A Glorious, if Nazi, Voice

“And don’t give me that stuff about Fischer-Dieskau being Hitler’s favorite baritone,” snapped Pablo, as I waited in line yesterday to get the popcorn. And did eyebrows rise?

Of course not—we were at the Metropolitan Opera Rebroadcast, and the movie theater was filled with people who have been hearing this argument for years.

As it happens, the jury is probably in on Fischer-Dieskau. Yes, he was a member of the Hitler Youth—as was everyone’s favorite Pope Emeritus—but neither man probably had much say in it. And he served in the German army, at one point caring for horses in the Russian front, and later getting captured by the Allies. The point is that he was a young man during the war, and hadn’t started his musical career: Hitler probably had never heard of him.

OK—so what about older musicians, those who had been established at the rise of Nazism, especially those who were German? Did they have the moral obligation to speak out?

Specifically, what about Elisabeth Schwarzkopf—certainly one of the greatest singers of the last part of the 20^th century, but also a Nazi? And if so, how much of one? Because look, it’s one thing to get—grudgingly—into bed with the bastards, it’s another thing to seek them out, flirt outrageously, and commit outrageous libidinous acts with them.

And according to The Guardian, Schwarzkopf went quite a ways with the Nazis: she joined the Nazi Student League, which according to The Guardian was hardly unusual: half of the students were members. But according to The Guardian:

What was unusual, however, was that she volunteered to become an ANSt leader, at least for one term. That demonstrated dedication to the cause of Nazism beyond the call of duty, and was an obvious sign that she wanted to get ahead quickly in her profession.

There’s more—she may have had an SS general for a lover when she contracted tuberculosis and had to spend a year in a sanatorium. She joined the Nazi party, although only one in five musicians were active in the party. When the war ended, Schwarzkopf was with the Vienna State Opera, which was handy, since she was more easily “de-Nazified” there than in Berlin.  And she later took an American boyfriend after the war, and then married an English Jew, which gave her British citizenship (and allowed her to earn a title). Nor was that all: the husband was Walter Legge, artistic director of EMI Music, and a man who would shepherd her career adroitly for decades.

Her defense? Well, according to The Washington Post:

"Everybody at the opera joined," she told the New York Times. "We thought nothing of it. We just did it."

As well, she told the Times that it was the equivalent of joining a union: if you wanted a job, you joined the party.

Think this is just about Nazism? Hardly, since Gustavo Dudamel, the Venezuelan conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, has recently been criticized for not having criticized the current president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro. Worse, according to his critics, Dudamel played a concert in Venezuela the day after a particularly bloody protest. And Dudamel’s defense? Well, he is a product of a remarkable program called El Sistema, which takes kids out of the barrios, puts instruments in their hands, and teaches them both how to play remarkably well, and how to be disciplined, how to work together, how to succeed. And for that program to work? It needs government support.

Nor is Dudamel alone—what about Valery Gergiev—the Russian conductor who has supported Putin and his actions in the Crimea and the Ukraine? Oh, and has been comfortably silent on the draconian anti-homosexuality laws? Doesn’t he have the moral obligation to speak up?

If we say yes, then the question becomes “why?” Why hold Dudamel / Gergiev to a different standard than a rock star, a movie star, a writer? If we demand that classical musicians and no one else stand up and denounce repressive states or dictators…well, aren’t we claiming the moral high ground? Aren’t we saying that what we do is better than anyone else?

Why not come out and say it?

Yes.

I could invoke the philosopher Schopenhauer; here’s Wikipedia on the subject:

"[...] “Schopenhauer thought that music was the only art that did not merely copy ideas, but actually embodied the will itself.”[29]

He deemed music to be a timeless, universal, language which is comprehended everywhere, and can imbue global enthusiasm, if in possession of a significant melody.

But why not put Schopenhauer aside, and just say that there’s something special that we do—those of us who have spent years practicing our art? True, Michael Jordan spent years practicing his hoops—but I’m sorry, it’s different.

It’s curious—Schwarzkopf was known for her recording of Strauss’s Four Last Songs, but it was actually another soprano, the Norwegian Kirsten Flagstad, for whom Strauss wrote the work. And Flagstad took some heat for returning to Norway during World War II; here’s Wikipedia on the subject:

Nonetheless, against the best advice of her friends and colleagues, including former president Herbert Hoover, who pleaded with her to stay out of Europe, she returned to Norway via Lisbon, Madrid, Barcelona, Marseille, and Berlin in April, 1941.[3] Though during the war she performed only in Sweden and Switzerland, countries not occupied by German forces, this fact did not temper the storm of public opinion that hurt her personally and professionally for the next several years.[4] Her husband was arrested after the war for profiteering during the occupation that involved his lumber business. This arrest, together with her decision to remain in occupied Norway, made her unpopular, particularly in the United States. The Norwegian ambassador and columnist Walter Winchell spoke out against her. In 1948, she performed several benefit concerts for the United Jewish Appeal. In defense of Flagstad's husband, Henry Johansen, it should be noted that after his death it was revealed that during the occupation he was arrested by the Gestapo and held for eight days. Also, Johansen's son by his first marriage, Henry Jr, had been a member of the Norwegian underground throughout the war.

Well, I spent time listening to the great, last song of the Four Last Songs, “Im Abendrot.” Schwarzkopf has the more technically perfect recording—it sounds as if it were recorded yesterday. Flagstad has all the creaks and crackles of an old recording, and the quality of the recording isn’t high. But it’s easy to get a sense of what an amazing voice it was, and what an interpretation she gave the song.

Somehow, however gloriously Schwarzkopf sings, it’s the voice of Flagstad that seems less mannered and more majestic.

Or is it just that a Nazi isn’t singing it?

669 Worlds

Sir Nicholas Winton pooh-poohs the idea, which is hardly surprising. If any nation could pooh-pooh, shouldn’t it be the British?

So Winton really thinks the credit should go to Trevor Chadwick or Martin Blake or the Dutchwoman Gertruida Wijsmuller-Meier, and there may be something in that. Winton, after all, only spent three weeks in Prague, sitting at a dining room table in his hotel room overlooking Wenceslas Square, and interviewing the (mostly) Jewish parents who were desperate to get their children out of Czechoslovakia. Hitler had been given the Sudetenland, and everybody with a brain knew—he wouldn’t stop there.

And there were other organizations getting German and Austrian kids out to safety—it was called the Kindertransport, and the British had raised half a million pounds for the effort. But in Czechoslovakia? Nothing.

So Martin Blake called on Nicholas Winton, a 28-year old London stockbroker, to cancel his ski vacation in Switzerland, and come to Prague instead. There, he found families not just from Prague but from Slovenia; so desperate were they to flee, they were living in camps, hoping to arrange transport out.

In fact, the list would grow to 5,000 children, and there were the predictable problems. First, what governments would take them? After Kristallnacht, the two-night pogrom in November of 1938 in which Jewish stores and synagogues were torched, the British and Swedish governments opened their doors to people under eighteen. The rest of the world, including the United States? Cold shoulder.

Money—kids had to have 50 pounds on deposit to assure repatriation. And 50 pounds then was the equivalent of about 3500 dollars today. Many of the parents were refugees living in camps; they barely had enough money for a meal.

So Trevor Chadwick took note and was told—nobody is doing anything, have a go at it. He opened an office, word spread, and hundreds of parents were outside on the street, desperate to hand over their child to a stranger. And the account of Chadwick by one author is fascinating; here’s Dorit Bader Whiteman:

He certainly was a superman.  Tall, handsome and with striking Nordic look… At the time, though, it seemed as if Trevor Chadwick had singlehandedly killed the dragon and was wafting me away. I was accepted at once…. My stout little mother planted herself firmly in front of Chadwick, addressing a speech of thanks to his navel (he being much taller than she). She liked to air her English, and I suspect she thanked him from the bottom of her heart. Trevor Chadwick shuffled his feet.

Later, Bader Whiteman wrote that the prevailing feeling on the trains going out to Holland, where they would ferry to England, was not sorrow but excitement. The parents had gone and spent their last money—in many cases—on new clothes. And they had told the children—we’ll join you soon, maybe in weeks, perhaps in months. But what a wonderful time you’ll have in England.

England, where Winton had returned, and where he resumed his day job as a stockbroker. But in the evenings and into the night, he was arranging for foster parents, putting photos of children everywhere he could think of, begging newspapers to donate advertising, and lastly, dealing with the paperwork. Not altogether uncreatively; here’s his comment:

"Officials at the Home Office worked very slowly with the entry visas. We went to them urgently asking for permits, only to be told languidly, 'Why rush, old boy? Nothing will happen in Europe.' This was a few months before the war broke out. So we forged the Home Office entry permits."  

Seven “shipments” of children were sent, the eighth was to leave on 1 September 1939—the day broke out, and Hitler invaded Poland. Here’s the account:

"Within hours of the announcement, the train disappeared. None of the 250 children aboard was seen again. We had 250 families waiting at Liverpool Street that day in vain. If the train had been a day earlier, it would have come through. Not a single one of those children was heard of again, which is an awful feeling."

An awful feeling, yes—but there is the consolation that 669 children were saved—thanks to the efforts of Chadwick, Winton, Blake and others. In fact, one child stated that the men are responsible for the survival of a generation of Czech Jews, since almost no one else survived the camps.

Winton joined the air force, and fought for five years. Then, he came home, put his diary of the efforts to save the children in his attic, and never mentioned it to anyone, including his wife. It was she, in fact, who found the diary, and learned of the story.

Winton wears a ring with a quote from the Talmud: save one life, save the world.

Winton saved 669 worlds.

Round Two

You know the story as well as I do: the two explosions; the 78 year-old runner blown to the street; the smoke lifting; the stunned man filming the event, who can only keep saying “Oh, my God.”

So it’s happened again, a dozen years after September 2001. We have spent billions of dollars on “security,” we’ve lost significant amounts of freedom, we have allowed the government to strip us of rights in order to “protect” us. In addition, we’ve lost the ability to think, and fallen victim to fear. Does anybody really think that having zillions of people scrutinize us as we empty our pockets and take off our shoes and belts and go through metal detectors at our airports is making us safer? Wouldn’t a simple lock on the cockpit door have done the trick? And why, since hijacking has been around since the 60’s, wasn’t it standard procedure to lock the cockpit?

So yes, I watched the videos compulsively yesterday, until it occurred to me—it wasn’t doing my stomach any good. Nor was it being particular useful to the people of Boston, so why was I doing it?

Later I wondered—under what circumstances would I ever put a bomb (or two or four, however many there were) in a crowd full of innocent people? Would I ever? Would I ever have so much hurt, so much pain, that it would give rise to that level of rage and bile?

I hope not.

OK—Adolf Hitler. When would I have the necessary knowledge to justify putting the bomb under his desk? Would I need to have seen the concentration camps? Would hearing accounts be enough? Would just seeing the Jews crammed in the cattle cars be sufficient?

So now the country is watching a city block of Boston, Massachusetts, and scratching their heads and saying, “why do they hate us?” The answer, most people think, is that there is such a thing as evil, and the people who perpetrated this deed were evil.

Well, I think there’s an alternative explanation, and the New York Times reported on it today. “US Practiced Torture After 9/11,” announced the headline, and my response was, predictably, “duh….”

Of course we were practicing torture—will anybody in the world forget that sadistic photograph of the female soldier, her cigarette dangling from the side of her mouth, her foot resting on top of a heap of naked prisoners? We admitted that we water-boarded, it was reported that the justice department had written memos, and that we had signed off on these “interrogation” techniques, but that no—national security, we couldn’t read them.

So it was a true “dog bites man” moment for me, but not, apparently for a Republican guy named Asa Hutchinson, who served under Bush as head of the Drug Enforcement Agency and undersecretary of the Homeland Security. He was the Republican balance to a bipartisan report, and he initially started out believing that no, there was no torture committed. But here’s what the New York Times has him saying:

“This has not been an easy inquiry for me, because I know many of the players,” Mr. Hutchinson said in an interview. He said he thought everyone involved in decisions, from Mr. Bush down, had acted in good faith, in a desperate effort to try to prevent more attacks.

“But I just think we learn from history,” Mr. Hutchinson said. “It’s incredibly important to have an accurate account not just of what happened but of how decisions were made.”

He added, “The United States has a historic and unique character, and part of that character is that we do not torture.”

Yeah? Wanna ask the rest of the world?

I read once that there was a British maxim—a man is judged by how he treats his enemy. And nations as well; that said, how well do we score?

Well, the Army Field Manual on Interrogation may reveal a hint or two; section M allows for interrogation sessions for up to 40 consecutive hours.

“Doesn’t sound like much,” you say. Right, but try staying awake from 8AM Monday morning to midnight the next day—that’s 40 hours.

And the very fact that it was officially permitted led to other things, not officially permitted. Here’s one chilling sentence from the Times story:

The C.I.A. not only water boarded prisoners, but slammed them into walls, chained them in uncomfortable positions for hours, stripped them of clothing and kept them awake for days on end.

Oh, and here’s another one:

The core of the report, however, may be an appendix: a detailed 22-page legal and historical analysis that explains why the task force concluded that what the United States did was torture. It offers dozens of legal cases in which similar treatment was prosecuted in the United States or denounced as torture by American officials when used by other countries.

Nor does the report spare the Obama administration:

While the Constitution Project report covers mainly the Bush years, it is critical of some Obama administration policies, especially what it calls excessive secrecy. It says that keeping the details of rendition and torture from the public “cannot continue to be justified on the basis of national security” and urges the administration to stop citing state secrets to block lawsuits by former detainees.

Well, you know where I land on this issue. Obama didn’t want to focus on the past, he said, he wanted to focus on the future, going forward.

Lovely sentiment.

Bullshit.

No president is gonna go after a former president, for the simple fact that every president is going to BE at some point a former president.

So now we know. Oops, so sorry—looks like we went a little overboard.

Is that enough?

Let’s see—what time is it, over there in the Hague?

Doña Ilia Charms the Plaza

We’re forty lives short of California.

It took us an hour and 45 minutes to read through Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, and Arkansas.

It felt like a performance—mouth was dry, hands were shaky, my focus had narrowed. Pablo picked up on it, and asked if I was OK.

“Nerves,” I said.

So what was there to be nervous about?

Raf carried the camcorder, I carried the materials: the two books of the 33,050 names; the information flyers; two chairs, one for reading, the other for the 33,050 people who are not there.

“You’re such a drama queen,” said Pablo, as I was clothes-pinning the shirt to the back of the chair, and the blue jeans to the seat. “I love it….”

“Let’s go around the plaza and tell people about the project,” I said. So we did for fifteen minutes or so.

“You know, it’s really important to engage with people—that’s what I’ve been learning,” said Pablo.

He’s a social anthropologist, but that’s incidental. He’s also my Puerto Rican brother, who went away for a while and now is back.

So he started the reading the names—Robert Schneider, Marc Perry, Frederick Hogan…. He read for fifteen minutes, and then went off to his next project or commitment. Just before doing so, I ran into my first, and only, gun rights advocate.

“I wonder if you’d read the list of people whose lives have been saved by guns,” he started out.

“No, but if you want to compile the list, you’re more than welcome to sit on the other side of the plaza and read it….”

I’d been dreading meeting this guy or one of his ilk—a full-fledged, card-carrying member of the NRA who recited the Second Amendment word for word, though transposing the militia clause from front to back.

Which he may have done on purpose, since he immediately asked me why we need guns.

“Protection.”

“Yes, and protection from what?”

“I think you’re gonna tell me…”

“The government,” he exploded. “From a tyrannical government. We need to have guns so that in the event of a tyranny, we can rise up and protect our rights!”

I had forgotten one of the great American crazinesses—this wild belief that the damn Federal government is plotting away back there in Washington to take away my rights and my land and my children but by God they step one foot on my land I’ll blow the brains out of them fuckers!

It’s completely irrational, although maybe not. Thanks to George W. Bush and the war on terror (decided not to cap that term….) we’re probably less free than we’ve ever been as a nation and as citizens. But somehow, I don’t think that was what he meant.

“Hitler killed 30 million people and never fired a gun,” he said.

I didn’t get it.

And still don’t. He said that words kill more people than guns.

So guns don’t kill, words kill!

OK—the talk was cordial, respectful. Did he want to go before the camera and give his point of view? This is all about fostering debate.

“No,” he said quickly. And I wondered—what was he afraid of? Because there were many “noes” yesterday—the “no, I’m shy,” the “no, I’ve got to meet someone,” the “no, this isn’t my thing.”

Into the scene improbably walked Nydia, Raf’s sister, who had completely panned the whole idea two days previously. But there’s a thing about Nydia, she’s totally loyal. So if I’m out making a fool out of myself under the hot Caribbean sun, well, she’ll be there.

“I’m here to read names,” she said, kissing me, and then, having heard a bit of the conversation, dropped the news “but guns kill,” onto the man.

“Go give Raf a break,” I said. Somehow, the combination of a strongly emotional, passionate Nydia and a fearful gun owner didn’t seem like a good idea. So she went off to read.

And then, into the plaza and into the picture stepped doña Ilia, Raf’s indomitable 83-year-old mother. Who is here to read as well, and does so, sitting in her walker.

She’s full of charm, this rheumatoid-arthritis-wracked lady who went, almost seven years ago, into cardiac, pulmonary, and kidney arrest, met God and told him to go to hell—she wasn’t ready yet. And so she was moving about the square, telling little girls “Ay, ¡qué linda, m’hija!” and patting them and beaming at the parents. Or she was standing behind Nydia, and proudly holding the sign that announces the project—“30,000 Lives.” Or she was telling the two visitors from Wisconsin about how many of her children went to the University of Wisconsin—three, plus a grandchild.

Nydia more or less trapped a girl into reading—she did so for five minutes and then joined her friends who would do a flash mob and dance. Then the Wisconsin kids took over, the girl reading, the guy holding the sign. Lastly, there was a guy, don Miguel, walking through the plaza and carrying two signs—one in English, the other in Spanish. So he read some names, and then talked about his project—the proposed plan to sell the airport.

It was hot, we were tired, we were done for the day. People had drifted by, taken pictures of us on their cell phones, stopped to chat. The only person who doesn’t have a picture?

Me—completely forgot to bring the stills camera.

No matter—stay tuned for the YouTube clip that will instantly go viral.

How do I know?

Who can resist an 83-year-old lady who told God to take a hike reading names in the middle of a square in San Juan, Puerto Rico?

If anyone can get a message out, doña Ilia can….

Requiem for a Pope

There are, in fact, some things to like about him. He’s fond of cats—he fed them around the neighborhood, and was lent a grey tabby when he went to a festival in Australia. He’s also a good pianist, whose favorite composer is Mozart. True, he didn’t say what his predecessor said after a performance by the Chicago Symphony, but that’s a pretty funny line to beat.*

Right—so we’ve gotten that out of the way, we’ve stated the little good that can be said of him. Though there might be one other good thing for lesbians and gay men to say about Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger: he wasn’t on our side.

Look, would you want a friend like that?

“It was a failed papacy,” said a student, who attends mass every Sunday, who is on the editorial board of the biggest newspaper in Puerto Rico, and who reads The New York Times every day. That’s why he could tell me the remark of a cardinal speaking—of course—anonymously. “The single beneficial thing that this pope ever did for his church was resign.”

Ouch.

And now that he has put himself out of the way of doing more harm, my feelings may be turning a bit.

He was and wasn’t a Nazi. Yes, he was conscripted into the Hitler Youth, but that was mandatory. He also served in the German army during World War. Here's what one source has to say:

Joseph Ratzinger was a member of an anti-aircraft unit protecting a BMW factory that used slave labor from the Dachau concentration camp to make aircraft engines, but he was drafted into the military and didn’t have any choice in the matter. In fact, Ratzinger also says that he never fired a shot and never participated in any combat. Later he was transferred to a unit in Hungary where he set up tank traps and watched as Jews were rounded up for transport to death camps. Eventually he deserted and became a prisoner of war.

Right—so we have a pope capable of watching Jews being rounded up for transport to a death camp. I’ll be honest: one question that has haunted me for most of my life is what I would have done had I been, as Ratzinger was, confronted with the question of acquiescing or challenging the evil that was Nazism.

Ratzinger took the middle path. Serving in the military was obligatory, so he served. Others didn’t, though that came at a great cost. A few hundred yards from Ratzinger’s childhood home, a family was hiding a young soldier and member of the German resistance, Hans Braxenthaler. The SS regularly searched homes, so it was no secret that the resistance existed. As well, a neighbor whose brother-in-law was sent to Dachau as a conscientious objector had this to say:

“It was possible to resist, and those people set an example for others. The Ratzingers were young and had made a different choice.”

Even more chilling, however, is that in 1941—when Ratzinger would have been 14 or 15—a cousin of his afflicted with Down’s Syndrome was seized and murdered by the Nazis under their eugenics program.

So we have a pope who confronts evil by joining in tepidly and then deserting the army in April of 1945. Did anyone notice? The army was in tatters at that point. 

After this, he resumes his studies in the seminary, and then becomes an academic. There, he excelled, earning praise from his students—he was diligent, committed, and always well prepared.

He should have stayed there, and probably wishes he had. But in 1977, he’s appointed Archbishop of Munich and Freising. And it’s then that the first mud stain on the white robe appears. Ratzinger approves the transfer of a sex predator to another parish, barely days after the priest begins “treatment.”

Ratzinger then gets sent to Rome, where his is appointed Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This is current Vatican lingo for the inquisition, and Ratzinger is up for the job. Part of which is to stamp down on any whiff of liberalism that might injudiciously drift across his gaze. The Jesuits get kicked, as do liberal priests everywhere. The other part of the job was to enforce a document called Crimen Sollicitationis—a document from 1962 that declared that all investigations in the Catholic Church were confidential.

Yeah?

It’s true, Ratzinger didn’t actually say “don’t go to the cops if you’ve got a predator priest,” but did he have to? Given the culture and history, just saying “these investigations are confidential” is more than enough.

Worse, somebody did call him on it. In Milwaukee, the church had a real problem with a priest named Lawrence Murphy, who took time out from his loving care of deaf kids to molest some 200 of them. The Cardinal wants to defrock him, but guess what? The church statute of limitations had run out. What to do?

The archbishop of Milwaukee writes to Rome, to Ratzinger directly.

Twice.

And never gets a response. Here’s Wikipedia quoting Archbishop Weakland:

"The evidence was so complete and so extensive that I thought he should be reduced to the lay state," and complained that Vatican tribunals moved too slowly.[2]

Reduced? Your word, archbishop, not mine….

The ironic thing is that Ratzinger did it all right. He met with the victims, he prayed with them, he shared their sorrow. He apologized and apologized and then apologized some more. He did far more than his previous boss.

It wasn’t enough, and it didn’t go away. In the end, it will be the first thing one remembers about Ratzinger. His obituary will start, “Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, whose papacy was marred by the sex abuse scandal, died…”

For all his love of Mozart and cats, I wonder if in some way the guy had a chance. He grew up in a toxic environment. Here’s Ratzinger’s biographer on the subject:

John L. Allen, Jr. says that anti-Semitic violence, displacement, deportation, death, and even resistance turned the town into “an over-populated lunatic asylum of hopeless inhabitants.”

For all his hard-lined theological views, he appears morally weak, if not terminally ill or dead. All his life, he saw evil…

…and went along with it.

*Pope John Paul II left a Chicago church, where the Chicago Symphony Orchestra had just played Bruckner. A deafening roar rises from the crowd. The pope lifts his arms and silences them, remarking, “Please, I’m just the pope, not the Chicago Symphony.”     

Famous and Unknown

There are guys who can make you laugh just by looking at you. Or repeating a word. Or making a gesture.

Consider that I have been laughing out loud in the café that became my office when Wal-Mart, during their realignment, realized that I (or my job) was outta line.

I challenge you—look at the clip below and try not to laugh. Unless you’re comatose, catatonic, or seriously, seriously depressed you’ll be chortling, giggling, laughing and finally holding your sides.

Victor Borge was born in Denmark in 1909. His father was an orchestral musician; Borge in turn becomes a child prodigy, later studying at the Royal Danish Academy of Music. He became one of Denmark’s greatest musicians, states the official website, and then turned to comedy.

Oddly, the website is the blandest of affairs (and could, incidentally, use a good editing—at one point, it speaks of “Victor borge,” another sentence manages to incorporate two mistakes….) I say oddly, because the site must have been shown to the family, who in 2008 participated in a documentary for Danish television.

And the documentary is anything but bland. Borge, for all that he appears the genial, grandfatherly character in later life, is a very talented, very handsome and…

…very nervous young man.

He plays the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto Number Two for his first big concert. Then something happens—the musician’s worst fear. He gets stuck, he goes and talks to the conductor, and covers the gaffe.

Performance is interesting. There is a part of every musician that must be a racehorse, a thoroughbred—quivering sensibility, starting if not bolting at every slightest sound, and in an agonizing awareness of the surroundings. But it also requires the abilities of the plow horse—stamina, stolid nerves, brute insensitivity.

And what happens when the mix isn’t right? A descent into the abyss that couldn’t be swifter if you greased the toboggan.

Borge’s solution?

Humor.

Which has, as you know, a dark side. A Jew, Borge wasted no time lambasting Hitler; in the words of the BBC:

His lampooning of Adolf Hitler provoked the ire of Germany long before the Nazis invaded Denmark in April 1940.

Fortunately, Borge was in Sweden at the time of the invasion. Like so many other Jews, he fled to the States, arriving with 20$ to his name.

That’s what the article in the BBC says. But he’s not quite that hard up: he arrives with his first wife, and she has family in New York. But yes, it’s a struggle, not the least of which because he can’t speak the language (his wife has written out the Danish routines into English, Borge is reading them over the radio….) He gets a big break, though, when he appears on the Ed Sullivan Show, and then the Bing Crosby Show. There, he’s slotted for seven or eight minutes, but takes 30 minutes instead.

The documentary makes it clear—he’s an absent father. In fact, one of his sons says that for some time in his childhood, he thought his father was a family friend. He is obsessed with making it, and practices for hours at a time. Notice, for example, that even when he is accompanying a singer or soloist, he frequently is playing without sheet music. Has he memorized, or is he so good that he’s improvising the accompaniment?

After twenty years, the marriage fizzles. He’s been on the road a lot; his wife has no wish to travel. He meets a young woman from a small town in Indiana, he’s entranced, they marry.

And live a very European, formal, Victorian lifestyle. The children dress for dinner, speak only when spoken to, are taught to behave in a way that will be a credit to Borge. And the family is a unit doing one thing—promoting and creating the great man’s career.

And how big is he? Well, claims the documentary, as of 2008 he still holds the record for the longest run on Broadway, some 849 shows. That’s two and a half years. Oh, and nobody had ever done a one-man show before.

He gets rave reviews. Which he can only read about the next day. His own reaction? His nerves had gobsmacked him, he thinks he’s bombed, he wants to leave at intermission. His wife has to order him back on stage, as she will later forbid him to leave the party after the show.

He is obsessive, every detail counts. He goes back to Denmark, and is received like royalty. He buys a manor house, and lives in the grand style. And then, at the end of his career, the critics turn on him.

Well, it’s gotta be said. They guy was repetitive—he must have fallen off the end of his piano stool millions of times in the span of his career. But Borge is hypersensitive—the one word “repetitive” cancels out the thousand of words of praise. He’s filled, says the photographer who followed him around for two years, with fury.

And he had a problem—the stage was his life.

As was, apparently, his strong and independent wife. “They didn’t need each other,” said his granddaughter.

Well, it seems he needed her—the photo of Borge slumped in the chair of his wife’s bedroom beams agony as strongly as, on stage, he would beam comedy. He grieves deeply but as always, goes on. He travels for one last time to Denmark in 2000, and then, hours after returning to the US, dies.

He traveled in high circles, had many honors showered on him, and lived an elegant and rich life. He had, of course, a brilliant career.

One wonders—did he have a life? There were two Victor Borges, says the photographer who gave two years of her life to him, and who weeps in the documentary filmed seven or eight years after Borge’s death. The one always interrupting, and always cracking jokes. And the one whom no one knew. If no one knew you, could you really say that you had lived?

I think of another Danish musician, Gunnar Johansen. And they were fast friends, Borge and Johansen, respected each other immensely, and had wives from small towns in America’s heartland. Borge became known as “the funniest man in the world.” Johansen turned his back on fame, went into his studio, and emerged, ten hours later. He had, perhaps, recorded another piece, or learned a new piece, or maybe just practiced. But at the end of the day, he was at home, with his beloved wife, who worshipped him.

And Borge?

More often than not in a hotel room.

His children—one of whom is the page-turner in the clip below—speak fondly of him. His grandchildren as well. There must have been something in that Pagliacci, the world’s funniest man, the man nobody knew.