Odon

I wanted to see if there was any historical reference to the name Odon. My reader will remember Odon was the actor in Zembla who helped Charles Kinbote to escape. A quick google search directed me to this person, Odon von Horváth. Horváth was an extremely influential playwright of the early 20th century. His name, Odon, as the article states, is the Hungarian form of the word Edmund (perhaps a reference here to Shakespeare, yet again?).

One interesting bit of information about Odon is that he lived in constant fear of being struck by lightning. Ironically enough, he died from a falling branch in a thunderstorm.

One of his plays, Faith, Hope, and Charity, tells the story of a young girl in dire financial straits who the cruelty and harshness of this world breaks down. The play opens with her attempting to sell her cadaver for the money to pay off fines. In the end, she jumps into a river to kill herself, but is unsuccessful. She dies just after her rescue when her heart gives out. The story seems to parallel Hazel's story in several ways. However, the most interesting part of the review hyperlinked above, was the playwright's explanation of this tragedy he calls a comedy.

"All my comedies are tragedies --- they become funny only because they are sinister. The eeriness has to be there."

Comedy and tragedy, stand ,paradoxically, united. Hazel's tragic suicide and the beauty of Shade's poetry, unites with a pompous, conceited, purposely misguided commentator and we laugh! As we saw in class on Thursday, the only difference between the cosmic and the comic is a single letter.