Απολαυστική ανηθικότητα στην Πράγα

Ο αντικομφορμιστής Ladislav Klíma (1878-1928) - Wikipedia

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Το γκροτέσκο μυθιστόρημα του Klima, που λάτρεψαν πολλοί στη Δύση και "γέννησε" μία ταινία και μία προκλητική Όπερα 


THE SUFFERINGS OF PRINCE STERNENHOCH


ΤΑ ΠΑΘΗ ΤΟΥ ΠΡΙΓΚΙΠΑ ΣΤΕΡΝΕΝΧΟΧ

Το μόνο ολοκληρωμένο λογοτεχνικό έργο  του  Klima που το επεξεργαζόταν  για δημοσίευση κατά τη διάρκεια της ζωής του και μπορεί να θεωρηθεί ως η συμπύκνωση της φιλοσοφίας του. Το βιβλίο καταγράφει τη βαθμιαία πορεία  προς την  τρέλα του πρίγκιπα Στέρνενχοχ,  πρώτου ανάμεσα στους αριστοκράτες και ευνοούμενου  του Κάιζερ.  Έχοντας μετατραπεί στα χέρια της πεθαμένης συζύγου του Χέλγκα , βασίλισσας της Κόλασης , "στο κατώτερο είδος των σκουληκιών" ,  φτάνει τελικά σε μια ολοκληρωτική  κατάσταση ευδαιμονίας και σωτηρίας
Ο Klima χρησιμοποιεί σκοτεινό χιούμορ για να εξερευνήσει την παράδοξη φύση της καθαρής  πνευματικότητας σε σκηνές όπου κυριαρχούν το κωμικό γκροτέσκο και το άσεμνο. Ο τόμος αυτός περιλαμβάνει επίσης το περιβόητο δοκίμιό του συγγραφέα  "Η αυτοβιογραφία μου".
Αν και το έργο του Klima  έχει μεταφραστεί σε πολλές ευρωπαϊκές γλώσσες, αυτό είναι το πρώτο του βιβλίο που εμφανίζεται στα αγγλικά.
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Η ταινία του Jan Nemec "In the Flames of Royal Love" (1991) βασίστηκε  στο μυθιστόρημα και παίζεται συχνά σε διάφορες ταινιοθήκες του κόσμου .

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Τι είπαν για το βιβλίο: The non-conformist work of Ladislav Klíma has almost always shocked, has often incited scandal, but has hardly ever left us indifferent. One need not accept his view of the world to experience it and enjoy it in all of its ambiguity, just as one does the stage.

— Václav Havel

Sternenhoch’s instability is excellently demonstrated in his inability to hold one topic for longer than a couple of sentences, his consistent pauses in the middle of utterance. It’s graphorrhea before we even knew graphorrhea existed, and its retention is critical to our understanding of Sternenhoch’s madness.

— Amy Riddell, Bookmunch

Sternenhoch's antics are by turns depraved and dark, and hugely comical ... Klima's vast talent is more than capable of handling the task of chronicling Sternenhoch's descent into madness.

— Damian Kelleher, Neon

What I do want to acknowledge before I conclude is just how readable, how relentlessly entertaining, I found all this to be.

— Books, Yo

The grotesque and the sublime, the extravagant and the playful, run through this novel breathlessly written by a philosopher who wanted to recover his health.

— Le Monde

As a story of one man's madness, this work is up there with Dostoevsky and Kafka, though with a bitter sense of humor and absurdist, almost maniacal outlook on life.

— The Modern Novel

It is a classic darkly comic and obscenely funny piece of writing, — not for everyone but a wild excursion indeed. True black humor.

— edgylit

The tone of the book is serious, but not without humour and irony. The context is hilarious. The author gave the work the subtitle: A Grotesque. The structure, the building of this work and its theme, where the ego battles with evil and logic, refers to the literary tradition of Notes from the Underground by Dostoevsky and Gogol's Diary of a Madman.

— peekaboo

Ladislav Klima's The Sufferings of Prince Sternenhoch: A Grotesque Tale of Horror delivers on its title. It has everything; a decadent noble of questionable intelligence and sanity; a twisted, depraved, satanic shrew; not so graphic lewdness; dungeons, murder, madness... It is frankly, at times, difficult to stomach; and I have read The 120 Days of Sodom — more than once.

— Adventures in Nerdliness!

The Sufferings of Prince Sternenhoch may transmit the author's moral nihilism and Nietzschean will to power as well as any treatise. It is a hilarious, provocative, graphic — and at times spectacularly vile — gothic novel, conspicuously rooted in the Decadent milieu that spawned it, but painted in colors more characteristic of the Expressionist and Surrealist movements regnant when it was finally published two decades later. ... Klíma's entry since then into the Czech canon, to say nothing of his importance to artists as varied as Bohumil Hrabal, Jiri Kolar and the Plastic People of the Universe, more than warrants the scrupulous care that Bulkin and Twisted Spoon have dedicated to this welcome translation.

— Slavic and East European Journal

Klíma's tale reads like a book that Edgar Allan Poe might have written if he'd read Nietzsche, but there are also moments of reverie that are pure Czech ... Klíma's rambunctious mix of high and low style and holy and profane content has been stamped indelibly on the Czech literary tradition.

— Washington City Paper

There's much of the whip in all this, a great fascination with all things perverse ... Much scabrous wit and the hallucinatory nature of events leave the reader uncertain about taking anything seriously. Appended is the author's autobiography, in which he turns out to be as pathological as any of his characters, a genuine transgressive in the manner of de Sade.

— Publishers Weekly

A dark, diverting entertainment, certainly out of the ordinary ... [Klíma] was a decidedly odd bloke, a real character. But he was not a stupid man, and he could write. This volume is apparently the first book of Klíma's to appear in English. Certainly he is an author deserving wider recognition in the English-speaking world.

— The Complete Review

Given the power of Carleton Bulkin's excellent translation, I can only hope that Twisted Spoon or some other publisher sees fit to soon translate more of Klíma's works — fiction or philosophy ... The Sufferings of Prince Sternenhoch runs with gale-force intensity and speed.

— The Education Digest

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Παγιδευμένος σε έναν καταχρηστικό γάμο, ένας πλούσιος γερμανός πρίγκιπας αναζητά απεγνωσμένα μια διέξοδο. Αλλά αυτό που φαίνεται να είναι ο δρόμος της σωτηρίας μετατρέπεται σύντομα σε αυτοκινητόδρομο προς την κόλαση.

Η παγκόσμια γλώσσα της μουσικής συναντά τη διεθνή γλώσσα της εσπεράντο σε αυτή την πρώτη όπερα από τον Ivan Acher. Ο ξυλουργός, δάσκαλος, σχεδιαστής και συνθέτης έχει εμπλουτίσει το έργο έξυπνα με ηλεκτροακουστική και σύγχρονη μουσική για να δώσει ζωή στο εξπρεσιονικό μυθιστόρημα του Ladislav Klíma, Τα πάθη του πρίγκιπα Στέρνενχοχ.

 See: Ivan Acher, Sternenhoch 

2018

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Sternenhoch: Delightful depravity in Prague/Απολαυστική ανηθικότητα στην Πράγα

Μια κριτική ανάλυση :By Frank Kuznik, 10 April 2018

Source: bachtrack.com

Itʼs a rare stage interpretation of a literary work that thoroughly captures the essence and spirit of the source material. In the case of the National Theaterʼs new production Sternenhoch, the opera not only brings to life Ladislav Klímaʼs 1928 Expressionist novel with an electric jolt, but goes it one better.

Sternenhoch

© Patrik Borecký

The Sufferings of Prince Sternenhoch is actually less a novel than an extended exercise in depravity. Told in a series of journal entries by the title character, it chronicles his infatuation with a much younger woman whom he marries, abuses, tortures and eventually murders. But her ghost – or is it her cadaver come back to life? – will not leave him alone. The horrors that follow encompass almost every sexual perversion imaginable, giving Klíma a canvas on which to paint life as a grotesque, nihilistic endeavor from which the only sane retreat is a descent into madness.
Though almost universally reviled at the time, Sternenhoch has left an enduring imprint in a part of the world that also gave birth to Kafka and struggled mightily to survive 40 years of Nazi and communist occupation. And the work is not entirely without merit. It has a mordant wit and in its better moments draws heavily on deep thinkers like Schopenhauer and Nietzsche in considering concepts like will, subjectivism and spirituality.

Sternenhoch

© Patrik Borecký

How to handle all this? Composer and librettist Ivan Acher and stage director Michal Dočekal approach it as a danse macabre, a tightly choreographed, erotically charged tragicomedy performed with clockwork precision to a predominantly electronic score. The main characters – Helmut Sternenhoch, his wife Helga, her father, a dungeon-master lover and the gypsy witch Kuhmist – are supported by five dancers who often propel and join in the action. A riot of provocative costumes – except for the dancers, no two are the same – and creepy sets and lighting make for a toxic brew spiced by dashes of Edgar Allen Poe, Tom Waits and Rocky Horror.
Bulgarian-Ukrainian tenor Sergey Kostov shows remarkable facility in the title role, rising to the demands of often-delirious vocals ranging from romantic bombast to a cringing falsetto. Czech soprano Vanda Šípová does heroic work as Helga, dragged around the stage, chained by her wrists and ankles and sexually abused while singing plaintive, affecting lines about love and loss. For all that, the most intriguing figure onstage may be Tereza Marečková as Kuhmist, outfitted as a female satyr who taunts and torments the other characters with a violin or viola in hand.

Sternenhoch

© Patrik Borecký

The only other traditional instruments in the production are a contrabassoon and zither, played by two musicians who also man a large bank of electronics at stage right. Acher makes a convincing case for not needing any more, crafting infectious dance rhythms and powerful atmospherics with a full-bodied score that employs sounds and textures ranging from orchestral strings to electric guitar. Far from limiting the musicʼs reach and impact, his use of electronics shows an uncommon command of the medium and offers imaginative possibilities for contemporary opera. Even conductor Petr Kofroň, a serious-minded modern music enthusiast, is moved to break form when he gets up in the pit and starts dancing along with one of the more infectious production numbers, eventually pulled back to his seat by the prompter.

Sternenhoch

© Patrik Borecký

The best contemporary opera is moving in a direction that might more accurately be called music theater, a fusion of forms that combines elements of traditional opera and drama with experimental music to create a new hybrid. With its seamless synthesis of sound, sensibilities and stunning visuals, Sternenhoch is a sterling example of the emerging form and as good a piece of avant-garde music theater as one is likely to find in Central Europe these days. It will return in June as part of a new contemporary opera festival being staged by the National Theater – an encouraging sign in a hidebound city that for too long has been content to live in the musical past.

ΔΕΙΤΕ ΤΟ ΕΡΓΟ (Αγγλικοί υπότιτλοι) 

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