February 2020 in Books: What (I'll) Be Reading Next

While reading Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs went swimmingly despite its length and I'm currently just browsing the index at the end of the book as well as any other back matter, I am struggling with Solito, Solita and Their Eyes Were Watching God. They are not cheerful and lately I've needed a pick-me-up after not disagreeable but long hours at work.

Wrestling with the Devil: A Prison Memoir by Ngugi wa Thiong'o I'd like to read later, as well as Hidden Figures, which describes the role of African American women in the Space Age. I think that Wrestling with the Devil is on my list after watching a review of literature from the African continent from 'books by leynes.' She is a fellow Berliner who reviews books and talks about learning Russian and travelling during semester breaks and other things, in the self-possessed way of a typical opinionated young German, on YouTube.

In the 'BookTube' genre of YouTube users who make videos about literature, I am still trying to find more commentators whose style I like.

So far I also enjoy Lucythereader's videos — she is likely in her early twenties at most, obsessed with Victorian literature from Britain and the US as well as some Edwardian. And I like Booksandquills, by a young woman who used to work for Penguin, studied translation with a focus on Young Adult literature, and now freelances as a Dutch expatriate in the UK.

I have been reading more physics in Teilchendetektoren, more poems from Cavafy (who has mercifully left his peak phase of erotic poetry about younger men and is now foreshadowing the Turco-Greek upheaval of the early 1920s in Anatolia), and the rest of Racine's 17th-century play Bajazet.

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Bajazet borrows its plot from real political assassinations in 17th-century Turkish history, as retold to Racine by French diplomats and filtered through Racine's own artistic impulses. The sultan Amurat (Murad IV), from the battlefield at Baghdad, sends orders that his brother be murdered. (There is also another brother, Orhan, who has been dropped from Racine's narrative as far as I recall.)

"Sultan Murat IV dining with his court.
A golden cup,
a tablet with fresh flowers and fresh fruits
and porcelain plates are in front of him.
Ottoman miniature painting.
Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi, Istanbul."
In the Badisches Landesmuseum.
First half, 17th century
via Wikimedia Commons

The endangered brother — Bajazet (Bayezid) — has already been deprived of his liberty, trapped in the palace. There he and the fictional princess Atalide bypass the barriers of imprisonment and the harem to declare their mutual affection.

Amurat's favourite Roxane falls in love with Bajazet, too. The court vizier, Acomat, tries to manipulate the infatuation for political gain, entirely ignorant of Atalide's claims. With a misplaced confidence in his own acumen, he precipitates tragedy, when he really wants to raise Bajazet to the throne.

I guess that the moral conflict arises because it is hard for the hero Bajazet and heroine Atalide to remain honest, upright, and self-determined in the hothouse environment of the palace. There the powers of life and death are in the hands of brutal, impulsive people who are ready and willing to wield them; and virtue, enterprise and courage are relatively powerless. Because this is a theme of most or all classical literature and 17th-century reinterpretations thereof, however — especially of Racine's — it feels trite to re-state it.

It is, I agree, not Racine's best play. My personal favourite is still Andromaque. It is also strange when he credits Atalide with Bajazet's downfall when I think that Amurat, Roxane and the slave Orcan are likelier candidates, and Racine has stressed that Bajazet is exercising self-determination. But it explores his usual setting and conflict of the seclusion of a palace and the powerlessness of those in powerful circles against love, against a chaotic mingling of events that happen because of uncoordinated actions, and against each other.


As usual, it is funny to bundle so many forms of love beside each other. This 'love' might at times be abuse instead; Roxane's affections turn remarkably bloodthirsty. These definitions conflicted me even more when I read Phèdre. The woman may have been 'in love' with Hippolyte, but she didn't even like him aside from his appearance and military prowess. What else is the play about, if the supposed motive of love falls away?

Racine, Jean. Bajazet. Jean Lejealle, ed. Paris: Larousse, 1960.
Bajazet (play) [Wikipedia]
Bajazet [Wikipedia (in French)]
Murad IV [Wikipedia]