The Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Fortune

While the last three days have by no means unexciting, the main event that unfortunately sticks out in my memory is the skin irritation on my hands, probably caused by contact with too severe a soap as well as the dry air. At first it merely looked like a small army of mosquitoes had alighted on my hands and left behind the small mounds that are the usual calling-cards of the species. My left hand already had a tendency to swell and be red. On the first evening I consulted the dermatological section of Merck's Manual. While it much comforted me to realize how many unpleasant disorders I didn't have, it did not help that much. Three points I picked up on were to avoid exposing the skin to strong soaps, to try menthol in a dissolving base (as it happens, we have an anti-cold salve that answers that description precisely), and to expose the skin to direct sunlight. The menthol soothed the most figuratively as well as literally irritating bouts of itch, but neither it nor a moisturizing hand cream nor a skin lotion nor leaving the whole thing alone have cured the problem. Of course I know not to touch the afflicted areas, let alone scratch them. Anyway, this morning both my hands had ballooned and turned quite red, and I contemplated going to a doctor with still greater conviction. But we don't have health insurance here yet, since the company that has insured Mama has, in the infinite dubiousness of its wisdom, decided not to extend the privilege to her dependents.

Last evening I read an article about poor Third World people and told myself that it put everything in perspective. So it did until this morning, when I could not help forgetting my broader philosophical thoughts. For the rest of the day I've been cranky and miserable, shedding the occasional furtive tear much as I did yesterday evening. Reading is a good mode of distraction, and I've been able to indulge in it well. But of course the piano can only be played at certain hours. Exercise in the form of walks has not seemed to help much, though I intend to see what a really long walk can do. Then the nagging presence of my hand-affliction reinforces the nagging presence of similarly pathological thoughts about the possible ill success of my writing career, and a possible lifetime of loneliness and unfulfillment. When I can't go to sleep easily in the evening because of said hands the thoughts are particularly hard to get rid of.

Perhaps I shouldn't have George Gissing's New Grub Street as my bedtime reading either. But I hadn't realized when I read it for university how delightfully short the sentences are, though it is certainly a Victorian book. What I did already realize then is how excellent the observation is. It's probably a bad indication when Edwin Reardon writer's block, intellectual isolation, despair, etc., are described and I mentally exclaim, "I know exactly what he's talking about!" But I think I am more practical than he is, at least in theory.

Anyway, enough direct and indirect moping! Most people on earth probably have a much harder lot than mine, and my problems are by no means unsolvable.

Literary Oddments

Here are three quotations culled from my notes; all quotations are taken from www.gutenberg.org, except the last, which is taken from the New York Times.


An eighteenth-century novel . . .

"Oh words of transport and extacy!" cried the enraptured Delvile, "oh partner of my life! friend, solace, darling of my bosom! that so lately I thought expiring! that I folded to my bleeding heart in the agony of eternal separation!"

-- Cecilia, by Fanny Burney

two eighteenth-century courts . . .

Of Marie Antoinette:
"Her contempt of the vanities of etiquette became the pretext for the first reproaches levelled at the Queen. What misconduct might not be dreaded from a princess who could absolutely go out without a hoop! and who, in the salons of Trianon, instead of discussing the important rights to chairs and stools, good-naturedly invited everybody to be seated."

-- Memoirs of Mme. de Campan

"Fashion is always silly, for, before it can spread far, it must be calculated for silly people; as examples of sense, wit, or ingenuity could be imitated only by a few. All the discoveries that I can perceive to have been made by the present age, is to prefer riding about the streets rather than on the roads or on the turf, and being too late for everything. Thus, though we have more public diversions than would suffice for two capitals, nobody goes to them till they are over."

-- Letter from Walpole to Sir Horace Mann, 8th Sept. 1782 (Charles Duke Yonge, Ed.)

"I now do believe that the King [George III] is coming to _him_self: not in the language of the courtiers, to his senses--but from their proof, viz., that he is returned to his _what! what! what!_ which he used to prefix to every sentence, and which is coming to his nonsense. I am corroborated in this opinion by his having said much more sensible things in his lunacy than he did when he was reckoned sane, which I do not believe he has been for some years."

-- Letter from Walpole to Sir Horace Mann, Feb. 12 1789 (Ibid.)

“A French Marquis,'[. . .] fell from a balcony at Versailles, and [. . .], as it was court politeness that nothing unfortunate should ever be mentioned in the King's presence, replied to His Majesty's inquiry if he wasn't hurt by his fall, "Tout au contraire, Sire"'.

-- Richard Lovell Edgeworth: A Selection from his Memoirs, Beatrix Tollemache, Ed.

. . . and twentieth-century wisdom

“We must face the fact that the United States is neither omnipotent or omniscient — that we are only 6 percent of the world’s population; that we cannot impose our will upon the other 94 percent of mankind; that we cannot right every wrong or reverse each adversity; and therefore there cannot be an American solution to every world problem.”

-- John F. Kennedy, quoted in article by Arthur M. Schlesinger


Correction to post below: The events were about East/West relations in general. And I did rather exaggerate the elevator-look thing -- it just happened once or twice. (c:

A Most Eventful Non-Event

Mama, T., J. and I have just returned from a trip to the Akademie der Wissenschaften building at the Gendarmenmarkt, where there was a series of events on the topic of the Israeli-Palestinian situation. When I agreed to come to a discussion between an Israeli and a Palestinian, I pictured in my mind a modest white-washed university lecture room, with perhaps a lonely overhead projector standing at the front, and a modest crowd of idealistic students (with the occasional combination of large woolly sweater and dreadlocked hair) and adults from the region under discussion and interested adults, similarly quietly clothed, from the general public. This is how such an evening would most likely have looked in Victoria, or even Vancouver.

Instead, as soon as we entered, there were formal tables in the lobby, with attendants correspondingly dressed behind them. And scattered on the staircase and in the rooms of the ground floor there were multitudes of very well dressed and meticulously made-up grown-ups, and students older than me. We were also slightly stressed because we felt that we had come late (a bus had been tardy, and then we had completely unnecessary trouble finding the right U-Bahn exit, route to the Akademie building, etc.). Anyway, I really hate the feeling that people who are there to serve others (for example, a waiter in a restaurant, or in this case the people in the lobby) are looking down on you. On the other hand, it amuses me when an important society person -- always, I think, a middle-aged woman in very formal clothing, bright red lipstick, short hair, and uncompromisingly tightly clipped eyebrows -- looks at me with an expression that disgustedly seems to say, "Oh, it's you." The disgust is always personalized. The more general animadversion, "It's one of those poorly dressed people," would, I think, be expressed by raising the eyebrows and then swiftly looking away. But a prolonged elevator look -- as I noticed a couple of times today -- indicates a more particular distaste. Perhaps the look of unsubtle amusement that I wear on these occasions is also not the most refined reaction. And I must admit that I always think with satisfaction of my illustrious ancestors, and the blue-ness of my blood, and my decent education, when this sort of thing happens.

Anyway, we finally found the Einsteinsaal (where the discussion was about to begin), having seen the friend who had invited us to the event along the way. The Saal was positively packed and very stuffy. After we had moved into the room I got to the open window as swiftly as I could without being noisy (we had, after all, been climbing at least three flights of stairs). Then we left again, Mama saying that it was really no use to stay. So we wandered around the building more. We discovered a "paternoster," which is a most delightful type of elevator composed of multiple boxes running in a conveyor-belt like arrangement, with no doors. It was funny seeing the different people coming by. J. and Mama stepped into one box; T. and I were supposed to go into the next, but T. "wimped out," so I went in alone. The box went down, then to the side, then up again to the ground floor. I got out there and waited in vain for the others. Then I decided to go up to look for the others. On the second floor, Mama, T., and J. were waiting. A dramatic reading of the parable of the rings from Lessing's Nathan der Weise taking place. I got out just before the paternoster was requisitioned for the reading.

We returned to the ground floor, where a poetry reading was taking place. The reader had a nice, ladylike voice, but I thought that what the reading was rather ludicrous. Earlier I heard the nonsensical line (in German), "Men are only threatened by fatal danger, but women are threatened . . .," in her gentle and plaintive tones, and at the end, I heard the following trite lines: "The . . . feather . . . is falling . . . out of my hand . . . . Even my . . . hate . . . is . . . dead. . . . I . . . am . . . dying. [Moment of sympathetic silence, followed by applause.]" Or something to that effect. But maybe I'm just callous, and maybe the poet whose work is being read is very sincere and famous, so that I would feel ashamed if I knew who it was. (c:

Anyway, soon after this we went out of the building, made a circuit around the Konzerthaus in the Gendarmenmarkt, and walked along to the Stadtmitte bus station. Several stars were visible, as well as the waxing moon, and we were crunching through the part-snow-part-ice on the sidewalks. We waited at the bus station a while and finally returned home.

A Brief Celebration

Today I decided to bite the bullet, as it were, and read the Studienhandbuch of the Freie Universität. Having my desire to procrastinate cured for me by a good night's sleep, a beautiful sunny day, a thin layer of snow, and a most refreshing coldness outside balanced by coal-fuelled warmth inside, proved unexpectedly rewarding. I found out where I should send my application -- and I found out that the deadline, for the current winter semester at least, is not in early February, as I had thought, but in mid-July!

In honour of the occasion, here is a small procession:

(c: (c: (c: (c: (c: (c: (c: (c:

But I haven't done much today. I showered, went shopping, washed the dishes, and prepared dinner (Hawaii toast). Then I played some Well-Tempered Clavier and read a few news articles. That's basically it.

Papa was up all night working, Mama went to work at around eleven, and Gi., Ge. and J. woke up before it was light and then went to school. T. is helping J. do Math homework as I am typing this, while Gi. has already gone to sleep.

The Tempest, Papa's Birthday, and Literature

Today Gi. and Ge. came home early for school because of "Orkanböen," or "hurricane gusts." I thought they were joking when they explained it. But there was indeed a steady wind and driving rain when Gi. and I went grocery-shopping. As evening fell the storm intensified. There were two or more flashes of lightning and corresponding rolls of thunder. The rain ran down our windows, dripped in under the window frame, and pooled in the space between our double windows. We had to twist up newspapers and wedge them in under the windows, to soak up the water that called unwanted attention to the dirty nature of the frames. Every now and then there were gusts that sounded like low thunder and pushed at our windows and balcony door. The wind whooshed uneasily down into the stove in the living room. When I looked outside the branches of the trees were all agitated, even street signs and street lamps were shaking, the winds drove the rain from the roads as mist and blew them in every which way, and every now and then a solitary leaf would appear out of nowhere high above the road and be whirled across it.

When my uncle W. dropped by later he said that the trains had been put out of service because of branches and perhaps even trees that had fallen across the tracks. On the radio he had also heard that about seven people had died due to the storm. Watching the eleven o'clock news, I learned that the winds peaked at 131 km/h at Berlin-Wannsee. But at one spot in Germany gusts reached 202 km/h. Countless flights have been cancelled, and the trains are out all over. But the storm is expected to literally blow over soon; the high winds should have ended in Berlin by 2 a.m. or 4 a.m. at the latest.

Perhaps this account implies that all of this is rather exciting. But it hasn't really been, except for the strongest wind gusts.

At any rate, today it was Papa's birthday. This time we properly remembered it, and it was a nice day. To celebrate we had a dinner of a large leg of lamb, broiled to perfection with oregano, sage and garlic cloves, and accompanied by green beans. For dessert we had two cakes as well as nougat-nut pralines and chocolate-covered wafers and, it must be confessed, a certain fizzy brown drink. There were no formal presents as such, except some liquor-filled chocolates from W., and a phone call from Uncle Pu.

Yesterday evening I began seriously writing on my French Revolution story. I think it will do no harm if I write much on it now, even with my research in a highly incomplete state, because it should be no difficulty to rewrite it properly when I'm older. The personalities of my characters are crystallizing beautifully, though they are not well-rounded yet (I still have to do a lot of practice observing and depicting character). I am describing the d'Eules family in the May of 1789 (hopefully the dates are right), just before the opening of the Estates-General. On television I recently saw an image of a hilltop castle that seemed more livable than my previous template, Burg Braubach, so I used it instead. The natural surroundings were more or less the same.

But before I worked on my French Revolution story I wrote a draft of an essay entitled, "What Makes a Good Poem?" Today I typed it up and greatly improved it. It ended up being four single-spaced pages. I enjoyed the process of writing it a lot, because, despite the broad topic, I felt that my approach was reasonably comprehensive. Quotations from the poetry I've read in school and university and with my sister and our French teacher Marie and on my own over the years simply fell into place.

I was fresh from Shakespeare, because I've been browsing through our edition of his Complete Works (even the Passionate Pilgrim is included in the back) for two days already, hoping to understand more and get more out of him than I have in the past. In the sonnets I discovered two lines that I found somehow gripping, perhaps because I've read them before: "Thou art too fair for my possessing" and "Like as the waves make toward the pebbled shore (. . .)" -- if I remember properly. But while skimming through the sonnets and some of the plays I've been thoroughly paranoid about sexual innuendo, and I find it distracting. My English 220 professor found that sort of thing amusing, but whether it is out of Puritanism or out of the more flattering quality of innate delicacy, I don't.

As for the individual plays, All's Well That Ends Well bothers me. I find the Bertram de Roussillon character singularly unappealing, and do not understand why one would possibly want to be tied for life to a philandering snob. In contrast I much appreciated Rosalind's caricatures of a female during courtship, in As You Like It. Then I looked at the Love's Labour's Lost speech about the eye of a woman being the truest teacher of love, or some such thing. When I was still at UBC there was a house event where one of the students recited that speech, and I was much struck by it though I only really remembered the eye part. Turning to Pericles, I thought that the character of Mariana was an unlikely choice for Shakespeare, her effortless angelic goodness being wearisome in the extreme. I've avoided Timon of Athens for being too depressing (I only know it as one of the Lambs' "tales from Shakespeare"). But then I read the scene where those whom Timon had helped the most in the past refuse to give him any money in his difficulty, and now I want to read all of it. The end of King Lear I found truly moving for the first time, with Cordelia's recovery of her father and her subsequent death. Somehow, even though she is similarly perfect, I see her as a real woman much more than Mariana. Much Ado About Nothing and A Midsummer Night's Dream -- no new thoughts, as far as I remember. As for The Merchant of Venice, I still can't come to terms with the way that Antonio treated Shylock. While I still see Shylock as a disagreeable character, I don't see how one can condone Antonio's humiliation of and contempt for him, and this conduct is particularly jarring coming from a supposedly good individual.

And now I'll catch up on my sleep, as my hapless reader may be doing by the time that he reaches this sentence. (c:

A Day of Sloth

First of all, I should say that this wasn't entirely a day of sloth; I did shower, make my bed, and go grocery-shopping. It was a cloudy day, but mild (I've heard many remarks about the unseasonal warmth here in Berlin throughout the winter), so there was no real reason to stay inside much, but I did. Today I played Mozart and Beethoven and Chopin and Mendelssohn better than average, and Bach about average. Of the first two I played piano sonatas; of the third assorted waltzes, mazurkas, the beginning of a Polonaise, and three nocturnes; and last of all I played Mendelssohn's "Spring Song." I only played one prelude by Bach.

Then I read articles on the Guardian and New York Times websites. The Guardian has a good, detailed article about William Hogarth, whose Rake's Progress we looked at in my History 120 course. Then there was an article about Iraq's civil war that I found most illuminating, as well as a rather too uncritical one about Angela Merkel. Finally, there is also a discussion about writing by Zadie Smith, of which the following sentences particularly caught my attention:

Bad writing does nothing, changes nothing, educates no emotions, rewires no inner circuitry - we close its covers with the same metaphysical confidence in the universality of our own interface as we did when we opened it. But great writing - great writing forces you to submit to its vision. You spend the morning reading Chekhov and in the afternoon, walking through your neighbourhood, the world has turned Chekhovian; the waitress in the cafe offers a non- sequitur, a dog dances in the street.

In the Times I was surprised to read that a Charles Stimson, the US's deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, had suggested in a radio interview that corporations boycott prominent law firms whose members work on behalf of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay. I was amused until I read that this person is a lawyer himself, though a military one. I've read, probably in the New York Review of Books, a witticism to the effect that military justice has roughly the same relationship to justice that military music has to music. Perhaps the statement is not so unfair. But what really shocked me is Mr. Stimson's following comment: “I think, quite honestly, when corporate C.E.O.’s see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, those C.E.O.’s are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms (. . .)." Does he really not understand that those terrorists who were directly responsible for September 11th are already dead? Even if he does understand that, it is highly worrisome given his position that he cannot grasp the fact that many of the detainees in Guantanamo Bay are innocent, and that there is a reason why the US government has only filed charges (and that, I think, only in a military court) against ten of the over six hundred inmates.

As for the question of representing people who, one can be reasonably sure, are responsible for terrible acts, I'm sure I wouldn't want to do so. But, if I were a lawyer, I think I would see it as my duty, to the defendant and to the truth. One cannot come to a true understanding of a crime and the identity of its perpetrator if there is only a prosecutor; to give an analogy, two spotlights trained on an object from different directions provide a much better view of the whole than only one spotlight would. Anyway, the leading editorial of the Times was a stinging reply to Stimson's comments, and it was a pleasure to read. But the last paragraph, while I admire it from a rhetorical standpoint, went too far as it pounced on Stimson's involuntary implication that the corporate financial losses of September 11 were more serious than the human death toll.

Anyway, the other major reading I did today was St. Elmo. I find it isn't nearly as annoying as At the Mercy of Tiberius (though both heroines unfortunately have an alliterative name). It is nearly as thrilling: there is one duel and the mention of another, the heroine's grandparents die, the hero out-Byronics Mr. Rochester, the villain of the piece is a blonde-haired femme fatale resembling Dumas's Milady, and the heroine has a close encounter with an unfriendly dog who has just devoured a sheep, two fainting-fits because she suffers from hypertrophy, and three marriage proposals (thus far). The heroine is also very learned, and can, for example, quote Mill at will and disparage him with great ease. She delivers an amusing anti-suffragist outburst, denouncing the ranks of suffragettes as ugly, disappointed New England spinsters, horrible she-males, fanatics on the brink of insanity, etc. Here, in contrast, is her description of the ideal wife, quoted from a certain Rogers:

"His house she enters, there to be a light
Shining within when all without is night;
A guardian angel o'er his life presiding,
Doubling his pleasures and his cares dividing;
Winning him back, when mingling in the throng
From a vain world we love, alas! too long,
To fireside happiness and hours of ease,
Blest with that charm, the certainty to please.
How oft her eyes read his! her gentle mind
To all his wishes, all his thoughts inclined;
Still subject -- ever on the watch to borrow
Mirth of his mirth, and sorrow of his sorrow."

I wonder whether reading novels does have a pernicious effect on the mind. On the one hand, I'm frittering away time I could otherwise spend continuing the Leviathan, reattempting Kant, reading about the French Revolution, diminishing my ignorance of the sciences, sketching, and getting properly launched on Waverley. On the other hand, I find that a satisfactory novel keeps me in a good mood as nothing else can. The pious ones also help me to fine-tune my moral ideals. And I think that I do read novels bearing firmly in mind that they have little or no relation to the real world, so I don't indulge sentimental daydreams or anything like that -- but one can never really tell, can one?

School and Sentimentality

We've just eaten a splendid dinner by Papa, consisting of a chicory-and-orange salad as well as roast pork. Mama is at an Amnesty meeting, T. is on the web, Gi. is trying to go to sleep, Ge. is reading Lord of the Rings and thereby preparing to try to go to sleep, and J. is slumbering peacefully on the broad living room couch.

Today it was the first day of school for my brothers. Gi. came home first, cold and damp from the rain that he encountered while riding his bike home. Ge. and J., who had taken the U-Bahn home, came soon after. J. had two mishaps in his "Sport" class, but he was in good spirits, as were Gi. and Ge. The latter soon did their homework; they answered questions about fermentation for their Chemistry class, and looked over a text about the book Das Parfum, which they have to read for German. The discussion about fermentation, ATP, etc., reminded me pleasantly of Biology 12, though, as I remarked to Ge., I hadn't really paid attention when we learnt about that.

As for me, I went for a walk around the Kleistpark, played from Schumann's Album für die Jugend and Beethoven's sonatas, browsed the web, and read more of At the Mercy of Tiberius, which is also by the author of St. Elmo (which I haven't read yet). The plot: a woman living with her invalid mother in New York travels to the South in order to ask for money (desperately needed to finance an operation on the mother's aneurysm) from her mother's father. The grandfather grudgingly obliges; the beleaguered grandchild goes on her way, only to be arrested for murdering her grandfather just before she reaches home. Heroine charged with the crime; circumstantial evidence accumulates that seems to render her guilt indisputable, but actually points to a good-for-nothing brother whom no one else knows about; heroine decides not to denounce her brother, but to sacrifice herself because she promised her mother to do everything possible to protect said brother. Heroine rewarded with five years in jail for manslaughter; clear proof of innocence however eventually surfaces; happy ending. A likely story. (c:

The questions that arise in the book about crime and the way that society handles it, as well as about the courts and their relation to the ideal of justice, are equally relevant today. If certain other questions arise about scientific probability, oh, well . . . Other things bother me more. For instance, the author's implicit parallels between the heroine and Christ make me queasy. And the author overindulges in describing feminine weakness; bouts of diphtheria, brain fever, and pneumonia -- the latter two almost fatal -- assail her poor heroine, and the effects of unhappiness and illness on her face are described in aestheticized detail; besides which the heroine often says that she wants to die. Pfft! Speaking of femininity, the author is probably reflecting her time when she makes a fuss about the treatment of her heroine. Why should it matter whether the accused in a court case is female or not? Of course women can do terrible things; the author gives examples herself. One can argue that suspects and convicts should all be treated with greater dignity. But not to charge a woman, however attractive and outwardly pious, with murder when all the circumstantial evidence points that way, would be injust and frankly stupid. The circumstantial evidence was really enough for a conviction.

It being a novel set in the south, African-Americans come up too. I would say that they are sympathetically portrayed, and that they are by no means considered as untouchables, but at the same time the author (a staunch Southerner) pretends that their situation was much better than it really was. She only mentions one case, as far as I remember, where a slave is beaten, and she has the gall to make a "Yankee" overseer responsible for it.

I have often wondered why the author, Augusta Jane Evans, isn't better known. She has a good ear for language, a broad and varied perspective, keen observation, and is, as far as I can tell, quite original (though Charlotte Bronte seems to be a major inspiration). I think the answer is that her books are simply too sentimental. Because of this sentimentality her gifts are squandered: her main characters and her dialogue are unlike anything ever heard or seen on land or on sea (or probably even on the stage), her prose is purple, and her plots are not realistic. Her views on issues like the nature of woman are, it is true, also outdated. Yet she was very open-minded for the time -- for example, even though she clearly dissociates her heroine from real criminals, she argues against the "pharisaical" way that society ignores and neglects these others, and describes her heroine trying to help them. She also has a propensity for obscure references to Greek and Norse mythology, Roman history, the Bible, etc., and for philosophizing in highly elaborate phrases for a paragraph or two every now and then. But I like this, and it's a nice and new experience to consult a dictionary or an internet search engine while I'm reading a work of fiction.

Buckets and Buckets of Artistic Blood

Today my cousin A., Mama and I went to the Hermann Nitsch exhibition in the Martin-Gropius-Bau. We took the M48 bus to Verian-Fry Strasse, then walked under the brilliant fluorescent lights of Potsdamer Platz until we reached the building in question. The Bau is a decorous building in a neoclassical style, but none of the pomposity that is associated with it. The bases of the columns in front are bountifully decorated with putti and vines, the pillars running along the edge of the first floor are rectangular and painted in black with gold bands and a golden Corinthian capital, the roof over it consists of a firm wooden grid covered with some opaque material (which brings to mind Japanese architecture), the doors are of wood, the floor is covered in beautiful intricate designs in dark colours and gold, and the molded leaves, etc., in plaster that adorn the ceilings are detailed, free, and profuse.

We bought tickets in the ground floor, then ascended to the first floor along the fine broad turnout-ed (this pseudo-word brought to you by Wikipedia) stairway with whimsical green ceramic balusters (also Wikipedia) decorated in acanthus leaves. The first thing we saw were a series of neatly arranged photos, in red and white, of naked people bathed in blood and apparently spilling out their intestines. I caught sight of a white frock and perhaps the stance of the unfortunate subjects, which made me aware that religion was a thematic element. I averted my eyes and walked past with Mama, considerably dubious (I wasn't expecting much blood). Then we entered the exhibition. Right beside the entrance way a video of some Catholic feast was running. In the room itself there were rudimentary wooden altars with standing boards behind them, on which there were frocks that had rust-coloured dried blood or paint on them. At the figurative feet of these frocks there was often an ornate priest's surplice, perhaps a surgical tool or three or four. There were also tables covered in glass that had surplices with these tools neatly laid on top, and a test tube or two for good measure. Some feet away there was a rudimentary table with neat stacks of about four tissues each placed at precise intervals on top of them.

As for the rest of the rooms, they contained more of the same, bloody frocks, huge canvases with loads of red or black paint (or both, or a bit of purple too), photos of starkly naked people with pig intestines on top of them made to look like their own (at this point I was relieved that it really was pig intestines), photos of somber-looking students (the artist's acolytes) in white frocks with some obliging colleague pouring blood into their mouths and down the front of their frocks (as Mama asked, who had to clean that up?), photos of the acolytes stuffing a pig corpse with its intestines (ashes to ashes, guts to guts?), detailed pseudo-anatomical drawings, and posters and books about previous exhibitions of Mr. Nitsch. Mr. Nitsch, with a long da Vincian beard, glowing cheeks and mild blue eyes, and the general air of an early twentieth-century grandfather, seemed a surprising source of all these bloody spectacles. There was, incidentally, also a more peaceful room, where there were shelves (Ikea, as Mama said below her breath), a painting of Jesus looking unhappy, religious regalia and ornaments, and lots of test tubes with blood (fake?) and other colourful liquids.

Mr. Nitsch seemed to be commentating on the idea of Jesus spilling his blood for us (though I don't know what that comment would be), on the violence of the ritual slaughter of animals for religious purposes, and perhaps on the slaughter of animals in general. The bloodiness was so unappealing that the artist was clearly not glorifying violence -- that much must be said for him. But I thought that his point was excessively belaboured. Also, while it did have artistic value, one cannot enjoy it because of what it represents.

When we left the exhibition both of us were mildly traumatized, Mama a little indignant. A., who had gone off on his own, didn't seem to mind it so much, but he wasn't especially taken with it either. We quickly popped into the Rebecca Horn exhibition before we went. There was a sort of mirror-pool in the middle of the floor, which had different lenses and mirrors suspended above it, that reflected the room and our faces and the blue light at the top of the lighting apparatus. It was very calm and nice. I happened to need a tissue, and Mama, as she gave me one, joked that she had brought one along from the previous exhibition. (May it be granted to me that I can hear of or see a tissue again without thinking of blood!) Then we looked at a similarly calm exhibit, which I liked very much, of a giant needle circling like a compass in the center of a round area, with a dragonfly perched somewhere, an inverted funnel full of a blue liquid at the edge, and perhaps stones at intervals -- at any rate, a garden scene. It was, in terms of colour and mood and theme, the opposite of the other exhibition, and helped me to regain my mental equilibrium.

Surprisingly, all three of us still had enough of an appetite to get something from a bakery as we headed home!

Dinner, Hobbes, and Ideal Wifehood

Today it was a rainy day, but not too dark. I was trotting about for several hours shopping (two trips), washing the dishes while Ge. dried them, sweeping the kitchen, setting the table, and cooking dinner with T. Dinner was a noodle casserole with ground beef, onions, tomatoes and gouda on top; to the ground beef we added plenty of herbs and spices (not curry, though, because T. didn't want it), with a most satisfying result. We had broccoli and tomato slices on the side, and stracciatella as well as chocolate-marzipan ice cream for dessert. (c:

Yesterday I began reading Hobbes's Leviathan. I'd have to be abysmally unintelligent if I didn't understand the first sentences of that book. It's most interesting, really, thinking about a country as a Body (Politick) -- also because it reminds me of the few sentences of Freud's Massenpsychologie that I've read. I suppose that the comparison holds even after our knowledge of physiology has advanced so much; a person is like a cell, and though few cells make direct contact with one another, they are interdependent. The danger of this way of thinking is probably that it invites the claim that the state is more important than the individual -- which, my personal dislike of the idea aside, has been responsible for a lot of damage.

But my uncle W. and cousin An. have come for a visit, so I should curtail this blog post. Later I plan on re-reading a most exciting online novel, St. Elmo (originally published 1867) I feel slightly guilty for reading it, because it is a novel and there are really silly parts, but the flamboyant prose, the barely intelligible philosophizings, the dramatic scenery and dialogue and plot, and the idealized characters -- all of the most unrealistic order -- provide excellent entertainment.

Here is the opening quotation of the book:

"Ah! The true rule is -- a true wife in her husband's house is his servant; it is in his heart that she is queen. Whatever of the best he can conceive, it is her part to be; whatever of the highest he can hope, it is hers to promise; all that is dark in him she must purge into purity, all that is failing in him she must strengthen into truth; from her, through all the world's clamor, he must win his praise; in her, through all the world's warfare, he must find his peace." -- John Ruskin.

I suppose that this paragraph explains the saying that marriages are made in heaven; I think that few of us would qualify for the bonds of matrimony before translation.

The Restored Picture of Health

After a miserable night and day of grippe, my ill-health has subsided and left me with a benign case of the sniffles. Whilst lying awake in the hours before daybreak worrying that my dinner would again see the light of day, I told myself to avoid gluttony hereafter, and perhaps the memory of my tormented resolves will indeed cause me to exercise more moderation in my consumption henceforth.

The last sentence is probably so convoluted and archaically worded because I just began to work on my play based on A Christmas Carol again. I was looking up videos on YouTube because I couldn't remember whether the Spirit of Christmas Past was the lovely angel or the jolly hybrid of Father Christmas and Bacchus. There I realized that I'm confusing the film versions of 1938 with Reginald Owen and of 1951 with Alastair Sim, and that I should credit both. After I've written my version of the story I want to reread Charles Dickens's original and improve my version as much as I can. While I was on the Internet I also took a look at William Congreve's play The Way of the World, at the first twenty or so lines, to be precise. The prologue is very witty, and the opening dialogue reminded me greatly of The Importance of Being Earnest (which I had to read in English 110, but which I had also read before that (c: ).

Nearly everyone in my family is or has been sick. Ge. had a very miserable few days, as did J., who is now reclining on the small red living room sofa with a wet washcloth on his brow and a blanket guarding his tender frame from the cold. His black shirt makes him look very pale indeed. Papa is still having a bad time of it. T.'s cold has improved. Gi. is probably only sleepy, but he doesn't look too chirpy either. Mama probably has vestiges of a cold but otherwise seems in good spirits.

The rest of the day was taken up by reading articles on nytimes.com, theglobeandmail.com, and guardian.co.uk; "lurking" on an online forum; reading Hunter's Marjory at gutenberg.org; and running errands with Mama as well as hopping over to Plus on my own. But I also read the beginning of a book on Nicolaus Copernicus, published 1954. After a few pages I checked the front to see if it really was published in 1954 and not 1945, because the main thesis of the author seemed to be that the origins of and influences on Copernicus were mostly, or exclusively, German, not Polish. The final sentence is: "West Prussia with Thorn, the land of his birth, and Ermeland with Frauenburg, his second home, therefore have a special right to be proud of the great genius Copernicus whom they brought forth and gave to the German people and to all men." Perhaps the book was indeed published earlier than 1954, because the copy we have is a translation from the German. After that, I read the first "Gesang" in Goethe's Hermann und Dorothea. Then I dove into Keats's "Isabella, or the Pot of Basil." The last time I read that poem was when I was visiting my aunt in England in 2005. It reminds me of the tale of Andersen or Wilde, where the skull of a murdered beloved is hidden in a flower-pot until the hour of macabre revelation and retribution. The veneer (or topsoil) of civilization is thin indeed! :c(

I've forgotten to mention that I tried to read Kant's Kritik der Urteilskraft. My concentration and comprehension didn't make it through the first sentence, though I read on a little farther. I reflected how lovely it would be if the long convoluted sentences were chopped up into sensible shorter ones. Then I skimmed further until I reached "Ideale der Schönheit," where the first sentences were comprehensible but of which I don't remember anything either. I think at present my mindset is just like the one I had in high school regarding math; I stubbornly desire not to understand, unless someone takes the trouble to explain things to me clearly and methodically. But I intend to revisit the book in the next few weeks so that I will become used to it, and I think that Kant is a difficult philosopher to read anyway.

I don't understand why philosophers like Leibniz (I read the first pages of Monadologie), Kant, and Aristotle (I read the first pages of his Poetik) make statements about things without attempting to prove them. A few interesting bits of insight apart, I much prefer reading about alternate world views as they are presented in fairy tales or religious texts. The former don't pretend to be truthful and the latter promise a splendid (or at least exciting) afterlife. Well, I've been exaggerating. I guess I just don't have a high level of thinking. While I don't mind philosophizing now and then, I want to do it on my own terms; also, I do mind when something is stated as if it is fact though, in fact (pun, alas, intended), it is only a hypothesis. Perhaps I should, after all, begin by reading the ancient Greek philosophers and then work my way up through centuries of boringness. (c:

Resolutions: Or, An Adventure in Predictability

1. Apply to a university, or several.
2. Have piano and violin lessons.
3. Have voice lessons (perhaps).
4. Develop some degree of courage.
5. Don't be disagreeable.
6. Don't be so self-conscious in public.
7. Walk more than you have in the past 6 months.
8. Continue learning Russian and Italian.
9. Don't feel sorry for yourself.
10. Read philosophy.
11. Explore the sciences.
12. Do more artwork.
13. Try to be happy or, failing that, resigned.
14. Reconsider the superstition that caused you to add an extra resolution.
15. Write your Great Novel, if you can. (c:
Also attempt some work recounting the legend of Hercules.
16. Improve the pieces that you play on the piano each time you play them.
17. Observe the people around you (without being obnoxious) as much as you can.
18. Don't be a snob.
19. Do some good in the world rather than complaining about it.
20. Donate blood as you intended.
21. Improve your German.
22. Read much more German and French literature. Attempt Trollope, and re-attempt Vanity Fair and Anna Karenina and Tom Jones. Try to read Maxim Gorky and Tolstoy's short stories in the original language by the end of the year. In Italian, work toward being able to read Tasso, Dante, Petrarch, etc. Try Dostoyevsky in English so that you can easily skip over the depressing parts. Try Gustave Flaubert, Don Quixote, and Les Misérables. Read Paradise Lost all the way through, and Spenser's Faerie Queen -- finally. Also on your list:
- all of Tennyson's In Memoriam
- Sir Walter Scott: rest of Waverley novels, Marmion, Lay of the Last Minstrel
- Byron's Childe Harold, Don Juan
- Confessions of an Opium Eater
- more of Pepys's diary
23. Read more about music and composers.
24. Improve your Latin and Greek. Try being able to read Herodotus and Horace's satires by end of year.
25. Read Thucydides, Suetonius, and Cicero's orations.