The Triumph of Life

Introduction

                              S y d n e y,  A u s t r a l i a . 1 9 7 6 
                                                Introduction
Rain hurtled earthward on that dark and fortuitous evening as Juliette walked into the glare of stage lights at the Conservatorium of Music. The storm that raged outside was audible as a gentle purr- warm and comforting- as she prepared to play her graduation piece, Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto. 
Foremost in her mind, however, was not Berg’s concerto, the work she had been studying all year. In its place she felt a sudden obscession, a dogged notion to write a biographical novel about the life of Alastor Swann (1900-1976), the Australian composer who had been a student of Alban Berg’s in Vienna during the nineteen twenties. In the last year of his life, Alastor Swann gave Juliette violin lessons. Juliette, as a young woman would take more from the last year of Alastor Swann’s life than she ever imagined. She later said, in the introduction to her novel, that she learnt that there were things worth living for and things worth dying for and it was all wrapped in that mystical instrument, the violin.

The old man and the young student embarked upon a journey into the private reaches of each others psyche;  fear, love, hate and all that frail stuff that was, or will be-

Earlier that afternoon, before her graduation, before the storm, a beautiful afternoon in which the laughing sun blazed across the Southern sky in a Matisse blue, a sky that leaves one in awe of Nature- a three dimensional sky. A summer breeze drifted innocently, like a muted saxophone, tense and emotional - masking some malevolence. That afternoon, Juliette witnessed the very last breath exhale from the lungs of Alastor Swann; composer, friend and mentor.

Alban Berg’s violin concerto was not often performed, particularly in a piano transcription; nevertheless, the audience would be expected to appreciate 12-tone compositions. It was, after all, the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Juliette could feel the concert hall teem with the ambient anxiety of faceless heads as she stood bathed and blinded by the sharp-angled rays of light. Her face was calm, resolute and sure, her hair, dyed blood red, fell like an abandoned bird’s nest; locks hung over her ears, her forehead, red wisps stuck to her nose and mouth. She wore a white bustier, flat shoes and white stockings, ripped, and tattered. Her short, billowing white tutu exposed black suspenders. Strapped to her back, a pair of large, white angel wings stretched from her head to her waist. Made of feathers the wings wavered from side to side with each determined stride as she moved to the centre of the stage.
She closed her eyes, positioned her feet and settled into the Andante movement, becoming one with the music, the instrument and her fascination with the life of Alastor Swann. Juliette drew the bow slowly and hauntingly across the strings and the beast came to life; the violin, she believed, possessed the secret to mankind’s torment. Ever since the great Stradivarius created his first perfect instrument, the sacred relationship and the mysterious conundrum of modern man has intrigued human beings. Alastor Swann revealed to Juliette this intrigue.
Her mind soared through the scenes and experiences of the past year. Every bar of the music was inextricably bound to the encounters with the old man she knew while looking for her bliss. The dramatic subterfuge in the Berg Violin concerto left no room for error in her recital. She presented one of the most engaging performances of modern music the conservatorium had witnessed. 
         Twenty six minutes later she opened her eyes, tears rolled down her red cheeks as the music died and the audience rose to their feet; applause echoed throughout the room. She walked off stage, picked up a flask of vodka from her handbag, put it to her mouth and felt the silvery liquid bite the back of her throat; she called it that charming fire; And then stuffed the flask unceremoniously into her bustier. As the applause faded, someone put a lectern on stage and she re-emerged to address the crowd with the customary speech and take questions on the nature of her graduation. She started quietly ….
“Can this unfathomable expression of metaphysical angst called Art offer anything to people whose shame consists solely in a systematic indifference to their own fate and that of others?” She momentarily paused to survey the blandly confused, illuminated faces, some still held fast to their smiling demeanour. “Art is the picture of man's insanity, the manifestation of his existence and the tale of his madness.” She growled ever so coarsely. “The beauty, the magic and the horror of life must surely reside in the astounding fact that for millennia we have contemplated our existence, predicted the outcome and envisaged a solution to all the poisonous barbs life throws at us…” She then yelled at the silent crowd.
“Life!” she visibly picked up her cadence.
“We vainly seize the magnificence of it, arrogantly possess it like a toy in the hands of an unrestrained, selfish child and then shamelessly kill anything that moves in the name of some well-thought-out theology that claims to be an ancient and sacred rite of our most glorious, anthropocentric civilization! A theology that, in truth, represents the cold-hearted indifference of an animal that is totally lost; a beast separated from its lair, wandering aimlessly upon a fertile plain, devouring and destroying that which it needs to survive, unable to tell friend from foe –yes, Man!” She exclaimed loudly.
         The audience sat stunned as the rainfall crashed to earth like a portent of things unknown, unexpected and inexplicable.
         “Have we lost our way,” she cried. “In this odorous labyrinth we have paved with greed and blood and built from a Herod-like monomaniacal superiority over all living creatures?” She arrogantly swayed in front of the lectern, her brow furrowed, her lips, beautiful and inviting in their youth now formed the curvature of loathing; the expression of one who is hiding a slice of bitter lemon in the side of their mouth. Her once unripened eyes that had no more encountered the world’s evil than a newborn suckling, now possessed the narrow stare of informed disillusionment; a distaste with which she scoured the dead-pan gaze of the crowd.
         “As Joseph de Maistre presaged 20th century man with his famous invective …” She drew from her bustier a piece of paper and her flask of vodka. Written on the sheet of paper a quotation from de Maistre’s ‘Soirees in St. Petersburg.’ She quickly took a mouthful and then loudly trumpeted her speech as if she needed to drown-out the dead calm, the passivity that had gripped the audience. The vapours wafted from her bitter lips.

         “An open violence reigns down on the domain of living creatures and of nature, a prescriptive fury that extends across the plant and animal kingdom. Inscribed on the very frontiers of life is the decree of violent death. An unseen power, a force has appointed each animal to be devoured by another. There are insects of prey, reptiles of prey, birds of prey, fishes of prey, and quadrupeds of prey. Not a moment in time passes when one creature is not being devoured by another.
         Moreover, positioned over all these creatures is the animal man and in his destructive hand he swings, in a vicious arc, his scythe, leaving nothing that lives to stand. He kills to obtain food and he kills to clothe himself; he kills to adorn himself; he kills in order to attack and he kills in order to defend himself; he kills to instruct himself and he kills to amuse himself; he kills to kill.” She looked up at the audience and quietly said.  “It has become pleasurable, a pastime.” She picked up her cadence once more as she straightend the crumpled scrap of paper.
         “Conceited and terrible ruler, he wants everything and nothing stands in his way. From the lamb, he tears out its belly and makes his harps resound.  From the wolf, he takes a tooth to polish his pretty works of art; from the elephant, his tusks are fashioned to make a child’s toy. His table is covered with corpses, and who in this carnage will exterminate him who exterminates all the others? Man! It is man who is charged with the slaughter of man.
         So is accomplished the great law of the violent destruction of all living creatures. The whole earth perpetually steeped in blood is nothing but a vast altar upon which all that is living must be sacrificed without end, without measure, without pause, until the consummation of things, until evil is extinct, until the death of death.”

         Juliette’s face had turned dark red as the adrenaline drove her anger. The audience muttered like a flock of trapped geese. She stood unyielding and half drunk. With every word the strong vaporous aroma of vodka steamed from her mouth.
“This story is as old as the blood that flows through human veins. Have we taken advantage of humankind’s history? Of this inheritance, this insight that separates us from other species. Are we incessantly excusing our obsession with slaughter, finding endless justification for worshiping at the bloodstained alter of the soulless God of human arrogance and superiority; and then, and then!” She paused momentarily. “Claim some humanity for our actions ... moreover, ultimate superiority on earth?” She paused again and allowed the tension to dissipate and then quietly announced. “Then, what is life I cried!”
         She stormed off stage and left her fledgling career behind. Her anger with humanity had boiled over with the death of her friend that afternoon; she decided never to play the violin again.