Siegfried

An incredible study of the nature of evil through some very unlikely characters. A great story that doesn't seem forced despite the extraordinary circumstances the main characters find themselves in.

Given Harry Mulisch's personal background (son of a German-Austrian banker and a Jewish Dutch mother, who was spared being shipped to a concentration camp, or worse, by his collaborationist father's connections), it is natural that in his fiction Mulisch was obsessed with the Nazi episode. Here he tackles the most bewitching and bewildering Nazi-related topic: Hitler himself.Mulisch starts by proclaiming Hitler "the most enigmatic human being of all time" - someone who cannot be grasped logically or historically. Further, "[h]e can't be explained with psychology; you need theology instead." I can sort of accept that. But Mulisch decides to transcend the limitations of reason and history and capture the essence of Hitler by approaching him through "some imagined, highly improbable, highly fantastic but not impossible fact" and seeing what that tells him about Hitler's underlying reality. In SIEGFRIED, that crucial imagined fact is Hitler's son (named, of course, Siegfried), who was secretly birthed by Eva Braun on Kristallnacht in 1938, and then entrusted for raising to a young Viennese couple who had been transferred to the Berchtesgarden. Mulisch's story of the young Siegfried adds an additional layer of ghastly inhumanity to the historical Adolf Hitler.And what does this conceit reveal about Hitler? For Mulisch, as he proceeds with his imaginative alchemy, he learns that Hitler was a "singularity in human form" - "surrounded by the black hole of his retinue". Alternatively, he is, among human beings, what the number zero is among numbers - something that is a natural number but through multiplication by which destroys every other number. Mulisch follows his alchemic thought experiment further, leading him to the realization that "Hitler was from the very beginning the manifestation of the Totally Other: the zeroing Zero incarnate, the living singularity, who of necessity would become visible only as a mask." Approaching the matter slightly differently, Mulisch traces a sort of linearity from Schopenhauer to Wagner to Nietzsche to Hitler. The connection between the latter two was particularly close: Hitler was conceived in July 1888 - exactly at the moment when Nietzsche began to go mad; both Nietzsche and Hitler lived to the same age - fifty-six; "Nietzsche's madness lasted exactly as long as Hitler's time in power: twelve years." Grand conclusion? "[W]ith Hitler we are dealing with something like a metanatural phenomenon * * * . Except that he was not an extraterrestrial creature but an extraexistential being: Nothingness."It probably is obvious that I regard all this as hifalutin twaddle. To the extent that Mulisch makes any sense at all, he seems to view Hitler as an Anti-Christ who mesmerized a credulous, malleable Germany and led it pied-piper-like to the progressive cataclysm of World War II. In other words, for Mulisch, without Hitler neither WWII nor the Holocaust could possibly have happened. I, however, am not willing to let the German nation off the hook so easily and exonerate it of everything save gullible lemminghood.If you read SIEGFRIED purely for the "story", ignoring or skipping the alchemistic divination of Hitler's essence, it is a so-so novel. With all the pseudo-metaphysical rubbish, however, it is an inferior one.

Interesting story. But I like it better in the original Dutch version, as the translation into English sometimes doesn't come out so well.

This could have happened. I like the book. I think the author did a good job. Brings up interesting possibilities.

An interesting look into Mulisch's thoughts about Hitler and the meaning of evil, with only the thin trappings of an implausible novel wrapped around them. That said, I still thought it was worth reading.

I bought this book just because I was bloody bored at a mall waiting for my cat's surgery to end. The title and cover intrigued me so I bought it to read while waiting for my cat.When I started reading it, I thought how bloody boring it is, but since I had nothing better to do and I was tired- I continued reading. As pages melted in my eyes, I got interested and wanted to know how everything will end. And I can say I already knew the ending, it was predictible book. But actually it ended not like I thought. In fact the last sentence of a book made me stunned for some minutes. Such a mysterious ending! In fact all book was so mysterious... Predictible and nothing special, but the end was amazing. It's hard to write how I liked this book not making a spoiler.So, to say it simply: it was philosophical, predictible and mysterious book.First pages make you want to put it away, but all interesting plot is just in the middle. And in fact... I have now such thought in my head: "What if this is truth what was said in the book?" What if....

This book is perhaps a bit more complex and deep than most readers, including I, are used to.I think he bases his book on a quote from Nietzsche: "When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." That is what the protagonist of the book does, and pays a frightening price for enlightment.Mulisch actually comes very close to explaining Hitler, and the nature of evil, in this book. I think many readers are put off by his slightly mystical explanation of the phenomenom of Hitler. However, many more authors have tried to explain Hitler from a purely rational POV and have failed.Hitler was banal, a blank, a nothing. He only defined himself as a leader. To thrive he was dependent on the unidivded attention of multitudes.I suppose here is where the book stumbles: Mulisch explains Hitler, but he does not explain his followers! Did Hitler have this ability to hypnotise because anyone could read in their own wishes and fears into Hitler's emptiness?Also, we will have to remember that towards the end of the book the narraor is not fully reliable (!). His ramblings, while very interesting, about Hitler's mystical connection to Nietzsche - Hitler as the negative opposite of the philosopher - can be seen as the insights of a man already insane.So, in short, my verdict is that this is an uncomplete masterpiece.

This is an absolutely stunning and criminally neglected novel by a master craftsman. Riveting throughout, heartfelt, and thought provoking. It's a little masterpiece that should be far more widely known.