Bookworming in the Last Week of December

This morning one of my brothers went out to fetch the usual Saturday breakfast of croissants and a baguette, telling us after he returned that the pavement had been slippery with black ice. Our mother had also observed pedestrians from the window taking tiny careful steps as they navigated the streets. Yesterday evening I'd heard the whooshing of a Berliner Stadtreinigung snowplow on the larger street, but wasn't sure if the side streets and sidewalks had been sprinkled with salt or crushed gravel this time.

Last evening we had stove-related excitement again, as a while after I'd laid three more coals on the fire in one of our tile stoves, I smelled a 'hot iron' scent. I nervously checked the fire a few times but it seemed all right. Then some minutes later Ge. checked the stove and felt even more nervous, deciding to evacuate most of the coals. Based on the fierce heat that radiated from many of the tiles even for hours afterward, the whooshing draughts, the dry and frosty weather, and Ge.'s googling, we surmised that the draught must have been too strong and the fire too bright, so that old deposits of creosote may have started smouldering in the hidden upper niches of the stove. The piping hot tiles were a comfort insofar as we concluded that whatever deposits were there were hopefully still burning off so that they would stop being dangerous. Overnight we let the stove cool entirely, then in the morning restarted it.

I've been devoting most of my time to 'self-care': an hour of ballet and yoga yesterday, and a lot of reading. Short stories by contemporary Italian writers translated into German, an old romance novel by Mary Burchell translated into Portuguese, news from the New York Times and on the websites of Rundfunk Berlin Brandenburg and Tagesschau, and an even older romance novel from the early 1900s that was set amongst tourists in the Netherlands. The Dutch setting, and my Wikipedia searches for locations, were surprisingly relevant to my one university-homework-related enterprise: reading about 17th-century philosophy to figure out what an Enlightened man looks like. I finished the Spinoza chapter in A History of Western Philosophy, and have now hopped over to a biography from the 1960s published by the German house Rowohlt. Spinoza grew up as the son of Jewish parents who had escaped the Inquisition from Spain via Portugal to the Netherlands, and while much of the Jewish quarter of Amsterdam was razed during the Nazi occupation, two 17th-century synagogues, a church, and at least one stately house remain.

In turn, the history of 17th-century Amsterdam ties into late 16th-century trade, which is relevant to the Tudor era Beauty-and-the-Beast story that I'm trying to write again. The challenge I'm facing right now is the 'world building,' which is necessary if I want to write an interesting take rather than a thoroughly effete fan fiction. So, taking techniques from my university courses, I've been reading a long and rambling Elizabethan work by Sir Philip Sidney and taking notes on many of the 'topoi' (e.g. sheep: shepherds, lambs, piping, ...) I come across in it, to research Elizabethan Britain. It's startling how much in the English language has not changed over time, for example the colloquialism 'busy as a bee'; and Sidney uses a rich emotional vocabulary, ranging from depression to envy, which feels startlingly New Age.

I've been thinking of making the Beast a Spanish person who is hiding in England during the Armada. First of all, the challenge of being able to see an 'enemy' as a fellow human being is, I think, a very contemporary topic. As the granddaughter of Germany's fascist generation it's always boggled my mind how after World War II there seemed to be a wild range of reactions e.g. amongst American or British veterans toward Germans, ranging from the famous 'Little Vittles' operation (distributing chocolate and raisins to Berlin's children) to the opposite, and I think some of the same challenges are arising for example between Ukrainians and Russians. Secondly I seem to remember that the original French tale emphasized that the Beast didn't even have esprit (wittiness) to recommend himself. I think that the original tale was pressuring women to go along with arranged marriages, even if they are not attracted to their future husbands; so not all aspects of the source material are ones that I'm willing to pursue. But what I'm willing to pick up is the fear of seeming stupid — and few of us can help feeling stupid when trying to express ourselves in a second language, for example, so creating language differences between the protagonists will bring out that dimension. Thirdly, being an enemy of the state would explain why the Beast would need to live in secrecy. Lastly, the Spanish angle will let me weave in literature and history that I'm studying... That said, a lot of difficulties remain. A central problem with that era and its trade is, of course, the birth of colonialism; and it would be silly to write a story about e.g. a nice cozy winter spent at the fireside, if the more salient and less threadbare backstory is that one logged and stole the neighbour's forest for fuel.

Whenever I feel weltschmerzy and guilty, I've been reducing my carbon footprint by deleting old Twitter news digest emails from five years ago. It's disconcerting how much the world has changed since then, and how optimistic it was from my lefty point of view. For example, debates about weaponry that emerged in the German national news often referred to the ethics of exporting German-manufactured arms to countries that don't respect human rights. Xenophobic sentiment was attributed to and espoused by an extreme fringe, instead of a mainstream. And a gay rights activist who supports trans rights claimed, after she spoke out about a political debate, that 'J.K. Rowling never disappoints' ...

In the meantime, we still have a lot of uneaten Christmas gingerbread and chocolate and marzipan in our pantry. The revelry goes on!

Christmas Morning, 2025

Christmas Day is bright and clear, at the expense of the temperature: it was already -7°C yesterday evening, and it hasn't become any warmer. Car traffic is sparse, but more audible now, although one can hear the church bells well despite the layer of sound.

The youngest brothers, my mother and I have had breakfast: bread rolls with or without raisins, cheese, cold cuts, with tea and coffee. We have also started on our Christmas plates: Spekulatius, chocolate-coated gingerbread hearts filled with jam, Nürnberger Lebkuchen, fondant stars and shapes, sugar-speckled jelly shapes, Marzipankartoffeln, Pfeffernüsse, and satsuma oranges. Aside from the poinsettia-patterned tablecloth that my father's mother gave us in the 1990s, we also lighted tapered candles and tea lights. Then we sang two Christmas carols in the living room, beside the tree, which J. decorated yesterday evening.

Early this afternoon, a neighbour rang our doorbell to pick up a parcel, and we've been mildly busy on social media; but aside from that we've had little contact with the outside world.

I've been reading a book and thinking about whether I really feel like going outside again.

At midnight I'd had a little excursion to take photographs and out of sheer curiosity about who is still up and about at 11:59 p.m. at Christmas Eve in our neighbourhood. Frost was forming on the windowpanes and roofs of cars, Christmas lights twinkling sparsely from the apartment blocks, pedestrians were far and few between, but quite a few windows were alight. And at Nollendorfplatz, as always, the fluorescent bands of rainbow colour were glowing on the cupola of the U-Bahn station.

Shakespeare's Complete Works Reading Challenge: Sixth Day of Henry VI

WHAT IS THIS ABOUT? Last year I had a hankering to half-liveblog all of Shakespeare's plays ... in chronological order, onward from Henry VI, Part 1: written by Shakespeare (b. 1564) in 1591. Time travel to Elizabethan Age literature also feels strangely Christmassy, and therefore seasonal again.

Previous Henry VI blog posts

Act I Scene 1: Henry V's funeral | Scenes 2, 3 & 4: French dauphin meets Joan of Arc, Duke of Gloucester clashes with Bishop of Winchester, the Earl of Salisbury is killed in fighting in Orléans | Scenes 5 & 6: Joan of Arc fights Lord Talbot, French celebrate lifting of siege on Orléans | Act II Scene 1: The English reconquer Orléans | Scenes 2 & 3: Charles VII and Joan of Arc are defeated & on the lam. Countess of Auvergne tries and fails to kill Lord Talbot.

***

December 1
10:20 p.m.

Act II.
Scene IV.

Mary would have certainly disapproved of fighting...
La Vierge nourrissant le Christ, miniature d'un livre d'heures paris
by the Master of the Munich Golden Legend (fl. 1420-1460)
via Wikimedia Commons

A squabble amongst English lords takes place in London, in a garden where roses grow, beside the Temple Church that is run by the Knights Hospitaller and serves generations of lawyers-in-training. The future Duke of York lodges in a chamber at the Temple, too. Richard of York (Plantagenet) is the leading figure on one side of the squabble, the Duke of Somerset on the other side.

They want the Earl of Warwick to decide who is right.

Warwick diplomatically (albeit with arguably false modesty) offers a refusal:

Between two Hawks, which flies the higher pitch,
Between two Dogs, which hath the deeper mouth,
Between two Blades, which bears the better temper,
Between two Horses, which doth bear him best,
Between two Girls, which hath the merriest eye,
I have perhaps some shallow spirit of Judgement

...But, he adds elaborately, in this case he doesn't have a clue.

York and Somerset reply heatedly that it's not such a tough question, each one claiming that anyone who has eyes to see could see that they are in the right.

Then, eager to end the dispute, York (who seems the cleverer character of the two) asks the men around him to pluck flowers from the red rose bush to show that they are on his side.

The Bard doesn't make clear which legal matter York and Somerset were arguing about — Wikipedia suggests that the matter was trivial. Essentially, however, the two lords are discussing the line of succession to the throne of England. York's mother's parentage has given him a strong claim; but York's father was considered a traitor, imprisoned, and beheaded when young Richard was fewer than five years old.

It is the rosebushes in Shakespeare's telling that eventually led Sir Walter Scott and his 19th-century contemporaries to refer to the English civil wars of 1455 to 1487, i.e. the fight between the House of York and the House of Lancaster for the throne, as the Wars of the Roses:

At any rate, the men who believe in York's side of the argument are instructed to pick white roses; the men who believe in Somerset should pick red roses.

Warwick begins the selection, picking a white rose from a bush. Next Suffolk picks a red one.

But Vernon intervenes. He says that the lords should only keep up the exercise if it would truly end the dispute: the side that ends up with the fewest roses should concede defeat.

Although at first York and Somerset both agree with Vernon's intervention, the losing side changes its mind. As more and more white blossoms are picked, Somerset and his friend the Duke of Suffolk exchange insults with the York faction rather than give up.

York concludes by telling his enemy,

And by my Soul, this pale and angry Rose,
As Cognizance of my blood-drinking hate,
Will I for ever, and my Faction wear,
Until it wither with me to my Grave,
Or flourish to the height of my Degree.

Suffolk and Somerset flounce off the stage.

Somerset: Farewell ambitious Richard.

Afterward Warwick predicts,

And here I prophecy: this brawl today,
Grown to this faction in the Temple Garden,
Shall send between the Red-Rose and the White,
A thousand Souls to Death and deadly Night.

York thanks his supporters, and as they leave the stage he tells them,

Come, let us four to Dinner: I dare say,
This Quarrel will drink Blood another day.

Rather than plucking flowers to decide whether 1. Shakespeare's version of history or 2. my doubt of Shakespeare's version of history, is correct, I've checked with Wikipedia. In fact the Bard was not very accurate. It is beyond the scope of this blog to properly research the leading figures and events and causes of the Wars of the Roses. But I recommend a quick look at the biographies of Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset, Henry Beaufort, 3rd Duke of Somerset, and Richard of York, 3rd Duke of York, because they are entertaining tales in themselves.

"Detail on the West Door of Temple Church, London"
by Ethan Doyle White (2018)
Temple Church had to be reconstructed after WWII
but I am fairly certain that Shakespeare might have seen these capitals
in their original state.
via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

December 2

6 p.m.

Scene V.

The dying Lord Mortimer, uncle to Richard of York, is released from prison. York arrives for a friendly family visit. In this ahistorical scene, Shakespeare changes a few small details — like the fact that the real Lord Mortimer had revealed York's father's plot against Henry V and later sat on the commission that passed the father's death sentence.

I'm wondering whether to borrow Lord Mortimer's terminology the next time I visit the doctor:

Even like a man new haled from the Wrack,

So fare my Limbes with long Imprisonment:

And these gray Locks, the Pursuivants of death,

Nestor-like aged, in an Age of Care,

Argue the end of Edmund Mortimer.

These Eyes, like Lamps, whose wasting Oil is spent,

Wax dim, as drawing to their Exigent.

Weak Shoulders, over-borne with burdening Grief,

And pith-less Arms, like to a withered Vine,

That drops his sap-less Branches to the ground.

Yet are these Feet, whose strength-less stay is numb,

(Unable to support this Lump of Clay)

Swift-winged with desire to get a Grave,

As witting I no other comfort have.

He later adds, to let his nephew know without ambiguity that he is tottering on the brink of death:

the Arbitrator of Despairs,

Just Death, kind Umpire of men's miseries,

With sweet enlargement doth dismiss me hence

In real life, Lord Mortimer was sent to Ireland because he had a confrontation with the Duke of Gloucester. There he died of the plague, at the age of only 33 years — three decades before the Wars of the Roses began. That said, York really was his heir.

In Shakespeare's play, York tells his uncle Mortimer of the Duke of Somerset's insults in the Temple garden (Somerset had unkindly mentioned York's father's execution). He embraces his uncle's (fictional) cause to install the House of York on the throne of England.

Lord Mortimer is more cautious, telling York,

With silence, Nephew, be thou politick,

Strong fixed is the House of Lancaster,

And like a Mountain, not to be remov'd.

And so Richard leaves for Parliament, to settle the score with the Duke of Somerset...

Winter Doldrums

ON MONDAY it was my sister's birthday.

In the morning a university class was — if I recall correctly — cancelled due to the professor being sick. Altogether four of my professors have been out sick since the semester started in mid-October. I've been finding (like a child who, after eating ice cream for a week, finds out to its dismay that eating broccoli for a week would have counterintuitively left it feeling happier and more like playing outside) that the missed classes and online classes are actually not that good for my morale. A brisk bicycle ride to campus wakes up the brain, meeting up with my mother over a hot chocolate at the cafeteria lends a bit of comfort and brightness to the day, looking at bulletin boards for event posters and job advertisements is surprisingly stimulating, and I enjoy the sense of fulfilled virtue in having shown up for the requisite 1 hour 30 minutes and then being able to put a lesson behind me. Whereas doing homework for 1 hour 30 minutes at home instead — with recollections of undone housework, business and personal correspondence, job-searching, and literary and news projects swimming in my head like a vast soup — is not very relaxing.

The other problem lately is that the stove pipe in the corner room started glowing red from stove socket to wall socket one day last week. We'd thought that we followed all the proper procedures, especially aeration, to prevent a build-up of creosote. Nor have we used exorbitant quantities of coal. So it's a mystery why the pipe overheated. Long story short, we haven't been able to use that stove, unfortunate as temperatures have dipped below 0°C. An expert will only come by to look at it on December 8th.

This Incident has left my mother's room unheated, indirectly also mine. 'Indirectly,' because given what happened in the corner room, I feel paranoid about using my own room's stove, since no stove expert has taken a look at it in years. My room has been so chilly that I've been pulling a hoodie over my head and huddling in a sleeping bag during the daytime, and sleeping fully clothed under the sleeping bag at night. Besides I wake up at night worrying that the coal stove in the room next to mine has gone out. Then there are cold spots and draughts, despite my clothing and two layers of blankets.

So I feel badly rested when I wake up in the mornings, and not very energetic about studying or about errands or about any challenges whatsoever. When I was younger I just toughed the weather out. But now that I know that cold temperatures raise blood pressure (I've even stopped measuring my blood pressure regularly because it's so chilly when I take off my sweatshirt to fit the cuff around my arm) and I am having trouble sleeping, it no longer feels like a larky adventure.

That said, my mother has been staunch about the whole situation. She uses the heated office room to work and read in during the daytime. And wearing woolly socks is surprisingly helpful.

Today I finally made up my mind to use the electric heater in my room more often — despite the environmental and financial disadvantages.

At any rate, Ge. and I put things in order for T.'s birthday. Then, in the evening, our Uncle Pu joined us for snacks and conversation in the room next to mine.

ON TUESDAY AFTERNOON I had an online class. The professor was recovering from the cold that had led him to cancel last week's class: he was visibly ill and audibly hoarse. (He was dosing himself with cough-candies, and politely requested for us to talk so he wouldn't have to. The other professor-recommended remedy for losing one's voice I've come across is to sip Coca Cola; I suppose honey with ginger is the other option.) Fortunately, the class pitched in, and we had a fairly lively conversation about literary tracts on the role of women from 15th and 16th century Spain.

I felt lucky for being able to keep up with the discussion, since I'd read only 5 pages out of 50 in the scholarly book chapter he had assigned to us as the central text. (But to be fair, I'd also read the poem by St. Teresa of Avila, alongside the first chapters of Moses — assigned because the oppression of women was often predicated on the story of Adam and Eve.) When I mentioned the anomaly of Queen Elizabeth I as a woman in power during roughly the time we were discussing, like Isabella of Spain, the professor seemed to light up; I guess he'd once studied that period of English literature. Anyway, the role of Spanish women was grim; the ideal was for us to speak as seldom as possible, and to be kept at home by means of domestic violence if we were married so that we couldn't 'flirt' by looking at other men. Fray Martín Alonso de Cordoba, who was writing advice for Queen Isabella, was more diplomatic and perhaps progressive than the other tract-writers. Perhaps one might say, a nice Machiavelli. But I wasn't able to figure out if he was hoping to become one of her chief advisors. In other words, I suspected that even if he didn't fudge his ideas to ingratiate himself with the Queen, the power he wanted her to take might have been intended to promote his own ends.

It does feel a little strange that theology is popping up in my university classes, since I usually lead a pretty secular life despite my private convictions, and writing about Sunday church services already makes me a little uncomfortable...

THEN, ON WEDNESDAY, I slept badly and not well enough. I had the instinctual feeling in the morning that I should have stayed at home instead of going to university, but tried to make the best of things. My bicycle's steering has felt wobbly lately, and from experience I know it's not the bicycle but my own physical stability that causes the wobble. So I took the U-Bahn.

At the end of the class, I went up to the professor to apologize for not handing in the written assignments lately. (I've seen too late when the assignments are meant to be submitted online; and this week I was convinced I needed to submit something Wednesday when it was actually Tuesday. etc.) I felt non compos mentis as I was talking to the professor, probably used horrible grammar, and awkwardly used the Italian word finito when I couldn't think of a Spanish phrase. At any rate, the professor assured me that if I had too many other things to do, it was OK if I couldn't hand in the texts. But I had the impression that he was more peeved at my making excuses (in bad Spanish) than at my not handing in the assignments. Admittedly the situation is maybe more disadvantageous for me than for him, because I'll need to write an in-person essay exam in two weeks, and it's best if I iron out my errors with practice texts now. Lastly, I felt guilty: I'm not sure if I do have too many other things to do....

At least the afternoon class was an improvement. I had done 1.5 of 2 readings, and that was already enough to impress the instructor even though I was candid about the missing 0.5. We talked about Crimean Tatars and the Soviet Greek alphabet that was developed to try to put the local Greek (Romaic?) dialect into writing, as well as an author who pioneered Tatar literature. Then we briefly mentioned Vera Ingber's story "Maya" and Alexander Kuprin's tale of (early 20th century?) fishermen near Balaklava: "The Laestrygonians."

THURSDAY started on a better note. The morning class took place, and I had diligently prepared all the Greek grammar exercises that were assigned to us. We also discussed newspaper headlines, and I took the Council of Nicaea as a topic because it absolutely fascinates me that we still care about something that happened well over 1,000 years ago. Of course it's also relevant in that it's the new Pope's first journey abroad, amongst other things important because of the diplomatic implications of his visit to Turkey.

FINALLY, ON FRIDAY I cycled to university for my archaeology class. Unfortunately, I was 45 minutes late because I was waiting for the coal stoves to start up properly and there was nobody else in the apartment to take care of it. We talked about stratigraphy and 'stratigraphic units,' and how to survey archaeological excavations, using examples from Middle Eastern archaeology.

After class I went grocery-shopping: presents for Ge.'s birthday, and fruit and vegetables grown on the farm at the university campus. Then it was off to the zero-waste shop for more groceries. And then I joined the online class about Greek history from the 18th century to the present. We were waiting for the third student to join the video call, so I asked the professor about a book chapter I'd begun to read from the extended reading list. He seemed blissful that we were doing extended reading, and in general was in a good mood this week. He also enjoyed the questions we asked, and went off on an interesting tangent at the end of class about the Ottoman politics at play between the Sultan in Constantinople and Pasha Mehmet Ali in Egypt after the Battle of Navarino.

In the evening, I began looking for books from Italy in our shelves, for my personal reading project, and ended up reading Carlo Rovelli's Seven Brief Lessons in Physics from cover to cover. Next: Elena Ferrante's My Beautiful Friend.

TODAY I was idling in the apartment in the hoodie I'd slept in, wondering when I'd gather the energy to go grocery shopping, when the doorbell rang. The brothers were playing music, so I went to answer, and found that instead of a parcel delivery, it was an uncle and an aunt! They are visiting Berlin, and we'd been disappointed that tomorrow we have a commitment that won't allow us time to meet up with them. So I was delighted they were there. We had chocolate-covered gingerbread and tea in the office room, beside the coal stove, and talked happily. Afterward (inspired by a discussion about how to cook beets) I made a pot of borsht for dinner. And hopefully I was not too unkempt and fusty-smelling...

Despite the visit, I feel like I want to slip right into the Christmas holidays to rest, read, and recharge my figurative batteries. Also: I'm waiting to hear back about a mini-job I applied for: selling decorations at a Christmas market. But I only got a missed call from an unknown number, which didn't match the number on the job posting. When I called back it turned out that it was likely a spam call (Berlin area code, redirected to a different number with an Austrian area code when I called back). It would also be the lowest-paid job, in terms of hourly wage, that I've possibly ever had.

An Autumn Leaf-Poem

This verse surfaced in my email archives, which I've been sorting and thinning out. Apparently I wrote it when I was 19 years old. Since it's reasonably seasonal, I've tidied it up a bit and will post it...

***

Subtle changes: newly cold
mornings, and shining sun
warmly calling forth the red
and yellow of the trees

Stir of wind, a whirl of leaves;
drifts of sweetly smelling
orange and brown and fading green;

squirrels bending over treasures
of walnuts, buried in the soil:
wetted, it still retains a
morning coolness and the dew.

Drying moss in concrete's cracks:
there grainy soil is dark with rain.
The blurred mud shadow of a leaf
trodden in the driveway.

— Nothing new, since through the ages
foliage has come and gone,
winds of desolation swept
through avenues that are made green
with towering maples and with oaks

— but something that still tells me of
great change and tides of fate and time,
better seasons, bitter years
yet life that thrives in spite of all.

A Kind-of-Naughty Tuesday

Life has gotten better since my last blog post, thanks to a programmed day of indolence: on Tuesday I skipped a morning class, didn't do my university homework, went to Dussmann with a friend and then read a romance novel in French translation for the rest of the day.

My indolence didn't avenge itself too badly on Wednesday: the professor cancelled the afternoon class due to her indisposition, for example, so I ended up being able to do one of the two readings (a short story, "Maya," by the Soviet author Vera Ingber) at leisure. And I feel fresher, and have happily shed the feeling of being stuck on a treadmill.

At Dussmann we ate cake, drank something hot (fresh mint tea for me), and talked, in the basement café. Afterward we roamed around the Christmassy displays on the ground level and first floor, including the English Bookshop section. I bought a book to give as a Christmas present — and a package of plum, passionfruit and pomelo-flavored mochi sweets, imported from Taiwan, to share with my family at home. I was tempted to skim through the first chapters of a few English-language books, since I've been thinking of casting a vote in the best-of-2025 book competition on Goodreads. But this would have forced my friend to wait. Besides I'm already listening to an audiobook recording of one of the contending books, Finding My Way by Malala Yousafzai, online.

It was not too crowded in the bookshop when we arrived at 3 p.m. But by the time we left more than two hours later, it was busier. Winter has begun to displace autumn, so daytime temperatures have often been below 5°C in the past few days, and shops feel more like refuges from the elements than like mere capitalist repositories. On Monday I cycled to university gingerly, as I didn't trust the glossy pavement; that said, except at bridges it seemed like there was no black ice, and the main perils seemed to be the smooth or rotting leaves on the asphalt and — as usual — the antics of all of us who were sharing the roads.