Wise before and after the event

I WAS interested to see that the writer Francis Stuart has, at the age of 94, been elected as an Aosdana saoi, or wise man of the tribe.

You're going to stir up that controversy again.

Controversy? Over the notion that wisdom comes only with age, if at all? Yes, that is highly debatable.

For God's sake man, I mean the controversy over Stuart's decision to remain in Nazi Germany during the war. No doubt you are going to add your tuppence worth.

You place a low value on my contribution without having sampled it. However, it was someone else's opinion I had in mind.

Whose then?

That of Milan Kundera.

Don't know him. Hang on did he write some book about Brendan Behan's superficial talent?

Not to my knowledge.

I have it - The Unbearable Lightness of Behan.

Being.

Pardon?

Lightness of Being. A witty and elegant book.

All right. So what has he to say about Stuart?

Nothing specific. But in his collection of essays, Testaments Betrayed (Faber) he has many interesting things to say about the nature of tribunal and trial Two concept words, he says, bequeathed to us by Kalka, and indispensable for understanding the modern world.

This is heavy stuff.

You put a (low) price on my opinion, and a (heavy) weight on Kundera's, and in both instances I notice you do not wait to see what is on offer.

Could you just get on with it?

Certainly. Writing about what he calls "the spirit of the trial" in our age, Kundera lists some of those accused of pro Nazi sympathies: Hamsun, Heidegger, Richard Strauss, Gottfried Benn, von Doderer, Drieu la Rochelle, Celine.

You know all these lads?

I know only a little about some of them.

Ignorance is bliss. Go on.

Ignorance is far from blissful, but I will. Also accused by the shadowy tribunal are sometime supporters of Mussolini, including Ezra Pound; as well as the Communists and their sympathisers: Mayakovsky, Gorky, Shaw, Brecht and Shostakovich, among others.

You're saying that many artists make in is takes in their political judgments.

I am not saying anything myself yet, I am merely quoting Kundera. In regard to Shostakovich, Kundera noted that to atone for his difficult music, he manufactured rubbish for the regime's need.

No harm in that I suppose.

That is the way the composer looked at it, maintaining that for the history of art, a worthless thing is null and void. Kundera however claims the composer did not know that for the tribunal it is the worthlessness itself that counts.

You have more examples no doubt.

Kundera also asks how it is possible that Mayakovsky, despite being a maker of versified propaganda, a Soviet Russian chauvinist, and "the greatest poet of our epoch" in Stalin's own words, is nevertheless a tremendous poet.

"One of the greatest."

Has he an answer to this?

No. But he believes it is something we must think hard about, even if this should lead us to question anew all our certainties about man.

Is that it?

With regard to Celine, Kundera says the immature sit in judgment on his erring ways without realising that because of these erring ways, Celine's novels contain existential knowledge that, if they were to understand it, could make them more adult.

More adult? How?

Because therein, he says, lies the power of culture: it redeems barror by transforming it into existential wisdom. "If the spirit of the trial succeeds in annihilating this century's culture, nothing will remain of us but a memory of its atrocities, sung by a chorus of children."

The Lord save us. I wouldn't like to hear that song.

No need to worry: you are unlikely to be around if it is ever sung.

Are you going to venture any opinion yourself?

I was merely disappointed that when Francis Stuart was elected a saoi, much more attention was paid to the old controversy surrounding him than to his literary achievement.

That's the way of the world.

So it seems. Similarly, when secret British government files on P.G. Wodehouse were recently released, finally clearing him of treachery charges made as a result of his wartime broadcasts from Berlin, there was extensive media coverage; but no word of tribute to the great jewel in the crown of British humorous writing.

Sire what's humour in the end?

In Milan Kundera's opinion it is the divine flash that reveals the world in its moral ambiguity and man in his profound incompetence to judge others the strange pleasure that comes of the certainty that there is no certainty.

Be the hokey.

Quite.