Category: Breath in Literature & Art

There‘s a wonderful religious breathing scene in Ani Tuzman’s novel, The Tremble of Love. The novel is based on the life of the 18th century Jewish mystic Rabbi Yisroel ben Eliezar, also called the Baal Shem Tov.

In the scene, Leah, the local Jewish shoemaker in the Polish town Okup, has been imprisoned by Christians for blood libel. A mob of young men are trying to get into her cell for revenge.

„Breathing in the foul mustiness, Leah felt a sudden rising panic that made the dank room feel smaller and airless. She had to breathe fresh air or she would die in this merciless crypt. She tried to stand but she hit her head on the low roof of her cell. The clammy walls she found on hands and knees closed in around her. Dark and fear were swallowing her. She had to calm herself. She would take God‘s name. That‘s it. There were many to choose from. She would repeat them out loud, one by one, slowly, over and over again: Adonai, Ein Sof, Shechina, HaShem. „Breathe through me.“ She must feel God‘s love around her, in her. She would think of God‘s love as the air she breathed. 

I just finished watching the glorious series Justified based on Elmore Leonard‘s Raylan Givens stories. Raylan Givens is a U.S. Marshal who is reassigned from Miami to the tough coal mining towns of his childhood in Kentucky. His nemesis is the local criminal and former fellow coal miner Boyd Crowder. In Season 6 episode 5 of Justified, Boyd Crowder and his accomplices are planning to blow up a vault. In the discussion about this, Boyd Crowder discovers a route through an old mine shaft in Blanton and gives a characteristically articulate description of the effects of Black Damp on the lungs.

I‘d like to share an excerpt from the essay It’s late, I can‘t breathe by Mario Wirz.

It’s late, I can‘t breathe is a stream of consciousness monologue of one night in which the author views his current situation: Berlin, 1991; he‘s thirty-five years old and HIV positive. He knows he’s going to die. The breathlessness of his despair propels him forwards as he looks back on how his life so far has unfolded. With each sentence, each thought he revolts against death.

A spectacular image called “Ginkgo Lungs and Airways in Pink” by Art in Anatomy.

This is the rendering of a CT scan showing upside airways forming the trunk and branches of a tree.  The lungs have been reshaped and colored to reflect the shape of the ginkgo leaf.

I‘d like to share this image of the wonderful book „There is no right way to meditate and other lessons“ by author and illustrator Yumi Sakugawa.

My artist friend Lena gave this to me when I was in hospital four years ago with a broken shoulder. It was a perfect gift and some of the illustrations and messages have stayed with me til today.

I just finished listening to „Scenes From Village Life” by Amos Oz, a novel in the form of a collection of stories from an imaginary village by the name of Tel Ilan in Israel.

In the penultimate story, “Singing”, there is a brilliantly written „breathing scene“. One evening, people from the village come together for a sing-along at the home of Dalia and Avraham Levin. Four years previously their son had committed suicide, shot himself in the head under his parents‘ bed, where he lay curled up and dead for a day and a half, without his parents noticing. The story’s nameless narrator is part of the party of singers but feels himself increasingly drawn away from the party and towards the master bedroom upstairs which hasn’t been used since the suicide. He doesn‘t understand what’s happening to him but as he stands alone in the darkened, death-filled room – in stark contrast to the communal activity downstairs, he knows that this is where he is meant to be. And just at that moment, he hears his own breath in the silence after the singers have stopped singing.

I‘d like to share an excerpt from an article titled D.H. Lawrence on Trees, Solitude, and How We Root Ourselves When Relationships Collapse, in which Maria Popova, mastermind of Brain Pickings, highlights the relation-ship between humans and trees. 
From a breathing perspective, this relation-ship is about co-existence and co-operation between equals. D.H. Lawrence takes on a similar stance in his novel Aaron’s Rod. In this passage from the novel, he captures the presence of cypress trees in Tuscany, turning the conventional paradigm of human communication and expression amidst a silent, passive nature on its head. Here it is the cypresses that „breathe“, „communicate“ and even „commemorate“, whereas mankind is diminished by a loss of reality, and of life itself through its own achievements of civilisation.

About six months ago, I picked up a volume of contemporary poetry in my favourite book store in Berlin, Marga Schoeller Buecherstube in Charlottenburg. The volume of poetry was The Last Visit by Chad Abushanab, and I‘ve been reading it on and off since then. Every time I open a page randomly, I‘m stunned at how potently these poems speak on the subjects of family and violence, and particularly of the poet‘s relationship with his alcoholic and abusive father. 

Many of Chad Abushanab’s poems feature breathing, breathing as a measure of who someone is at any one moment, in relation to another: the father‘s smell of whisky from his mouth, the sound of him sleeping.

A few weeks ago, I watched the Batman/The Dark Knight Trilogy from Christopher Nolan again and there is a great breathing scene in Batman begins. Bruce Wayne, in training with Ra‘s al Ghul, the leader of the League of Shadows, inhales the smoke of a ground blue mountain flower containing halluciogenic properties. Ra‘s al Ghul guides him through his journey, „Breathe. Breathe. Breathe in your fears.“ As Bruce inhales the smoke, we can see the fumes taking their effect, transporting him into the traumatic memories of being trapped in a cave surrounded by bats and of his parent’s murder when he was a boy.

The episode titled Breathe in the TV series Better Call Saul, is consistently faithful to the twist-of-fate=reality style of its beyond brilliant creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould. At the very end of the second episode in season 4, Arturo, one of Hector Salamanca‘s muscle, suffocates in a see-through plastic bag, pulled over his head by Gus Fring. Arturo’s partner Nacho watches in horror, unable to move and down on his knees, with guns being pointed at him by Gus Fring‘s muscle, Victor and Tyrus. The nature of Arturo‘s death is the culmination of an episode in which most of the characters in Better Call Saul are finding it hard to breathe. If you want to study tense, withheld and limited breathing in all its varieties, observe the jaws and chests of the beloved characters in episode 2, season 4 of Better Call Saul. I’ve listed some of the scenes in which this is most easy to see: