of our time, with so many aggressions against our spiritual environment, we will more than ever miss his intensity, his code of work and honesty, his humor and humanness.

Cella and I, we are overwhelmed by sadness and loneliness. He was for 30 years our American brother, always nearby, caring, energetic, vital, and helpful, a unique interlocutor, irreplaceable. Our exile became deeper, darker. But we’ll be buried near each other. Let’s hope that this way we’ll be less lost in the endless desert of the afterlife.

Norman Manea was born in Bukovina (Romania) in 1936. His works include the novels The Lair and The Black Envelope and the memoir The Hooligan’s Return.

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