A Visit, Advent, and Virtue

Today I woke up before ten, as far as I know, very well rested. This is especially surprising because I had stayed up the whole previous night, then slept for about two hours in the middle of the day yesterday. And I only went to sleep at around one in the evening.

The main reason I woke up was because we had a guest, the son of friends of a relative, from America. After breakfast with crêpes prepared by T. (and mixed by the master hand of Gi.), and some conversation before and during that, the guest went off with T., Gi., and J. to Schloss Charlottenburg. They had an audio tour and walked around the grounds, and Gi. took photos. I had decided to stay at home, so I played the piano a little, looked at the Sartorialist blog, and talked with Ge. about his ground school reading about "Menschliches Leistungsvermögen" (to translate roughly, human performance capability). When everyone was back (including Mama, from work, and at first excluding Papa and T., who were at a Physics lecture at the FU), we had Döner kebabs, pistachios, and After Eights while talking much more, about subjects like music and languages and the Punic Wars and US politics. It was very nice, and I talked much more than I usually do (except to my immediate family) but not (unlike when I was little) too much.

Then I played more piano. I'm sightreading the Goldberg Variations at present, which is going splendidly because I skip the hardest variations and because I listened to Glenn Gould's (later) rendition of them throughout the last university semester. It also went splendidly because I really like the variations, and (to descend to the mundane) because my playing happens to be undergoing a good period again. Beside that I played pieces from the Well-Tempered Clavier, Vol. I, parts of Mozart sonatas, and (in the morning) a nocturne from Chopin of which I am particularly fond.

I've just remembered that today is December 1st! This is a great day for me as a part-German, because the Advent calendar countdown begins today. This year I don't have a calendar with chocolate in it, but at the head of my bed I hung one conventional calendar for December, with lovely illustrations, and on the shelf below it I put up one Advent calendar, with equally lovely illustrations, of the type where you see pictures when you open the doors. Also, this glorious day means that my self-imposed embargo on singing German Christmas carols is lifted. I'm glad that I'm enjoying the season this year, because I find the rampant commercialism and gaudiness surrounding it so distasteful. Also, I'd prefer if people were more openly but truly considerate of others during the whole year instead of going through the motions for a month, but devoting a large part of their generosity to bloated corporations, in order to buy useless things that have exacted a large cost on the environment. Giving money to a charity seems to be the modern equivalent of purchasing pardons from the Church in Chaucer's time -- but, I admit, more useful, unless 80% of the money is going into a bureaucracy and publicity . . .

I'll end with my reading yesterday evening. I read Dove in an Eagle's Nest by Charlotte Yonge, which I hadn't read before because I find historical novels with period dialogue frequently nauseating, even more so if the novel is set in Germany and the maledicted author thinks that it would be quite corking to make their characters say "thee" and "thou." But the book was bearable in this respect, though in terms of characters and insight and originality it had little to offer, and the heroine was not so sympathetic (she was more effete* than Fanny Price in Mansfield Park, and that is saying a lot). The plot: a saintly burgher's daughter is married by a wild baron, baron apparently dies (the moment the "death" was described I foretold his future resurrection), twin sons are born and raised saintly-ly by mother, Emperor Maximilian (idealized, of course) pops up a couple of times, one son as a young man is treacherously killed but family forgives as Christians, supposedly defunct baron ransomed from Ottoman slavery and returns to family (Christian), all live happily ever after. Then I skimmed through parts of Countess Kate and Heartsease and The Young Stepmother. I read almost all of Miss Yonge's books on gutenberg.org one time, but I find her books tiresome in their depiction of wrongdoing, painfully drawn out and poorly paced, and expressive of an unhappy Christianity. The Heir of Redclyffe was mentioned in Little Women, but I don't see why Louisa May Alcott, who does have a sense of humour, saw anything in it (if she did). Reading how some unhappy individual manages to do an unrealistic wealth of damage through pride, impetuosity, etc., undergoes severe suffering, and then is finally admitted -- miserable and downtrodden, with a great fear of wrongdoing but not the smallest comfortable vice left -- to the ranks of Christianity (or directly to the ranks of Heaven, having repented just before his decease), seems to me to be an achingly pointless sort of vicarious self-flagellation.

*if I've used the word correctly