Amadeus (was) Ron's Alleged Jealousy and Authorial Intention

[Petra Pan]

No: HPFGUIDX 52792

Dicentra:
> OK.  An excellent study of
> jealousy -- "soul-eating, deadly sin
> jealousy" -- is in "Amadeus," the
> movie and the play.  Salieri is a
> reasonably good composer in his
> own right, but next to Mozart, his
> music looks positively mediocre. 
> It drives Salieri nuts that the
> bawdy, irreverent Mozart can write
> amazing music in his sleep, while
> the pious Salieri cannot praise
> God in terms nearly so sublime as
> Mozart can.  Salieri had two 
> options, really. He could have put his
> ego aside and counted himself lucky
> to be in the presence of such
> greatness.  He could have become
> Mozart's greatest friend and admirer
> and studied Mozart in the hopes that
> he could learn something -- or at
> least be able to grasp Mozart's
> greatness from up close.
> 
> But instead Salieri let jealousy
> get the best of him.  He esteemed
> Mozart his enemy.  He took each
> of Mozart's triumphs as a slap in the
> face and a threat to his own success. 
> He *hated* Mozart and wanted to
> see him fall flat on his face.  
> If I'm not mistaken (I've not seen it
> for awhile), he undertook to discredit
> Mozart in the hopes he could get him
> out of his way.
> 
> In other words, he saw it as a
> zero-sum game, a competition in which
> there is one winner only and everyone
> else is a loser.  Every time Mozart
> won, he lost.

I agree with your take on Amadeus and 
wonders if an aspect of that story that 
has always struck me might come into 
play in HP.

Salieri is everything you've mentioned, 
though I'd disagree over Salieri's 
piety since so much of it seem to be 
for show only.  But something else 
about Salieri seems to at work in 
Shaffer's play, which I can't find a 
word for in English (help?): having 
achieved what he had defined as the 
penultimate in success, Salieri is 
completely unable to adjust to the 
bar being raised when Mozart came 
onto the scene.

Salieri has always struck me as being 
utterly resentful of having his idea 
of the ultimate sublime shown up to 
be anything but.  He has also struck 
me as being resentful of his God 
favoring Mozart over himself.  As 
Salieri sees it, he made himself into 
THE vessel of heavenly music and that 
his success means that God has chosen 
him to be his messenger on earth, 
his heir, so to speak.

Then Mozart comes along and ruins 
Salieri's illusions of divinity.  
In this, thematically, Voldemort 
strikes me as being a bit of a 
Salieri in the making.

We see then that Salieri's piety 
is nothing more than a fascade.  
He claims to be motivated by the 
desire to see his God praised, 
an end, as it turned out, better 
achieved by Mozart.  If such an 
end is truly his motivation, then 
how can one justify Salieri's 
attempts to destroy Mozart?

If we can't, then we must find 
another, the true motivation.  I 
nominate his ego, that which 
motivates so many human beings 
to go above and beyond mere 
self-preservation.

Is Voldemort like Salieri?  Yes.  
Is Ron?  Not so much...

Petra
a
n  :)

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