Schadenfreude, Part III

Of all the posts on the topic this one is probably the hardest to write. And that likely explains why I've been extrapolating (procrastinating) all the different aspects of Amadeus and not essentially getting to the point that I set out to make. This one requires some of the 'digging' I've been talking about (see? I'm still doing it) to hone in on why these seemingly insignificant parts are so poignant.

At first we were consciously moved by the scene of the young Salieri signing away his feral ghost (it's funny how classically, pacts with God require one to give up everything that makes life actually worth the trouble [selling your body] and pacts with the Devil require that one give up everything that connects you with the next world [selling your soul]. I'm not sure, but a progressive, modern individual might consider God to be the more shrewd/conniving merchant in this scenario [a character trait typically assigned to the Devil]) to reach immortality through music. Next, we figured out that in actuality our subconscious was moved by the scene with flamboyant Mozart and voyeuristic Salieri (and the whole giant, floating metaphor for the movie itself - blah, blah, blah). Anyway. So why the anticipation for these scenes in particular?

It's been written and thought about ad nauseum but really, what can we learn from the juxtaposition of these men's situations besides complete, arm-dropping despair? Not to be gloomy (though invariably that's the only way to reasonably talk about this), but when taken to its logical boundary this train of thought stops (I'm so sorry. I swear I'll never drop something like that ever again) at futility and meaninglessness. It's really hard to grasp this, I mean really digest it, unless it's personalized. And there's nothing easier than "understanding" someone else's misery when you don't have to live through it. It's probably why most people think sympathy and empathy are interchangeable. I had a futile moment like that not too long ago. It was at a club (of course) and it involved a girl (of course) and a distant acquaintance who is much taller/handsomer/smoother than I am. It wasn't tragedy, I mean it was for that night, but it left a really ugly taste. It was just a small inroad to the pandemic powerlessness that pervades (ok really, I'm going to stop now) us with the ultimate Why? It's the Southern blacks who had to watch their own get lynched for whistling at a white woman and then see the perpetrators walk. It's the Soviet Jews who were categorically denied seats in the University despite being smarter and more capable than their gentile peers.

I think Salieri - who prostrated himself before the Universe and then was forced to watch another devour everything he ever wanted, and more, without desire or effort - was Camus' 'absurd man;' the Sysiphus who hauls his rock ad infintium without hope or end in sight. What meaning can we derive from the meaningless, our constant chore in a world that recognizes neither need nor effort, only the luck of the draw.? Camus says "the struggle itself is enough to fill a man's heart."

I can't agree with Camus' conclusion that the only way to live is to embrace the hopelessness, to acknowledge it and make it fully conscious; that truth will conquer it. But maybe I'm not old (cynical) enough for that yet. Nor am I convinced of the fate of the absurd man in Dostoyevsky: The recognition of futility but with a glimmer of hope embodied in faith and God (this probably becomes more relevant in reference to the aside about selling one's soul/body. Who knows, maybe the makers of Amadeus saw Salieri's celibacy [I'm not doing this on purpose] as that glimmer of hope, the reward at the end of the ride).

What I do know is that between the absurdity of this world and the uncertainty of the next is the thin, sticky realm of Art; a higher threshold that makes irrelevant concepts of meaningless and also hope. Art is beauty. Beauty is truth. From that it must follow that art is truth. So it seems that Camus, in a way, was right. "One must imagine Sysiphus happy."