In the preface to the English edition of his novella The Bass Saxophone, titled “Red Music”, Josef Škvorecky gives an elated, fresh, hopeful definition of the meaning of jazz. He writes: “ Its essence is far more elemental: an élan vital, forceful vitality, an explosive creative energy as breathtaking as that of any true art, that may be felt even in the saddest of blues. Its effect is cathartic.”
Reading the increasingly poetic prose of Škvorecky’s Bass Saxophone, I felt the truthfulness of the author’s initial claim. His first \-person narration draws us in, hooks us indefinitely, inspiring us to follow the jazz-initiation adventure of his unnamed alter ego, amidst the setting of the Nazi-occupation of the Czech lands. From the moment they first meet, the out-of-this-world instrument and its future player, we sense that their adventure will be one of passion, surrender, transgression, perhaps even betrayal. Feeling the instrument against his body, the self-pronounced ‘novice’ engages in a painstaking relationship with a demanding mistress: ‘I stood there, a little slumped, and I saw myself in the mirror of the dressing table…immersed in a sea of shimmering particles, the unreal light of the grotesque myth, like a genre painting…Just a young man with bass saxophone.”
Throughout his hero’s remonstrations, structurally given in a series of causally connected inner monologues, interrupted here and there with the occasional dialogue, Škvorecky’s lines read like notes out of a music score: there is the solo, struggling to make itself heard, slowly joining in the big band’s accompaniment, striving for a (near) perfect resolution, striving for appeasement. And when he stops himself from asking why they, the disgruntled and physically grotesque ensemble of German musicians, were in need of him, exactly him as their replacement player, we are reminded again of youth’s need to persevere, especially in times of great challenges and unspeakable tragic events. He, the young bass saxophone aficionado tells us in plain black and white, the simple language of youth: ‘I was seventeen, eighteen, later on in my life I wasn’t as noble, I pretended to hear intonations. But this time I accepted and I didn’t question; they had a reason.” Even after he is abruptly dismembered from his ‘fellow’ players, he cannot believe the incredulity of his situation. It seems to have all been a dream, one larger than life, definitely greater than the tradition and gossip tales circulating around his Kostelec.
What is “the unattainable message of music”, i.e., what part in its deliverance has he played, will he play? Is music the only universal language? Can music, particularly jazz as such a free form, abridge our differences and facilitate our mutual sense of respect and understanding?
After finishing Škvorecky’s tribute to the creative spiritus movens of life as he sees it, I would like to agree with his almost too-idealistic portrayal of human engagement and artistic unification.
However, a question begs, if we are to agree that such re-inscription of art as not only endurance but also a force of appeal will finally prevail over the baseness and cruelty of a totalitarian regime, what are we to make of narratives such as Tadeusz Borowski’s
This Way for Gas,
Ladies and Gentlemen, or Primo Levi’s
Survival in Auschwitz? The ubiquitous events of the Nazi Concentration camps as described by these two camp survivors do not leave room for art’s, music’s symbolic power of final victory. But then again, people, survivors, individuals undergo different experiences even though they may be the victims of similar circumstances. It is the plurality of their narrative voices which allows us to begin to understand both the pain and the moments of joy of their respective struggles under a dehumanizing system of government. After all, Škvorecky’s youthful prose reminds us of the necessity for such a plurality in form and idea.
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