Bernard Malamud at the Wikipedia:
click herePictures of Fidelman at the Wikipedia: click here
The Last Mohican: review
The Last Mohican: analisis
The Last Mohican: critical review
Presentation, by Gemma Agell
The writer
Bernard Malamud, a New Yorker, was born in Brooklyn in
1914 and died in Manhattan in 1986. He is one of the main representatives of
the Jewish literature, although he was a declared agnostic. His parents were Russian
immigrants. Malamud lived his adolescence during the Great Depression and
watching Charlie Chaplin’s films to have some fun and explain them to his
friends. He graduated at Columbia University where he did his thesis about
Thomas Hardy. It seems it was an impulsive man since in 1948, he burned his
first manuscript entitled The Light Sleeper.
The topics he wrote about were social issues and above all the difficulties of
immigrants who arrived in America, and the hope in reaching their dreams
despite their poverty. He is not considered a prolific writer since he only wrote
8 novels. In 1967, he won the Pulitzer and the National Book Awards with the
novel The Fixer where he talks about anti-Semitism
in the Russian Empire. He was also known for the 55 short stories collected and
published after his death in the book Complete
Stories.
The story
The Last Mohican happens in Rome and has two men as protagonists.
Fidelman is a middle-aged man who’s just arrived in Italy to spend a year to write
a critical work about the painter and architect Giotto. He planned to stay in
Rome for one week and then travel to Florence, Assisi and Padua, but this was
completely disrupted by the appearance of a mysterious Jewish man. Their first meeting
was when Fidelman was leaving the rail station, Susskind, keeps his eyes on him;
Fidelman was good-looking and well-dressed, the perfect prey for Susskind who was
looking for someone to finance their “street business”. He was a Jewish refugee
from Israel who had lived in Germany and now was trying to survive in Rome
cheating tourists. He offered Fidelman as a guide, to help him to find an
hotel, in fact all of them were things to get some money. After this first
meeting, the story tells us how a very organised man with a well-planned stay
in Rome, changed completely when Susskind got into his life. In order to escape
from this, Fidelman decided to go to Florence some days before expected, but
his plans were broken when he arrived at the hotel room and his briefcase, and
in addition the first chapter of the manuscript about Giotto, disappeared. From
the beginning, he suspected of Susskind, and started a searching that supposed for
him a decline, for during three months he quit the visits to the museums and got
obsessed about find Susskind, even though he got up on weight and his physical
aspect got worse. At the end of the story he finds Susskind but not his
manuscript.
Some things
Malamud starts with an accurate physical description
of Fidelman and his outfit. It is important that the reader imagine a good-looking
man but also emphasize with him, presenting him as a humble man who had worked
hard to save money and even borrowed some from his sister in order to make his
dream true, travel to Italy.
The reason that Fidelman decided to go to Italy was
Giotto. Giotto di Bondone was a painter and architect born in Vicchio in 1267.
Nowadays, we can contemplate his works at the Gallerie degli Uffici in
Florence, Louvre Museum in Paris or the National Gallery in London. He
contributed to the Italian Renaissance, and is known for representing emotions
in paintings and also for incorporate 3-dimentional vision. By the
incorporation of this changes it started a new way to express the religious
art. He has remarkable paintings in churches of Assisi and Padua. The writer
also wants to reflect that Fidelman is a curious person mentioning Trofimov as
his alter ego: “Call me Trofimov” he
said to Susskind. Trofimov was a role of the play The Cherry Orchard by Chekov where he express his ideas and
represents an eternal student; Fidelman said “If there’s something to learn I
want to learn it”.
The author describes the life that Fidelman dreamed at
his arrival in Rome, a curious person who had planned his stay with a lot of
activities: mornings at libraries searching for catalogues and archives, and
after lunch and a nap to recover, he visited churches and museums during the
afternoon. A perfect day for him finished with some relax, dinner with white
wine and a stroll in Trastevere quarter near the Tiber. The role of Susskind is
the stereotype of a person who takes profit on others, he asked for a suit, for
money, and had not enough with some dollars he received from Fidelman. Susskind
is a kind of survivor who lives illegally in Italy after quitting Germany; I’m
not sure if he really wants to find a real job or prefers to live this way.
When he begins to go after Fidelman, surely because he thinks that he is rich, he
becomes almost his shadow, and Fidelman gives him some money in order “to have
some peace of mind” as he said in the story. In my opinion, while the story
goes on you empathize with Fidelman and his feelings to get rid of Susskind and
really enjoy his stay in Rome, just until it became to an obsessive behaviour.
While reading the story you are someway transported
there, he reflects the art present in Italy and especially in Rome,
incorporating references of emblematic sites of the Eternal City: the
Diocletian Baths, which afterwards were reconverted in a church and convent by
Michelangelo. The Vatican, a paradise for art lovers, where Fidelman
experienced some kind of “ecstasy” staring at its walls and absorbing all that
beauty, and he also introduces a little reference to the statue of Romulo and
Remus, the twins from the legend of Rome’s origin.
Malamud chose that the two main characters of the
story were Jewish like him, although he was agnostic. The first time they met,
Susskind calls Fidelman asking if he was Jewish, this was the link he found to
explain him his own story as a refugee a connect with his solidarity.
The story had a change of direction when the briefcase
with the manuscript disappears, Fidelman was another man, he didn’t enjoy any
more his stay in Rome, and even he postponed his trip to Florence and the other
cities. The next months he started to visit places just to find Susskind, because
he suspected that he has stolen the briefcase, he didn’t answer his sister
calls, his appearance was not important anymore, he put on weight. The search
for Susskind had become an obsession.
The author added some irony in the narrative, mostly
when he explains his dreams, for instance the one where he was in the cemetery
reading the inscription; these situations always finished with the sentence:
“But not Susskind”. This particular sense of humour was also used to represent
in a visual way the freezing cold of the refugee’s room, he said: “this fish in the fishbowl is swimming around
in Arctic Seas”. When he goes in Susskind apartment furtively and don’t
find anything, he returned to the pension and had a dream where he found the
briefcase, “but not the manuscript!”
Some Giotto's paintings
On the day before our departure, we decided to go as far
afield as Padua where were to be found those Vices and Virtues of
which Swann had given me reproductions; after walking in the
glare of the sun across the garden of the Arena, I entered the
Giotto chapel the entire ceiling of which and the background of
the frescoes are so blue that it seems as though the radiant day
has crossed the threshold with the human visitor, and has come in
for a moment to stow away in the shade and coolness its pure sky,
of a slightly deeper blue now that it is rid of the sun's
gilding, as in those brief spells of respite that interrupt the
finest days, when, without our having noticed any cloud, the sun
having turned his gaze elsewhere for a moment, the azure, more
exquisite still, grows deeper. In this sky, upon the blue-washed
stone, angels were flying with so intense a celestial, or at
least an infantile ardour, that they seemed to be birds of a
peculiar species that had really existed, that must have figured
in the natural history of biblical and Apostolic times, birds
that never fail to fly before the saints when they walk abroad;
there are always some to be seen fluttering above them, and as
they are real creatures with a genuine power of flight, we see
them soar upwards, describe curves, 'loop the loop' without the
slightest difficulty, plunge towards the earth head downwards
with the aid of wings which enable them to support themselves in
positions that defy the law of gravitation, and they remind us
far more of a variety of bird or of young pupils of Garros
practising the vol-plané, than of the angels of the art of
the Renaissance and later periods whose wings have become nothing
more than emblems and whose attitude is generally the same as
that of heavenly beings who are not winged. (Marcel Proust: La prisionnière)
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Navicella
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San
Francesco dona le vesti al cavaliere povero.
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TOPICS
Fidelman has a pigskin briefcase. What is the importance of this particular for the story?
What are “oxblood shoes”?
What do you know about the Diocletian Baths?
Fidelman: describe very briefly his appearance and his personality.
What is the meaning in context of “give a skeleton a couple of pounds”?
What do you know about Romulus and Remus legend?
There’s a film directed by Guy Richie (Madonna’s ex-husband) called “Lock, Stock and Two Barrels”. In the story we have the expression “lock, stock, barrel”; what does it mean? What is its origin? What is its relation with the title of the film? Have you seen it?
What is the meaning of “knickers”, in context?
Shimon Susskind: describe briefly his appearance and his personality.
What can you say about Florence, Siena, Assisi and Padua?
Who was Trofimov?
What was Fidelman’s daily routine?
There is the expression “remembrance of things unknown”. Doesn’t it remind you of a famous French literary work, a masterpiece? What’s its author and the exact title?
Fidelman said “My God, I’ve got to stop using my eyes so much” when he was looking at some ceiling. Why does he say it? What do you know about the Stendhal syndrome?
Why Susskind doesn’t go to Israel?
What is the context for the sentence: “The Italians are human people”?
What business does Susskind propose to Fidelman?
At the police station, an officer draws a line on “valore del manuscritto”. What is the meaning of this?
How did Fidelman try to recover the main ideas of his first chapter about Giotto?
Where did Fidelman look for Susskind and where did he find him?
What were Fidelman’s three different accommodations?
What was Fidelman’s daily routine after losing his work about Giotto?
They mention the Spanish painter Murillo. What do you know about him?
What was Fidelman’s real vocation?
Where did Susskind live?
What is the meaning of Fidelman’s last dream (“San Francesco dona le vesti al cavaliere povero”)?
Why did Susskind burn the chapter?
What did Fidelman earn at the end?
What is the relationship between the title and the story (remember there’s an adventures novel by James Fenimore Cooper called The Last of the Mohicans)?
VOCABULARY
shalom, schnorrer, Yiddish, constipated, mirthlessly, grant, porter (two meanings), cigar store Indian, welfare organization, gabardine, warped nerve, peddle, Joint Distribution Committee, gross, saddled, pest, Sephardim, faucet, pudgy, ghetto, goyim, painstakingly
