XL
In an attempt to court Marie Godeau, L. arranges for all of his closest friends to go on a communal outing to Linderhof Castle, one of the fairy-tale castles built by King Ludwig II in the Bavarian Alps. During the trip, Z. finds himself defending the mad king against a skeptical Schwerdtfeger. Their discussion touches upon the relationship between art and politics: should art put itself at the service of political madness, as Hans von Bülow and Wagner did with Ludwig II, or should it aid in its overthrow?
Time of composition: ca. September 22–October 4, 1946. Time of narration: In or after July 1944. Narrated time: 1925.
| | Municipality in the Bavarian Alps, roughly thirty miles southwest of Munich. Famous for the passion play that is performed there once every decade. L. has visited the town, and the other attractions that follow, before, with Rüdiger Schildknapp (see 218/298). |
| Monastery at Ettal […] Linderhof Castle | Kloster Ettal is a Benedictine Abbey a couple of miles southeast of Oberammergau. Like Castle Neuschwanstein, which L. considers but rejects as a destination, Linderhof was constructed by King Ludwig II of Bavaria (1845–1886), colloquially known as “Mad King Ludwig.” Ludwig II was known as a patron of the arts (and especially of Richard Wagner), but also shrouded in scandal because of his homosexuality. He committed suicide by drowning himself in Lake Starnberg, a fate that foreshadows L.’s own actions following the onset of his madness. At the time of his death, he was almost exactly the same age as L. is in this chapter. |
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| a kind of rehearsal for something yet to come | See chapter XLI. At the same time, Z.’s mission recalls the plot of Love’s Labour’s Lost. |
| the black, the blue, and the same-coloured eyes […] under Adrian’s eye | The black eyes belong to Marie Godeau (439/606), the blue ones to Schwerdtfeger (213/293), and the “same-coloured” (blue-grey-green) ones to Schildknapp (182/250). |
| “Let us not speak […] of these pious sins!” | A possible sign that Marie Godeau’s presence is causing L. to have second thoughts about the work that is the most obvious product of his syphilitic infection so far. |
| letting von Bülow play the piano | Hans Guido Count Bülow (1830–1894), pianist, conductor, and first husband of Cosima Wagner. Von Bülow tolerated his wife’s love affair with Wagner and even recognized a daughter that resulted from this affair as his own. The menage-à-trois possibly foreshadows events in the next few chapters, but Bülow is also significant because his piano playing for Ludwig II alludes to the relationship between music and melancholia. |
| | Joseph Kainz (1858–1910), famous nineteenth-century actor. |
| Ludwig’s so-called madness, which […] I declared an unjustified and brutal act | Throughout the following discussion, Z., not for the first time, reveals his essentially conservative nature as well as a secret fondness for mythmaking against which he on other occasions publicly protests. The “shallow” Schwerdtfeger, on the other hand, seems more closely aligned with the tenets of liberal democracy. Z.’s compassion for King Ludwig also foreshadows his later care for the paralytic L. |