tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-42743764573672304162024-03-25T18:51:17.187+01:00The Lighthouse at AlexandriaNeglected and Loved Treasures of Ancient and Modern LiteratureEdithorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12785482134177392627noreply@blogger.comBlogger183125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4274376457367230416.post-21655935498991127272024-03-02T20:21:00.005+01:002024-03-02T20:21:44.240+01:00Spring Scenes in: The Ugly Duckling<p>As Berlin breaks out of the winter stasis at its customary slow pace, I wanted to celebrate spring with seasonal classics.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQPu2ywxHrPjwGm10atCvwMzgHRTNLNfXLxHLgrxAnF1VU3rY6JkrdGRaFGRXW5Af5SZYrsLVSGsiFgJbyY2Z-neTykSkuZ6wXvFn_RLs_ZJXUly-3rEvZTJXsvnLs2HEU9rgmnXJB-6s6UoDl6j9ZrftkZmwTOGbnZtKyrRQa2zWaeAy7xX1rzWWEvJjS/s599/532px-Emil_Zschimmer_Maiabend_im_Tieftal_Erfurt_1885.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Idyllic painting of a hilly village on a sunny day with light clouds. A church with an onion dome, two large half-timbered houses. A dusty street leads up the hill with villagers on it. The trees are beginning to have leaves, some have blossoms." border="0" data-original-height="599" data-original-width="532" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQPu2ywxHrPjwGm10atCvwMzgHRTNLNfXLxHLgrxAnF1VU3rY6JkrdGRaFGRXW5Af5SZYrsLVSGsiFgJbyY2Z-neTykSkuZ6wXvFn_RLs_ZJXUly-3rEvZTJXsvnLs2HEU9rgmnXJB-6s6UoDl6j9ZrftkZmwTOGbnZtKyrRQa2zWaeAy7xX1rzWWEvJjS/w355-h400/532px-Emil_Zschimmer_Maiabend_im_Tieftal_Erfurt_1885.png" width="355" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Maiabend im Tieftal - Erfurt" (1885)<br />by Emil Zschimmer (1842-1917)<br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Emil_Zschimmer_Maiabend_im_Tieftal_Erfurt_1885.png">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></td></tr></tbody></table><p>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.</p><p>***</p><p>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.</p><p></p><blockquote style="text-align: justify;">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. </blockquote><blockquote style="text-align: justify;">He felt the warm sun shining, and heard the lark singing, and saw that all around was beautiful spring. </blockquote><blockquote style="text-align: justify;">Then the young bird felt that his wings were strong, as he flapped them against his sides, and rose high into the air. </blockquote><blockquote style="text-align: justify;">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. </blockquote><blockquote style="text-align: justify;">From a thicket close by came three beautiful white swans, rustling their feathers, and swimming lightly over the smooth water.</blockquote><p></p><p>From: <i><u>Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales</u>. Mrs. H. B. Paull, transl. London/New York: Warne & Co., 1888.<br />[<a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Hans_Andersen%27s_Fairy_Tales/The_Ugly_Duckling">Wikisource</a>, but I've changed the paragraph structure]</i></p><p><i>(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.')</i></p><p><i>***</i></p><p><i></i></p><blockquote><p><i>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.</i></p><p><i>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.</i> </p></blockquote><blockquote><p>— Hans Christian Andersen. "Den grimme Ælling" (1843) [<a href="https://da.wikisource.org/wiki/Den_grimme_Ælling">Wikisource</a>]</p></blockquote><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhd_q4d72jjJfEmF8AzVrz35ubFX4f_gRA_uBIehRk9d684pFqcoInRtPcbHaVy_8zBqdlJGa9-VSLcz4AUwh-S90qV8l8ZU1a1Fc_3ZP9xzCzurSQnPErIisWJt52tcly5UVvgKccI1h01H2jPoxzWnxaNVCrTsHtC5z693UdjNRBh7FUccqBOKmOiUoFR/s772/Brockhaus_and_Efron_Encyclopedic_Dictionary_b11_310-0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Gold-toned, coloured painting of water lily flowers, papyrus stalks and other plants in a pond" border="0" data-original-height="599" data-original-width="772" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhd_q4d72jjJfEmF8AzVrz35ubFX4f_gRA_uBIehRk9d684pFqcoInRtPcbHaVy_8zBqdlJGa9-VSLcz4AUwh-S90qV8l8ZU1a1Fc_3ZP9xzCzurSQnPErIisWJt52tcly5UVvgKccI1h01H2jPoxzWnxaNVCrTsHtC5z693UdjNRBh7FUccqBOKmOiUoFR/w400-h310/Brockhaus_and_Efron_Encyclopedic_Dictionary_b11_310-0.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Illustration from Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary (1890—1907)<br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brockhaus_and_Efron_Encyclopedic_Dictionary_b11_310-0.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </p>Edithorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12785482134177392627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4274376457367230416.post-19093067801238025062024-01-19T12:54:00.004+01:002024-01-19T12:54:48.370+01:00January 2024 in Books: What I'm Reading<p>As December ended, I tried to finish as many books as I could before New Year's:</p><p>Ken Krimstein's graphic novel about <b>The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt</b>, 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 <i>Dead Poets' Society</i>, but either way it is very well done.</p><p>My uncle also gave me Berenberg's German-English edition of Eliot Weinberger's poem <b>Die Sterne</b>. 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.</p><p>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: <b>Greek Myths: Gods and Goddesses</b>. Which was a present, too, from a British former teammate.</p><p>Chekhov's <b>Lady with a Lapdog and Other Stories</b> 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.</p><p>*</p><p>Aside from that, I read <b>The Light of Days</b> by Judy Batalion in a young readers' edition.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.'</p><p>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.</p><p>Did grenades, bullets, lightbulbs filled with acid, etc., always hit the oppressor instead of the helper? </p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>*</p><p>The next book once <i>The Light of Days</i> was finished: <b>We Had a Little Real Estate Problem</b>, a book on First Nations, Native Americans, and stand-up comedy by the Canadian author Kliph Nesteroff.</p>Edithorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12785482134177392627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4274376457367230416.post-62744744179703199662023-12-26T00:12:00.005+01:002023-12-26T00:15:40.071+01:00Carollers and Wind in the Willows<p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg93qqU2wBoNzJNxS0I5zB8uYhPaQga9dqKcDLpQAOQlcyjMfht29SIglcuD-hy39-RC9j4-M8OsCBfVdD3XcbTVi83ZdzahACPwTRL__ybQ2JQ5ElKJn_kiEwJTH3c7AQng1GgLpDvPREPSNkq-AWiaopcBdATdpKQNARYTgzZJLylWLAmGRjpKnUc3_f2/s800/The_wild_beasts_of_the_world_(Pl._32)_(6505647963).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="561" data-original-width="800" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg93qqU2wBoNzJNxS0I5zB8uYhPaQga9dqKcDLpQAOQlcyjMfht29SIglcuD-hy39-RC9j4-M8OsCBfVdD3XcbTVi83ZdzahACPwTRL__ybQ2JQ5ElKJn_kiEwJTH3c7AQng1GgLpDvPREPSNkq-AWiaopcBdATdpKQNARYTgzZJLylWLAmGRjpKnUc3_f2/w400-h280/The_wild_beasts_of_the_world_(Pl._32)_(6505647963).jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Badger by C. E. Swan<br />(Meles taxus syn. Meles meles)"<br />From: <i>The wild beasts of the world</i> (1909)<br />by Frank Finn<br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_wild_beasts_of_the_world_(Pl._32)_(6505647963).jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></td></tr></tbody></table><i><br /></i></p><p><i>The Wind in the Willows</i> first appeared in print in 1908. It's a beloved children's classic since then — I suspect that a plot summary isn't needed! Even aside from the books with Ernest H. Shephard's (or Arthur Rackham's, or...) illustrations, its legacy lives on in other ways.</p><p>My family watched the <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086829/">1980s British stop motion animated series</a> on Canadian television in the 1990s, and still sometimes hum the theme song from memory.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-TrPou8djeFo61TNipcLIUdKdvjK9ISUyKB8adeTnB6ri8i2Af5uDjRuFwBZHOT49dqVdZvGoJ4t8SIYBdcMR5odsVdNNdHG0PZKU-ygbCRNJ9JfBZPvMdOuMm3crNIZYnctVNPqKrV4WX5HOnoX9Cn4mVHlN5k9Bw-Si92ZvskqPJir1qfSj_VdO7cig/s500/Appley_dapplys_nursery_rhymes_09.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="A watercolour painting of a lady mouse, who is sitting, wearing an old-fashioned cap and knitting a sock" border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="304" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-TrPou8djeFo61TNipcLIUdKdvjK9ISUyKB8adeTnB6ri8i2Af5uDjRuFwBZHOT49dqVdZvGoJ4t8SIYBdcMR5odsVdNNdHG0PZKU-ygbCRNJ9JfBZPvMdOuMm3crNIZYnctVNPqKrV4WX5HOnoX9Cn4mVHlN5k9Bw-Si92ZvskqPJir1qfSj_VdO7cig/w195-h320/Appley_dapplys_nursery_rhymes_09.jpg" title="Mouse knitting" width="195" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mouse knitting<br />From: Appley Dapply's Nursery Rhymes (1917)<br />by Beatrix Potter<br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Appley_dapplys_nursery_rhymes_09.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></td></tr></tbody></table><p>The <i>Wind in the Willows</i>'s Christmas passages, atmospheric and pleasingly English, have also inspired composer Audrey Snyder to arrange a musical setting of the Carol. It is sung by choirs at Christmas under the title "Joy on Christmas Morning." (For example: [<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oCgTy1ecHk">YouTube</a>].)</p><p>***</p><p></p><blockquote><p>It was a pretty sight, and a seasonable one, that met their eyes when
they flung the door open. In the fore-court, lit by the dim rays of a
horn lantern, some eight or ten little fieldmice stood in a
semicircle, red worsted comforters round their throats, their
fore-paws thrust deep into their pockets, their feet jigging for
warmth. With bright beady eyes they glanced shyly at each other,
sniggering a little, sniffing and applying coat-sleeves a good deal.
As the door opened, one of the elder ones that carried the lantern was
just saying, 'Now then, one, two, three!' and forthwith their shrill
little voices uprose on the air, singing one of the old-time carols
that their forefathers composed in fields that were fallow and held by
frost, or when snow-bound in chimney corners, and handed down to be
sung in the miry street to lamp-lit windows at Yule-time.</p>
<p><span> </span>CAROL</p>
</blockquote><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">Villagers all, this frosty tide,</blockquote><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">Let your doors swing open wide,</blockquote><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">Though wind may follow, and snow beside,</blockquote><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">Yet draw us in by your fire
to bide;</blockquote><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">Joy shall be yours in the morning! </blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"> </blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">Here we stand in the cold and the sleet,</blockquote><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">Blowing fingers and stamping
feet,</blockquote><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">Come from far away you to greet</blockquote><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">—You by the fire and we in the
street—</blockquote><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">Bidding you joy in the morning! </blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"> </blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">For ere one half of the night was gone,</blockquote><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">Sudden a star has led us on,</blockquote><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">Raining bliss and benison</blockquote><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">—Bliss to-morrow and more anon,</blockquote><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">Joy for
every morning! </blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"> </blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">Goodman Joseph toiled through the snow—</blockquote><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">Saw the star o'er a stable
low;</blockquote><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">Mary she might not further go—</blockquote><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">Welcome thatch, and litter below!</blockquote><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">Joy was hers in the morning! </blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"> </blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">And then they heard the angels tell</blockquote><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">'Who were the first to cry NOWELL?</blockquote><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">Animals all, as it befell,</blockquote><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">In the stable where they did dwell!</blockquote><blockquote style="border: medium; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">Joy
shall be theirs in the morning!'</blockquote></blockquote><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG8ZezzawT_PyOVikaY8dg9Rb8k7E0Jea5-HbhSRESE-nLoGaTJimCRLudMJIiTTSZ1tz4GstJtOwde1V21MbzVR6rsnKVjMZVc3qUfXn_yL8xxL6g5gfsif-sIcG3tYR9M2sQFSMFC8m759_LTx46XNIkkTNOhe6dvdfpvMdnIbgNRqjQ20DT8RDf33FJ/s800/800px-Louis_Pierre_Verwe%CC%81e_-_Belgian_winter_landscape.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="A wintry landscape painting with a lake, snowy path with a horse and rider on it, pollarded willow trees, and vast partly cloudy sky" border="0" data-original-height="549" data-original-width="800" height="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG8ZezzawT_PyOVikaY8dg9Rb8k7E0Jea5-HbhSRESE-nLoGaTJimCRLudMJIiTTSZ1tz4GstJtOwde1V21MbzVR6rsnKVjMZVc3qUfXn_yL8xxL6g5gfsif-sIcG3tYR9M2sQFSMFC8m759_LTx46XNIkkTNOhe6dvdfpvMdnIbgNRqjQ20DT8RDf33FJ/w400-h275/800px-Louis_Pierre_Verwe%CC%81e_-_Belgian_winter_landscape.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Belgian winter landscape" (19th century)<br />by Louis-Pierre Verwee<br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Louis_Pierre_Verwée_-_Belgian_winter_landscape.jpeg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></td></tr></tbody></table> </p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;">The voices ceased, the singers, bashful but smiling, exchanged
sidelong glances, and silence succeeded—but for a moment only. Then,
from up above and far away, down the tunnel they had so lately
travelled was borne to their ears in a faint musical hum the sound of
distant bells ringing a joyful and clangorous peal. </p></blockquote><p></p><p><u>Source:</u> <i>The Wind in the Willows</i>, by Kenneth Grahame [<a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks/fr100025.txt">Project Gutenberg Australia</a>]</p>Edithorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12785482134177392627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4274376457367230416.post-41528349585210572842023-12-05T14:58:00.003+01:002023-12-17T12:24:22.327+01:00A 15th-Century Storke Carol<p>"The Storke" is as far as I know not well known in Canada, the United States, or indeed in the United Kingdom where it was written in the 15th century.</p><p>But it was set to music by the Canadian conductor Ernest MacMillan around 1927. I heard it in a recording from the late 1990s, by the Canadian choral group Elmer Iseler Singers in their album <i>Noël: Early Canadian Christmas Music / Music canadienne d'antan pour Noël</i>.</p><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_MacMillan">MacMillan</a> had been captured in Germany during World War I, as he was visiting Bayreuth when the war broke out, and interned in Ruhleben. He would only return home in 1919.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6vptfJyE8uzjBkl6K53cAzhhRufL-hFdfvCmVJgQ08jixBWBocRl8MLSi0ocjlq9SX-vbUMG82gtclFs-W9dCugEJZhlqeRrxZZSo01b_5j-AYfFXcBifLSR_spORuIJL-JYPA1UnooqXP1dbQGnqc5PNEOfecrGSIhmLFJ9nds22LuRKZeYOZXx7nCxI/s331/De_arte_venandi_cum_avibus5.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="186" data-original-width="331" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6vptfJyE8uzjBkl6K53cAzhhRufL-hFdfvCmVJgQ08jixBWBocRl8MLSi0ocjlq9SX-vbUMG82gtclFs-W9dCugEJZhlqeRrxZZSo01b_5j-AYfFXcBifLSR_spORuIJL-JYPA1UnooqXP1dbQGnqc5PNEOfecrGSIhmLFJ9nds22LuRKZeYOZXx7nCxI/s320/De_arte_venandi_cum_avibus5.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"De arte venandi cum avibus"<br />13th cent. Creator unknown.<br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:De_arte_venandi_cum_avibus5.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></td></tr></tbody></table><p>According to Clifford Ford's liner notes for the album, MacMillan's interest in an old poem reflected a general "revival of English folk songs" during the first half of the 20th century. (The earliest edition of "The Storke" as a poem I found on Google Books was from ~1914.) Ford adds, referring also to a song "I Sing of a Maiden,"</p><p></p><blockquote>The original tunes for these carols have not survived, but MacMillan's vocal lines, sensitive accompaniments, and metrical shifts to accommodate textual accents, produce two charming settings reminiscent of Vaughan Williams.</blockquote><p></p><p>In the UK, Donald Swann, who himself had an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Swann">adventurous life</a>, picked up the poem a generation later and set it to music in <i>Sing Round the Year</i> (1968).</p><p>Both settings can be found on YouTube.</p><p>***</p><p><i><b><u>The Storke</u></b></i></p><p>1. The storke shee rose on Christmas-eve,<br />And sayed unto her brood,<br />I nowe must fare to Bethleem<br />To view the Sonne of God.</p><p>2. Shee gave to ache his dole of mete,<br />She stowed them fayrlie in,<br />And farre shee flew And fast she flew,<br />And came to Bethleem.</p><p>3. Nowe where is He of David, line?<br />She askd at house and halle.<br />He is not here, They spake hardlye,<br />But in the Maungier stalle.</p><p>4. Shee found hym in the maungier stalle.<br />With that most Holye Babye,<br />The gentyle storke shee wept to see<br />The Lord so rudelye layde.</p><p>5. Then from her pauntynge brest shee pluckd<br />The fethers whyte and warm;<br />Shee strawed them in the Maungier bed<br />To kepe the Lord from harm.</p><p>6. Nowe blessed bee the gentle storke<br />For evermore, Quothe Hee,<br />For that shee saw my sadde estate<br />And showed such Pytye.</p><p>(7. Full welkum shall shee ever bee<br />In hamlet and in halle,<br />And hight henceforth The blessed Byrd,<br />And friend of Babyes alle.)</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3rY6zQOHU5yGakxngNIBril0hLjgMZD8dldprHmOJXSbGvZIOWAud34JfK3j5UEKuXocgT_RT6Qgf7OcEZcp9bsmBptp1qE-SaBkGuXnSMb1Cdlc2x6k_3Ey2SSRlsra7Ycqm71a0tgAflUkBofzXcimqrdS9aDbt0MCKHTA34TC7bhYSlv_yAavGVHBD/s600/Arras_015.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="451" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3rY6zQOHU5yGakxngNIBril0hLjgMZD8dldprHmOJXSbGvZIOWAud34JfK3j5UEKuXocgT_RT6Qgf7OcEZcp9bsmBptp1qE-SaBkGuXnSMb1Cdlc2x6k_3Ey2SSRlsra7Ycqm71a0tgAflUkBofzXcimqrdS9aDbt0MCKHTA34TC7bhYSlv_yAavGVHBD/w301-h400/Arras_015.jpg" width="301" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Stork (detail of a tapestry)." 1550s.<br />Artist unknown - City of Brussels.<br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Arras_015.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p><br /></p>Edithorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12785482134177392627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4274376457367230416.post-45005707394394837922023-09-03T23:46:00.006+02:002023-09-10T13:20:18.781+02:00Berlin Reads, 2023: A Short Story by Idza Luhumyo<p>The International Berlin Literature Festival formally begins on September 6th this year, but '<a href="https://literaturfestival.com/berlin-liest-am-03-09-2023/">Berlin liest</a>' is a long running prefatory tradition that my bookseller mother has also celebrated once or twice.</p><p>'Berlin reads': People and businesses read aloud a book, for no more than 30 minutes, in public. It's a kind of 'amuse bouche' for the festival itself.</p><p>***</p><p>There are few restrictions, but the organizers offered a few nudges. Why not read poetry by Dinçer Güçyeter, whose prose and poetry memoir <i><b>Unser Deutschlandmärchen</b></i> won the prize at the Leipzig Book Fair in April? Or Palestinian author and current New Yorker Ibtisam Azem, who wrote <b><i>Das Buch vom Verschwinden</i></b> as a reflection on the ongoing conflict in Israel and the Palestinian Territories? Salman Rushdie's <b><i>Victory City</i></b> is also on the list, in honour of the author who was notoriously attacked last year. Jeffrey Eugenides's <b><i>Virgin Suicides</i></b> and <b><i>Middlesex</i></b> are well known, Bora Chung's short stories in <i>Der Fluch des Hasen</i> (<b><i>Cursed Bunny)</i></b> imaginative works of fiction.</p><p>In the end I read the magical realist short story "<b><i>Five Years Next Sunday</i></b>." Idza Luhumyo won the Caine Prize for African Writing for it, in 2022. You can read it as well <a href="http://www.caineprize.com/the-stories-2022">on the Prize's website</a>.</p><p>It's short, but full of imagery, and the metaphors are so complex that I wasn't able to disentangle them fully. (If they <i>are</i> all metaphors; some things you can probably also understand literally, like acquaintances rudely pawing the protagonist's hair.) Pili, the main character, is being emotionally bled dry by the family (parents and teenaged brothers) and new friends around her. On one level she sees through their motivations, on another level she doggedly takes their purported affection at face value. At the same time, I think, Pili is scrambling for a chance to escape and to chase her own daydreams.</p><p></p><blockquote><p>She keeps looking outside, reporting on the gathering of the clouds, the darkening of the day, the flight of the birds. “Rain is coming,” she whispers.</p></blockquote>Edithorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12785482134177392627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4274376457367230416.post-45022963883446281212023-08-03T00:13:00.001+02:002023-08-03T00:13:13.266+02:00August 2022 in Books: What I'm Reading<p>It's a colossus and I'm still running back and forth between its legs like a Brutus (to attempt a poor Shakespeare allusion). But gradually I'm tackling the audiobook recording of Robert A. Caro's memoir of Lyndon B. Johnson during his vice presidency under John F. Kennedy: <b>The Passage of Power</b>.</p><p>If it were a <i>Columbo</i> television crime show episode, I'd say at once that Johnson was the mastermind who organized Kennedy's assassination. Jealousy, enmity, rivalry, and humiliation teem in the pages.</p><p>It's hard to regard Kennedy's presidency as a saintly Camelot, or to consider even Robert F. Kennedy as a kindly figure, if one reads about the dynamics behind the scenes. That said, no individual actions of the Kennedys stick in my memory as criminal; the Kennedys generally just seem sort of mean. (Well, all right, I think the patriarch was genuinely a 'piece of work.') Johnson himself, however, practically built his career on electoral fraud and political crimes.</p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIQnKVNqjAnqeyzYmx8HYCZdFSBy3a5hciRCocRqbp4ML7sel2Ar5MVBorDj0oR3sem5bBLsS7OFo6Z15OI0mn9pExwLlulQvVEUQCk4Hq5qkoBlmUOhlyniCgt8cqdODlPmm5RnBzE0p3Of-sHNYT6pUaoeujyAsFj8T-v2EYmA3Tl9A4ltgJbX6lfQg-/s600/Senator_Lyndon_Johnson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="417" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIQnKVNqjAnqeyzYmx8HYCZdFSBy3a5hciRCocRqbp4ML7sel2Ar5MVBorDj0oR3sem5bBLsS7OFo6Z15OI0mn9pExwLlulQvVEUQCk4Hq5qkoBlmUOhlyniCgt8cqdODlPmm5RnBzE0p3Of-sHNYT6pUaoeujyAsFj8T-v2EYmA3Tl9A4ltgJbX6lfQg-/s320/Senator_Lyndon_Johnson.jpg" width="222" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Photo portrait of Lyndon B. Johnson<br />as U.S. Senator for Texas<br />and Majority Leader"<br />(1950s)<br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Senator_Lyndon_Johnson.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span><br /><i>Public domain</i></td></tr></tbody></table><p>So it does feel as if one scratched the surface of the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. and found it — and by extension the entire presidency and democratic system — to be made not so much of stone, as of paper-mâché formed to look like stone.</p><p>And of course the other paradox: despite the emotional and moral hollowness that marked parts of their political lives, Kennedy, Johnson, and others, achieved genuine, lasting good. — And before Kennedy's political career, [as mentioned in a past blog post] his rescue of his fellow sailors in a torpedo boat in World War II really is the stuff of superheroes, and makes for a thrilling adventure in Caro's prose.</p><p>It's also astonishing how many significant historical details are no longer known, now that the former President and Vice-President have died.</p><p>The most significant detail, perhaps:</p><p>Did Kennedy offer the vice presidency to Johnson assuming, after their fierce primary battle and mutual hatred, that Johnson would reject the offer? Or was it in fact a purposeful, strategic move to enable Kennedy to win more votes than Richard Nixon's Republicans in the South?</p><p>***</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl48eSpOg-BhaIHWFleK0-wXuNboIllNWxfqpm3taFDYXh3-LJ2WWma91A6XgSVWFhMOf6IokORkhDftwKltYE8qLS1R_cTws4udtMj8AD3GLrPRLnXMlZW8wx4-qTl59FL2ZjScgG_EVRMhgNdUi-bj_4J2q35XJKuH5ALXsO5V9PN49wldUZA3WXCBi6/s280/9780888013767_0x280ConnellyTouchDragon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="280" data-original-width="186" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl48eSpOg-BhaIHWFleK0-wXuNboIllNWxfqpm3taFDYXh3-LJ2WWma91A6XgSVWFhMOf6IokORkhDftwKltYE8qLS1R_cTws4udtMj8AD3GLrPRLnXMlZW8wx4-qTl59FL2ZjScgG_EVRMhgNdUi-bj_4J2q35XJKuH5ALXsO5V9PN49wldUZA3WXCBi6/s1600/9780888013767_0x280ConnellyTouchDragon.jpg" width="186" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">New cover of <i>Touch the Dragon</i><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">From the <a href="https://www.turnstonepress.com/books/non-fiction.html">Turnstone Press</a></span></td></tr></tbody></table><p>Karen Connelly's <b>Touch the Dragon</b> (1994) was given to me by my paternal grandfather when I was a teenager.</p><p>The author went to Thailand on a student exchange when she was seventeen years old. It was the 1980s. She was a Canadian who didn't know much of the language, but she is taught partly by immersion and partly in a school.</p><p>In brilliant prose, Connelly describes daily life from the glamourous to the not-so-glamourous. She writes frankly of the mental discomfort of adjusting to what feels like a diametrically opposed new reality, and dishes about the dissolution of her relationship with a boyfriend back in Canada.</p><p>It's affectionately, immersively written. Connelly's sarcastic, worldly-wise voice as an author recalling her younger self is pitch-perfect — but I think that one or two snap judgments that seem insensitive, like calling music at a festival 'horrific,' could also have been edited away without weakening the book.</p><p>***</p><p>Otto Hahn's autobiography, <b>Mein Leben</b>, is not a famous book. But from reading it I have been converted from someone who knows that he was a famous German scientist, to an admirer of him personally.</p><p>He is generously precise about his life, starting in a lower-middle-class family in Frankfurt am Main, through his university years and his escapades e.g. in duelling fraternities, and his various youthful loves and losses.... And that's as far as I've gotten. His life certainly did not end in the early 1900s, and later chapters will likely detail his attitudes toward the two World Wars, and the Cold War.</p><p>Christopher Nolan's film <b>Oppenheimer</b> has come out in theaters, tracing the role and reaction of a different scientist to knowledge pursued for the sake of military applications. It would be interesting to compare the different works.</p>Edithorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12785482134177392627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4274376457367230416.post-16636934571796198712023-01-20T01:36:00.000+01:002023-01-20T01:36:08.673+01:00On Shaping Poetry: Audre Lorde<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSjfGyImCt0Y-BTt7XVjsoPbFRnpjwhnljvGhxbz-OjXK7EuUodrtzwWA26w1wwHwdVvxJ4Gq9-e-fEg0Y_o-3zVqDhi8Jq-L07ZDM8FiVfd33b-iAT4ETr-6el-cXAFjcg_qXY4ny_xKSRAqyg7AXE8Alm_JjV6jZPRfymcJV90f4cSZlwC6W3N5lDw/s405/Sister_outsider_cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="405" data-original-width="245" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSjfGyImCt0Y-BTt7XVjsoPbFRnpjwhnljvGhxbz-OjXK7EuUodrtzwWA26w1wwHwdVvxJ4Gq9-e-fEg0Y_o-3zVqDhi8Jq-L07ZDM8FiVfd33b-iAT4ETr-6el-cXAFjcg_qXY4ny_xKSRAqyg7AXE8Alm_JjV6jZPRfymcJV90f4cSZlwC6W3N5lDw/s320/Sister_outsider_cover.jpg" width="194" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cover of <i>Sister Outsider</i><br />Audre Lorde<br />Crossing Press, 1984<br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">via <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sister_outsider_cover.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>, Fair use</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div>The American professor/essayist/poet/feminist Audre Lorde's useful advice about 'finding' a poem: <blockquote><span style="font-size: medium;">I was revising too much instead of writing new poems.<br /><br />[...] poetry is not Play-Doh. You can’t take a poem and keep reforming it. It is itself, and you have to know how to cut it. And if there’s something else you want to say, that’s fine.</span></blockquote><div><div><i>From an interview with Adrienne Rich, 1979, in <b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sister_Outsider">Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches</a></b> (audiobook, narrated by Robin Eller). Read in 2019.</i></div></div>Edithorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12785482134177392627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4274376457367230416.post-13900008276809937552023-01-15T16:17:00.022+01:002023-09-10T13:22:02.836+02:00Spare: A Memoir of British Royalty and War<p>My godfather, knowing my penchant for gossip, offered to buy this bestseller for me; and I gratefully accepted. Yesterday he came over for coffee and cake, brought it along, and I began reading it.</p><p>The first thing that struck me was, from a literary perspective, that the prose was not good. There would be paragraphs of exposition, and then lapidary short sentences in americanized English, which (to do them too much honour) reminded me aside from the americanization of the '<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_and_wheel">bob and wheel'</a> structure of <i>Sir Gawain and the Green Knight</i>. "The sky was gray, but the tulips were popping" is not going to win any Nobel Prizes either.</p><p>Prince Harry is uncomfortable with expressing himself in writing — fair enough, but at least his ghostwriter could have found a better stylistic embodiment of a masculine, military-trained point of view, streaked with New Age touchy-feelyness. At its worst, it was something that E.L. James might write in the first person from the perspective of a U.S. Navy Seal. The editor, too, left "nonplussed" where 'nonchalant' was meant, and did not seem to realize that "running like a top" is a malapropism.</p><p>But it soon became clear why even literary critics, apart from John Crace in his pastiche in the <i>Guardian</i>, ignored these aspects.</p><p>The subject matter and emotion of Prince Harry's memoir — the story of his life, the self-irony, the sincere battle to overcome the experience of losing his mother, and his genuine-seeming empathy — are far more important. If you don't want to read the book but still are curious, try watching last week's interview with the American talk show host Stephen Colbert.</p><p>First and foremost, the memoir is about his grief. His brother William and he had famously enjoyed a close relationship with their mother in spite of royal conventions and her absences: the games their mother played with them, her child-appropriate vein of humour (burping contests etc.), her warm way of building relationships with employees as well as a large circle of friends, and her affection. At the same time, her sons knew her mercurial sides, too.</p><p>Losing her was an experience that, as a nine-year-old boy, Prince Harry could not handle well. He felt guilty for not crying more when she died, he refused to talk about her for years, and he had trouble remembering specific things about her.</p><p>(I don't know if it's in any way the same thing. But the memory loss reminded me of a personal experience: a bad year in school in Germany seemed to wipe out the memories of the four years of school I'd had in Canada before that.)</p><p>His 'magical thinking' that his mother was just hiding, living in peace until she felt ready to claim her sons again, rang a bell for me.</p><p>(I kept dreaming that the hospital was keeping my late father in a basement for medical research, and that eventually he would be woken up out of general anaesthesia and sent back to us. I haven't mentioned this before as it was nutty. Anyway, it's comforting to read that others have delusions like these, too.)</p><p>Aside from that tragedy, the book explains things I'd wondered about as a child, one or two years younger than Harry: what it was like to be a prince.</p><p>He explains that he suffered at school from having not just his teachers and father, but also the whole world, know how terrible his grades were. When there was gossip about a haircut gone wrong, it wasn't only a whisper network of fellow pupils who'd know about it, but in fact every child and adult in his life, because it was reported in the press. It's clear that every child has pressures and embarrassments, but that these are heightened if the press has no ethical barrier to reporting about minors.</p><p>There are also heart-warming family details, for example: "My mother used to say that being around Granny was like standing on a moving carpet" because of her throng of corgis.</p><p>And I liked the wry humour when he said that a girlfriend first struck his fancy because she 'wasn't visibly fitting herself for a crown' when she met him.</p><p>The book also reveals how Prince Harry felt after going to a party in an SA uniform when he was older, in 2005. It's clear that he regrets it and he explains again why it was bad — paying tribute as he does so to the (unnamed) late Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. A later scandal was being photographed naked in Las Vegas, something I'd forgotten about and which is appropriately presented in the book as embarrassing but not morally questionable on his part.</p><p>Prince Harry's service in the military also, of course, forms a large part of his autobiography. To me, it's a part he hasn't fully processed. He hammers the point home that life with the British press was so unendurable that the military became a haven. There is nuance in what he describes — not writing Victorian-style jingoistic prose, but presenting both Afghan civilians and Taliban fighters as people, and expressing doubts about ethical aspects. To me, he did not 'boast' about his kills. I also greatly appreciated as a woman that he consistently mentioned women members of the military instead of defaulting to male.</p><p>But I still feel uncomfortable. The war zone is not just a tabloid-free godsend or a liberation from rigid socioeconomic hierarchies (he becomes a 'normal person' there: no class distinction). It is not just a place where soldiers become badly injured or traumatized or both, and then require organizations and events like the Invictus Games that Harry helped organize. It has other implications too. Also, on a more trivial level, I didn't like the idea of soldiers reading 'lad magazines' to pass the time either, but perhaps I'm too exacting.</p><p>I also feel uncomfortable, to a lesser degree, with the hunting lifestyle in which Prince Harry was immersed from childhood — he began to shoot squirrels and other small game at the age of twelve.</p><p>Lastly, to complete the chronology of his life so far, he describes his relationship with Meghan — as touchingly besotted with her in the book as he is in interviews and documentaries, live television coverage and photographs.</p><p>He describes their relationship's obstacles, although these chapters feel more perfunctory perhaps because a Netflix documentary already laid it all out. His and Meghan's press office was overwhelmed by answering journalists' requests and correcting press reports, and the tough working environment that was falsely laid at the door of his wife was in fact just a reflection of this influx, he explains. Her own workplace was at one point "on lockdown because someone, reacting to what they'd read, had made a credible threat."</p><p>For their picturesque wedding, the security personnel had set up snipers: "On the rooftops, amid the bunting, behind the waterfalls of streamers. Police told me it was unusual, but necessary. Due to the unprecedented number of threats they were picking up."</p><p>Their neighbours, friends, distant relatives of the bride, etc. were all subject to reporters' harassment. One case that he especially despised was that in the United States, the bride's mother job was helping people who were in palliative care, but</p><p></p><blockquote>Paps scaled the walls and fences of many patients she visited. In other words, every day there was yet another person, like Mummy, whose last sound on earth ... would be a click.</blockquote><p></p><p>***</p><p>After reading <i>Spare</i>, I don't agree that Harry was dragging down his father. In fact, like Diana and Sarah (Fergie), Charles is one of the figures in the book who are presented in a kindly, respectful light (I think) unlike tabloid coverage. Prince Harry writes of Charles's attempts to be a more engaged father after Diana dies, of his hard work ethic, of his intellectual rigour and far-ranging interests, and of his empathetic but also healthily critical-minded support during Harry's worst public gaffes.</p><p>After reading of Princess Diana as a loose cannon, a failure, and an embarrassment, for decades, it is also refreshing to see her differently: as a good mother who won the respect and love of her children, and a courageous person who against great odds at least tried to fight against the press instead of tamely submitting.</p><p>'Aunt Sarah' is the relative who made sure that Harry and William had locks of Diana's hair to remember her by, bringing these back from Paris in 1997. She helps Harry give Meghan Markle a crash course in royal etiquette when Meghan meets the Queen for the first time. Her daughter Eugenie (meanspiritedly caricatured in social media as an 'ugly stepsister' during William's and Kate's wedding) is one of Harry's and Meghan's best friends, giving warmth and support when these were needed.</p><p><i>Spare</i>'s passages on ex-girlfriends are also dignified: Chelsy Davy, Caroline Flack, Florence ?, and Cressida Bonas are presented to us kindly and thoughtfully. I felt it was also a tribute to Meghan that Harry was evidently free to include them in this way.</p><p>His affection for his sister-in-law Kate is also clear.</p><p>Unrelated to the Royal Family <i>per se</i>, what brightens the book and also speaks well for Prince Harry is the way he depicts the bodyguards and other employees whom he grows up with, as well as fellow soldiers.</p><p>Often bodyguards are depicted as unfeeling Big Brother figures who prevent celebrities from going and doing what they like, imprisoning them in a secure routine that takes the spontaneity and freedom from their lives. In Harry's book they become something analogous to childhood teachers whom we learned a lot from, like personally in spite of the professional barrier, and also keep in touch with later in life; and he also genuinely relies on their protection. This dynamic also explains why, for example, his wife describes in a documentary sobbing in the arms of a bodyguard when they decided to leave the UK.</p><p>Harry's empathy also comes across in how he describes the point of view of his entourage. One example: I liked how he considered the point of view of the chauffeur whom he asked to drive him through the tunnel where Princess Diana died.</p><p>Even the detail of the conflict-free diamond in the engagement ring that he arranges for his soon-to-be fiancé expresses a well-rounded view of his influence on the world around him.</p><p>***</p><p>That said, there were lapses into 'First World Problems.'</p><p>On a trivial level, I was annoyed by the suggestion that shopping for furniture from Ikea due to a lower budget is a humiliation. For my family, the fact that we don't need to go into deep debt for decent mattresses, bookshelves and kitchen shelves, a wardrobe, and bed frames, has been a godsend. If anything it would make sense to have concerns about forest stewardship, fair wages, and the survival of craftsmen.</p><p>Also, does the Palace need to release a statement saying that Meghan's wardrobe had been officially pre-approved, if a newspaper complains about her jeans at a public event? The tabloids are reflecting the petty preoccupations of minds at any socioeconomic level who, knowing no purer joy in life, just try to tear down others. If I hear someone calling someone else 'pudgy,' I generally sigh inwardly with exasperation at their lack of better priorities and move on.</p><p>***</p><p>Where the book's ethics falter on a personal level is in the depiction of Prince William. Here I think that Prince Harry's advisors should have intervened, or not egged him on.</p><p>In a charitable interpretation, Prince Harry is trying to break on William's behalf the ban on admitting that he is prey to human emotions, and trying to explain to his readers William's childhood trauma as well. He is expressing brotherly concern.</p><p>He also expressly defends William at times. For example he was annoyed that when William tried to protect his wife by restricting press access or said something that could be construed as anti-Brexit, the tabloid media (who was profiting both from the royal gossip and the pro-Brexit campaign) began to grind an axe.</p><p>But in the end, William's private life and feelings generally should have been William's own choice to share and describe. The more twisted these are, the more important it would have been to respect his privacy — for example, his drunken turmoil before his wedding, which also seems unfair to Kate.</p><p>In my view, it's fine for Harry to reveal that he drove through the tunnel in Paris where his mother died to try to understand if her death was accidental or not; but it's not for him to reveal if anyone else in his family did.</p><p>The most twisted scenes of the brothers' relationship in the book were not, to me, the one-sided physical fight that was leaked before publication. It was the argument of whether Prince Harry could wear a beard at his own wedding or not, which seemed emotionally abusive and also made me a little concerned on Kate's behalf. During his 'stag night' before the wedding to Meghan, Harry writes,</p><p></p><blockquote><p>I also feared that if I got too [...] drunk and passed out, Willy and his mates would hold me down and shave me.</p><p>In fact Willy told me explicitly, in all seriousness, that this was his plan.</p></blockquote><p></p><p>Less seriously, William's squabbles about who can monopolize which sphere of charity — whether it's wildlife or the entire (chronically overgeneralized — I rolled my eyes a lot here, as I'm not sure if either of the brothers ever set foot in, say, Egypt, or Algeria, or the Central African Republic) continent of Africa — also sound as ridiculous to me as they evidently did to Harry. And had neo-colonialist overtones.</p><p>But Prince Harry has apparently never been asked to fully see things from Prince William's point of view. It may not be a good point of view and as written above, elements of the elder brother's behaviour seem borderline abusive. But stray insights, like William feeling that he has been held to an "impossibly high standard," deserve consideration and could be delved into without betraying confidences.</p><p>The passages about Prince William generally suffer from bias due to sibling rivalry. For example I thought it was inappropriate to mention his impending baldness, a Samson-esque proxy for a power struggle between the two brothers. Such a power struggle is normal and happens within many families, I imagine — but writing about it publicly feeds into the cruelty of the press on the same subject, and is an unfair use of publicity leverage.</p><p>It is always difficult as an eldest child or younger child to define one's own role in the family. Who is trusted and given responsibility by the parents? who is given better and larger gifts? and so on and so forth. This is something that needs to be handled in private, or acknowledged with that context and perspective in public. It is not a singular persecution that only Prince Harry faces.</p><p>Animus tinged the representation of Thomas Markle, too. Anyone who cares to intrude on Meghan's father's privacy can find unflattering articles on the internet. It's not necessary to defend Meghan by treating him contemptuously. It still feels as if he was more victim than villain; I wondered if pressure from tabloid reporters triggered the heart attack before his daughter's wedding.</p><p>***</p><p>It is no surprise after watching Netflix's <i>The Crown</i> how manipulative the Royal Family's public relations teams and staff can be. I think this is one of the open ends of the book, no resolution being in sight yet unless perhaps the United Kingdom does decide to abolish the monarchy.</p><p>Family members want more press coverage for themselves, more <i>favourable</i> press coverage for themselves, and more press coverage for their charitable events. The Court Circular (i.e. annual public events calendar) becomes a horse race as each family member tries to achieve the most public engagements. Budgets are fought for. Christmas at Sandringham becomes an annual ordeal instead of an annual idyll.</p><p>Press officers with little sense of proportion or ethics encourage Royal family members to leak confidential information and plant unflattering articles about each other, to look good by comparison. Prince Harry also plausibly suggests that importing public relations personnel from politics into royal family members' offices has introduced a fiercer culture of backbiting.</p><p>But a happy ending is the legal victory in Hackergate, as well as the later legal victory regarding the publication of Meghan's letter to her father. Harry doesn't even need to mention much about how phone tapping by tabloid newspapers poisoned friendships and trust by making Royal Family members think that their circle was knowingly talking about confidential matters to the press. Or the fact that there was a tracking device on the car of his girlfriend, so the press could follow her everywhere. It's fortunately now known.</p><p>In the psychological effects of the preceding snooping and mind games, there are echoes of the 5th season of <i>The Crown</i>: to help procure an interview with Princess Diana, Martin Bashir presented spurious evidence to her that British intelligence services were monitoring her, exacerbating her "paranoia."</p><p>I'd like to think that now the media are far more inhibited in what they can do, if only due to their own self-interest. Perhaps also due to the lucrative new industry of minor celebrities' self-promotion, even more than legal precariousness.</p><p>Whether I'm contributing to the industry of nosy, harmful scrutiny of celebrities' private lives by reading the book and writing this review is, however, something I still need to finish thinking about.</p><p><br /></p><p><i>[<u>Update:</u> An <a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2023-01-12/prince-harry-spare-errors-ghostwriter-sales">article in the Los Angeles Times</a> gathers examples of factual errors in the book. The XBox gaming console being mentioned as existing in 1997 did strike me while reading.]</i></p>Edithorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12785482134177392627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4274376457367230416.post-34930744536206154492023-01-13T03:08:00.006+01:002023-01-13T03:18:43.711+01:00January 2023 in Books: What I'm Reading<p>In January my programme is tinged by research for a World War I story.</p><p><b>All Quiet on the Western Front</b> is deservedly famous: deeply humane, descriptive, truthful-feeling, and philosophical. I believe it gained in mellowness from the fact that Erich Maria Remarque published it a decade after the war. It is also hard to understand its offensiveness to Fascist readers if one contrasts the truly bitter poetry and prose that was written by other veterans.</p><p><b>Diary of a nursing sister on the western front, 1914-1915</b> (1915) represents the perspective of an American nurse with the Red Cross who was already a graduate of the Boer War, embodying in its grim details the message in Remarque's trenchant verdict, "Erst das Lazarett zeigt, was Krieg ist" (roughly translated: <i>The field hospital is the first thing that shows what war is.</i>). It can be read at <a href="https://archive.org/details/diaryofnursingsi00nursuoft/page/n7/mode/2up">Archive.org</a>.</p><p>Lindsey Fitzharris's <b>Facemaker: One Surgeon's Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I</b> (<a href="https://www.google.de/books/edition/The_Facemaker/eeE7EAAAQBAJ?hl=de&gbpv=1&dq=inauthor:Lindsey+inauthor:Fitzharris&printsec=frontcover">Google Books</a>) goes deeper by exploring the revolutionary skin grafting and cosmetic surgeries that were performed by Harold Gillies. Highly readable except insofar as the details of how the wounds were given and how the wounds were mitigated are equally gruesome, it explains the time before penicillin was used in battlefield surgery and before modern plastic surgery and its tools existed. (It is also important to note that the term 'disfigured' reflects the judgment of society, not the patients.) "Only the dead have seen the end of war," George Santayana writes, in one of the epigraphs that she inserts at the beginning of the book.</p><p>James Norman Hall's books <b>Kitchener's Mob</b> (1916) and <b>High Adventure: A Narrative of Air Fighting in France</b> (<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24570">Project Gutenberg</a>) (1918) would however probably never fall afoul of a censor. He, like the Red Cross nurse, is an American who volunteered to be involved in the bloodshed.</p><p>I especially liked his prose, lyrical and highly detailed, and his philosophical views about both sides of the conflict.</p><p></p><blockquote>Then we learned the biscuit-tin-finder trick for locating snipers. It's only approximate, of course, but it gives a pretty good hint at the direction from which the shots come. It doesn't work in the daytime, for a sniper is too clever to fire at it. But a biscuit tin, set on the parapet at night in a badly sniped position, is almost certain to be hit. The angle from which the shots come is shown by the jagged edges of tin around the bullet holes. — <cite><i>Kitchener's Mob</i></cite> </blockquote><p></p><p>Fritz Kreisler also wrote a slender memoir, <b>Four Weeks in the Trenches: The War Story of a Violinist</b> (<a href="https://archive.org/details/fourweeksintren00kreigoog/page/n37/mode/2up">Archive.org</a>) (1915), of his time in the Austrian army. He was an officer, fighting Russians near eastern Austria at the outbreak of World War I. The book was printed in English in the United States, which was not yet aligned against Austria and Germany. The well-meaning naïveté of the emperor-worship and patriotism that the violinist faithfully describes in Vienna and in himself are striking, not dissimilar from the atmosphere in parts of the English population and for example Canada, and I think sad.</p><p>***</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQBkHMYmx04pFPWo8L4eGUEotKaQfSxADOOATXX3jla5xE9rhB5-iGAkrdgxjw8dNcHxaNZG_BdWZvd4GBNtFNkyRZhbL1e90NIJWjnXmDUq_yeVe6jQaEqkjkX2Vdqebchn3bGnLkvWXxTPBfVUaiCnELi34UgfM5A0IhbIqOMF71toOSwV6YHw_8kw/s1024/service-pnp-ggbain-17300-17385v.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Photograph shows French Moroccan soldiers, between Villeroy and Neufmoutiers, France, caring for a wounded German soldier during World War I. (Source: Flickr Commons project, 2011)" border="0" data-original-height="737" data-original-width="1024" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQBkHMYmx04pFPWo8L4eGUEotKaQfSxADOOATXX3jla5xE9rhB5-iGAkrdgxjw8dNcHxaNZG_BdWZvd4GBNtFNkyRZhbL1e90NIJWjnXmDUq_yeVe6jQaEqkjkX2Vdqebchn3bGnLkvWXxTPBfVUaiCnELi34UgfM5A0IhbIqOMF71toOSwV6YHw_8kw/w400-h288/service-pnp-ggbain-17300-17385v.jpg" title="French succoring wounded German" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"French succoring wounded German"<br />Bain News Service, 1914<br /><a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/2014697647/">Library of Congress</a></td></tr></tbody></table><p>***</p><p>World War I also inspired gripping poetry, of course. Siegfried Sassoon's "<a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_War_Poems_of_Siegfried_Sassoon/A_Working_Party">A Working Party</a>" (1919),is all dogged rhythm and onomatopoeia. But aside from this poem, a Rupert Brooke classic and another two from Wilfred Owens, and a little Edmund Blunden, I have not read much in the genre yet.</p><p>***</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicIQRLnpEMbkhKNyA14iK7tClFYFQiXS2-ICUTJSgoZhNkvWRK5AFjRL-u7W-BvY4iUVyBiiZ9Rn20hP9TW-nCRXVE_aZcOsYEdXgEwcoMGJhlfpzhsTjNz2DB-A-YjWxq3jyia-f-85BGLKWeUBTfQVRYRYvXlgXk3rWBst9FdEqwEFRNkZHwA0YLBw/s450/9780385348737.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="292" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicIQRLnpEMbkhKNyA14iK7tClFYFQiXS2-ICUTJSgoZhNkvWRK5AFjRL-u7W-BvY4iUVyBiiZ9Rn20hP9TW-nCRXVE_aZcOsYEdXgEwcoMGJhlfpzhsTjNz2DB-A-YjWxq3jyia-f-85BGLKWeUBTfQVRYRYvXlgXk3rWBst9FdEqwEFRNkZHwA0YLBw/w130-h200/9780385348737.jpeg" width="130" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cover of <i>The Splendid and the Vile</i><span><span><br />via <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/225405/the-splendid-and-the-vile-by-erik-larson/#">Penguin Random House</a></span></span></td></tr></tbody></table><p>But one historical book I'm reading, a massive work on World War II from the perspective of Sir Winston Churchill's environment, is set later. In <b>The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family and Defiance During the Blitz</b>, Erik Larson demystifies how popular the war actually was. Churchill found himself in the perverse situation not of being a five-year-old child clapping his hands in a Peter Pan theatre performance to show he believes in fairies, but of demonstrating how much he believed in declaring war on Germany in spite of a reluctant public, reluctant politicians like Sir Neville Chamberlain and Lord Halifax, a reluctant American government, and even a reluctant King who preferred his predecessor.</p><p>Reading about World War I through the biography of an insider like John Maynard Keynes, through the lens of a half-sympathetic, half-skeptical biographer, gave the similar impression of an elite with bizarre priorities, unmoored from reality. (e.g. Keynes's interest in cadging art from continental Europe, presumably so the war wouldn't benefit nobody.)</p><p>Larson sprinkles in epistolary passages and diary entries from a British elite that was at times tremendously catty, or gushing, or silly. He lends more human details, too, to Churchill:</p><blockquote><p>Often generals, ministers, and staff members would find themselves meeting with Churchill while he was in his bathtub, one of his favorite places to work. He also liked working in bed, and spent hours there each morning going through dispatches and reports, with a typist seated nearby.</p></blockquote><p>Regardless of whether the topic is political, historical, or social, Larson's prose is equally readable.</p><p>I only noticed one or two factual errors that might be due to the ebook edition I read: for example, München-Gladbach should be München Gladbach.*</p><p>*<u>Note</u>: this is a very pedantic criticism: In 1950 this German city, which appears in the book because the Royal Air Force bombarded it early in the war, acquired the hyphen; and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mönchengladbach">in 1960 it became Mönchengladbach</a>.</p><p>***</p><p><b>Passage to Power</b>, one of the American presidential biographer Robert A. Caro's magisterial works, is about Lyndon B. Johnson. But, at the spot where I'm in the audiobook recording now, he also delves into the war service of President John F. Kennedy, specifically the wreck of the future President's patrol torpedo boat during World War II.</p><p>Even living through the original explosion of the boat was a feat, of luck perhaps. In Caro's hands the tale of how Kennedy then rescues his wounded men and tries to make sure a ship picks them up, swimming many kilometres under adverse conditions, is nail-bitingly suspenseful. (The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrol_torpedo_boat_PT-109#Survival,_swim_to_Plum_Pudding_Island,_2_August">Wikipedia article about Patrol torpedo boat PT-109</a> and its fate is less dramatically paced than Caro's prose, but its epilogue about Kennedy's reconciliation with the commander of the Japanese ship that had sunk the patrol boat is touching.)</p><p>*</p><p>In more cheerful reading, Michelle Obama's <b>Becoming</b> and Nelson Mandela's <b>Long Walk to Freedom</b> are ongoing. I am also beginning to read <i>New York Times</i> food writer Melissa Clark's fusion cookbook, <b>Dinner in French</b>, and hope to try out a recipe once my work life settles down.</p>Edithorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12785482134177392627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4274376457367230416.post-27785024930493724152022-06-12T03:18:00.006+02:002023-09-10T13:27:20.940+02:00April, May & June 2022 In Books: What I've Been Reading<p>As always, I've been reading older books, although Akwaeke Emezi, Kacen Callender and Elizabeth Acevedo have all published new works in May that I'm looking forward to reading.</p><p>Thanks to colleagues clubbing together to buy me a gift certificate, I now also have <i><b>Transcendent Kingdom</b></i> by Yaa Gyasi and <i><b>If Beale Street Could Talk</b></i> by James Baldwin.</p><p>In paper form I finished reading the five tales by Nikolai Gogol. In the end, <b><i>The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich</i></b>, maybe also <b><i>Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka and His Aunt</i></b>, and <i><b>The Overcoat</b></i> were my favourites: the scene-painting, the emotions, and even the discomfort of seeing the social inequalities and imperfections that must have been full-blown tragedies in everyday reality.</p><p>*</p><p>Vaguely I remembered reading Lebanese Australian journalist Rania Abouzeid's posts on Twitter during the early years of the Arab Spring. A decade later, it turns out that she wrote at least two books about her experiences: living in Syria with middle-class families, and interviewing protesters and militants across an impressive spectrum.</p><p><b><i>Sisters of the War</i></b> (2020) focuses intimately on the lives of two girls and their families: one, from a pro-Assad, Alawite family — the other, from a revolutionary family. Perhaps it is written more for a younger audience, and the intention to draw attention to our shared humanity breathes through every page. I listened to an audiobook that helpfully offered the proper Arabic pronunciations.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQo8IzFOCwIBnIJpVKmoXd9bBvkZJlV2j_unBSDkM6W5A5HTp9ZZTmx6oivn4PfCHqDVBI6OHE26aocH4SpIe3b7SKGd6Md0xEoEBH3aJ_42e7I88WjSx8Pwj6_02ZAgPhjy016XTTABv8DaypH2nPW857AK3S03gVugCCcAvCYgRjS_mZsmAfpTMxbA/s594/SistersRaniaAbouzeid.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="594" data-original-width="396" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQo8IzFOCwIBnIJpVKmoXd9bBvkZJlV2j_unBSDkM6W5A5HTp9ZZTmx6oivn4PfCHqDVBI6OHE26aocH4SpIe3b7SKGd6Md0xEoEBH3aJ_42e7I88WjSx8Pwj6_02ZAgPhjy016XTTABv8DaypH2nPW857AK3S03gVugCCcAvCYgRjS_mZsmAfpTMxbA/s320/SistersRaniaAbouzeid.jpeg" width="213" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://clubs.scholastic.com/sisters-of-the-war/9781338551143-rco-us.html?cgid=3_6&rrec=true">Cover of <i>Sisters of the War</i></a> (Scholastic Publishing)</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p><b><i>No Turning Back: Life, Loss, and Hope in Wartime Syria</i></b> (2018) follows adult Syrians as they negotiate their path amongst various anti-Assad groups, culminating in being either witnesses to or also perpetrators of intense violence and in one case even sympathy with Isis. Abouzeid makes an unusual decision not to speak about rape, except when an al-Nusra militant alleges that Alawite prisons perpetrate it against women. While <b><i>Sisters of the War</i></b> also proves if proof were needed that she thinks the women's perspective is just as important, the book is guided largely by masculine points of view.</p><p>She uses the book to bust myths about the Syrian Arab Spring, and finds the leading threads in the entanglements of different revolutionary groups, al-Qaeda, the Turkish government, foreign intelligence agencies, etc. knowledgeably. (I was following the news at the time and recently rediscovered a diagram I'd drawn of which group or party was linked with which other group or party.)</p><p>The food scarcity, cut-off water supplies, self-interested diplomacy, disappearances, technological makeshifts, and bombing of residential areas, in the 2022 invasion of Ukraine; the torture and other abuses that Abouzeid describes in Syrian government prisons that will not have ended with the war; and the legacy that Syrians today still carry —these many open ends and tragic parallels make <i>No Turning Back</i> and <i>Sisters of the War</i> still feel urgent years later.</p><p><i><a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393356786/about-the-book">No Turning Back </a></i>[W. W. Norton & Company]</p><p>***</p><p><b>Public Service Announcement:</b> I'd like to take the opportunity to link to the resources at the <a href="https://dartcenter.org/topic/self-care-peer-support">Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma</a>. They take a modern approach, founded in mental health best practices and a care for the wellbeing of any journalist, source, and assistant, to understanding, acknowledging, and counteracting the risks of war reporting. On a personal note, I've cribbed some of the ideas here to help cope with work stress unrelated to war.</p><p>***</p><p><b><i>Tilly and the Crazy Eights</i></b> is a fictional novel that addresses another traumatic history — colonial and post-colonial treatment by Canadian government authorities of Indigenous people. </p><p>Monique Gray Smith had already written about Tilly, the youngest of the core cast of characters and a registered nurse who is tasked with caring for her elderly cohort, in another book that I haven't read. In this sequel, she introduces a knitting circle of elderly Indigenous ladies. They decide to travel to the southern United States in a bus, and to try to address something in their own 'bucket lists' — lists of things they would like to have done before they die.</p><p>Along their journey they carry their nightmares. For example: often sexually abused in Canadian residential (boarding) schools, many of the elder characters were forced to repress their own language, and taught that their cultural traditions were inferior and wrong. A few older and younger characters are trying to mend broken relationships; one older character has also survived cancer, and another is living with diabetes. In one case, an elder is personally affected by one of the thousands of unresolved murders and disappearances of First Nations women that are rarely prosecuted in Canadian courts.</p><p>I appreciated that the author included an Indigenous woman who came out as a lesbian during the feminist Second Wave in urban Canada, a perspective which one doesn't read about that often and is well (if sparingly) presented here.</p><p>Gray Smith guides the plot perceptibly with magical realism and other devices to the conclusions that she wants. I'd argue that a firefly that zooms in during a crisis moment like a B2 bomber, is not really a fair analogue to the coincidences and talismans that we sometimes look for as guideposts in life, for example. Some of the humour is maybe a little corny — realistic for the cast of characters, and yet I did feel the urge from time to time to stick a fork in my eye.</p><p>But I loved the genuine warmth in <i>Tilly and the Crazy Eights</i>.</p><p>The road trip itself — a writing challenge to the greatest literary genius and the 'merest plodder' alike — is well executed. Gray Smith gives tastes of the scenery and locations at just the real pace and depth of highwayside observation, not weighing down the book with pedantic exposition about historical, geographical or cultural minutiae.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhgCTrCpUonHuXf6uqssByoablRCXomfU-PKQbrMo4D574JynpN3fOSS9TxUwuFRHhqOlh4-v1ivLFcvHlBmShaBqfJ0p8rNwLMoOFIgGGl-SxcTQPvY2VuHChonnjB7cJRDnnaCw11IUZfemCwBdWaO2KpxHfvsggBPJhSRWk6jg8_S4t_tNHBnUClA/s773/TillyCrazyEightsSecondStoryPress.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="773" data-original-width="500" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhgCTrCpUonHuXf6uqssByoablRCXomfU-PKQbrMo4D574JynpN3fOSS9TxUwuFRHhqOlh4-v1ivLFcvHlBmShaBqfJ0p8rNwLMoOFIgGGl-SxcTQPvY2VuHChonnjB7cJRDnnaCw11IUZfemCwBdWaO2KpxHfvsggBPJhSRWk6jg8_S4t_tNHBnUClA/s320/TillyCrazyEightsSecondStoryPress.jpg" width="207" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://secondstorypress.ca/adult/tilly-and-the-crazy-eights">Cover of <i>Tilly and the Crazy Eights</i></a> (Second Story Press)</td></tr></tbody></table><p>***</p><p>Lastly, I read <b><i>Efrén Divided</i></b>, by Ernesto Cisneros, and some of <b><i>The Ghost Squad</i></b>, by Claribel Ortega. The first book — which explores the effects of American immigration law enforcement in the 2010s on Latino-American families from a teenage boy's perspective — especially is wonderful and a 'tear-jerker', not necessarily just for tween and teenage readers. The publication year of <i>The Ghost Squad </i>is a little unfairly positioned chronologically, between the Harry Potter books, which also deal with magic, and were published before Ortega's book, and the film <i>Encanto</i>, which also deals with magic, and was released after Ortega's book. If you're interested in imaginary young people doing fun magic for good causes, I recommend <i>Encanto</i>.</p>Edithorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12785482134177392627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4274376457367230416.post-71128784297644337242022-05-10T01:00:00.007+02:002022-05-10T01:03:25.152+02:00Around the World in 32 Countries: South Korea<p><u>Official languages:</u></p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Korean (Pyojuneo)</li><li>Korean Sign Language</li></ul><div><u>Capital City:</u> Seoul</div><div><u>Surface Area:</u> 100,363 km<sup>2</sup> (smaller than North Korea, larger than Taiwan)</div><div><br /></div><div><u>Currency:</u> Korean Republic won</div><div><u>Driving side:</u> right</div><div><br /></div><div><u>Main trading partners:</u> China, United States, Vietnam, Taiwan, Japan</div><p></p><p><i>Sources: "South Korea" [</i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Korea" style="font-style: italic;">Wikipedia</a><i>] and "Economy of South Korea" [</i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_South_Korea">Ibid</a><i>]</i></p><p>***</p><p>As a twenty-something I spent hours watching the entirety of the Korean romance drama television series<i> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Hours">Goong</a></i> (<i>Princess Hours</i>), and one of my siblings was a fan of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_Prince_(2007_TV_series)">Coffee Prince</a>.</i> So the South Korean cultural output I've been exposed to was generally cheerful.</p><p>My reading experience of South Korean books, during my literary journey around the world, has turned out by chance to be rather strikingly grim in contrast.</p><p>*</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXLp_kxvT492skfGz_bhEui4KJH_UmidhAaFfxY_Yve3cqhqkEeaauR40Zb975guWHM5zO4BBF8_FQ1T2N76cwGA8eG6zce1c4gka-bv6cKVGXdv5oPcZf1HoNI1ihfsU5kwQDC4u3XD-vbBtGE75hxQSoLiCKTugbxMGalZVI8L_63F8BkrILd-bEdQ/s800/MountHallaJejuIsland.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXLp_kxvT492skfGz_bhEui4KJH_UmidhAaFfxY_Yve3cqhqkEeaauR40Zb975guWHM5zO4BBF8_FQ1T2N76cwGA8eG6zce1c4gka-bv6cKVGXdv5oPcZf1HoNI1ihfsU5kwQDC4u3XD-vbBtGE75hxQSoLiCKTugbxMGalZVI8L_63F8BkrILd-bEdQ/s320/MountHallaJejuIsland.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mount Halla, in South Korea<br />Photo ca. 2005, photographer unknown. (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:GNU_General_Public_License">Gnu Public License</a>)<br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">via <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hallasan-2005_07_22_-_1.jpg">Wikipedia</a></span></td></tr></tbody></table><b><br /></b></p><p><b>One Spoon on This Earth</b>, I've already mentioned in this blog before.</p><p>In this novel (published in 1999 by a Korean writer who made it part-autobiographical), a man who was born on Jeju Island in the mid-20th century mirrors his horrific experiences of growing up in the shadow of World War II. Starvation, house burnings, massacres, and more gruesome incidents crowd the pages, in chapters that act as vignettes.</p><p>The vignettes 'photograph' a bookish, introverted young boy who survives into teenagerhood despite the violence in his neighbourhood, the starvation and disease, that threaten him and his big multigenerational family. He himself is sickly, less socially adept than some of his peers, and haunted by his resentful relationship with his often-absent father.</p><p>At the same time he loves his natural environment, except where mountain slopes are the haunted field of a massacre or the oceanside reminds him of a drowned friend, and a few of his experiences with childhood playmates.</p><p>The author, Hyun Ki-young, published a story "Aunt Suni" in the 1970s, which was also about the Jeju massacre. It was so politically fraught even decades after the events it described that, according to his <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyun_Ki-young">Wikipedia biography</a>, "shortly after its release in 1978, Hyun was arrested and tortured for three days by the South Korean authorities"</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLDJkYKTALywJkcbm3sxhOvNvGptFFvZz_qJyEgxsopYNSa2SyDhJPmLOBVYjAs3rIsVUAuzAvacJtkYE8mhm5GCPCEJRzLUdlMWdTfv2ikoFfSVo50kPlGKRx15hH_iIrKsWILHj1qmjhTwSn5ieUn9mBg-t0BmX8Zjhe4l7-ipC7ohGqGlEz8uk8yQ/s494/Jeju_Massacre.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="332" data-original-width="494" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLDJkYKTALywJkcbm3sxhOvNvGptFFvZz_qJyEgxsopYNSa2SyDhJPmLOBVYjAs3rIsVUAuzAvacJtkYE8mhm5GCPCEJRzLUdlMWdTfv2ikoFfSVo50kPlGKRx15hH_iIrKsWILHj1qmjhTwSn5ieUn9mBg-t0BmX8Zjhe4l7-ipC7ohGqGlEz8uk8yQ/s320/Jeju_Massacre.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Jeju citizens awaiting execution in May 1948."<br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">Public domain (South Korean law), via <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jeju_Massacre.jpg">Wikipedia</a></span></td></tr></tbody></table><p>One shock to a North American or European reader may be that the 'democratization' of South Korea post-World-War-II was not the squeaky clean transition one might have learned of in a history class: Syngman Rhee was a deadly leader and it was not only North Korean leaders who cracked down on civilians in revenge for political and armed opposition in the post-war period.</p><p>Two passages I copied into my notes embody the author's endurance and deadpan humour:</p><p><i>Since I survived a politically dangerous and volatile period when living and dying was purely determined by chance, perhaps my fate isn’t so bad after all.</i></p><p>and</p><p><i>Entering an elementary school meant having a new set of family. In other words, it was like having an even stricter father and even more selfish brothers and sisters.</i></p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p><b>Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982</b> takes up the early 2000s. It has more of a hardened dystopian quality, although the events it tells are of ordinary life and not wild flights of fantasy or brutal wartime events.</p><p>The book was a bestseller, published in Korea in 2016 and a hit not just there but also in Japan, Taiwan and other countries. But there was also a wave of antagonism in reaction to it. Perhaps it hit a nerve because statistically South Korea is surprisingly unequal in its treatment of genders. Over 90% of the population mention in polls that they want a power balance between the sexes, so it is not necessarily intentional.</p><p>An interview from 2020 with the American media outlet National Public Radio summarizes how and why the author chose her theme:</p><blockquote><p>Author Cho Nam-Joo wrote the book inside of three months. She says she never expected it to take off — and she didn't even know if she could get a book deal. "I just wanted this book to be in the bookshelves, in bookstores and the library as evidence of how women in this era, the 2010s, lived, thought and made efforts," Cho says through an interpreter.</p></blockquote><p>In the book, Kim Jiyoung's life looks regular; she is an everywoman, married with a child, family around her, cooking and tending the household. But she begins to slip into irregular outbursts of apparent psychosis.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm2gQZAcfNSpkkLtx-OH3xcTnRDMFb06p4yX_OtZSd2wvVeCvMh9FyCwpB8yTBEh63vrobs7Jvx135WoQmwnih5vCXEC8dWiRpX_1T1cc5Oy2jiJ0pDROhjCATxbJkwcPSXjFP2k2GTy06jVvCjr9XbqkIIt16ba3LEPx3cUQX8GZ2S_jG7Y94nE-Waw/s383/KimJiYoung_born_1982.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="383" data-original-width="266" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm2gQZAcfNSpkkLtx-OH3xcTnRDMFb06p4yX_OtZSd2wvVeCvMh9FyCwpB8yTBEh63vrobs7Jvx135WoQmwnih5vCXEC8dWiRpX_1T1cc5Oy2jiJ0pDROhjCATxbJkwcPSXjFP2k2GTy06jVvCjr9XbqkIIt16ba3LEPx3cUQX8GZ2S_jG7Y94nE-Waw/s320/KimJiYoung_born_1982.png" width="222" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Original cover of <i>Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982</i><br />Minumsa publishing house<br />via <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Ji-young,_Born_1982">Wikipedia</a></td></tr></tbody></table><p>Cho Nam-Joo sketches an unhealthy reality for Korean women, finding madness that underlies not her titular character's own psyche but rather her titular character's world. ("[S]he wanted women to know they're not alone," says NPR)..</p><p>A pattern of (semi-)benevolent and at rare times outright malevolent repression underlies her everyday life. It gives rise to malaise: Kim Jiyoung is not the only one who notices that something is wrong. But it simmers away insidiously instead of looking like an outright cause for reform or outrage.</p><p>Sexism makes Kim Jiyoung's family life in childhood tilted in favour of some siblings, her academic environment limited, her career doomed, a walk in the streets fraught with discomfort, and her marriage annihilating.</p><p>When she does express unhappiness about the invisible limits that hedge her every day, she is met with 'gaslighting' and her protest sinks away into oblivion. People who don't bear the brunt of the system, or have decided not to fight, are too comfortable with the way things are. The echo of George Orwell's year <i>1984</i> in the title is surely not unintentional.</p><p>(I read the book a while ago, so please excuse any inaccuracies.)</p><p>So in the end Kim Jiyoung, despite her middle-class income, her education, and the lack of crime or violence in her environment, has very few genuine means.</p><p><i>Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 </i>tells part of the truth of being a woman as I haven't read anyone else tell it — certainly not only relevant to South Korea. Thank goodness, it is only a part of the truth.</p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;">"Gender inequality in South Korea" [<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_inequality_in_South_Korea">Wikipedia</a>]<br />"Hoju" [<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoju">Wikipedia</a>]<br />"Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982" [<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55854245-kim-jiyoung-geboren-1982?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=kiQTyKzFLO&rank=3">Goodreads</a>]<br />"Kim Ji-young, Born 1982: Feminist film reignites tensions in South Korea" [<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-50135152">BBC News Korean</a>], by Hyung Eun Kim (October 23, 2019)<br />"South Korean Bestseller 'Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982' Gives Public Voice To Private Pain" [<a href="https://text.npr.org/835486224">National Public Radio</a>], by Elise Hu, with Se Eun Gong, Dasl Yoon, and Petra Mayer. (April 19, 2020)</span></p><p style="text-align: center;">***</p><p>Lastly, a Canadian missionary, educator and translator, James Scarth Gale, published an English-language edition of Korean fairy tales by Im Pang and Yi Yuk, in 1913. The Koreans' tales are set in a time frame roughly equivalent to the Early Medieval period through the European Renaissance and Baroque eras.</p><p>Each tale tells of old times and practices, in a landscape of animals, hermits with incredible powers, mysterious wanderers, aristocrats, goblins, mountains, and wilder regions of the afterlife.</p><p>The tales also sketch a great bureaucracy, Confucian religion, and imperial armies that fictionally adumbrate the bygone empires. The plots do not insist that life must be fair; but the characters in them sometimes find that 'what comes around, goes around.'</p><p>*</p><p><b><i>The Old Woman Who Became a Goblin</i></b></p><p><i>There was a Confucian scholar once who lived in the southern part of Seoul. It is said that he went out for a walk one day while his wife remained alone at home.</i></p><p><i>When he was absent there came by begging an old woman who looked like a Buddhist priestess, for while very old her face was not wrinkled. The scholar's wife asked her if she knew how to sew. She said she did, and so the wife made this proposition, "If you will stay and work for me I'll give you your breakfast and your supper, and you'll not have to beg anywhere; will you agree?"</i></p><p><i>She replied, "Oh, thank you so much, I'll be delighted."</i></p><p><i>The scholar's wife, well satisfied with her bargain, took her in and set her to picking cotton, and making and spinning thread. In one day she did more than eight ordinary women, and yet had, seemingly, plenty of time to spare. The wife, delighted above measure, treated her to a great feast. After five or six days, however, the feeling of delight and the desire to treat her liberally and well wore off somewhat, so that the old woman grew angry and said "I am tired of living alone, and so I want your husband for my partner." This being refused, she went off in a rage, but came back in a little accompanied by a decrepit old man who looked like a Buddhist beggar.</i></p><p><i>These two came boldly into the room and took possession, cleared out the things that were in the ancient tablet-box on the wall-shelf, and both disappeared into it, so that they were not seen at all, but only their voices heard. According to the whim that took them they now ordered eatables and other things. When the scholar's wife failed in the least particular to please them, they sent plague and sickness after her, so that her children fell sick and died. Relatives on hearing of this came to see, but they also caught the plague, fell ill and died. Little by little no one dared come near the place, and it became known at last that the wife was held as a prisoner by these two goblin creatures. For a time smoke was seen by the townsfolk coming out of the chimney daily, and they knew that the wife still lived, but after five or six days the smoke ceased, and they knew then that the woman's end had come. No one dared even to make inquiry.</i></p><p>Translated from a tale by Im Bang, or Pang, (1640-~1722), son of a provincial governor, scholar.</p><p>Im Pang rose in the political ranks, but in 1721 (already an elderly man) he fell from grace. He was banished a year later when he was involved in 'disturbances.' He died in exile.</p><p style="text-align: center;">*</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgsVsc_ZNQOQrskpkVEcTUx89OjC73bonfjMN8aumDmGRIGXfKf2OVsNoj1UFIhiT4T4x1ch4qR4XeiaUCcjTS5yz6Lt9TuoI3pYjQWwUG29JHud3qU46D4S2CFCG-j2tdQCwABiz_VFxD11NLn8UWIj8PZAOSd9yT9WKzZgmlqVlT_8typSIag1lDuQ/s800/Changdeokgung_Palace_2014.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="411" data-original-width="800" height="205" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgsVsc_ZNQOQrskpkVEcTUx89OjC73bonfjMN8aumDmGRIGXfKf2OVsNoj1UFIhiT4T4x1ch4qR4XeiaUCcjTS5yz6Lt9TuoI3pYjQWwUG29JHud3qU46D4S2CFCG-j2tdQCwABiz_VFxD11NLn8UWIj8PZAOSd9yT9WKzZgmlqVlT_8typSIag1lDuQ/w400-h205/Changdeokgung_Palace_2014.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Changdeokgung (Palace)<br />Photo ca. 2014, by unknown photographer<br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">(License: <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/kr/deed.en">CC-BY-2.0-KR</a> )<br />via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:창덕궁_전경_(2014)_(cropped).jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></td></tr></tbody></table><p>***</p><p>Pang, Im and Yi Ryuk. <i>Korean Folk Tales: Imps, Ghosts and Fairies</i>, James Scarth Gale, transl. (London: J.M. Dent, 1913) via <a href="https://archive.org/details/koreanfolktalesi00impa_0/page/78/mode/2up">Archive.org</a></p>Edithorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12785482134177392627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4274376457367230416.post-67932065982868991112022-03-10T00:25:00.002+01:002022-03-10T00:25:32.527+01:00March 2022 in Books: What I'll Be Reading<p>B<span style="font-size: x-small;">ECAUSE</span> of the literary tour around the world begun last year, I'd been reading Ukrainian books when the country was invaded on February 24th.</p><p>In the family's translated copy of Nikolai Gogol short stories, I have finished "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tale_of_How_Ivan_Ivanovich_Quarreled_with_Ivan_Nikiforovich">The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich</a>" and begun reading "The Nose."</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhRlwSRVwQsmOp3bBzE3dVfn-zQcLR_fk6_Lzu52Vyt_iJPBX2dRRdvIB_vk8EOVgTUz2Qs2cFPWAap6I1-gEE8Gkk8Xmn9y0Qaj1xe7rMLgIzLVhpXugqpg-v9z1vZ7-8z04Ziur6SQANB9VKE-RgIB0yja55OOwuMzopnYqjMdbZ9OiWi84pXIz3X5Q=s277" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="277" data-original-width="220" height="277" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhRlwSRVwQsmOp3bBzE3dVfn-zQcLR_fk6_Lzu52Vyt_iJPBX2dRRdvIB_vk8EOVgTUz2Qs2cFPWAap6I1-gEE8Gkk8Xmn9y0Qaj1xe7rMLgIzLVhpXugqpg-v9z1vZ7-8z04Ziur6SQANB9VKE-RgIB0yja55OOwuMzopnYqjMdbZ9OiWi84pXIz3X5Q" width="220" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Portrait of Nikolai Gogol (early 1840s)<br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">
by Otto Friedrich Theodor von Möller</span><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">
via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:N.Gogol_by_F.Moller_%281840,_Tretyakov_gallery%29.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></td></tr></tbody></table><p>Even as a sheltered Berliner in peacetime Germany, it hurts the soul to read the jaunty, satirical prose — framed in imperial Russia; with its tin soldier figures, small-town drama, and tempests in a teapot. Because his tales are harshly real at times, but at other times far away from harsher realities even of Gogol's time.</p><p>(That said, since I was also a reader who did not want to read pandemic literature during Covid, but others enjoyed 'the hair of the dog' as an approach to handling times of duress, your mileage may vary.)</p><p>I am often thinking before reaching for the book of the decimated 21st century apartment buildings, dead Ukrainians and Russians, and fleeing civilians of 150 years later.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjS6yTgmHewT-XkfALkQ34XOy8Od3g5dwjFe7irGz23Tga_a_5_2MKXpO9lliTSsPP0BJ3nSeXid1xeNpbSKMYMDY0ZW3uAe4i5GUtjFffnNHCFS8xMirBCXBEHrYhaZBgzZWdyFpyoWrRivQxOQLmgOjIF1B98hWP31C2UEhBDrHF6JU4tA8vV3Zf1tw=s600" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="489" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjS6yTgmHewT-XkfALkQ34XOy8Od3g5dwjFe7irGz23Tga_a_5_2MKXpO9lliTSsPP0BJ3nSeXid1xeNpbSKMYMDY0ZW3uAe4i5GUtjFffnNHCFS8xMirBCXBEHrYhaZBgzZWdyFpyoWrRivQxOQLmgOjIF1B98hWP31C2UEhBDrHF6JU4tA8vV3Zf1tw=s320" width="261" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Picket Ural Cossacks" (1813)<br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">by Korneev E. M. (1782 – 1839)<br />via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Picket_Ural_Cossacks.png">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></td></tr></tbody></table><p>But, to paraphrase the Bible, the wars are always with us. In Berlin, I live in what used to be a village that was practically annihilated during the Seven Years' War. Gogol would certainly have known war at least at a distance — like the heard roll of cannon thunder.</p><p>The beautiful depictions of landscapes, people, and other vignettes in his prose are a little, but very little, comfort. Here is a passage from "<a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Stories_by_Foreign_Authors_(Russian)/St._John%27s_Eve">St. John's Eve</a>," another Gogol story I haven't read entirely yet, which illustrates his style:</p><p></p><blockquote>As I now recall it,—my old mother was alive then,—in the long winter evenings when the frost was crackling out of doors, and had so sealed up hermetically the narrow panes of our cottage, she used to sit before the hackling-comb, drawing out a long thread in her hand, rocking the cradle with her foot, and humming a song, which I seem to hear even now.</blockquote><p></p><p>Or</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;">The sky is red only on one side, and it is already growing dark. It grows colder in the fields. It gets dusky and more dusky, and at last quite dark. At last! With heart almost bursting from his bosom, he set out on his way, and cautiously descended through the dense woods into the deep hollow called the Bear's ravine.</p></blockquote><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjsirSOs3wtgpZTy4jrZx_fzjmyv0YsdvEGeqxEW9Ot6snqiEqEBKN-78JMAUelY1CcogjBdHK5_CMPUIbXi5lHTpweXdG2HeKbHhY167hcVg8VJXhz2nkWLl9QEZZ644hTCB3ju6qsq1WAsuUS9DNXFnd_gP6WHp8NRKKYCqHx5kYU-u1Ho7S2rEp8Kg=s800" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="453" data-original-width="800" height="181" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjsirSOs3wtgpZTy4jrZx_fzjmyv0YsdvEGeqxEW9Ot6snqiEqEBKN-78JMAUelY1CcogjBdHK5_CMPUIbXi5lHTpweXdG2HeKbHhY167hcVg8VJXhz2nkWLl9QEZZ644hTCB3ju6qsq1WAsuUS9DNXFnd_gP6WHp8NRKKYCqHx5kYU-u1Ho7S2rEp8Kg=w320-h181" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Nightingale</span><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">by A. Weitzel, 2013 (attr.)<br />via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nightingale_(8911973780).jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></td></tr></tbody></table><p>Or, from "<a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Mantle_and_Other_Stories/A_May_Night">A May Night</a>"</p><p></p><blockquote>The nightingales of the Ukraine are singing, and it seems as though the moon itself were listening to their song. The village sleeps as though under a magic spell; the cottages shine in the moonlight against the darkness of the woods behind them. The songs grow silent, and all is still. </blockquote><p>
Which reminds me indirectly of Thomas Hardy's consoling poem "<a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Darkling_Thrush">The Darkling Thrush</a>" (1900), about another songbird:</p>
So little cause for carolings<br /> Of such ecstatic sound<br />
Was written on terrestrial things<br /> Afar or nigh around.<br />
That I could think there trembled through<br /> His happy good-night air<br />
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew<br /> And I was unaware.
<p>*</p><p>(Off topic, I haven't even gotten far into "The Nose" yet. But also based on the internal evidence of "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Fyodorovich_Shponka_and_His_Aunt">Ivan Fedorovich Chponka and His Aunt</a>", I have already decided that the author is not the Feminist of the Century.)</p><p>It also turns out that Gogol influenced Sholem Aleichem, another Ukrainian prose author whose work is sitting on my desk.</p><p>***</p><p>Emma Graham-Harrison, foreign correspondent for the <i>Guardian</i> newspaper, <a href="https://twitter.com/_EmmaGH">noted via Twitter</a> on March 4th:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p></p><blockquote><i>"We aged a hundred years and this descended/</i></blockquote><p></p><p></p><blockquote><i>In just one hour, as at a stroke."</i></blockquote><p></p><p>Only realised today that the great 20th century poet Anna Akhmatova was born in Ukraine and had Ukrainian roots.</p><p>Her poem on the outbreak of WWI, "In Memoriam" seems apt </p><p><i><a href="https://poetrybyheart.org.uk/poems/in-memoriam-july-19-1914/">https://poetrybyheart.org.uk/poems/in-memoriam-july-19-1914/</a></i></p></blockquote><p>***</p><p>Aside from Ukrainian works, the Jimmy Carter biography <i>His Very Best</i>, Canadian author Esi Edugyan's historical <i>Half Blood Blues</i>, Vincent Sheehan's <i>Louis XIV</i> and Omar el Akkad's <i>What Strange Paradise</i> are a few of the half-read books I'm working on.</p>Edithorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12785482134177392627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4274376457367230416.post-52440434357119883852022-02-12T03:30:00.008+01:002022-02-13T16:41:18.831+01:00Valentine's Day: Do Poets' and Novelists' Arrows Hit, or Miss?<p>[<i>Disclaimer: As a Valentine's Day skeptic, I am also purposely publishing this blog post two days early in sign of protest.</i>]</p><p>In my Canadian high school, an English teacher asked us to bring in and discuss a poem that expressed to us what love is. I failed in that attempt because it was hard to find anything that did, even though in the end a Shakespeare sonnet was what came closest. As a teenager, to me there were three pieces of literature that came to mind:</p><p><i><b>War and Peace.</b></i> For some reason the later scenes with [<i>spoiler alert: please drag your cursor over the white spaces if you don't mind the spoiler</i>] <span style="color: white;">Pierre</span> and <span style="color: white;">Natasha</span> represented to me what true love was all about. Everyday, boring happiness where you're a little starry-eyed about each other even in your forties; a type of relationship whose harmony makes it livable and comfortable for others (children, friends, relatives) to be around you.</p><p><b>Shakespeare's Sonnet 116</b>.</p><p></p><blockquote><p>Let me not to the marriage of true minds<br />Admit impediments. Love is not love<br />Which alters when it alteration finds,<br />Or bends with the remover to remove:</p><p>O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,<br />That looks on tempests and is never shaken;<br />It is the star to every wandering bark,<br />Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.</p><p>Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks<br />Within his bending sickle's compass come;<br />Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,<br />But bears it out even to the edge of doom.</p><p>If this be error, and upon me prov'd,<br />I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.</p></blockquote><p><i><b>The Scarlet Pimpernel.</b></i> Even as a teenager I knew that the book was soap opera in its depictions of relationships and human psychology. But this scene was still moving and while it felt over-the-top as a scenario, held a kernel of possible emotional truth:</p><p><i>Pride had given way at last, obstinacy was gone: the will was powerless. He was but a man madly, blindly, passionately in love, and as soon as her light footsteps had died away within the house, he knelt down upon the terrace steps, and in the very madness of his love he kissed one by one the places where her small foot had trodden, and the stone balustrade there, where her tiny hand had rested last.</i></p><p>***</p><p>In the intervening years, I've read other poems that were felt to be romantic classics — amongst others — by the Victorians. For example:</p><p><b>Wordsworth's She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways</b></p><p></p><blockquote><p>She dwelt among the untrodden ways<br />Beside the springs of Dove,<br />A Maid whom there were none to praise,<br />And very few to love.</p><p>A Violet by a mossy stone<br />Half-hidden from the eye!<br />—Fair as a star, when only one<br />Is shining in the sky.</p><p>She lived unknown, and few could know<br />When Lucy ceased to be;<br />But she is in her Grave, and, oh,<br />The difference to me!</p></blockquote><p></p><p>I think a poem that idealizes a woman's life being largely unappreciated and ending in early death, is a strange choice as a love poem. Wordsworth's other poems are also infantilizing (Note: which is not to say that I don't appreciate Wordsworth in general):</p><p></p><blockquote>A Creature not too bright or good<br />For human nature's daily food;<br />For transient sorrows, simple wiles,<br />Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles</blockquote><p></p><p>*</p><p>As a 36-year-old, here's my latest take:</p><p>In the end, the <b>Corinthians</b> in the Bible give perhaps the best nudge toward how to love when you have the chance, platonic or romantic:</p><p></p><blockquote>Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,<br />Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;<br />Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;<br />Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.</blockquote><p></p><p>"1 Corinthians" in: <i>The King James Bible</i>. Oxford: 1769 (<a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Bible_(King_James)/1_Corinthians">Wikisource</a>)</p><p>As a teenager I'd probably think this idea of 'love' is to be soft-spoken and ingratiating, and find it vomitous. But now I think I understand. It's encouragement to keep fighting the battle not to make ourselves feel better by depreciating others, or by getting hung up on silly arguments.</p><p>And, to drop Shakespeare's idea of a constant love that had convinced me as a teenager, I think love needs to keep changing, adapting, growing, stretching and improving the older we grow and the more challenges we find.</p><p>*</p><p>Lastly <b>Charles Baudelaire's "L'Harmonie du soir"</b> comes to mind, especially the elegiac but heartwarming final line "<i>Ton souvenir en moi luit comme un ostensoir!</i>" ('Your memory, in me, glows like a church monstrance.')</p><p>***</p><p><u>Sources:</u></p><p>"Sonnet 116" in: Shakespeare, William. <i>Shakespeare's Sonnets.</i> Edward Bliss Reed, ed. Yale University Press: 1923. (<a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Shakespeare%27s_Sonnets_(1923)_Yale/Text/Sonnet_116">Wikisource</a>)</p><p>Orczy, Baroness Emmuska. <i>The Scarlet Pimpernel</i>. Ch. XVI. (<a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Scarlet_Pimpernel/16">Wikisource</a>)<br />[Edited to add - Feb. 13th: <i>As a strange historical footnote, apparently </i>The Scarlet Pimpernel<i>'s central narrative, adopted into a 1940s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Pimpernel%22_Smith">anti-fascist propaganda film</a>, inspired Raoul Wallenberg.</i>]</p><p>Wordsworth, William. <i>Poems</i>, Vol. I. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown (1815) (<a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Poems_(Wordsworth,_1815)/Volume_1/She_dwelt_among_the_untrodden_ways">Wikisource</a>) and "<a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Poems_(Wordsworth,_1815)/Volume_1/She_was_a_Phantom">She was a Phantom of delight</a>"</p><p>(<i>I hate when people do this self-referential thing, but will do it anyway:</i> For Baudelaire's poem, please see my <a href="https://lighthouseatalexandria.blogspot.com/2011/10/autumn-season-and-harmonie.html#more">blog post</a>)</p>Edithorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12785482134177392627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4274376457367230416.post-60748587568567260722022-01-23T18:25:00.004+01:002022-01-23T18:25:46.650+01:00Danish, Icelandic, Irish Mythologies of Winter: A January Hodgepodge<p>One thing that's delightful to read across religions, philosophies, and tales is the explanations we have written down for the natural world that surrounds us.</p><p>Sitting at my laptop on a grey January day in the Northern Hemisphere, the coal stove fired up, buds still rarer on the oak twigs outside the window, green bulbs beginning to form on the forsythia indoors and a hyacinth bursting into pale pink blossoms on the windowsill, of course looking at winter makes sense. And I'll also reach back further in time than I've done lately on this blog.</p><p>***</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg0H8XVbDLThJ-MJiJz1b3SWtARbBAndWcke07kllkaJwkjwO3E2rLvKOQ-tHzuek9nmPMUgy0EC94y88tMOEUHFUrOw2NAU9lXBPMPzogRg6bZRN2rTsyoDmqAXPatQRvk9OXMt0t2kxkdVAozWtb95p6TYgc7wJkU-KvJo1waHgqXGErAZitedwWVlg=s599" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="599" data-original-width="387" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg0H8XVbDLThJ-MJiJz1b3SWtARbBAndWcke07kllkaJwkjwO3E2rLvKOQ-tHzuek9nmPMUgy0EC94y88tMOEUHFUrOw2NAU9lXBPMPzogRg6bZRN2rTsyoDmqAXPatQRvk9OXMt0t2kxkdVAozWtb95p6TYgc7wJkU-KvJo1waHgqXGErAZitedwWVlg=w259-h400" width="259" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry</i> Folio 1, verso: January<br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">
("A New Year's Day feast including Jean de Berry")</span><br />
by the Limbourg brothers (fl. 1402–1416)<br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">
via <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Les_Très_Riches_Heures_du_duc_de_Berry_Janvier.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></td></tr></tbody></table><p>Pliny the Elder wrote in his <i>Natural History</i>:</p><span></span><span><a name='more'></a></span><blockquote><br />THE world and thiswhatever other name men have chosen to designate the sky whose vaulted roof encircles the universe, is fitly believed to be a deity, eternal, immeasurable, a being that never began to exist and never will perish. What is outside it does not concern men to explore and is not within the grasp of the human mind to guess.</blockquote><p></p><p>Which is reminiscent of Alexander Pope's <a href="https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/An_Essay_on_Man">couplet</a>: 'Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; the proper study of mankind is man.' But Pliny the Elder attempts it nevertheless, in a mishmash of deism and agnosticism that echoes French Revolutionary utilitarianism in theology:</p><p></p><blockquote>In the midst of these moves the sun, whose magnitude and power are the greatest, and who is the ruler not only of the seasons and of the lands; but even of the stars themselves and of the heaven. Taking into account all that he effects, we must believe him to be the soul, or more precisely the mind, of the whole world, the supreme ruling principle and divinity of nature. He furnishes the world with light and removes darkness, he obscures and he illumines the rest of the stars, he regulates in accord with nature's precedent the changes of the seasons and the continuous rebirth of the year, he dissipates the gloom of heaven and even calms the storm-clouds of the mind of man, he lends his light to the rest of the stars also; he is glorious and pre-eminent, all-seeing and even all-hearing[. T]his I observe that Homer the prince of literature held to be true in the case of the sun alone.</blockquote><p></p><p><u>Source:</u> <i>Natural History</i> (1938). First published in the year 77 CE by Pliny the Elder, translated by H. Rackham (vols. 1-5, 9), W.H.S. Jones (vols. 6-8), and D.E. Eichholz (vol. 10). via <a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Natural_History_(Rackham,_Jones,_%26_Eichholz)/Book_2">Wikisource</a> (Retrieved January 23, 2022)</p><p>***</p><p>Hans Christian Andersen, less abstractly, married Greek, modern morality, and Victorian-era geography in his 19th century fairy tale, "The Garden of Paradise."</p><p></p><blockquote>It was the North Wind who came in, and bringing with him a cold, piercing blast; large hailstones rattled on the floor, and snow-flakes were scattered around in all directions. He wore a bearskin dress and cloak. His sealskin cap was drawn over his ears, long icicles hung from his beard, and one hailstone after another rolled from the collar of his jacket.</blockquote><p></p><p>B<span style="font-size: x-small;">ALANCING</span> the cruelty and benevolence of the winds, and generalizing largely about the quarters of the Earth represented by the cardinal points of the compass, Andersen has the North Wind tell this account to the Wind's mother and to a prince who is visiting their cave:</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj1l8YQ9bzjomk_Lzb7ZMd1M4Jn-fT7inqKLcNPW-N1IlHum_4yxfIrjKTiuWAnlGjO3HgQnZ47ENmRoU-IX1hP_a2_2_SsNAZuvIok5j1NJwoje9Gua64NpFld983vjGRq5oWxO4jGvrWF69hUxLYY0AxlJvIaDLTROSLbVYdICUykDWD4TcAzFV9AVQ=s800" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="567" data-original-width="800" height="227" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj1l8YQ9bzjomk_Lzb7ZMd1M4Jn-fT7inqKLcNPW-N1IlHum_4yxfIrjKTiuWAnlGjO3HgQnZ47ENmRoU-IX1hP_a2_2_SsNAZuvIok5j1NJwoje9Gua64NpFld983vjGRq5oWxO4jGvrWF69hUxLYY0AxlJvIaDLTROSLbVYdICUykDWD4TcAzFV9AVQ=s320" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">"Chasse aux Morses"<br />From <i>Le monde de la mer</i> (1866)<br />by Lackerbauer reproducing M Gudin & M. Biard<br />via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chasse_aux_morses.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><blockquote><p>“I come from the polar seas,” he said; “I have been on the Bear’s Island with the Russian walrus-hunters, I sat and slept at the helm of their ship, as they sailed away from North Cape. Sometimes when I woke, the storm-birds would fly about my legs. They are curious birds; they give one flap with their wings, and then on their outstretched pinions soar far away.”</p><p>“Don’t make such a long story of it,” said the mother of the Winds; “what sort of a place is Bear’s Island?”</p></blockquote><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhy3bOvFE_FTDk0FhFNfxUGzX17KiEos-M_rwLwLzoZRGvO0fbFApPssElBi7WxYGYWuKt-UbqeVjO4kdo8fZWmOH4q9naiQeLbdSI9Mqf6Xlfr-u2QI9SZNdUmUrYsIBhKZCiJ59twuxCtGRGiLdO7LiOTGX-u_XovuadpvEELGuAMv3pfQE9dvxEunA=s800" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="800" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhy3bOvFE_FTDk0FhFNfxUGzX17KiEos-M_rwLwLzoZRGvO0fbFApPssElBi7WxYGYWuKt-UbqeVjO4kdo8fZWmOH4q9naiQeLbdSI9Mqf6Xlfr-u2QI9SZNdUmUrYsIBhKZCiJ59twuxCtGRGiLdO7LiOTGX-u_XovuadpvEELGuAMv3pfQE9dvxEunA=w400-h288" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Diana and Chase in the Arctic"<br />by James H. Wheldon (c. 1832–1895)<br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">Painting in the Hull Maritime Museum.<br />via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Diana_and_Chase_in_the_Arctic.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></td></tr></tbody></table><p>He delves into a walrus hunt on Bear Island:</p><p></p><blockquote>“The harpoon was flung into the breast of the walrus, so that a smoking stream of blood spirted forth like a fountain, and besprinkled the ice. Then I thought of my own game; I began to blow, and set my own ships, the great icebergs sailing, so that they might crush the boats. Oh, how the sailors howled and cried out! but I howled louder than they. They were obliged to unload their cargo, and throw their chests and the dead walruses on the ice. Then I sprinkled snow over them, and left them in their crushed boats to drift southward, and to taste salt water. They will never return to Bear’s Island.”</blockquote><p>(Original Danish: <i>"Så gik det på Fangst! Harpunen blev sat i Hvalrossens Bryst, så den dampende Blodstråle stod som et Springvand over Isen. Da tænkte jeg også på mit Spil! jeg blæste op, lod mine Seilere, de klippehøie Iisfjelde, klemme Bådene inde; hui hvor man peb, og hvor man skreg, men jeg peb høiere! de døde Hval-Kroppe, Kister og Tougværk måtte de pakke ud på Isen! jeg rystede Snee-Flokkene om dem og lod dem i de indklemte Fartøier drive Syd på med Fangsten, for der at smage Saltvand. De komme aldrig meer til Beeren-Eiland!</i>" via <a href="https://da.wikisource.org/wiki/Paradisets_Have">Wikisource</a>.)</p><p></p><p>His mother does not approve:</p><p></p><blockquote><p>“So you have done mischief,” said the mother of the Winds.</p><p>“I shall leave others to tell the good I have done,” he replied.</p></blockquote><p></p><p><u>Source:</u> <i>Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales</i> (1888). Hans Christian Andersen, translated by Mrs. H. B. Paull. London and New York: Frederick Warne and Co., pages 385–395. Via <a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Hans_Andersen%27s_Fairy_Tales/The_Garden_of_Paradise">Wikisource</a>. (Retrieved January 23, 2022)</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg_3evrrj-x0HU512eNEWj1UeqURy1UUZ6_BsJguxF-aZt6MmWAyIPSeuSZTSLIO1RKDHCG-TX_aoMyDT3eUTV-FgxEHRn0lracaNmjb-sy7SGJo2GdUZ3-SfonWXkem1nXwa9e0ncmKOzSaC5RzcTzzHAbLWEzWkdoyKGv-Rmqic1lnPtmzoSg4qdcsA=s600" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="423" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg_3evrrj-x0HU512eNEWj1UeqURy1UUZ6_BsJguxF-aZt6MmWAyIPSeuSZTSLIO1RKDHCG-TX_aoMyDT3eUTV-FgxEHRn0lracaNmjb-sy7SGJo2GdUZ3-SfonWXkem1nXwa9e0ncmKOzSaC5RzcTzzHAbLWEzWkdoyKGv-Rmqic1lnPtmzoSg4qdcsA=w283-h400" width="283" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From <i>Animals in action</i> (1901)<br />by Elbridge S. Brooks<br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Animals_in_action;_studies_and_stories_of_beasts,_birds_and_reptiles;_their_habits,_their_homes_and_their_peculiarities_(1901)_(14568753148).jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></td></tr></tbody></table><p>***</p><p>In a parallel to Pliny the Elder, Snorri Sturluson writes, in his Prose <i>Edda</i>, both of a deity who rules all creation, and of Earth as a separate feminine entity.</p><p>Here his picture of nature is quite 'secular,' for lack of a better word:</p><p></p><blockquote>Another quality of the earth is, that in each year grass and flowers grow upon the earth, and in the same year all that growth falls away and withers; it is even so with beasts and birds: hair and feathers grow and fall away each year. </blockquote><p></p><p>But in a later passage he spiritualizes the Earth:</p><p></p><blockquote>the earth was quick, and had life with some manner of nature of its own; and they understood that she was wondrous old in years and mighty in kind: she nourished all that lived, and she took to herself all that died. Therefore they gave her a name, and traced the number of their generations from her. </blockquote><p></p><p><u>Source:</u> Translation by Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur (p. 4 and p. 5 via Internet Archive) </p><p>While parts of winter, like ice, are given inanimate roles in the Norse myths that he recounts, he does mention a cosmogony that blends fire and ice:</p><p><i>What was the shape of things ere the races were yet mingled , and the folk of men crew? Then said Har: Those rivers that are called Elivagar, when they were come so far from their springhead that the quick venom which flowed with them hardened, as dross that runs out of the fire, then became that ice; and when the ice stood still and ran not, then gathered over it that damp which arose from the venom and froze to rime; and the rime waxed, each (layer) over the other, all into Ginniinga-gap. Then spake Jafnhar: Ginniinga-gap which looked toward the north parts was filled with thick and heavy ice and rime, and everywhere within were fogs and gusts; but the south side of Ginniinga-gap was lightened by the the sparks and gledes that flew out of Muspellheim. </i>[Translation by George Web Dasent, p. 5 via <a href="https://archive.org/details/proseoryoungere00snor/page/4/mode/2up">Internet Archive</a>]</p><p>When he begins to set forth Odin, Loki, and the other familiar figures, summer and winter are personified, separately, as Sumarr and Vetr, in an arguably laconic paragraph (we never hear of these figures again, I think):</p><p></p><blockquote>But the father of Winter is variously called Vindljóni or Vindsvalr; he is the son of Vásadr; and these were kinsmen grim and chilly-breasted, and Winter has their temper. [<i>Brodeur, p. 33</i>]</blockquote><p></p><p>"Summer and Vetr" [<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumarr_and_Vetr">Wikipedia</a>]</p><p>***</p>
<p>In an old Irish poem, translated by Lady Augusta Gregory and published in 1919, "The Hag of Beare":</p><blockquote>
The stone of the kings on Feman; the chair of Ronan in Bregia; it is long since storms have wrecked them, they are old mouldering gravestones.<br /><br />The wave of the great sea is speaking; the winter is striking us with it; I do not look to welcome to-day Fermuid son of Mugh.<br /><br />I know what they are doing; they are rowing through the reeds of the ford of Alma; it is cold is the place where they sleep.
</blockquote><p>A hundred-year-old grandmother, the narrator deepens the metaphorical comparison of winter to human mortality. Then a tree metaphor mixes with references to Christianity in the next verses, reflecting — backhandedly, I think — the missionaries' ambivalent role in 9th century medieval Ireland.</p><blockquote>Amen, great is the pity; every acorn has to drop. After feasting with shining candles, to be in the darkness of a prayer-house.</blockquote><p>(The poem is also worth reading to its end for its wonderful flood-ebb metaphor.) </p><p>The Old Woman of Beara is pretty syncretic. — This <a href="https://www.theirishplace.com/heritage/the-cailleach-beara-or-the-hag-of-beara/">page</a> is a fair index to her traditions, with photographs of the landscapes her legend grew amongst, as well as the Wikipedia <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hag_of_Beara">summary</a>. —</p><p>An Irish goddess, a nun, perhaps both — in the poem that Lady Gregory translated she appears to be a sufferer of winter, but elsewhere she appears to be the bearer of winter.</p><p>***</p><p><u>Sources:</u></p><p>"The Hag of Beare." translated by Lady Augusta Persse Gregory (1852-1932) in <i>The Kiltartan Poetry Book</i>. New York: G. Putnam's Sons, 1919. pp. 68-71. (via <a href="http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/gregory/poetry/poetry-20.html">A Celebration of Women Writers</a>, University of Pennsylvania)</p><p>"The Hag of Beara" [<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hag_of_Beara">Wikipedia</a>]</p>Edithorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12785482134177392627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4274376457367230416.post-15261046573156417312022-01-15T19:57:00.004+01:002022-01-15T19:59:57.922+01:00Mid-January 2022: Still Reading...<p>I've already finished Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's <i><b>Notes on Grief</b></i>, and am reading a few books in parallel.</p><p>Assia Djebar's <i><b>Less femmes d'Alger dans leur appartement</b></i> is gathering in interest the longer I read it, hopping back and forth between different epochs of Algerian history in living memory, different generations of women. It has a few echoes of the mythology of Montesquieu's <i>Persian Letters</i> but also a lot more. All written in slender but meaningful prose.</p><p>Reading <b style="font-style: italic;">Behold the Dreamers</b> by Imbolo Mbue is progressing a little more slowly. The Cameroonian immigrant to the United States who is one of the main characters has obtained a position driving around the family headed by a finance industry professional. He unknowingly witnesses early symptoms of the forthcoming collapse of the Lehman Brothers.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhWlekBAhYYS9xGXBXL9neIakJaQ9ULt9RDacoZpr5iSctFIdG2rSBuED13XxYQxUa-jbT91oMiWm5c8j3skNqYdWN8x3BdcF80O_S8nA-uuPe7hvH8PQlpTSZ0iw_7R-tTIaD9q3RU9kw7N347yHZ4bup2JxPP5MxsCCTPupbZDu3za0ik4JtMzgwYTQ=s450" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="296" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhWlekBAhYYS9xGXBXL9neIakJaQ9ULt9RDacoZpr5iSctFIdG2rSBuED13XxYQxUa-jbT91oMiWm5c8j3skNqYdWN8x3BdcF80O_S8nA-uuPe7hvH8PQlpTSZ0iw_7R-tTIaD9q3RU9kw7N347yHZ4bup2JxPP5MxsCCTPupbZDu3za0ik4JtMzgwYTQ=s320" width="210" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cover of <i>Empire of Pain</i>, via <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/612861/empire-of-pain-by-patrick-radden-keefe/">Penguin Random House</a></td></tr></tbody></table><p>In terms of audiobooks, I am also listening to <i><b>The Empire of Pain</b></i>, by Patrick Radden Keefe, last year's bestseller about a family that profited hugely off the medical industry and is arguably also at the core of the American opioid crisis. It takes a perhaps unexpected route to its subject. It traces the early-to-mid 20th century of the family in detail, depicting the mid-century experiences in a psychiatric institution that made a bright future in medication versus institutionalization seem even a moral choice, and also exploring the arts patronage and marriages particularly of Arthur Sackler. (So far.)</p><p>The most delightful book, however, has turned out to be the short stories by Nikolai Gogol. Picture a dreary Berlin in January, all grey and social-distancey; and compare flowering gardens with melons and poppies and sunflowers in Gogol's Ukraine, thatched roofs, and in general the beautiful, very 19th century descriptive passages of the novelist. Although of course <b>"The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich"</b> is not a rosy and peaceful story <i>per se</i> — one almost feels one is there, and the regret about the risks and necessary bureaucratic tangles of travel in real-life 2022 diminishes a little. </p><p>***</p><p>Shopping at Dussmann Kulturkaufhaus in a fairly abandoned Berlin city centre today, opposite a long line of anti-Covid safety measure demonstrators with German flags (generally a warning sign of extremism outside of Euro Cup or World Cup soccer seasons) on their cars, I picked up a few books about the 20th century German political scene. Memoirs by Willy Brandt, former mayor of Berlin (this phase interests me most) and later Chancellor; a history of Berlin; and a history of the Social Democratic Party to which Brandt belonged. Besides I bought two presents that shall remain undescribed, and a Swedish language learning calendar.</p><p>It was an even nicer experience because I was browsing together with my mother, who picked up a German word-a-day calendar for the sake of her tandem partner.</p>Edithorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12785482134177392627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4274376457367230416.post-49936472716019913272021-12-27T18:36:00.008+01:002021-12-30T20:50:35.878+01:00January 2022 in Books: What I'll Be Reading<p>On my desk, <i>Menahem Mendel</i> by Sholem Aleichem is still waiting to be finished, alongside Vol. I of Nelson Mandela's <i>Long Walk to Freedom</i> (let's see if he mentions Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who has just died), <i>Behold the Dreamers</i> by Imbolo Mbue, <i>Jane Austen at Home</i> by Lucy Worsley, <i>4321</i> by Paul Auster, Beatrix Potter's tales, and Assia Djebar's <i>Femmes d'Alger dans leur appartement</i>. For Christmas I've also received Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's <i>Notes on Grief</i>. Besides, an English-language translation of Delphine Minoui's memoir <i>I'm Writing You from Tehran</i> looks tempting.</p><p><b>2021 in Review</b></p><p>In 2021 I kept a spreadsheet where I tracked part of my reading. I finished over 68 ebooks or paper books and 13 audiobooks. There were signs that I need to diversify my reading: for example, 56% of the books were from the United States.</p><p><b>Reading Journey Around the World</b></p><p>If I finally manage to write up the South Korean books read in 2021, as well as reading Ukrainian books, the next countries would be Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Italy, the UK, and France.</p><p><b>What I've Just Read</b></p><p>I listened to the last of the audiobook of Cherie Dimaline's <b><i>Empire of Wild</i></b> yesterday.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhpmGPrhJkQ6wyyjVevcnlD_nVDUAIMmdy1N6TU_whppZpKraqBWCw0OAYKJh8hKMp9qeu_Se3pR8_YZl2QY12tzcRe3n_wtYrosGB6jXp40dOrUI8Yfust0nONferCD0SSiBzVyygOHv0ORhpmLcqMrSRyGt0NQDYxk67JN0qil-VbrpmoSyEVWerRnw=s450" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="292" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhpmGPrhJkQ6wyyjVevcnlD_nVDUAIMmdy1N6TU_whppZpKraqBWCw0OAYKJh8hKMp9qeu_Se3pR8_YZl2QY12tzcRe3n_wtYrosGB6jXp40dOrUI8Yfust0nONferCD0SSiBzVyygOHv0ORhpmLcqMrSRyGt0NQDYxk67JN0qil-VbrpmoSyEVWerRnw=s320" width="208" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cover of Empire of Wild<br />
via Penguin Random House Canada</td></tr></tbody></table><p>Although its writing style leans toward too many similes, and a few patches of bald prose or scenes (like the sleazy affair of a corporate man of affairs with a young church acolyte) remind me of mass market thrillers, I found it incredibly absorbing.</p><p>The protagonist is Joan. She is a Métis woman — sometimes mistaken for a 'spicy Latina' in roadside bars — who has finally found an equally somewhat bohemian but loving partner in another Métis person, Victor. The two of them had met in a drinking establishment, decided to join forces and travel through the United States in a camper van, and finally settled down again and married in Canada.</p><p>In their rural Ontario community — the one Joan grew up in, with her construction worker mother Florence, grandmother Mère, her grandmother's friends, and her brothers — men and women work in house construction or mines, for example. Men and women also hunt for their food, like deer or rabbits or elk, alongside grocery store fare. Still, there are social conventions against killing more than one can eat. Also, one can't say that any of the characters in the book glorify guns, and there's no trace of Duck Dynasty.</p><p>After the pair argue, Victor disappears.</p><p>Joan does everything she can to find her husband. She finds irritation and solace in her family, who do not entirely support her quest and have their own battles to fight. Older than her years in spirit, unwise at times but self-aware, warm and reliable in her imperfect way, she felt very real, as if her voice were speaking from the page. [Edit: Some of the credit for this is surely also due to Michelle St. John's narration of the audiobook!]</p><p>The leading thread of Joan's longing for her husband, weakened by insecurities and lent interest and realism by the fact that neither of them were perfect, part of a bond whose precise nature is hard to pinpoint in moments of doubt, was in my view well spun. At times this plot aspect has a timeless quality, as old as Penelope waiting for Odysseus — with a positive modern difference: Joan is actively working for the good of her husband instead of waiting for him to reappear on his own.</p><p>It is also this plot and characterization thread, though, that makes me a more partial reviewer, prone to over-interpreting — it reminded me of the platonic yearning for family and friends in the era of social distancing. Sometimes descriptions of grief take on a very self-conscious, cult-like quality, but I liked <i>Empire of Wild</i> all the more because it steered clear of that tendency.</p><p>Cherie Dimaline's book has one foot in secular reality: the financial needs of Métis communities in Ontario vs. the destruction of ancestral lands and culture through pipelines (e.g. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_Pipeline">Keystone Pipeline</a>) and mining, along with financial exploitation, casual misogyny, and the ways in which people both embrace and need more than the places they come from. Its other foot is set in the world of Métis legend: the werewolf-like figure of the Rogarou and the spirit world that avenges the misdeeds of the community. Of course, the lines blur.</p><p>As oil pipelines and other dilemmas still exist for many First Nations (and other) communities in Canada, as well as the mingled legacy of Christianity on First Nations cultures, <i>Empire of Wild</i> has lost nothing of its contemporary power and relevance.</p><p>Altogether, although listening to audiobooks I'm less likely to pick up on problems in the literary style, I'd say that <i>Empire of Wild</i> is one of the best books set in Canada that I've read. Like Eden Robinson's <i>Monkey Beach</i>, Jesse Thistle's <i>From the Ashes</i>, Joshua Whitehead's <i>Jonny Appleseed</i>, and maybe even the works by Guy Vanderhaeghe and Margaret Laurence that I found singularly tasteless, grim and unedifying as a high schooler, it has made me even more aware of never really having understood the cultures and living reality of most of the rest of the country I used to live in. Attending a German-Canadian church in a middle-class suburban community in Victoria in the 1990s and early 2000s, with heavily Americanized influences through school and television, is apparently not all that representative.</p><p>*</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi9DXDV6gY038HQC2_ZQtXAyk6PPc0BRDKnjXY3YMQY6I4tAHiLK1cre0B6cEF3A2etIJI_6H7dQSfO2FXMDQDLTVAzg4R-PbkmkdePEXtORgcbzYRhof8k96bS0bHyT2y5itfHouXCEuB_-1i9GS0TGJCCk_hfgvcNqvr_37PUJRyYjTX96WUDNu8dMw=s500" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="417" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi9DXDV6gY038HQC2_ZQtXAyk6PPc0BRDKnjXY3YMQY6I4tAHiLK1cre0B6cEF3A2etIJI_6H7dQSfO2FXMDQDLTVAzg4R-PbkmkdePEXtORgcbzYRhof8k96bS0bHyT2y5itfHouXCEuB_-1i9GS0TGJCCk_hfgvcNqvr_37PUJRyYjTX96WUDNu8dMw=s320" width="267" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pine Island, Georgian Bay (ca. 1915)<br />
by Tom Thomson<br /><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">
via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tom_Thomson_-_Pine_Island,_Georgian_Bay.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></i></td></tr></tbody></table><p>*</p><p>"<a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/cherie-dimaline-my-community-is-where-my-stories-come-fromand-its-also-where-my-responsibilities-lie/article35509226/">Cherie Dimaline: ‘My community is where my stories come from and it’s also where my responsibilities lie’</a>" [Globe and Mail] (June 30, 2017)</p><p><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/600423/empire-of-wild-by-cherie-dimaline/9780735277205">Empire of Wild</a> [Penguin Random House Canada]</p><p>***</p><p><b>Cookbooks</b></p><p>Aside from still needing to make more recipes in Yasmin Khan's <i>Ripe Figs </i>(but the tahini swirl buns were excellent), Kirsten Buck's <i>Buck Naked Kitchen</i>, and Sarah Kieffer's <i>100 Cookies</i>, I now also have a German language translation of Meera Sodha's <i>East</i>, bought as a Christmas present for the family.</p><p>***</p><p><b>Resolutions</b></p><p>To forage in Dussmann Kulturkaufhaus again. Also, to read books in Italian. To read more internationally, and cook many healthy recipes and a few naughty ones ... The list goes on.</p>Edithorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12785482134177392627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4274376457367230416.post-73805974317470522732021-12-18T15:39:00.003+01:002021-12-18T15:39:54.647+01:00December 2021 in Books: What I'm Reading<p>T<span style="font-size: x-small;">HIS MORNING</span> I read "Cecily Parsley's Nursery Rhymes" (1922) from <i>The Complete Tales of Beatrix Potter</i>. Published reluctantly when the author-and-illustrator was losing her eyesight, she gently rewrites famous rhymes like "This Little Piggy."</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhduhOEGEIiBoTDuwueZeIkYf55MImyR7ohnwDYL1ItSXyAoBPA7qWnpRVJ99g6YXt02TdazdPsSkK3Y5KFzooliKf8WC5we-syyPuASGV8--nRK54t25q19WveIwYSHh80NX3UR6vG_6t2bGid-MThaJrcw7ozwU-Ceww7wqE4yiy5Gj-nhTGYIOA-_A=s300" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="212" data-original-width="300" height="283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhduhOEGEIiBoTDuwueZeIkYf55MImyR7ohnwDYL1ItSXyAoBPA7qWnpRVJ99g6YXt02TdazdPsSkK3Y5KFzooliKf8WC5we-syyPuASGV8--nRK54t25q19WveIwYSHh80NX3UR6vG_6t2bGid-MThaJrcw7ozwU-Ceww7wqE4yiy5Gj-nhTGYIOA-_A=w400-h283" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"We have a little garden"<br />
Illustration of <i>Cecily Parsley's Nursery Rhymes</i><br />
by Beatrix Potter</td></tr></tbody></table><p>She also illustrates a poem from her friend Louie Choyce:</p><p><i>We love our little garden<br />And tend it with such care,<br />You will not find a faded leaf<br />Or blighted blossom there.</i></p><p>[Tip: You can find the entire book on <a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Cecily_Parsley%27s_Nursery_Rhymes">Wikisource</a>. ]</p><p>***</p><p>Turning to adult literature of the 21st century:</p><p><i><b>The Vanishing Half</b></i> by Brit Bennett felt like a page-turner after a while. Set in the 1950s through 1990s, if I remember correctly, it follows two twin women who were born in the segregation-era United States.</p><p>I enjoyed the back and forth between the different generations of Vignes women.</p><p>My only gripe? At times I wished I were reading James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, or another 20th century author instead; sometimes a 21st century perspective blurs the experiences of the 20th too much.</p><p>*</p><p>In a predictable coincidence, the Jimmy Carter biography <i><b>His Very Best</b></i> sheds another light on racism in the late 1960s and early 1970s.</p><p>His campaign to become Governor of Georgia profited greatly by what a few people ca. 2016 have called 'racial anxiety.'</p><p>But Carter upended expectations when, in his inaugural speech, he declared his support of racial integration.</p><p>*</p><p>In between I have been reading more of Assia Djebar's <i><b>Les femmes d'Alger dans leur appartement</b>.</i></p><p>Then I have begun reading <b><i>Behold the Dreamers</i> </b>by Imbolo Mbue. Set during the recession of 2008-2009, its main characters are a family of Cameroonian immigrants to the United States.</p><p>In an audiobook recording, I'm also listening to Cherie Dimaline's <i><b>Empire of Wild</b>.</i> Published in 2020, it is a novel about a Métis community in Canada, in which a wife looks for her lost husband.</p><p>***</p><p>This past week, Barack Obama has posted his end-of-year <a href="https://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/1471168495312420877">lists</a> of his favourite songs, books and films of 2021. A few authors are old-timers, like Jonathan Franzen, Colson Whitehead, and Kazuo Ishiguro; others are relative newcomers like Honorée Fanonne Jeffers and Dawnie Walton. The lyrics of a few of the songs are also worth looking at, in their own literary right.</p>Edithorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12785482134177392627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4274376457367230416.post-44186072632296253722021-11-28T23:36:00.000+01:002021-11-28T23:36:09.141+01:00In the Bleak Midwinter, in a Nutshell<p>Christina Rossetti, one of the clan of Pre-Raphaelites, wrote a religious poem that has since been set to music by Gustav Holst and others, and turned into a Christmas hymn.</p><p>I've not entirely been a fan of her writing style, which in the first verse of this poem has a kind of literally lapidary Cubist quality even if she was writing decades earlier, in the 19th century. But it is undoubtedly also moving.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-pcXIYmj-eA5-gMhD06TnC6nuWSHtfqj6TysQuMB3LmFQIYsQrgEANGd5urpwXsHJWGA9UMPoi6SIwgYqbumtzDtVvl6-QZaOB2hfS5FJJOhFVBeJxwfocZaV6iNjHHcbx6YXbgeoNYpz/s800/WilliamHolmanHuntLandscape.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="551" data-original-width="800" height="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-pcXIYmj-eA5-gMhD06TnC6nuWSHtfqj6TysQuMB3LmFQIYsQrgEANGd5urpwXsHJWGA9UMPoi6SIwgYqbumtzDtVvl6-QZaOB2hfS5FJJOhFVBeJxwfocZaV6iNjHHcbx6YXbgeoNYpz/s320/WilliamHolmanHuntLandscape.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From <i>Pre-Raphaelitism and the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood </i>(1905)<br />
Likely by William Holman Hunt, via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pre-Raphaelitism_and_the_pre-Raphaelite_brotherhood_(1905)_(14592590477).jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></td></tr></tbody></table>
<p><b>In the bleak mid-winter</b></p>
<p>Frosty wind made moan,<br />
Earth stood hard as iron,<br />
Water like a stone;<br />
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,<br />
Snow on snow,<br />
In the bleak mid-winter,<br />
Long ago.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhazuyOi4AWaDiTYBKoBa2zHLrSK8hgUqhRR_Z8Zkw2TawgT2zWsTyv2VYSsS6P4DFyoN0PoTCtrkzR2rUmX88PD9wdrJIk4VnJdXcA3pV2j5y2KUAnTf9DazDqjrSgkMjS06W3iZButILT/s600/NightEdwardBurneJones%25281870%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="223" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhazuyOi4AWaDiTYBKoBa2zHLrSK8hgUqhRR_Z8Zkw2TawgT2zWsTyv2VYSsS6P4DFyoN0PoTCtrkzR2rUmX88PD9wdrJIk4VnJdXcA3pV2j5y2KUAnTf9DazDqjrSgkMjS06W3iZButILT/w149-h400/NightEdwardBurneJones%25281870%2529.jpg" width="149" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Night<br /><i>
by Edward Burne-Jones<br />
via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Night_-_Edward_Burne-Jones_(1870).jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></i></td></tr></tbody></table>
<p>Our God, Heav’n cannot hold him<br />
Nor earth sustain;<br />
Heav’n and earth shall flee away <br />
When he comes to reign:<br />
In the bleak mid-winter<br />
A stable-place sufficed<br />
The Lord God Almighty<br />
Jesus Christ.</p><p>[...]</p>
<p>What can I give him,<br />
Poor as I am?<br />
If I were a shepherd<br />
I would bring a lamb,<br />
If I were a Wise Man<br />
I would do my part,<br />
Yet what I can I give him,<br />
Give my heart.</p><p>***</p><p>To me, an element of William Blake's mysticism tinges the second verse: having an idea of religion in which there is always a conflict or a wrangling for a central role, the Tyger and the Lamb. Maybe inspired by <i>Paradise Lost?</i></p><p>I see this portrait of conflict as projecting a personal struggle with faith, or with the world. Seen as an 'objective' reader of the poem: why, in a Christian cosmology, can't a loving God coexist with heaven and earth?</p><p>It's also unclear why Jesus would expect gifts; but that might be just my opinion, influenced by my Black Friday season anti-consumerism.</p><p>*</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQzVPcj-FGN4T_vVrhQ4T7Nicjlzm9pr6LMz4xkrdhOB1ZXy-fUmQom40SCYBKPxn5xFS0Eiy0IapY99JPNQvNWceuyFAmRXvxrwKgNU7fZA0Fw2J7G1nmPq48xtIqjp-IocG5PnR6Ljjs/s600/Pre-Raphaelite_window_in_Highfield_URC%252C_Rock_Ferry_2.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="587" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQzVPcj-FGN4T_vVrhQ4T7Nicjlzm9pr6LMz4xkrdhOB1ZXy-fUmQom40SCYBKPxn5xFS0Eiy0IapY99JPNQvNWceuyFAmRXvxrwKgNU7fZA0Fw2J7G1nmPq48xtIqjp-IocG5PnR6Ljjs/w391-h400/Pre-Raphaelite_window_in_Highfield_URC%252C_Rock_Ferry_2.jpg" width="391" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">'Pre-Raphaelite window<br />
in Highfield United Reform Church, Rock Ferry'<br /><i>
In the Pre-Raphaelite style.<br />via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pre-Raphaelite_window_in_Highfield_URC,_Rock_Ferry_2.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></i></td></tr></tbody></table><p>The King's College Choir at Cambridge recorded a rather fine version of Holst's musical setting in 2005, and it is available on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hs9-Sxf9j4">YouTube</a>.</p><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Bleak_Midwinter">In the Bleak Midwinter</a> (1872) [Wikipedia]</p><p></p>Edithorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12785482134177392627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4274376457367230416.post-7112838788299183092021-11-23T01:14:00.008+01:002021-11-23T01:27:50.789+01:00The Life of President Carter, Take Two<p>One of NPR's best books of 2020 was an exhaustive (800+ pages in paper, 30+ hours in audiobook) biography of President Jimmy Carter: <i>His Very Best</i>, by Jonathan Alter. Although it is rooted in portraits of rural Georgia during the Great Depression, when the president was still very small, and passes through the wartime 1940s and the halls of the naval academy in Annapolis, it always checks in again with contemporaneity.</p><p><i>His Very Best </i>has ambiguities practically on every page. It makes clear that Carter was not always mild-mannered, not always the greatest husband to Rosalynn (pronounced 'ROE-za-linn'), a tough parent, a skeptic where he is now a kind of non-conformist Baptist, a future humanitarian who did not air his own liberalism on race at a time where the backlash to the civil rights movement made it uncomfortable, a political strategist despite his unworldly(ish) principles. Also: Depending on where you sit on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, you may or may not see a contradiction (seemingly the author does) between the peace-brokering he did between Israel and Egypt in the late 1970s, and his views on the Palestinian cause nowadays.</p><p>Every president proves as best he can that he is a man of the people, while running for office. Jimmy Carter himself may have overstated the deprivation of his childhood circumstances during political campaigning — sure, his family did not have running water for a while, but during the Depression they were rather well off compared to their indigent neighbours. In one passage the author, Jonathan Alter, also writes with painful directness about the way Carter's family economically exploited their Black neighbours even while the family was also at times more tolerant and more deeply helpful than their other White neighbours. — But Carter also seems a much more handy, self-made figure than his presidential peers. The author argues that he is an autodidactic renaissance man.</p><p>The truth, as one of Oscar Wilde's characters phrased it, is rarely pure and never simple.</p><p>The author — who states that the biography is unauthorized and does write a few very unflattering assessments, but also spoke with his subject for the sake of the book — tries to enhance Jimmy Carter's image, even without resorting to Carter's famously helpful post-presidential career. (Well into his 90s, he has still been on the ground with Habitat for Humanity, helping build houses for those who need them, for example.) </p><p>Alter wants to show that what passed for weak policy in the 1970s is often common sense today: emblematic, the solar panels that the President installed on the roof of the White House. And the author does have a good case: another example is Carter's opposition to the death penalty, something that is now gaining wide currency amongst top Democratic Party leaders. Maybe Carter has been the first 21st century president.</p><p>I think the biography is in its approach also very much a reflection of 21st century thinking: we no longer need to pretend that large social struggles were won through immaculate saviour figures, nor is it useful or fair to pretend this. We do not need to write hagiographies of a Martin Luther King, Jr., as a saintly figure who glided through life enfolded by the aura of moral White approval, to appreciate his impact for the better on the course of history. Instead, we can look to the behaviours of all people who did not step into the light of the many others who came together to lead change, the people who would talk with a Menachem Begin and an Anwar al-Sadat — and help them be guided by their own thoughts and feelings toward some course of action that may make the world a slightly better place to live in. The future of civil rights and human rights may well lie (perhaps it has always done so) in a democracy of goodwill.</p>Edithorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12785482134177392627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4274376457367230416.post-20922174111589822472021-10-30T00:57:00.003+02:002021-10-30T00:57:25.773+02:00November 2021 In Books: What I'll Be Reading<p>After the Nobel Prize in Literature was announced, it would make sense to read the writings of <b>Abdulrazak Gurnah.</b></p><p>And in September Colson Whitehead published <i style="font-weight: bold;">Harlem Shuffle,</i> set in New York City in the 1960s.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIqPIHkZmHa13Uq9Mjf4G93BtCUGdzQqEkc3Ghm0GmKY1_Kb6To9Ek6b2vmaqiNVO9nJQnUIZwIc_SJ06sn86o8_i0Mhgt8jV7d56QARAQU2x2CmmG2ZpuXo1Zw5e2kpzVfk70fntKiG07/s450/HarlemShuffleDoubleday.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="296" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIqPIHkZmHa13Uq9Mjf4G93BtCUGdzQqEkc3Ghm0GmKY1_Kb6To9Ek6b2vmaqiNVO9nJQnUIZwIc_SJ06sn86o8_i0Mhgt8jV7d56QARAQU2x2CmmG2ZpuXo1Zw5e2kpzVfk70fntKiG07/w131-h200/HarlemShuffleDoubleday.jpeg" width="131" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cover of <i>Harlem Shuffle</i>
<br />via <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/608669/harlem-shuffle-by-colson-whitehead/">Doubleday</a></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p>For the would-be archaeologist like me, Lara Maiklem's <i><b>Field Guide to Larking</b></i> is also a tempting new book (published longer ago in August, it should be mentioned).</p><p>But I will continue to dig into a reading backlist instead of reading newer publications. There are the <i><b>Complete Tales of Beatrix Potter</b></i> to finish, and the list of best books of 2020 from National Public Radio's website.</p><p>Michelle Obama's autobiography <i><b>Becoming</b></i> is turning out warm, readable, and beautifully written. Still reading earlier passages about her childhood piano lessons when she grew up in Chicago, I'm enjoying comparing and contrasting her literary approach to her husband's.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhNGq_N3S_XcD6jnTwQrYIEyOZiSFCm6afTl4liAwBqIFOnaGZObsl0XSZRysiWAT8XhuUovVznybcXCSPoGwE42YOAc1L9o2h7m4T1N0ICyvlcO8mi49J1XBQKY3sDw2JNFtjQc7WVN6C/s450/MichelleObamaPenguinRandomHouse.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="297" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhNGq_N3S_XcD6jnTwQrYIEyOZiSFCm6afTl4liAwBqIFOnaGZObsl0XSZRysiWAT8XhuUovVznybcXCSPoGwE42YOAc1L9o2h7m4T1N0ICyvlcO8mi49J1XBQKY3sDw2JNFtjQc7WVN6C/w132-h200/MichelleObamaPenguinRandomHouse.jpeg" width="132" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cover of <i>Becoming</i><br />
via <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/562881/becoming-by-michelle-obama/">Penguin Random House</a></td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div>Aside from that, I'll just post a list:<div><br /><div>Sholem Aleichem: <i><b>Menahem Mendel</b></i> (transl. from Yiddish to German)</div><div>Assia Djebar: <b><i>Femmes d'Alger dans leur appartement</i></b></div><div>Eliese Colette Goldbach: <b><i>Rust: A Memoir of Steel and Grit</i></b></div><div>Brit Bennett: <b><i>The Vanishing Half</i></b></div><div>Beatrix Potter: <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Complete Tales of Beatrix Potter</i></div></div><div>Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman: <b><i>Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close</i></b></div><div>... and I have a lengthy 'to be read' list too! The perils of being too absorbed in work, and relying too much on 'comfort reads' to get me through my stretches of angst, are that the books pile up too much.</div>Edithorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12785482134177392627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4274376457367230416.post-53894591883923229292021-08-15T01:38:00.010+02:002021-08-15T11:19:14.596+02:00August 2021 In Books: What I'm Reading<p>Earlier this month I finished Jutta Person's <i><b>Esel</b></i>, a thin German-language volume of cultural history about donkeys and anthropomorphic interpretations of them by everyone from Roman satirists through Christian theologians to German romantics. My uncle M. gave it to me as a birthday present last year because donkeys are my favourite animals. Now another birthday gift, Paul Auster's <i><b>4321</b></i>, is lined up to read next.</p><p><b><i>The Nickel Boys</i></b> by Colson Whitehead, and Nigerian writer Akwaeke Emezi's <b><i>The Death of Vivek Oji</i></b>, are also read, and although both were undoubtedly good, I won't write reviews at present because they'd be too half-baked.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYOgXm0vzBuNqudo7MtOl9pWdhQgvXojCfA1kG1RFIQJ1f4r3XeTDm8xTIsRPdAjtNpTHCrMeTvFYx0Eb4eWCLj58_IY-fTuX_ZfVTEkHJDxCYwywrsQ-eDjn6MDGCAiFryOzmlSnsxC26/s768/AHundredMillionYearsAndADay.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="500" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYOgXm0vzBuNqudo7MtOl9pWdhQgvXojCfA1kG1RFIQJ1f4r3XeTDm8xTIsRPdAjtNpTHCrMeTvFYx0Eb4eWCLj58_IY-fTuX_ZfVTEkHJDxCYwywrsQ-eDjn6MDGCAiFryOzmlSnsxC26/s320/AHundredMillionYearsAndADay.jpg" width="208" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Cover of</i> A Hundred Million Years and a Day<br /><i>
via Gallic Books/<a href="https://belgraviabooks.com/product/a-hundred-million-years-and-a-day-pb-b?i=1">Belgravia Books</a></i></td></tr></tbody></table><p>In a big geographical leap, I've moved to reading <i><b>A Hundred Million Years and a Day</b></i>, a French hit novel that is set at various times in the first half of the 20th century, It is written from the perspective of a solitary, dry-souled ivory tower paleontologist — written by Jean-Baptiste Andrea and translated sublimely and award-winningly by Sam Taylor. Perhaps because my French literary frame of reference is small, the atmosphere and the setting remind me of Marcel Pagnol and the spare style reminds me of <i>Le grand Meaulne</i>s. It's also well thought out; sometimes time-hopping in books is so tediously confusing that I want to gouge out my eyes, but here the back and forth — as the details are filled in — adds genuine suspense.</p><p>***</p><p>The book I'm most enthusiastic right now because it makes me happy is <i><b>Dancing Man: A Broadway Choreographer's Journey</b></i> by Bob Avian and Tom Santopietro. A basic knowledge of musicals or of mid-20th century film is enough to make its revelations understandable.</p><p>The aim of the authors is to tell us exactly what we want to know: each chapter is grouped quite tightly around a specific musical. Fortunately the gossip is generous and not mean-spirited. We hear that Jerome Robbins, a god of sorts among choreographers, was tremendously unpleasant; but we are also told that this was because he was unhappy.</p><p>In general Avian (from whose perspective the book is written) and Santopietro express modern views. Avian, in his eighties, makes little attempt to present a great man's (or woman's) sadism as ideal or even as a useful evil. He presents it as a flaw, but as a flaw whose owner still deserves sympathy.</p><p>I love the old-fashioned turns of phrase in the book, too, however: 'great gal', or "<i>[... q]uicker than you can say “West Side Story,” Audrey set her cap for Michael and snagged him.</i>"</p><p>It feels twee or reductive to call Avian delightful, but the adjective comes to mind anyway.</p><p>The authors are friendly raconteurs, as we see not just there, but also when they wink at the audience with sentences like this vignette from an unsuccessful play production:</p><p></p><blockquote>Act Two contained a King Lear ballet—yes, you read that right—and I was completely at sea.</blockquote><p></p><p>Avian also mentions his experience of 1960s drug culture in a characteristically wholesome way:</p><blockquote><p>I tried pot for the first time and thought, “Hmm, this sure is a lot of fun. And creative.”</p></blockquote><p>He died in January this year, as I was startled to learn when reading his <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Avian">Wikipedia biography</a>.</p><p>Readers who want memoirists to disembowel their private lives might find this book not for them, but fans of Broadway, or of 20th century American film star history, and perhaps also fans of New York City's social history in general, will probably love this. National Public Radio included it in their list of the best books of 2020.</p><p>*</p><p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2021/jan/22/bob-avian-broadway-choreographer-dies">"Tony award-winning Broadway choreographer Bob Avian dies aged 83"</a> by Adrian Horton (January 22, 2021) [Guardian]</p><p>***</p><p>As part of my research into the history of the earliest decades of the 20th century, I have also jumped into the World War I chapters of the British philosopher Bertrand Russell's <i><b>Autobiography</b></i>. Published well after that War, when the Cold War was still on, it is like the oak in Jean de la Fontaine's fable — not in that its roots touch on the realm of the dead, but rather that its roots touch on the realm of Victoria and an era of absolute British aristocratic privilege that seems utterly absurd now.</p><p>I first read the autobiography when I was a teenager struggling with my own opposition to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. He was briefly an imaginary posthumous mentor.</p><p>And now — even as I wince at his views on relationships during the passages about Lady Constance Malleson, Katherine Mansfield and Lady Ottoline Morrell; even as I find him overprivileged in one passage, and mindbogglingly out of touch in another; and even though I don't admire his catty moments — in general it feels like his intelligence, his wonderful turns of phrase, and his dedication are not in doubt. And his insights on political and social celebrities are also great, if partial, gossip.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwZE2DydfnePFPdibOMbaBjFjZWgAP7hyphenhyphenQ2BLvB-quOmqXKDybgz6fzzXO6Qdd0089KqpMBS8OYI9Jjpo9B4oJnG1mlF2PWD1YYDMO1aNck6GKKv8-uKa6qeche7hUNCRxs6-_obHnOfir/s600/WhyMenFight.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="384" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwZE2DydfnePFPdibOMbaBjFjZWgAP7hyphenhyphenQ2BLvB-quOmqXKDybgz6fzzXO6Qdd0089KqpMBS8OYI9Jjpo9B4oJnG1mlF2PWD1YYDMO1aNck6GKKv8-uKa6qeche7hUNCRxs6-_obHnOfir/s320/WhyMenFight.jpg" width="205" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Cover of</i> Why Men Fight<i> (1917)</i><br /><i>
via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Whymenfightameth00russuoft.djvu">Wikimedia Commons</a></i></td></tr></tbody></table><p>Here is a passage where he has been imprisoned due to his activism against the First World War, in a rather posh prison division thanks to the intervention of former British prime minister Arthur Balfour:</p><p></p><blockquote>I found prison in many ways quite agreeable. [...] I wrote a book, <i>Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy</i> [...] and began the work for <i>Analysis of Mind</i>. I was rather interested in my fellow-prisoners, who seemed to me in no way morally inferior to the rest of the population, though they were on the whole slightly below the usual level of intelligence, as was shown by their having been caught.</blockquote><p></p><p>(Russell, Bertrand. <i>Autobiography</i>. London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1978. p. 256)</p><p>*</p><p>I'm also reading <i>Hidden Valley Road</i> by Robert Kolker, about a large midcentury American family that included a high number of sons with schizophrenia. I am struggling with it. As a takedown of the conformist 1950s ideal of domestic bliss, or of the unalloyed joys of military service and being in a military family, I think <i>Hidden Valley Road</i> is the most effective.</p><p>I would like it better if the family could have written their own history. It's not much fun of reading their lives as a psychological literature exercise. From my amateur armchair perspective, I like it better when we acknowledge that we can follow some of the thought patterns of the more conspicuously mentally ill, for example.</p><p>I've known people who are genuinely healthy in mind, like the psychological equivalent of an amazingly athletic person. In most cases I would say, however, that we are participants in, and not observers of, the human battle for logic, reason and proportionate emotional reactions. If we don't acknowledge that, it's unhealthy for ourselves and harmful to others.</p>Edithorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12785482134177392627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4274376457367230416.post-57078518533104380232021-07-25T14:38:00.003+02:002021-07-25T14:38:59.654+02:00Around the World in 32 Countries: South Africa<p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGAXFnPEGFrijQ8qFTIsyp91O_XO5g_YX1ocSwo-6iO1sgGd3qwh6c5eP6eMfc_BKdC5BjYhn1TbRWZTqmR5gV_Q2oArK6-JEYlVNB9-uDhaoleIJ0fmvHqSvctVNrfBy7Hb73fWciWKfW/s800/HillbrowHair.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="509" data-original-width="800" height="255" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGAXFnPEGFrijQ8qFTIsyp91O_XO5g_YX1ocSwo-6iO1sgGd3qwh6c5eP6eMfc_BKdC5BjYhn1TbRWZTqmR5gV_Q2oArK6-JEYlVNB9-uDhaoleIJ0fmvHqSvctVNrfBy7Hb73fWciWKfW/w400-h255/HillbrowHair.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Typically, hair gets done on weekends (Hillbrow, 2010)"<br />
Two women in the Hillbrow neighbourhood of Johannesburg, South Africa.<br />
Attributed to Guinivere Pedro, c. 2015<br /><i>
via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Typically,_hair_gets_done_on_weekends_(Hillbrow,_2010).jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en">CC-BY-SA 4.0</a> license</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><b><br /></b><p><b>Official languages:</b></p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>English (first language of 9.6%)</li><li>isiZulu (22.7%)</li><li>isiXhosa (16%)</li><li>Afrikaans (13.5%)</li><li>Sepedi</li><li>Setswana</li><li>Sesotho</li><li>Xitsonga</li><li>siSwati (Swazi)</li><li>Tshivenda</li><li>isiNdebele</li></ul><p></p><p><b>Modern-day state formation year:</b> 1994 (democratization)</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-3RT9XpaKvaXFgS5fSSbS2Dy1S-W1hpoyh0xShv-me54PiplIX8dBwsVVztweFwmNdUDOWNikWuEqT09ViqaeBDO7Ic94HkJ8eTz_Tb1Wh1yFAusPUp8fasV6JY8mpQGcCgZl-RpPMOUd/s794/Strandveld_in_Blaauwberg_Conservation_Area.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="577" data-original-width="794" height="291" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-3RT9XpaKvaXFgS5fSSbS2Dy1S-W1hpoyh0xShv-me54PiplIX8dBwsVVztweFwmNdUDOWNikWuEqT09ViqaeBDO7Ic94HkJ8eTz_Tb1Wh1yFAusPUp8fasV6JY8mpQGcCgZl-RpPMOUd/w400-h291/Strandveld_in_Blaauwberg_Conservation_Area.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Dune Strandveld growing on dunes<br />
in Blaauwberg Nature Reserve. Cape Town."<br /><i>
Photograph taken ca. 2010, attributed to Abu Shawka<br />
via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Strandveld_in_Blaauwberg_Conservation_Area_-_Cape_Town_SA.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>. Public domain.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><p><b>Capital city:</b> Pretoria (executive), Bloemfontein (judicial), Cape Town (legislative)</p><p><b>Surface area:</b> 1,221,037 km<sup>2</sup> (larger than Ethiopia and smaller than Mali or Angola)</p><p><br /></p><p><b>Currency</b>: South African rand</p><p><b>Driving side:</b> left</p><p><br /></p><p><b>Main trading partners:</b> Germany, the United States, China, Japan, the United Kingdom and Spain</p><p><b>Crops:</b> Sugarcane, maize, grapes, oranges, potatoes, wheat, soy</p><p><b>Mining:</b> Amongst top 10 worldwide producers of platinum, chromium, manganese, titanium, vanadium, iron ore</p><p><u><br /></u></p><p><u>Sources:</u></p><p>South Africa [<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa">Wikipedia</a>]<br />List of countries and dependencies by area [<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_area">Wikipedia</a>]<br />Economy of South Africa [<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_South_Africa">Wikipedia</a>]</p><p>***</p><p>While the history of South Africa stretches back thousands of years, I concentrated in my reading of South African books on the period from 1900 to the present.</p><p><i><b>Long Walk to Freedom</b></i> by Nelson Mandela is a classic that requires little introduction. I am still reading Volume I. He portrays his childhood in a chief's extended family and household in the 1910s and 20s, then his education in colonial British institutions, reaching the apex of his university studies at Fort Hare. Then the life he'd envisioned takes another swing into the unknown as he runs away from his guardian, a short job at a mining complex abruptly breaks off, and he grows into work at a lawyer's office in Johannesburg. There he meets anti-apartheid activists, including Communists, and no longer just attempting to fit into the socioeconomic reality of South Africa as it approaches the Malan years where apartheid became solidified into its extremist nadir, he begins to become political. Altogether he takes pains when setting forth his own life's story to portray the different groups and milieus in South African society, to depict a bonded rather than isolated nation.</p><p>Because Albert Luthuli's life ended in the late 1960s, long before the defeat of apartheid, and he was more religious, his book<b> <i>Let My People Go</i></b> offers the most insight into specific topics: Christianity in South Africa, attempts to bring about reconciliation between groups in the country (South African civilians who were facing apartheid in different parts of the land, urban or rural; the different White political groups and administrators; the interracial 'Coloured' population and population of Indian extraction; Communists and Anglicans and Catholics; racist White individuals and policemen and less racist White individuals and policemen), the creeping influence of apartheid on Luthuli's home ground of education, and initiatives to organize passive resistance on a large scale, in the mid-20th century.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7-D7uS_smcABqsl5552Cw0dajF7GKjxEUhihE63YpODgSmI2QinVXuZnDER4IR4WGfpPkvZrbHLrRYsofzrYanArH3bjBnDj_-yhMwLn8Su0T_J5LQ3Fgq4a776ujmC5iJK8lvNThUFpE/s800/Maloti-Drakensberg_Park-113961.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7-D7uS_smcABqsl5552Cw0dajF7GKjxEUhihE63YpODgSmI2QinVXuZnDER4IR4WGfpPkvZrbHLrRYsofzrYanArH3bjBnDj_-yhMwLn8Su0T_J5LQ3Fgq4a776ujmC5iJK8lvNThUFpE/s320/Maloti-Drakensberg_Park-113961.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Maloti-Drakensberg Park (Lesotho, South Africa)<br />
by Véronique Dauge, c. 2005<br /><i>
via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Maloti-Drakensberg_Park-113961.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>, courtesy of UNESCO<br />
<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/igo/deed.en">CC-BY-SA 3.0</a> license</i></td></tr></tbody></table><p><i><b>Apartheid</b></i>, the volume of anti-apartheid essays edited by the exiled writer Alex La Guma to help concert international pressure to undermine the apartheid government, offers a broader spectrum view of all of South African history up to the early 1970s, when it was published abroad in Britain. It establishes a factual basis earlier in the book of the gradual introduction of racist government policy whether English or Afrikaner, details apartheid's impact in the fields of education, land ownership, military spending and even sports, and winds up with perspectives of the future that admit in some cases that violence and/or Communism may be the answer.</p><p>While the essays aren't always thrilling to read, and the earnest interspersed poetry often feels like the offcuts of better work, it remains informative even after 40 years of events have piled on top of the ones in the book. It's also interesting to me even in that bygone era of the Vietnam War, other after-effects of colonial rule, Cold War coups and invasions, etc., South African government policy internationally still had the power to shock.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIS3iS-Uh0MbWsQfZJBctinvf-LEaLPdeVyAmSkfW3HFfAZkKryy1v49Arv-W7A8iG0mhHmq5S2Wy0PttH8-5_RIIi6cHHJfDrF_5EFyqKAmxMZ52v76s_tiHGkQLiGPykje5X35GdOYXq/s800/City_Deep_container_terminal_Johannesburg_2014.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="510" data-original-width="800" height="255" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIS3iS-Uh0MbWsQfZJBctinvf-LEaLPdeVyAmSkfW3HFfAZkKryy1v49Arv-W7A8iG0mhHmq5S2Wy0PttH8-5_RIIi6cHHJfDrF_5EFyqKAmxMZ52v76s_tiHGkQLiGPykje5X35GdOYXq/w400-h255/City_Deep_container_terminal_Johannesburg_2014.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"City Deep container terminal Johannesburg 2014"<br />
<i>via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:City_Deep_container_terminal_Johannesburg_2014.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en">CC-BY-SA 4.0</a> license</i></td></tr></tbody></table><p>Turning to fiction: Lauren Beukes's novel <i><b>Zoo City</b></i>, set in her birth city of Johannesburg and published in 2010, gives a fantasy view of present-day South Africa. Her heroine is a young Black woman who had intended to become a journalist but had become sidetracked by the violent death of her brother, drug abuse, and a prison term, into petty crime. Even strangers recognize that she has been in trouble with laws written or unwritten, due to the presence of a large sloth by her side. This particular one appeared after the brother's death and it is linked to her by magic: a pet with a mind of his own, her external conscience, and her partner.</p><p>Crime and socioeconomic inequality in fictional Johannesburg are the focus of the novel. But, although this is by no means central, Beukes also mentions how the city (fictionalized in the book, but mirroring in some respects the 'true' South Africa) has paradoxically been a haven of sorts for refugees from violence, specifically wars in the northern African continent. </p><p>To quote Wikipedia:</p><p></p><blockquote>The UN High Commissioner for Refugees in 2008 reported over 200,000 refugees applied for asylum in South Africa, almost four times as many as the year before. These people were mainly from Zimbabwe, though many also come from Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia. Competition over jobs, business opportunities, public services and housing has led to tension between refugees and host communities.</blockquote><p></p><p>The author also spent time studying in New York City. Her depiction of urban crime seems like it can be applied beyond Johannesburg, perhaps as a result of that, even if it's true that in smaller cities like Berlin I do expect violent crime but not regular shootouts. What I did find refreshing is that, although for example the imaginary musical scene in her book is influenced by American pop culture, she helps make pretty clear through her descriptions that the world doesn't revolve around the US or Europe (as I'm sometimes tempted to think from my German-Canadian perspective). Most of the preoccupations, entertainment and future of South Africa are driven from within.</p><p>Beukes's writing style in <i>Zoo City</i> is prone to clichés and the narrator indulges in libertarian-esque cynicism that I unkindly found performative. First-person, present-tense narration is not everyone's favourite quirk, either, even if it is fashionable. But her strong characterization, scene-setting and writerly intensity made me forget and overlook these aspects, and the novel was compelling to read to the end.</p><p></p>Edithorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12785482134177392627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4274376457367230416.post-89335688859794985142021-06-27T15:05:00.005+02:002021-06-27T15:05:45.032+02:00July 2021 In Books: What I'll Be Reading Next<p>In the 'journey around the world' in books, I'm wrapping up my sojourn in South Africa: <i>Zoo City </i>by Lauren Beukes, the essays in <i>Apartheid</i> collected by Alex La Guma, and Albert Luthuli's <i>Let My People Go</i> all being read, I only still need to finish the first volume of Nelson Mandela's <i>Long Walk to Freedom</i>. (I've reached the stage of that autobiography where, as a fledgling lawyer trying to fit into his professional sphere without making waves, Mandela still decides to become politically active, joining meetings with Communists and other groups who are striving to end apartheid.)</p><p>South Korea is next. <i>Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982</i> felt so cheerless at the first reading that I've decided not to reread it. The opening pages of Kyung Sook-Shin's historical tale <i>The Court Dancer</i> — about a Korean courtesan who marries a French nobleman — were good, but I wanted something different. Aside from Korean folktales available in online book archives in a colonial-era English translation, it looked like there were mostly books about North Korea or about 'comfort women' during the Second World War or other depressing books to choose from in my online book subscription website. And perhaps South Korean manhwa is a more promising genre for lighthearted topics than literary fiction.</p><p>In the end, I chose <i>One Spoon On This Earth</i> in an excellent translation — stylistically speaking, at least; of course it would require a detailed knowledge of Korean to know about the technical accuracy. It is written by Ki-young Hyun, and fictionalizes — during the early chapters, at least — a childhood during the post-WWII occupation of Korea. The tyranny of Japan and the war itself were history; but starvation, a cholera epidemic, the destructive effects of post-traumatic stress disorder on home life, a tug-of-war between the occupying authorities (American and Korean) and the Koreans themselves, and battles over Communism, partition, and independence ensued.</p><p>Likely the list of 'trigger warnings' for this book is long enough to be a small book in itself.</p><p>*</p><p>It has been hard to find Ukrainian books to read after the South Korean books are done. For example, Joseph Roth may have been born in the Ukrainian portion of Galicia, but to me it seems highly unlikely he'd have considered himself Ukrainian. Nikolai Gogol's books also feel like an ambiguous case. Let's see.</p><p>But if I step back and revisit countries with under 60,000,000 inhabitants:</p><p>A French colleague of mine with Algerian family members has suggested Algerian books to read — she also offered to read <i>Les Misérables</i> by Victor Hugo with me in tandem.</p><p>I might also finally track down a copy of the book by a Taiwanese author that another colleague's wife recommended to me a year ago: <i>The Silver Bicycle</i>.</p><p>*</p><p>Yesterday I cycled to Dussmann Kulturkaufhaus, on a dozy summer weekend afternoon with remarkably few tourists roaming the Friedrichstraße, and browsed in comfort in the English-language books department. In the end I emerged with two novels — Brit Bennett's <i>The Vanishing Half</i> and Imbolo Mbue's <i>Behold the Dreamers</i> — and a travel memoir-cookbook — <i>Ripe Figs</i> by Yasmin Khan.</p><p>Lastly, my to-be-read pile still includes the 'best of 2020' books and related books from the National Public Radio list. Five hours are left of the <i>Stamped From the Beginning</i> audiobook, and I've made a little progress in <i>Hidden Valley Road</i> by Robert Kolker.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFwoUcZntd8n3MGE-5cIPwW5X_goQSjzkXN4aiNBq8j-nNwSROHMwcF2EtODrKGLNxhQOZNNDWIAceqIPFolWFHtNTc0IaX9MdNP5BC0cwimQqYbWXmfMHGZ_525Rz7blVfUK5y1f01Ndr/s211/RipeFigsYasminKhan.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="211" data-original-width="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFwoUcZntd8n3MGE-5cIPwW5X_goQSjzkXN4aiNBq8j-nNwSROHMwcF2EtODrKGLNxhQOZNNDWIAceqIPFolWFHtNTc0IaX9MdNP5BC0cwimQqYbWXmfMHGZ_525Rz7blVfUK5y1f01Ndr/s0/RipeFigsYasminKhan.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cover of <i>Ripe Figs</i>,<br />
via Bloomsbury Publishing</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p><br /></p>Edithorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12785482134177392627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4274376457367230416.post-69584816581914272812021-05-07T00:50:00.007+02:002021-05-07T00:52:13.168+02:00April 2021 in Books: What I've Been Reading (Children's and Youth Literature)<p>In the course of a deep dive into the Edwardian Age, I launched back into Beatrix Potter in April.</p><p><i><b>The Tale of Peter Rabbit</b></i> (1902), of course, is a classic and led to the breakout success of the author, when publisher Frederick Warne — wiser than other publishers who had rejected her — asked for the manuscript to be illustrated in colour and accepted it on those terms:</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivA6a1UhTnM0KeTEun_w5dYlwuOkmMi8ptzOIWlZYRjIw2NJd0LpInxrCVfQw5vuzcN2vj5fy_Ye_FUAMJxV6jygHWXqWspNwAOh1-bNg0WUdbGakvgr5NxLvUdsuXfacc9BFCGwSVo-Pc/s450/TaleofPeterRabbit.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="337" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivA6a1UhTnM0KeTEun_w5dYlwuOkmMi8ptzOIWlZYRjIw2NJd0LpInxrCVfQw5vuzcN2vj5fy_Ye_FUAMJxV6jygHWXqWspNwAOh1-bNg0WUdbGakvgr5NxLvUdsuXfacc9BFCGwSVo-Pc/s320/TaleofPeterRabbit.jpeg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Source: <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/344233/the-tale-of-peter-rabbit-by-beatrix-potter/9780723263920">PenguinRandomHouse</a></i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p><b><i>The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin</i>:</b> A young squirrel, bristling with energy, goes on short boat trips together with other squirrels to an island in the English countryside. The others, who respect the chief inhabitant of the territory, bring tribute to the elderly owl who inhabits the island, before they roam around it. But Squirrel Nutkin badgers the owl, taunting him with flippant rhymes, as the threat that the owl will finally take his revenge intensifies. I have to confess I didn't particularly like this book.</p><p>It is a cannibalistic book, in a way. In the Narnia books the conundrum of humanizing animals, but still making them attack or eat each other, also arises; but I think C.S. Lewis took more steps to address the paradox. One assumes that in the Edwardian Age, children were not thought to be particularly sensitive.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvjf_bN-YyUM1DCr6Qm0M-ymHvjNpAxBhXmYzZZLxWvdTOWKSAKfBGhD_vLFkx57egF-OSTk95cxWf2cy7oOh55pwcx4hVOUHGR40HRtG5EUPLxifkYeFU0EVQfD727aHZbShgyobzXdGv/s450/SquirrelNutkin.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="339" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvjf_bN-YyUM1DCr6Qm0M-ymHvjNpAxBhXmYzZZLxWvdTOWKSAKfBGhD_vLFkx57egF-OSTk95cxWf2cy7oOh55pwcx4hVOUHGR40HRtG5EUPLxifkYeFU0EVQfD727aHZbShgyobzXdGv/s320/SquirrelNutkin.jpeg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Source: <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/259923/the-tale-of-squirrel-nutkin-by-beatrix-potter/">PenguinRandomHouse</a></i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p>And <i><b>The Tailor of Gloucester</b></i> shows off Potter's range of illustrator skill with watercolour paintings: they teem with 18th century formality, panache and detail. It was, apparently, the author's own favourite work and is based on a local legend not unlike the Heinzelmännchen of German fairy tales.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-BO5YR6NfEeTqtvY-Pq-uyMGZhzSBSGNmJ21grHmekVNcss44H8f9-4rOAyRZt5vE4SLw_zY-Td0jjUQtRV-AdBkMkkJch7DrsxokZOD6baQSQkexcubuFFvKhoTOVIOm_DP6xvrXf9JJ/s450/TailorofGloucester.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="339" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-BO5YR6NfEeTqtvY-Pq-uyMGZhzSBSGNmJ21grHmekVNcss44H8f9-4rOAyRZt5vE4SLw_zY-Td0jjUQtRV-AdBkMkkJch7DrsxokZOD6baQSQkexcubuFFvKhoTOVIOm_DP6xvrXf9JJ/s320/TailorofGloucester.jpeg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Source: <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/259914/the-tailor-of-gloucester-by-beatrix-potter/">PenguinRandomHouse</a></i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p>***</p><p><i><b>King and the Dragonflies</b></i> is a middle grade or young adult book that was published in 2020 and landed in National Public Radio's best books of the year list. Kacen Callender also wrote <i>Felix Ever After</i>, which follows a transgender teen and, getting a lot of attention when it came out, feels like a pioneering book in the broadening social awareness of transgenderism, non-binary ideas of gender, etc.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio-XCggxLGRitDuRDS-9tlywmeGIIxlTEV-95Ou9mDhjBgaCbmDvfEGo5p3YjwnqYPVXwmXYMTnkq3MCFHgNq15e8EB1cDrKnCTgHy-UCuV1KVCZK4b5KzORHK4xywvd1YNbL3qdaehgww/s306/KingandtheDragonflies.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="306" data-original-width="204" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio-XCggxLGRitDuRDS-9tlywmeGIIxlTEV-95Ou9mDhjBgaCbmDvfEGo5p3YjwnqYPVXwmXYMTnkq3MCFHgNq15e8EB1cDrKnCTgHy-UCuV1KVCZK4b5KzORHK4xywvd1YNbL3qdaehgww/s0/KingandtheDragonflies.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://booklife.com/image-factory/http/localhost/amazongetcover/9781338129335.jpg/w204.jpg">via</a> Publishers Weekly</td></tr></tbody></table><p>The narrator protagonist of <i>King and the Dragonflies</i> is a teenager who lives in rural Florida, in walking distance of the wilderness of the bayou. Hurricane Katrina's legacy still looms large, and based on the ages and birthdates it is clear that the plot is supposed to be set in the here and now. The bayou itself mostly suggests, to the protagonist, his brother Khalid — an older, only sibling who died unexpectedly as a school athlete, and whose spirit King likes to think is reincarnated in the dragonflies that fly over its surface.</p><p>His parents are torn up about the sudden loss of their son, also uneasy and angry in a social environment where the sheriff is a racist and they feel unsafe.</p><p><i>King and the Dragonflies</i> has old-fashioned elements: the benign and not-so-benign rednecks who appear in the periphery of King's life are not too far off from the 1930s Alabama of <i>To Kill a Mockingbird</i>. This (possible) literary continuity says more about how engrained racist thought processes become in the mass psyche once they enter it, however, than about the author's intentions, I imagine. [A line of thought suggested also by Ibram X. Kendi's historical book <i>Stamped from the Beginning</i>, which shows in hundreds of ways how racist tropes and practices that we consider as part of the social landscape now, and don't always question and fix as much as we should, were introduced over the course of colonialist history, were certainly 'not always there,' and have unfortunately been very difficult to de-introduce.] </p><p>Racism and homophobia are shown as parallel ills, the battle against them both necessary for equality and individual freedom in the present day. Callender (the author prefers the pronouns they/them) also specifically stress intersectionality. People who champion the one cause might reject the other cause — in the book, King's father is homophobic, and King's friend Sandy, who is White and gay, is struggling to recognize his own family's racist legacy even if he does not share their prejudice. We can't fix one problem and believe that everything is fixed; the problems are interconnected and, to very crudely paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr., we can only enjoy justice for the one once we have ensured that it exists for all.</p><p>*</p><p>For the target audience: I think this book is a friendly companion to gay (or bisexual) children/teenagers, and an encouragement to come out of their shell, trusting in their own individual truth and worth. And to straight classmates it is a great encouragement to be a braver and more reliable ally.</p><p><br /></p><p>***</p><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kacen_Callender">Kacen Callender</a> [Wikipedia]</p><p><br /></p>Edithorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12785482134177392627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4274376457367230416.post-66167983011057975952021-02-07T21:07:00.008+01:002021-02-12T23:33:26.702+01:00February 2021 In Books: What I'll Be Reading Next<p>For the Around the World series, I am still finishing the reading from South African writers.</p><p><i><b>Apartheid: A Collection of Writings on South African Racism by South Africans</b></i>, edited by Alex La Guma, is of course the book with which I started the reading.</p><p>Its essays, by expatriates who are far-flung in Europe due to their opposition to the apartheid government, lay out the racial political, economic and cultural structure of apartheid by the time the book was published. (Ironically perhaps, given colonial history, the book was published in London, 1972.) Land allocations, education, defence spending, the entire history of the colonization of South Africa are knowledgeably sketched... I think the interspersed poems, pan-African themes and all, are meant as seeds for a free post-apartheid culture.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMTAT9k1S29zh8mRWxC9v_-vxl8Qkg8zx0f0s34BVDETNqzDoPRoHD4c4d6dny3t1XWko_ioyxlw4fh4R3W_LLVjtI0lnLM-pbFDsmZ_PktfFpNhlWhliCgJ9KyFbyTkC-GmgQQ-fOPcp3/s599/Albert_Loethoeli.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="599" data-original-width="483" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMTAT9k1S29zh8mRWxC9v_-vxl8Qkg8zx0f0s34BVDETNqzDoPRoHD4c4d6dny3t1XWko_ioyxlw4fh4R3W_LLVjtI0lnLM-pbFDsmZ_PktfFpNhlWhliCgJ9KyFbyTkC-GmgQQ-fOPcp3/s320/Albert_Loethoeli.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Albert Loethoeli, leider Zoeloes in Zuid-Afrika (1967)<br /><i>
(Albert Luthuli, leader of the Zulus in South Africa)<br />
From the Nationaal Archief, Netherlands<br />
via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Albert_Loethoeli_,_leider_Zoeloes_in_Zuid-Afrika,_Bestanddeelnr_920-5251.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p><b><i>Long Walk to Freedom</i> (Vol. 1)</b> by Nelson Mandela and <i><b>Let My People Go</b></i> by Albert Luthuli offer two perspectives on the fight against apartheid. Mandela (a member of the Xhosa people) came from a more prestigious background, and also appeared to benefit by the pre-apartheid reality more, and has more rigour and skepticism and lordliness. Luthuli (a member of the Zulu people) came from a less prestigious background, working as a teacher in what he describes as a cloistered academic environment for well over a decade before becoming a less well-paid chief; he also embraced Christian precepts to an extent that makes him feel more idealistic and gentle-tempered —most of the time. Like my paternal grandfather, one can sense bedrock underneath his mild willingness to find out what other people want and to let them have their way. Both Luthuli and Mandela, of course, became Nobel Peace Prize laureates.</p><p>A South African colleague, when I asked him, conceded that I could theoretically look into many classics of South African literature (Nadine Gordimer's work and Alan Paton's amongst them). But he suggested skipping them — instead, exploring contemporary South Africa and urban crime through the lens of <b><i>Zoo City</i></b> by Lauren Beukes. I'm still hoping to come across an ebook version; but, failing that, the audiobook is an option.</p><p>*</p><p>As an accidentally companionable read, I am also reading more of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's non-fiction and criticism. Although his personal experience of colonialism and neocolonialism centres on Kenya, he alludes in the particular works I'm reading to the South African apartheid state — not yet dismantled at the time he was writing. Apartheid would only crumble in 1994. There's also a tragic element in the knowledge as a reader from the future, of the impending bloodshed in Rwanda.</p><p>I've become impatient with the rote Communist passages — I can only read 'join hands with the proletariat' or 'comprador classes' so many times, without feeling that these phrases lose all meaning — in these essays/speeches. And I suspect that he turned into a self-conscious Hero of the Lecture Hall type of academic in his later years (I say as a disgruntled former undergraduate). But <i><b>Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedoms</b></i> is fascinating as a geopolitical time capsule of the 80s and 90s.</p><p>I do feel awkward when Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o writes of the need to write in African languages, not English or French or Portuguese, and he celebrates writing works in Gikuyu. In the end I am reading his celebration of writing in Gikuyu in English, because that is accessible to me.</p><p>His writing in <i>Moving the Centre</i> is less raw than the writing in his prison memoir <i>Devil on a Cross</i>, but the mood remains invigorating. He is always resisting.</p><blockquote><p><i>To know a language in the context of its culture is a tribute to the people to whom it belongs, and that is good. What has, for us from the former colonies, twisted the natural relation to languages, both our own and those of other peoples, is that the languages of Europe [...] were taught as if they were our own languages, as if Africa had no tongues except those brought there by imperialism [...]</i></p></blockquote><p>and</p><p><i></i></p><blockquote><i>'A peaceful country, don't you think', he [a colonial farmer] would say turning to the house servants who stood by ready to serve him his breakfast. And the house servants would also stand on some of the bodies but at a respectful distance from the master and they would chorus back: 'Yes master, peace'. </i></blockquote><p></p><p>***</p><p><i><b>Stamped from the Beginning</b></i> by Ibram X. Kendi is proving challenging and rewarding, an indispensable and amazingly researched completion of any picture of European and American politics from the Renaissance onwards, and a gem to any history enthusiast who is genuinely curious. A few passages are horrible to read, like the fate of Sarah Baartman, the 'Hottentot Venus,' who was treated essentially as a laboratory rat by scientists of the late Enlightenment and early Napoleonic era.</p><p>*</p><p>In British contemporary literature, I started listening to <i><b>Summer</b></i> by Ali Smith.</p><p>It is a stream-of-consciousness third-person-narrative novel from 2020, of the musings of an English teenager on political news as she grapples with homework, her parents' separation and her brother's predicament.</p><p>The book is well-written and critically acclaimed.</p><p>It is also very 'of the moment' as it talks about everything from the deported British residents of the Windrush Generation through Trumpism to Australian wildfires. But I don't like remembering the times where I 'burned at the stake' of world politics as much as the teenager in this book. To be fair, likely the author's own angst derives from Brexit, which is generally not felt as the deep crisis of economics, politics and social culture, the daily emotional torment, in Germany that it is felt to be in the UK itself. But at least I walked in protests against the War on Iraq instead of just complaining at home.</p><p>That feeling of not wanting to read hundreds of pages of aimless whining, however literary and however near my own political orientation, was why I did not finish the book.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXF8awkkBnOPwJnn1HyJVFm34fu6BBU5Z57EzB4i6xLi5yNIepr5HzxCGmIlBA9cgYBWzq5KLpQnSAX9RyxT4tn_8ixaAZ-HXe8r4K4vFj_kRMPv9B2vLfDc6pV0f70goO_WTht-l-Ky5U/s708/SummerAliSmith.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="708" data-original-width="440" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXF8awkkBnOPwJnn1HyJVFm34fu6BBU5Z57EzB4i6xLi5yNIepr5HzxCGmIlBA9cgYBWzq5KLpQnSAX9RyxT4tn_8ixaAZ-HXe8r4K4vFj_kRMPv9B2vLfDc6pV0f70goO_WTht-l-Ky5U/s320/SummerAliSmith.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cover of <i>Summer</i>, <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/285183/summer/9780241207062.html">via</a> Penguin Books UK</td></tr></tbody></table><p>(The narrator of <i>Summer</i>'s audiobook struggles with the repetitive 'he said' and 'she said' that dot the dialogue. This dialogue, in its faster rhythm, does bring movement and pace to the book. Therefore I found myself wishing that Ali Smith had written a play instead.)</p><p>*</p><p>In preparation for Canada Reads 2021, the televised competition will broadcast starting March 8th on CBC, I have begun reading <b><i>Butter Honey Pig Bread</i></b> by Francesca Ekwuyasi. Magical realism a little along the lines of Toni Morrison, it begins by telling the tale of the childhood of a spirit that tends to slip away from the living world.</p><p>(Content warning: There's menstrual blood in an early chapter, so the easily shocked should likely find a more soothing book to read; and also serious subject matter like stillbirths etc.)</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6bwwfZj9S0gBHgXwOZ3PgpLJtwIEcxxtrEdbmwrvWhJEFw0h_MwwMHO-QJqio37UTLwwnajbSFIrITiyKPNQq5WN79om5bK8-OzpllK-dyPNWlEVPoFPHJG7eMbUljFQQX3fwtbiwEjpf/s440/ButterHoneyPigBread.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="440" data-original-width="293" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6bwwfZj9S0gBHgXwOZ3PgpLJtwIEcxxtrEdbmwrvWhJEFw0h_MwwMHO-QJqio37UTLwwnajbSFIrITiyKPNQq5WN79om5bK8-OzpllK-dyPNWlEVPoFPHJG7eMbUljFQQX3fwtbiwEjpf/s320/ButterHoneyPigBread.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cover of <i>Butter Honey Pig Bread</i>, <a href="https://arsenalpulp.com/Books/B/Butter-Honey-Pig-Bread">via</a> Arsenal Pulp Press</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p>It's not self-consciously literary — you never feel like the word choice is stiltedly signposting its own excellence, even while it <i>is</i> excellent — nor pretentiously enigmatic.</p><p>*</p><p><b style="font-style: italic;">Buck Naked Kitchen</b> has a risqué title, but it's a respectable Canadian cookbook, published last year by Kirsten Buck. It has become a favourite of mine to the degree that I am sprinkling around good reviews around the internet.</p><p>I don't follow the Whole 30 Diet, which is a main nutritional inspiration for the book. But it's easy to stick to the more permissive recipe variants.</p><p>My family favourably reviewed the Smashed Potatoes with Roasted Red Pepper Sauce when I baked them the day before yesterday, as well as the pepper maple syrup bacon, so these appeal even to traditional tastes. I also liked the more consciously healthy or 'new-fangled' recipes. The Creamy Cashew Milk was frothy and sweet. The Perfectly Cooked Wild Rice was well cooked as promised: nutty and lightly salty and nicely grainy without being hard. And I've been making Buck's variation of a Fruit and Nut Trail Mix — walnuts, cashews, coconut flakes, hazelnuts, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, dried goji berries and blueberries and white mulberries — for my brothers. It's filling and has a nice balance of natural sugars and colours.</p><p>The cookbook's healthy ingredients (well, all right, I guess the bacon is debatable as a healthy ingredient), when mingled imaginatively, can have an experimental flair while being as satisfying as steak and potatoes.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_7RGYez9kFc0bByjlsKTxVuJy8rVPVNQTQnzcf4k1nQ2EiYFIAz8yiAcKUOpFu4g4ZyCJCenQc0ILmLJwH-qYgBmC_4Mnh1aQDQMqvWi76vM1IiaaLtw-2vLtDeNZprPFv6k7d17KqjnF/s643/FromCookbookKirstenBuck.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="643" data-original-width="553" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_7RGYez9kFc0bByjlsKTxVuJy8rVPVNQTQnzcf4k1nQ2EiYFIAz8yiAcKUOpFu4g4ZyCJCenQc0ILmLJwH-qYgBmC_4Mnh1aQDQMqvWi76vM1IiaaLtw-2vLtDeNZprPFv6k7d17KqjnF/s320/FromCookbookKirstenBuck.png" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The author of <i>Buck Naked Kitchen</i>,<br /><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/595284/buck-naked-kitchen-by-kirsten-buck-with-foreword-by-melissa-urban/9780735236813">via</a> Penguin Books Canada</td></tr></tbody></table><p>It was also pleasant to see the peaceful photography: daytime lighting and a leitmotif of green plant life.</p><p><i></i></p><blockquote><i>The idea for soup-to-go came to me while on a fall hike in the Whiteshell Provincial Park, located in southeast region of Manitoba along the Ontario border. The wind coming off the water was cold enough to give me a chill. Instead of the energy bar I packed, I really just wanted something to warm me up. </i></blockquote><p>Earlier in the week I had made the saffron rice from Yotam Ottolenghi's and Sami Tamimi's 2012 <i><b>Jerusalem</b></i> cookbook. It turns out that I dislike the flavour of saffron, even if the barberries were tasty. But I also undercooked the rice — not the recipe's fault, I am certain, because I used brown basmati rice instead of white basmati rice. The dill and white pepper instead of black pepper are important to the flavour, blending into and softening the stern flavour of the saffron, and I was impressed that the authors had figured this out.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYWXvIvRxujKe2v9hyphenhyphenEIH1nYzEcD9D6Sa4sF1fYONlg5pTj7XEmmqetdgiCXjfZg2QZ0ifbtrlP4OUvrN7VgExPexSZmU9p8yG48GsJVoJgF_6itFGzCd-eOJlXNUTKubYtrXe4Zj_-Alo/s720/100CookiesSarahKieffer.jpg.webp" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="720" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYWXvIvRxujKe2v9hyphenhyphenEIH1nYzEcD9D6Sa4sF1fYONlg5pTj7XEmmqetdgiCXjfZg2QZ0ifbtrlP4OUvrN7VgExPexSZmU9p8yG48GsJVoJgF_6itFGzCd-eOJlXNUTKubYtrXe4Zj_-Alo/w200-h200/100CookiesSarahKieffer.jpg.webp" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cover of <i>100 Cookies</i>, <a href="https://www.chroniclebooks.com/collections/baking-desserts/products/100-cookies">via</a> Chronicle Books</td></tr></tbody></table><p>Lastly, I've begun baking recipes from Sarah Kieffer's <i>100 Cookies</i>, an American bestseller in 2020, beginning with the soft chocolate chip cookies recipe. It is as regimented as <i>Buck Naked Kitchen</i> is flexible. Before the recipes begin, there are firm instructions, rather than idyllic word-paintings of kitchen escapism.</p><p>While Ottolenghi can be precise enough and I've grumbled in my head about the fiddly gram measurements and the need to measure fractions of a centimetre, it was only with <i>100 Cookies</i> that I felt like I was baking with a fastidious superego looking over my shoulder.</p><p>But my family, of course, just experienced the final result. They made blissful, Cookie Monster-like gestures as they ate the doughy, freshly baked cookies with the chocolate melted and gooey in them.</p><p>So, in the end, weighing out each 45-gram sphere was worth it.</p><p>*</p><p>Aside from <i>Buck Naked Kitchen</i>, Barack Obama's <i><b>A Promised Land</b></i> has become a 'comfort read.' Since I followed the news so much during the 2008 financial crisis, etc., the book is illuminating the past, as well as setting a 'prologue' for the not-identical-but-similar challenges of the Biden Administration. Besides, it calms my anxiety when turmoil arises in the workplace.</p><p></p>Edithorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12785482134177392627noreply@blogger.com0