April 2024 In Books: What I'm Reading

The Leipzig Book Fair ran last weekend, and I'd intended to read Dutch and Flemish books before then. I didn't, much, but picked up music scores from German publishers.

Before, I'd dropped into a Polish-German bookstore in the Berlin areas of Kreuzberg/Neukölln. The bookshelves were full of books I might want to read and hadn't read yet. NoViolet Bulawayo's Glory and Olga Tokarczuk's Flights, for example. Zimbabwe's Bulawayo I'd heard about on YouTube, and Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk's prose was so good when I read an excerpt from Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead that it has been on my mental list to read more.

Before that, I'd watched the 4 episodes of the literary Canada Reads 2024 competition on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's YouTube channel.

Jessica Johns's fantasy-thriller book Bad Cree was available in the Berlin bookshop just after I heard of it on Canada Reads.

Courtesy of ECW Press

But the first Canadian book I want to finish is Denison Avenue by Christina Wong and Daniel Innes. So far it is one of the best books that I have read in years.

After those, I hope to read The Future by Catherine Leroux or Shut Up You're Pretty by Téa Mutonji.

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In multimedia:

MIT's OpenCourseWare programme's self-guided English literature course of study on the medieval epic Beowulf, based on 2023 lectures for undergraduates. MIT has published lecture videos, reading lists, and other useful material on its website and on YouTube. It begins with a crash course in Anglo-Saxon grammar. I highly recommend it.

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, Roald Dahl's strange short story that left me wondering if it was fact or fiction (but I never tried seeing through a pack of cards, as it felt like too much trouble especially if it would likely only prove that I was gullible) when I was a child, has been adapted into a film by Wes Anderson. Breaking the fourth wall, the film weaves in Ralph Fiennes as Roald Dahl, the narrator. It is available on Netflix, and has won an Academy Award.

Spring Scenes in: The Ugly Duckling

As Berlin breaks out of the winter stasis at its customary slow pace, I wanted to celebrate spring with seasonal classics.

"Maiabend im Tieftal - Erfurt" (1885)
by Emil Zschimmer (1842-1917)
via Wikimedia Commons

William Wordsworth's famous poem "To a Daffodil" has already appeared in this blog. So, moving on to the next inspiration, I browsed translations of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales to find springtime scenes.

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The "The Ugly Ducking" (1843) (which is famous enough that it requires no synopsis) has a lovely description of spring. It's an analogy of the Ugly Duckling's winter of discontent turning into glorious summer.

It would be very sad, were I to relate all the misery and privations which the poor little duckling endured during the hard winter; but when it had passed, he found himself lying one morning in a moor, amongst the rushes. 

He felt the warm sun shining, and heard the lark singing, and saw that all around was beautiful spring. 

Then the young bird felt that his wings were strong, as he flapped them against his sides, and rose high into the air. 

They bore him onwards, until he found himself in a large garden, before he well knew how it had happened. The apple-trees were in full blossom, and the fragrant elders bent their long green branches down to the stream which wound round a smooth lawn. Everything looked beautiful, in the freshness of early spring. 

From a thicket close by came three beautiful white swans, rustling their feathers, and swimming lightly over the smooth water.

From: Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales. Mrs. H. B. Paull, transl. London/New York: Warne & Co., 1888.
[Wikisource, but I've changed the paragraph structure]

(English translations differ strongly in their translation of 'elders.' 'Lilacs' and 'syringas' appear in other editions published before the First World War. These seem to be the correct translation. 'Syringa' is the Latin genus name for 'lilac.')

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Men det vilde blive altfor bedrøveligt at fortælle al den Nød og Elendighed, den maatte prøve i den haarde Vinter – – den laae i Mosen mellem Rørene, da Solen igjen begyndte at skinne varmt; Lærkerne sang – det var deiligt Foraar.

Da løftede den paa eengang sine Vinger, de bruste stærkere end før og bare den kraftigt afsted; og før den ret vidste det, var den i en stor Have, hvor Æbletræerne stode i Blomster, hvor Sirenerne duftede og hang paa de lange, grønne Grene lige ned imod de bugtede Canaler! O her var saa deiligt, saa foraarsfriskt! og lige foran, ud af Tykningen, kom tre deilige, hvide Svaner; de bruste med Fjerene og fløde saa let paa Vandet. 

— Hans Christian Andersen. "Den grimme Ælling" (1843) [Wikisource]

Illustration from Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary (1890—1907)
via Wikimedia Commons

 

January 2024 in Books: What I'm Reading

As December ended, I tried to finish as many books as I could before New Year's:

Ken Krimstein's graphic novel about The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt, for example. It instilled an appetite for Weimar Republic-era philosophy that I haven't yet followed up on. It had a few moments of the perfervid enthusiasm of a Dead Poets' Society, but either way it is very well done.

My uncle also gave me Berenberg's German-English edition of Eliot Weinberger's poem Die Sterne. Interspersed with Franziska Neubert's illustrations of starry patterns, which nod I think to Weinberger's cross-cultural approach to star lore and remind me of Islamic art (at least, modern Islamic art) that eschews depicting people, it is a soothing read.

It's also happily tying in with a hardcover edition, with picturesque gilt-edged leaves, of Jean Menzies's collection of English retellings of ancient Greek myth: Greek Myths: Gods and Goddesses. Which was a present, too, from a British former teammate.

Chekhov's Lady with a Lapdog and Other Stories are proving harder to read, just because they aren't very cheerful. But it is impressive again to consider how a man who didn't see his 50th birthday was able to write with so much observation, at such a stylistically sophisticated level, about such a large range of characters.

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Aside from that, I read The Light of Days by Judy Batalion in a young readers' edition.

It extols young Polish Jewish women who fought Nazis as well as the Jewish police in the cities, towns and villages in the early 1940s. Incredibly grim as the events are, I was impressed the author pulled through the writing and research.

It's also a more morally ambiguous book than I think the author realizes. She cheerfully describes the deaths of Nazis, or (in some cases) the attacks on Jewish police who have been detailed at the coercion of German authorities to round up fellow Jews, as if she were a World War I-era Briton talking about 'potting the Huns.'

Whereas at other times, Nazis, Germans who aren't Nazis, Polish people, and Jewish police help Jewish civilians to escape, even at great personal risk.

Did grenades, bullets, lightbulbs filled with acid, etc., always hit the oppressor instead of the helper? 

I think it was more complex for the Jewish fighters to kill others than the book relates. Likely Batalion's research would have dug up evidence, if there had been any, of PTSD or feelings of guilt related specifically to guerrilla warfare. But I'm not sure if all Holocaust survivors would have been open about having these feelings.

I grew up around my grandparents' deep, war-related queasiness around weaponry. None of them, of course, were Holocaust survivors. Still, their attitude reinforced for me that people who knew best knew guns and their use, saw these as a serious, grim thing. In a limited context, guns can determine who dies and survives; as a broader response to violence, I am not sure they resolve anything as intended.

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The next book once The Light of Days was finished: We Had a Little Real Estate Problem, a book on First Nations, Native Americans, and stand-up comedy by the Canadian author Kliph Nesteroff.