Music
Yesterday evening Papa, Mama and I watched (on television) Daniel Barenboim performing three Beethoven sonatas at the Staatsoper. He began with the Moonlight Sonata, though we only heard the second and third movements, the latter of which was faster than I had thought, but it worked except that there didn't seem to be much of a point to the movement. He continued with Sonata No. 19 (?), one of the pleasant short sonatas that I know well because Papa played it often when we were little. At the end, appropriately enough, he played Les Adieux (earlier today Papa tried it out too). I must say that I prefer Papa's way of playing Beethoven's sonatas; when his mood is right he plays them fairly slowly, so that the music has time to sink in, without any artificial attempts at effect, and in a very sympathetic and nice way. But Mama remarked this morning that she did find Mr. Barenboim's playing quite "empfindsam" (sensitive, I suppose it would be in English). Anyway, the camera angles for the concert were occasionally hilarious, zooming in on Mr. Barenboim's thumb or on his pinkie, or rotating from above so that Mama and I made jokes about feeling seasick.
Travel
In the New York Times there was a nice article about Oxford, where T. and I went nearly two years ago. I enjoyed the following anecdote:
One 20th-century student reputedly demanded a flagon of claret during his exams, having discovered an ancient rule in the University Statute Book entitling him to. The invigilator was able to annul the request because the student was improperly dressed: according to another statute, he should have been wearing a saber.
Politics
This evening Mama and I went to a lecture by an Israeli professor, Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, about binationalism. It turns out that the term binationalism is not synonymous with a two-state solution. Instead it is an older concept, in circulation before the modern Israeli state even existed, propounded first in the 1920s by a small circle of intellectuals within the group Brit Shalom. An opposite of the colonialist concept of planting a Jewish state in the middle of Palestinian territory, the idea was to find a common cultural and, if I understand correctly, even national identity with the Arabs. It also means a rejection of a "two-state solution" in which Israel and Palestine become wholly alienated neighbours, which simply cannot work out well. The professor brought up the dichotomies inherent in the present-day Israeli population, even the non-"Arab" portion, and Jews in the past: Western vs. Eastern, Ashkenazi vs. Sephardim, secular vs. religious. There is no reason why a middle ground should not be found. Gershom Scholem, for instance, seems to have identified the West with colonialism and oppression, and exhorted the Jews to stand with the East. And, just as Jewish does not inevitably mean Western, religion does not inevitably mean ultra-Zionist. So binationalism addresses not only the rift between Israeli and Palestinian but also the rift between Israelis of different origin. Binationalism would be very difficult to translate into political reality, but using it as a premise for discussion would, the professor argued, be helpful today, and such a discussion is certainly still relevant at a time where the unilateral-Jewish-state vision has brought about such an unendurable situation.
Weather
Rainy and cold. Cotton wool clouds in night sky.
Film
At the Konzerthaus at the Gendarmenmarkt there was evidently a Berlin Film Festival (Berlinale) event. A fenced in corridor, a tented photo shoot area, an umbrella-carrying crowd, shouting, camera flashes, and a red carpet leading all the way up the really high stairs of the Konzerthaus. I must confess that I have rather felt like "gawking at celebrities," as I like to put it -- the Sony Centre is just up the street. And I read lots of news articles today about the Grammy and Bafta Awards. A profound intellectual on an elevated plane of existence I am not.
Books
I've reached the "M" authors on gutenberg.org again. I was re-reading bits of Harold McGrath's books. Yesterday I did also read part of a review-essay by Thomas Macaulay about a historical book by Henry Hallam, which -- even a hundred and fifty-odd years after it was written -- made me want to read the book. I've never understood how the authors of certain Victorian history books that I've read could justify perpetrating so many implied lies and half-truths in their pursuit of a moral view of the past, so Mr. Hallam's apparent impartiality much appeals to me. It was also interesting thinking about the role of a historian.
Then I began reading the memoirs of a French aristocrat, who was born in 1772, married a M. de Lescure at the age of 18, when the Revolution began fled to Paris (of all places!) and was well received by the Princesse de Lamballe and stayed on until the Louvre was overrun and until clergymen and aristocrats were being murdered in the street, then went to the south of France where her husband fought and died in the Vendée. To me the woman seemed incredibly stupid despite her intelligence, with some inexplicable predilection for the most dangerous areas in France. To be fair, she stayed on in Paris out of loyalty to Their Majesties. Later, however, I kept on expecting her to emigrate, but she didn't! The strongest argument in her favour is, I think, the contrast between her as well as her husband and the aristocracy of Poitiers. As she describes it, the young Poitevin nobles were plotting a grand rebellion, but at the news of the king's failed flight to Varennes (if I remember correctly), though the Poitevin peasantry supported them, they stampeded out of the country like a flock of scared sheep.
Poem
Perhaps there is
some page of some book,
or some tablet in a mind,
where it is written
who fails
and
who succeeds.
The tiny steps
an author takes
-- the books he reads,
the poems he writes,
the way he revises line after line
(criticism heard and acted on) --
do these steps tend to some end
or are they simply progress on a road
that, neverending, leads nowhere?
What is it we are looking for?
-- To others, fame; to others, fortune.
What it is that I am searching
is some expression of the world
that is all mine, yet open to all,
and something good and something true
that will give my life some meaning,
that will give my life some end.
All that I can do at present
is ponder shadows of the future.
What will be real and what illusion?
When will the answer at last be given?
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