Geçen girişte de belirttiğim üzere, şu aralar Somerset Maugham’dan The Razor’s Edge‘i okumaktayım. Başlarda kitap tam da ondan beklediğim gibiydi, 1920’lerin snob gençleri, Avrupa aristokrarisi ile Amerikan milyonerleri, The Great Gatsbyvari bir ortam… “Sıkılsam da okuyayım,” diyordum, “ne de olsa bir dönem kitabı..”. Ama kazın ayağı öyle olmadı, kitabın henüz başlarındayken 180 derecelik bir dönüş vuku buldu, şu anda da epey emin adımlarla ilerliyor. Bu arada, anlatım hakikaten harikulade. Maugham, kendisi olarak kitapta. Bir yazar olarak gözlemlediklerini yazıyor, hatasız kul olmaz düsturu ile. Örneğin, daha kitabın ilk paragrafında “kendimden bir şeyler katmayacağım, ne gördüysem, duyduysam onu yazmaya kararlıyım..” dedikten birkaç sayfa sonra bunun imkansızlığını anlıyor ve özür dileyerek, “olanların arasındaki boşlukları kendi hayalgücümle doldurmak zorundayım / karakterler tam olarak bu kelimelerle konuşmadılarsa da, aşağı yukarı şunu anlatmaya çalıştılar” itirafında bulunuyor ama beni asıl vuran aşağıda iki örneğini alıntılayacağım anlatım tekniği oldu.
|
(…)She hesitated for a moment and then embarked upon the account of her talk with Larry of which I have done my best faithfully to inform the reader.(p.92)
ile: (…)His intention, after Isabel left Paris, was to go to Greece, but this he abondoned. What he actually did he told me himself many years later, but I will relate it now because it is more convenient to place events as far as I can in chronological order. He stayed on in Paris during the summer and worked without a break till autumn was well advanced. (p.105) a, bir de bu vardı: (…)I do not want the reader to think I am making a mystery of whatever it was that happened to Larry during the war that so profoundly affected him, a mystery that I shall disclose at a convenient moment. I don’t think he ever told anybody. He did, however, many years later tell a woman, Suzanne Rouvier, whom Larry and I both knew, about the young airman who had met his death saving his life. She repeated it to me and so I can only relate it at second hand. I have translated it from her French. Larry had apparently struck up a great friendship with another boy in his squadron. Suzanne knew him only by the ironical nickname by which Larry spoke of him. (p. 54) |
Şimdi yazınca hatırladım, bir de bu dil meselesi var… Yine kitabın başındaki giriş kısmında, karakterlerinin çoğunun Amerikan olmasından yola çıkarak, bir İngiliz olan kendisinin onları doğru konuşturamayacağı uyarısını yapıyor:
|
Another reason that has caused me to embark upon this work with apprehension is that the persons I have chiefly to deal with are American. It is very difficult to know people and I don’t think one can ever really know any but one’s own country, men. For men and women are not only themselves; they are also the region in which they were born, the city apartment or the farm in which they learnt to walk, the games they played as children, the old wives’ tales they overheard, the food they ate, the schools they attended, the sports they followed, the poets they read, and the God they believed in. It is all these things that have made them what they are and these are things that you can’t come to know by hearsay, you can only know them if you have lived them. You can only know them if you are them. And because you cannot know persons of a nation foreign to you except from observation, it is difficult to give them credibility in the pages of a book. Even so subtle and careful an observer as Henry James, though he lived in England for forty years, never managed to create an Englishman who was through and through English. For my part, except in a few short stories I have never attempted to deal with any but my own countrymen, and if I have ventured to do otherwise in short stories it is because in them you can treat your characters more summarily. You give the reader broad indications and leave him to fill in the details. It may be asked why, if I turned Paul Gauguin into an Englishman, I could not do the same with the persons of this book. The answer is simple: I couldn’t. They would not then have been the people they are. I do not pretend that they are American as Americans see themselves; they are American seen through an English eye. I have not attempted to reproduce the peculiarities of their speech. The mess English writers make when they try to do this is only equalled by the mess American writers make when they try to reproduce English as spoken in England. Slang is the great pitfall. Henry James in his English stories made constant use of it, but never quite as the English do, so that instead of getting the colloquial effect he was after, it too often gives the English reader an uncomfortable jolt. (p.3)
|
Ama kitapta, şimdiye kadar olan kısımda, beni en büyülediği yer, fena halde tufaya yatırdığı yerin ta kendisi oldu. Şöyle ki: esas oğlan Larry Paris’te bohem hayatı yaşamaktadır, nişanlısı Isabel ile geleceklerini konuşurlar. Isabel varlıklı bir aileden gelmektedir, rahata alışıktır, her gece balodan baloya gider, akıllı da bir kızdır. Larry’nin otel odasını görünce şoka girer. Burada Larry, kıt kanaat yaşayacakları ama her yeri gezip görecekleri, formaliteden, gösterişten uzak, maceralı bir birliktelik teklifi sunar fakat Isabel kendi yaşam standartlarının altındaki böyle bir hayatı sürdüremeyeceğini belirtir (bu arada, Isabel, olası tahmininizin aksine, son derece akıllı bir kızdır – naçiz blogger’ınız Sururi Beyefendi’nin, bu “akıllı tiki kızlar” kavramıyla ilk karşılaştığımda ufak çapta bir şok dahi yaşamışlığı vardır hatta! 8). Sonra Isabel, Larry’nin o salaş otel odasından ailesiyle kaldığı eve döner:
|
When Isabel entered the drawing-room she found that some people had dropped in to tea. There were two American women who lived in Paris, exquisitely gowned, with strings of pearls round their necks, diamond bracelets on their wrists and costly rings on their fingers. Though the hair of one was darkly hennaed and that of the other unnaturally golden they were strangely alike. They had the same heavily mascaraed eyelashes, the same brightly painted lips, the same rouged cheeks, the same slim figures, maintained at the cost of extreme mortification, the same clear, sharp features, the same hungry restless eyes; and you could not but be conscious that their lives were a desperate struggle to maintain their fading charms. They talked with inanity in a loud, metallic voice without a moment’s pause, as though afraid that if they were silent for an instant the machine would run down and the artificial construction which was all they were would fall to pieces. There was also a secretary from the American Embassy, suave, silent, for he could not get a word in, and very much the man of the world, and a small dark Rumanian prince, all bows and servility, with little darting black eyes and a clean-shaven swarthy face, who was forever jumping up to hand a teacup, pass a plate of cakes, or light a cigarette and who shamelessly dished out to those present the most flattering, the most gross compliments. He was paying for all the dinners he had received from the objects of his adulation and for all the dinners he hoped to receive.
Mrs. Bradley, seated at the tea table and dressed to please Elliott somewhat more grandly than she thought suitable to the occasion, performed her duties as hostess with her usual civil but rather indifferent composure. What she thought of her brother’s guests I can only imagine. I never knew her more than slightly and she was a woman who kept herself to herself. She was not a stupid woman; in all the years she had lived in foreign capitals she had met innumerable people of all kinds and I think she summed them up shrewdly enough according to the standards of the small Virginian town where she was born and bred. I think she got a certain amount of amusement from observing their antics and I don’t believe she took their airs and graces any more seriously than she took the aches and pains of the characters in a novel which she knew from the beginning (otherwise she wouldn’t have read it) would end happily. Paris, Rome, Peking had had no more effect on her Americanism than Elliott’s devout Catholicism on her robust, but not inconvenient, Presbyterian faith. Isabel, with her youth, her strapping good looks and her vitality brought a breath of fresh air into that meretricious atmosphere. She swept in like a young earth goddess. The Rumanian prince leapt to his feet to draw forward a chair for her and with ample gesticulation did his shift. The two American ladies, with shrill amiabilities on their lips, looked her up and down, took in the details of her dress and perhaps in their hearts felt a pang of dismay at being thus confronted with her exuberant youth. The American diplomat smiled to himself as he saw how false and haggard she made them look. But Isabel thought they were grand; she liked their rich clothes and expensive pearls and felt a twinge of envy for their sophisticated poise. She wondered if she would ever achieve that supreme elegance. Of course the little Rumanian was quite ridiculous, but he was rather sweet and even if he didn’t mean the charming things he said it was nice to listen to them. The conversation which her entrance had interrupted was resumed and they talked so brightly, with so much conviction that what they were saying was worth saying, that you almost thought they were talking sense. They talked of the parties they had been to and the parties they were going to. They gossiped about the latest scandal. They tore their friends to pieces. They bandied great names from one to the other. They seemed to know everybody. They were in on all the secrets. Almost in a breath they touched upon the latest play, the latest dressmaker, the latest portrait painter, and the latest mistress of the latest premier. One would have thought there was nothing they didn’t know. Isabel listened with ravishment. It all seemed to her wonderfully civilized. This really was life. It gave her a thrilling sense of being in the midst of things. This was real. The setting was perfect. That spacious room with the Savonnerie carpet on the floor, the lovely drawings on the richly panelled walls, the petit-point chairs on which they sat, the priceless pieces of marquetry, commodes and occasional tables, every piece worthy to go into a museum; it must have cost a fortune, that room, but it was worth it. Its beauty, its discretion struck her as never before because she had still so vividly in her mind the shabby little hotel room, with its iron bed and that hard, comfortless chair in which she had sat, that room that Larry saw nothing wrong in. It was bare, cheerless and horrid. It made her shudder to remember it. (p.81) |
Takaaa! Belki siz de benim gibi tufaya düşmüşsünüzdür, belki yememişsinizdir, belki de -hatta muhtemelen- doğrudan buraya pas geçmişsinizdir. “Isabel listened with r…” kısmına kadar halbuki ne kadar iyi gidiyordu, değil mi? Maugham kitap boyunca hep ancak oradaysa, ya da sonradan öğrenmişse ve kaynakların ağzından aktarma yaptığından, burada doğal olarak bize talkımı yutturuyor tabiri caizse. Belki o belirttiğim cümle yeni bir paragrafla başlayabilirdi ama sonuç böyle olmazdı. Etkinin vuruculuğu bir anda karşınıza çıkması. Metni es geçip doğrudan buraya zıplayan %90 için tam olarak açıklama yapamıyorum “spoil” etmeyeyim diye ama vaktiniz ve yazıcınız varsa (hatta vaktiniz şu anda olmasa da olur, yazıcınız olsun yeter 8), bir çıktısını alın şu yukarıdaki alıntının da, akşam evinize giderken yolda okursunuz.. 8)
Maugham ve Razor’s Edge hakkında biraz araştırma da yapmıştım ama bu giriş uzadıkça uzuyor. Neyse, özet geçeyim. Maugham, yazdıklarıyla ciddi miktarda paralar kazanmayı becermiş ilk yazarlardanmış. Kaldı ki, eleştirmenler yapıtlarını hiç de öyle coşkuyla karşılamamışlar. Bu da doğal sayılabilir zira çağdaşları Woolf ve Joyce gibi edebiyata ters takla attıran modernistler. Kaldı ki, Maugham da alçak gönüllülükle zayıf olduğunu söylemiş, hatta “benim en büyük kusurum dar kelime haznemdir” demiş ama onu bana en çok sevdiren şey, edebiyatçılar arasında kendisini “ikinci sınıfların en ön sırasına” yerleştirmesi oldu.. Gelelim Razor’s Edge’e. Razor’s Edge’de portresi çizilen Larry’nin gerçek hayatta kim olduğuna (ve olmadığına) dair bir sürü fikir ileri sürülmüş, vs.. ama konumuz bu değil. Kitap yayımlanmasından kısa bir süre sonra filme aktarılmış, ben seyretmedim ama orijinaline pek sadık olmadığından bahsediliyor. Gelelim asıl filmimize: 1984’te Bill Murray’in senaryosunu yazdığı ve başrolü oynadığı yeni bir versiyon çekiliyor. Bu filmi Bill Murray örgütlüyor, Columbia da ancak Ghostbusters teklifiyle geldikten sonra yapımı üstleniyor*. Bir önceki satırdaki *’ı tıkladığınızda karşınıza gelecek olan röportajın (Rolling Stone, 16 Apustos 1984) son sorusu şöyle:
Are you expecting to do more serious parts in the future? Does that depend on whether ‘The Razor’s Edge’ is a success?
Well, to a certain extent, it does depend on whether The Razor’s Edge is a success or a failure, because if directors see it and they say “That guy can act a little,” then I’ll get offered jobs from serious directors. As it is now, I’m in the phone book under K for Komedy.
Ben sizi hemen birkaç ay ve dahi birkaç yıl sonrasına ışınlayayım: film gişede yattı, Bill Murray sinema işine 4 senelik bir ara verip Sorbonne’da filozofi eğitimi aldı ve hep o burukluğuyla komedilerde yer aldı (Halbuki öyle sevinmiştim ki onu Lost in Translation’da bütün haşmetiyle gördüğümde, bu sefer “oskar vermek zorundalar” demiştim, olmadı. Ama belki o kadar umurunda da değildir. Sonuçta Rushmore var, Steve Zissou ile aquatic yaşam var, hakikaten sağlam adamdır şu bizim Bill..) Bir de hastası olduğum bir Royal Tenenbaums faciası itirafı vardır:
|
As often as not, you don’t know what you’re looking for. You read something and go, “Hey, there’s something here I understand. This I could do.” Working with Wes Anderson–the first script of his I did, Rushmore [1998], was so clear, so I didn’t really pay attention to the next script [The Royal Tenenbaums, 2001]. He said, “You’re [playing] Gwyneth Paltrow’s husband.” I didn’t realize I was a cuckold [both laugh] and locked out of the bathroom for the whole movie. I had, like, three scenes. I read the script two days before we started shooting, and I was just crushed. But by not reading it till then, it was very easy to play an extremely disappointed husband, which is what I was.*
|
I. Dünya Savaşı’nın sonrasında geçen bu kitap, II. Dünya Savaşı sırasında basılıyor. Benim okumakta olduğum da 1. Amerikan baskısı, şöyle de bir duyuru var:
