Nostalgic, wistful, absorbing, breathtaking
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Cassandra by Christa Wolf is a quite difficult (at times frighteningly difficult) work, but a proper understanding allowed me to remain absorbed in the plot. The style is a classic stream of conscience, quite possibly the reason why this book is so demanding. There have been allegations that Wolf is an elitist, that she cares only for the "happy few", which is partially true considering that you have to have read Homer's famous epic poem Iliad.Otherwise, it will be difficult to keep up. Moreover, even if you have read the Iliad, you'll probably still be lost at times. The thing I like about Wolf's Cassandra is that it is a very detailed and a very thoughtful first person narrative. And for those who are fascinated by ancient Greek or Roman cultures, there is an added bonus because the book is written as if it is viewed by a "doomed prophet" named Cassandra. I suggest that right-wing chauvinists keep away from this book because of Wolf's feminist inclination: Cassandra is always right while the mostly masculine rulers overlook her warnings about the coming doom. Besides, she's antiwar.
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Wrong...
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Forced to read this book due to a third year literature course, and being a lover of great literature as well as 'fireside' reads, I got some chuckles from the 'elitist' ramblings of other reviewers regarding the complexity and importance of this book. I agree that anyone who doesn't 'get it' when it comes to this book - particularly after reading all the exegetical text that goes with the story - must be a little simple; Wolf's narrative touch is a subtle as a poorly wielded jaw-bone. This is such horrid revisionism and politically motivated story-telling as to make a thinking reader retch. Wolf dips her toes into Aeschylus' ocean of ideas, shrinks back from the cold, and retreats to the comfort of the sand. If the writings of the Ancient Greeks are considered misogynist (which I don't believe), then this text, judged by similar standards, is misandrist to the point of mania; I mean, the archetype for the modern misandrist novel is to make the central male figure incompetent, sexually disfuntional, emotionally disfuntional, ugly/sleezy, hate-filled, bitter and compulsively obsessed. This is almost a how-to book; 'An Idiot's Guide to Writing A Misandrist Novel'. Having said all that, Wolf is certainly not a poor writer; her craftsmanship is excellent. The characters she chooses to portray more than one dimensionally are vividly drawn. If the type of book described above is up your literary alley - and there is a market for this type of book, unforunately - then you'll really enjoy it.
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Prophetic on many levels
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Anyone so fixated on this narrative that they don't spend the entire time picking apart the metaphor only proves how engrossing this story really is. How can anyone miss the allusion to communist East Germany in Wolf's use of Troy, which Homer called the walled-city? How can anyone fail to see Wolf herself as the real Cassandra who published this novel BEFORE the fall of the Berlin Wall? How can anyone who reads the opening passage not be unnerved by Cassandra's last prophecy that her captor, Agamemnon, will find his own end when he finally returns home (especially anyone who follows the news of increasing right-wing violence in the reunified Germany)? Yes, there is something of a dispassionate voice in the narrator, but this is the voice of disheartened resignation, knowing she can see all, yet influence nothing.
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It's Literary. What do you expect?
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At the risk of sounding somewhat elitist (if a high school student may call himself that), I have the distinct feeling that many highly critical reviewers of Cassandra have either (1) failed to appreciate the intensely literary nature of the novel, (2) become so fixated on the "apparent" aspects of Wolf's message to notice the infinite subtleties, or (3) been guilty of the most heinous form of reductionism. Admittedly, Cassandra is not an easy read; 138 pages (the story itself) of streaming consciousness is not for the casual reader. Nevertheless, it is precisely this stream of consciousness--one of the most capably written of its form--that unifies the myriad thematic commentaries of the novel into a coherent and powerful message. Also missed are the subtleties behind Wolf's supposedly hyper-feminist message. Wolf is careful to point to the mutability of sexual roles (Anchises and Penthesilea offer superb examples) and the significance of a dualistic appreciation of culturally-derived gender tendencies. Numerous readers are also prone to missing the point of Wolf's revisionist mythology; in doing so they are no less guilty than Wilhem Girnus (DDR editor of Sinn und Form) of fixating upon the "crime" of creating new life in previously established literature. It may be unpleasant to see our heroic figure of Achilles portrayed in a cripplingly negative light, but Wolf's very insistence upon doing so exposes the greatest fallacies of our victory-fixated Western outlook. Cassandra may be too literary for some, too complex for a reader interested in a quick fireside jaunt into Literature Lite, but its immense artistry as a novel may not be so easily ignored.
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Cassandra
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I have to admit that I had some difficulties in reading this book in the first place. Christa Wolf uses a very stylised language which is not easy to understand although it sounds beautifully I think. It is defenitly not a book you can read to relax or to kill time on the train or anything like that. But by taking my time with this novel, I finally felt like coming close to Cassandras character, with all her good and bad personality traits. Whoever thinks this book is just about Womens Liberation just didn't really understand it. It might be an issue, but "Cassandra" is too complex to reduce it to just this one point. There is so much more in it, you just have to keep your eyes open. In my opinion it is one of the best books ever written.
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