Essay on "Reckoning Exercise"

Essay 18 pages (5625 words) Sources: 1

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Dangerous Beauty," Michael Paterniti uses recurring images of bodies, body parts, and bodily functions in order to tie together the different historical periods of his essay and give the story itself a sense of life. While the essay is mainly about David Williams, a professor interested in an anatomy book produced by Nazis during World War II using the bodies of murdered Jews as source cadavers, Paterniti also traces the history of the book itself, with a particular focus on its author and one of the its artists, Eduard Pernkopf and Franz Batke. Paterniti introduces Williams with a discussion of his heart problems and his daily regimen, and he uses the images of clogging arteries and a weakening heart in order to convey a sense of determination and possibly hopelessness to Williams' story (Paterniti 4). While Williams is determined to continue considering the book, going all the way to Vienna to investigate its origins, he is aging, and his love affair with the book is tarnished by its murderous origin, in the way that his heart muscles and arteries, which he exercises every morning, nevertheless slow down and clog. Paterniti also uses the image of a dividing cell in order to convey the tumult and divisions of history, repeating the notion of a cell (and history) splitting in two (Paterniti 9). The cell splitting is a process of life forming, but it also represents an irreversible division; in a way, the book itself can be considered the product of the process, because it is a beautiful, vital work born out of the destructive and horrific divisions of the Holocaust. Finally, Paterniti uses the images of detached body parts, both figuratively and in reference to the images in the anatomy book, in order to vividly demonstrate the destructive and dehumanizing effects of World War II. The Jews who died and were recorded in the pages of the book only appear as body parts, so that they are simultaneously given a kind of perverse life as vivid paintings while their real lives were snuffed out with little concern for the sanctity of their bodies.

Assignment 2: Fascination

Michael Paterniti's essay "The Most Dangerous Beauty" is full of interesting moments, as the narrative travels across the world and through time in order to tell the story of an anatomy book, the men who made it, and one American professor who was practically obsessed with it. However, a single moment stands out because it manages to capture the sense of awe that seems to surround the book without diminishing the terrifying historical context that the book sprang from. The moment comes when Paterniti is first introducing Eduard Pernkopf, on the day he gives a speech aligning himself irrevocably with the Nazi party and decrying Jews (Paterniti 12). Paterniti introduces Pernkopf the morning of the speech, but then goes back to discuss the history of the book itself and the effort of compiling its various artists. In doing so, he demonstrates how the creation of the book and the ascendance of the Nazi party are due to many of the same social and historical forces, so that the book itself seems to contain the essence of the historical period that created it. This history of the book is contained within Pernkopf's morning ritual before he gives his speech, and it helps define the character of the man not by describing his interactions or personality in detail (although Paterniti does this later), but by tying his personal work on the book into his more public work as a supporter of the Nazis. This moment is especially resonant because the essay as a whole details the morning ritual of David Williams, an American professor whose deep interest in the book frames the entire story (Paterniti 9). The similarities between the description of Pernkopf's and Williams' respective mornings make the moment eerily familiar, and it becomes somewhat more difficult to write Pernkopf off as a clear-cut villain when he is so closely tied to the ostensible protagonist of the story. Instead, one is forced to consider the personal and historical forces that drive individuals to their respective interests, and what connections might exist between oneself and seemingly distant, unrelated people.

Assignment 3: Assessment/Lacks

Question: How does the origin of a work affect its reception, and can genuine beauty come from the ugliest parts of human nature?

Michael,

In your essay "The Most Dangerous Beauty," you approach an interesting and important topic from a fresh perspective by attempting to uncover what it means that, among other things, Nazi atrocities produced works of seemingly undeniable beauty, and furthermore, whether or not the atrocious origins of a work should affect its subsequent reception and interpretation. However, while your essay raises these questions in vivid ways, it seems reluctant to offer a real answer, instead using the ambivalence of David Williams' own experience as a kind of cover that allows the essay itself to escape the need for an answer. In turn this forces the reader to ask a different question, namely, if a work's origin should affect its reception and interpretation, then how removed must that origin be in order for it to lose its hold over the subsequent work?

This question is crucial because it goes straight to heart of the dilemma facing anyone interested in the texts produced by the Nazis, which include not only Pernkopf's anatomy book but also the research conducted by scientists such as Josef Mengele. Mengele's experiments were cruel and horrifying, but they also contributed genuine knowledge about the human body (mostly in the areas of endurance, such the body's response to prolonged heat or cold). Most contemporary observers would agree that Mengele's experiments were immoral, but it is somewhat harder to determine whether or not it would be immoral to apply any of the knowledge he acquired through them. On the one hand, knowledge is knowledge, so what is done with it may be more important than how it was gained, but on the other hand, benefiting from his experiments forces one to acknowledge that they produced some benefit (even if one qualifies by stating that the benefits do not outweigh the harms).

This is the same conflict that David Williams seems to be struggling with in your essay, but tellingly, neither he nor the essay ever comes down clearly on one side or the other. However, this does not mean that there is not some hint as to both your and Williams' position. In the case of Williams, it seems as if he has accepted that beauty can come from atrocity, but he can only appreciate this beauty so long as he remembers to temper it with a healthy dose of sadness and guilt. Your essay, on the other hand, takes a more cowardly approach. Rather than make an explicit statement regarding the morality of benefiting from atrocity, or appreciating the beauty that may come from it, your essay pretends to be about Williams' own ambivalence, and as such, acts as if it has no stake in the debate, but is merely telling the story of someone who does.

In reality, however, you and your essay quite clearly have a stake in the debate, because your essay would not be possible without Pernkopf's anatomy book, or Williams' ambivalence. In a sense, then, you have directly benefited from the thousands of corpses stacked up by the Nazis outside the Institute in Vienna, but your essay pretends that this is not the case. Obviously, this is not to suggest that you or your essay hold any sympathy for the Nazis or anything like that, but when the entirety of your essay is about the difficulty of determining the morality of benefiting from and enjoying the products of atrocity, it seems almost disingenuous to remove yourself from the equation, and act as if you are merely reporting the story from afar, comfortably distant from the very real ethical questions at hand.

This lack of a willingness to make your position clear is made all the more crucial because it is not as if the essay itself is dispassionate or otherwise removed. Instead it is filled with vivid imagery and florid language, which has the effect of making it entertaining and engaging. If there is a problem with finding beauty in the work of Nazis, is there a problem with finding the story behind that work entertaining? If yes, then the essay itself has failed to live up to this moral standard, and if no, then it is impossible to say that there is actually a problem with finding beauty in that work, and the entire conflict of the essay disappears, becoming less a story about a man dealing with a difficult moral issue and more a story of a man who cannot make up his mind. Of course, one could attempt to distinguish between finding the anatomy book beautiful and finding your essay entertaining, but this simply returns to the question asked of you… READ MORE

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