This Sunday consisted mostly of playing, reading, and writing, in that order. Since I was deeply absorbed in thought, and the fingers cooperated, Beethoven sonatas and Chopin nocturnes (Op. 15 No.3* and Op.37 No.1**) went unusually well. I also played bits of Schubert's sonatas D. 958 and D. 959, bits of Beethoven's variations ("God Save the Queen" and the Diabelli variations), Debussy's "Claire de Lune," and the piano part of Händel's "Largo" (from Serse) arranged for cello and piano. All of these latter pieces are ones I've practiced for a long time, but haven't mentioned before.
Speaking of the Largo (or "Ombra mai fu"), I've just found many versions of it on YouTube. The spectrum reaches from the very dramatic (Jussi Björling) to the calm (Janet Baker). As for the more modern versions, I like Jennifer Larmore's voice very much, but her video of the Largo is a curiosity. I imagine that it appeals to the demographic of women whose favourite television series is "Touched by an Angel," who drink fruit tea every day, and whose houses are full of cats, aromatherapy candles, gardening and housekeeping magazines that they refuse to throw away, photo albums, and pastel drawings. Anyway, I was rather disillusioned when I found out that the song is addressed to a shady tree (the "dear and amiable vegetable"), but I suppose that the gravity and stateliness of the music do seem proportionate in mid-summer. (c:
As for the reading, it was the first three chapters of Jane Austen's Persuasion. I've read the book often, but yesterday evening I started trying to write a screenplay based on it, so I needed to refresh my mind. The inspiration was the 2007 ITV film adaptation of that book, which had some good aspects (it showed the isolation of the heroine and the callousness of her family well, and had modest costumes, some good casting, and a nice comic character in Mary) but was in most ways completely off. Their Anne Elliot seems to be a desperate spinster who has been put out of the matrimonial running because she was never particularly attractive anyway. Yet in the book she is attractive; she is still rather pretty, but above all a well-educated, refined, and good woman who would be popular in different circles. Another main point is that she conceals her emotion instead of tearing up the whole time. I don't think that the filmmakers understood how much gossip and humiliation an eighteenth-century old maid would have been up against if she had not been self-disciplined enough to conceal it.
Besides, I think that it is simplifying matters too much to have the heroine in tears so often. That's not the way it works, in my experience. Emotions tend to be compounds, that take a very long time to break down into simpler elements like anger or sadness. It is only when the breaking down has occurred that tears come, or that one can laugh and get rid of the tension that way. When there is doubt (as there usually is) whether one has a reason for feeling sad, or whether one should indulge it, the process is even slower. Usually, tears result immediately only where there are smaller, single and finite reasons for sadness, like a mean remark or a bad exam result. So, that was my mini-"anatomy of melancholy."
But, despite the liking I have for the heroine, I find the book difficult because it is not as objective as Jane Austen's previous books. It follows the thought processes of the heroine much more closely, especially the emotionally draining struggles of Anne Elliot to use her reason to control her manner and thoughts. Even the satire is not so light any more, because it is defensively directed at neglect and coldness, rather than offensively directed at quite harmless foibles. It is, I suppose, the detached, gently moralizing, and satirical tone of Austen's other books that, first of all, prevent one from feeling too much of the sorrows of the heroine, and, secondly, give one the reassuring feeling that everything will turn out all right. And I would venture to theorize that those books, while there is much realism in them, are excellently escapist because of this secure feeling, whereas Persuasion is not.
For the reading I went to the St. Matthäus churchyard again. It was sunny at the time, and the trees are still splendid (though the leaves are not as fresh as they were in May), and altogether it is very beautiful. The daisies have grown out now, but there are countless other flowers on the grave plots, from pink roses and begonias through white impatiens to the pale purple harebells. It seems like fall has come early, because the leaf-petals of the (linden?) trees are scattered over the ground. Birds and insects are also ubiquitous. A black and orange insect with a ridged back even climbed onto my book until I carefully flicked it off. As for people, there were more than usual, tending the gardens or simply walking about.
On my way out the gates I saw that the door of the church there was open, and I went to the doorway and looked inside. The church itself (built around 1908) is a beige-coloured building, compact, with one broad central tower on top of a squarish frame, with smaller towers at the corners; the towers are topped with sober, dark-grey, bulbous domes. There is a covered porch in front, with a sculpture of (if I remember correctly) a learned man and his pupil between the two entrances. Around the church there are tall trees, like a cottonwood or poplar, and flower beds. Anyway, inside it there is a large chamber, with white walls and a soaring ceiling that has plaster ornamentation at the top. There are dark wooden seats built into the walls left and right, and the room itself is full of rows of (not particularly appealing) light-coloured metal chairs. There is a large stained glass window bearing the words "Ich bin die Auferstehung und das Leben" at one end. Oddly enough, there were no basins for holy water. Set in to the wall opposite the entrances, there is a smaller sort of "stage" where the pulpit, tall potted bushes and candelabra are. Altogether it seemed simple and a little pretentious, but not bad-looking.
* Here is a video of it, unfortunately with lots of background noise.
** Another video, with little background noise, but many deep questions . . . and an abrupt ending.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Saturday, June 23, 2007
A Year of Memoranda
Here is a selection of quotations and links, which I've been copying and pasting into my word processor, from the past twelve months of online reading:
* * * * * * * *
June 2006
Underwater Volcano Discovered Off Sicily
*
December 2006
Sir Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of the British Commonwealth:
* * * * * * * *
June 2006
Underwater Volcano Discovered Off Sicily
*
December 2006
Sir Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of the British Commonwealth:
Those who are confident of their faith are not threatened but enlarged by the different faiths of others. ... There are, surely, many ways of arriving at this generosity of spirit and each faith may need to find its own.
Quoted in: "The Peaceful Crusader," Thomas Cahill, New York Times
*
"When after the opening chorus, she came first upon the stage, and stood watching the baton of the leader, a bum of admiration rose from the audience."
A quotation from Infelice, a most romantic online novel; the "she" is the heroine, and the "bum" (which should be "hum") is a typographical error.
*
February 2007
Restaurant Reviews:
1. "A pumpkin napoleon with cardamom ice cream was more intriguing to behold than to ingest."
Source: "Knowing Their Place and Aiming to Fill It", Frank Bruni, New York Times
2.
The Ambience:
"There was a funereal air to the deserted entrance hall at L***'s. When I received my starter, I understood why. The whole place was in mourning for the wasted lives of the Morecambe Bay brown shrimps that had been sacrificed to make it."
A Prawn Cocktail:
*
"When after the opening chorus, she came first upon the stage, and stood watching the baton of the leader, a bum of admiration rose from the audience."
A quotation from Infelice, a most romantic online novel; the "she" is the heroine, and the "bum" (which should be "hum") is a typographical error.
*
February 2007
Restaurant Reviews:
1. "A pumpkin napoleon with cardamom ice cream was more intriguing to behold than to ingest."
Source: "Knowing Their Place and Aiming to Fill It", Frank Bruni, New York Times
2.
The Ambience:
"There was a funereal air to the deserted entrance hall at L***'s. When I received my starter, I understood why. The whole place was in mourning for the wasted lives of the Morecambe Bay brown shrimps that had been sacrificed to make it."
A Prawn Cocktail:
What arrived was a highball glass piled with hot battered prawns, their delicate flavour mislaid in the deep-fat fryer. Underneath that was a cloyingly sweet marie rose sauce ice-cream - there are good reasons for not making ice-cream out of mayonnaise and tomato ketchup, not least politeness - then a layer of avocado cream, and finally, a plug of underpowered shellfish jelly. From this I can tell you L***'s does indeed celebrate British food, but only in the way a murderer might dance upon its victim's grave.
Source: "One is not amused," Jay Rayner, The Observer
Asterisks added by me.
*
Cacophonous Names:
Aubertine, Brainerd, Egbert
*
April 2007
Letter of Mozart: Milan, Jan. 26, 1770
"I know nothing new except that Herr Gellert, the Leipzig poet, [. . .] is dead, and has written no more poetry since his death."
Source: The Letters of Mozart, Vol. I, Transl. by Lady Wallace (Project Gutenberg)
*
An Affectionate Traveller:
Where'er I roam, whatever realms I see,
My heart untravell'd fondly turns to thee.
-- Oliver Goldsmith, "The Traveller"
Quoted in: The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 1996, p. 311
*
June 2007
An Ideal Newspaper:
Asterisks added by me.
*
Cacophonous Names:
Aubertine, Brainerd, Egbert
*
April 2007
Letter of Mozart: Milan, Jan. 26, 1770
"I know nothing new except that Herr Gellert, the Leipzig poet, [. . .] is dead, and has written no more poetry since his death."
Source: The Letters of Mozart, Vol. I, Transl. by Lady Wallace (Project Gutenberg)
*
An Affectionate Traveller:
Where'er I roam, whatever realms I see,
My heart untravell'd fondly turns to thee.
-- Oliver Goldsmith, "The Traveller"
Quoted in: The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 1996, p. 311
*
June 2007
An Ideal Newspaper:
The Tribune set a new standard in American journalism by its combination of energy in news gathering with good taste, high moral standards, and intellectual appeal. Police reports, scandals, dubious medical advertisements, and flippant personalities were barred from its pages; the editorials were vigorous but usually temperate; the political news was the most exact in the city; book reviews and book-extracts were numerous; and as an inveterate lecturer Greeley gave generous space to lectures. The paper appealed to substantial and thoughtful people. [Nevins in Dictionary of American Biography (1931)]
Quoted in "Horace Greeley," Wikipedia
(But I fear I'd probably still be too lazy to read such a newspaper.)
(But I fear I'd probably still be too lazy to read such a newspaper.)
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Atmospheres Present and Past
Today there was gloomy and wet weather such as I seldom even remember from winter, but I liked it. I like the irony of such weather during the summer solstice. But it was not too dark outside, though comfortably dusky inside; still, the air was considerably damp. Since I did not go out in the rain, I even enjoyed that. I think that it's repetitive weather that is the most annoying. Too much rainy weather is (of course) not nice (though lightning and thunder such as transpired today considerably relieve the tedium, as does a stiff wind), but too much sunny weather is not nice either. It always annoys me when I watch television on a hot and humid day, only to hear a weather news anchor announce an even more hot and humid day with the cheerful remark that a "nice day" is coming up. Perhaps weather people live in parallel universes with built-in air conditioning.
My main activity today was helping J. on his homework. It took an unnecessarily long time, but we enjoyed ourselves until we came to the last question of his recent Spanish exam, where he had to write a dialogue with a friend whom he wants to invite to a film. At that point we squabbled about the wording and other matters. I kept on wanting J. to use the phrase "Que lástima!", but J. had a wholly undeserved prejudice against it. And so on and so forth.
T. was, in the meantime, better employed; she made crêpes for dinner, which we then consumed with apricot marmalade and cinnamon sugar and apple sauce. We also have bowls full of fresh fruit, whose summery poeticness is marred by the flocks of fruit flies that visit them. Fruit flies, by the way, behave differently here than they did in Canada. They don't only fly but also crawl around with cockroach rapidity (they look like flightless insects then); in Canada they were much more laid back, and they were always either flying or stationary on whatever attracted their interest. It is nice not to see any ants here, except for a small red ant that painfully bit me perhaps a month ago. The juicy big black termites that overran our house one May, and smaller normal black ants that did the same in another year (where, in single file, they trekked across the grand expanses of the living room and continued to my room, at which point they flocked under the electric heater until pools of ant poison put an end to that) are entirely absent here.
I'm also reading Nature's Serial Story, another Roe book that goes into detail about the four seasons on a farm. The atmosphere is marred by the bird-hunting anecdotes at the beginning, because surely someone with a true love of nature would not approve of birds being shot down indiscriminately, especially rare ones. Nature is also idealized in a moralistic way that probably sounded as unconvincing when the book was written as it does today. Besides Mary Robinson's Beaux and Belles of England (which I might discuss in another post) my other major online reading was the news, in the Guardian. There was an article about the Australian government's intention to ban alcohol and pornography for the Aborigines in the Northern Territory. My first reaction was that it is indeed a paternalistic proposal; the second, that it wouldn't work anyway (vide Prohibition in US, or modern-day drug laws) and would lead to criminalization; the third, that the sudden deprivation of alcohol might have adverse medical effects. Wouldn't it be far better to work on reducing unemployment?
As for last evening, I continued writing on my England-in-the-time-of-Bloody-Mary story. William Lamington and Lady de Plessy (aunt of the hero, and the new guardian of the heroine) are having a cryptic conversation, in which they first trade witticisms about jousting, and then use metaphors from the classics to refer to certain people and events. The Calydonian Boar, for example, represents Her Majesty's minions. Lamington (who has insider knowledge) warns Lady de Plessy that Queen Mary's emissaries are imminent, and that they must be greeted with disarming hospitality. As for the hero (code-named Meleager), he is plotting away in exile in the Netherlands; but I've just read that they were under Spanish rule then, so I'll have to change that to France. I used the Netherlands because that's where one of the villains intends to go in Children of the New Forest, and because the ports made it fairly easy to travel to, and because I figured that it must have been Protestant at around that time. Anyway, the mythological references were crudely done, so I'll have to rewrite all of that later. And, though the heroine is beginning to be a trifle boring, the plot should become less so as the Boar arrives.
Anyway, some day I would like to write a really well-researched historical book, or series of short stories. It would not be a regurgitation of my research, but it would be well-rounded and naturally written because I would have a comfortable grasp of detail about the politics, education, art, literature, science, fashion, and society of the day, and I would try to capture some of the Zeitgeist. I think that, in historical novels, the present mentality is usually superimposed on the previous time; in my books I don't want to do this (consciously, at least). But my present theory is that people and their lives are basically alike no matter what the century or decade; certain material characteristics alter but, in the main, the routines and mentalities are the same.
To digress further, perhaps the idea is rubbishy or trite, but I've long thought that the atmosphere of a time is most clearly perceptible in its paintings. From the subjects one can tell the preoccupations of the times -- religion, for instance, or fashion --, from the faces one can tell how acute the psychological insight of the painter was, and from the clothing and surroundings one can, of course, gather the physical realities of the time. Medieval paintings, for instance, give me the impression of a lively, squalid time, where the average mind was perhaps solid but often rough. The paintings of Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael suggest a time where beauty of the highest sort was appreciated, and a deeper thought was prevalent, but the surroundings were still squalid. In this context, I must admit that I often regret it when paintings are restored so that the paint is as bright as if it had been applied yesterday, instead of being interestingly aged and subdued. (For example, if I remember correctly, the green in Holbein's "The Ambassadors" is quite glaring in the original.) But most painters probably never intended their paintings to be delightfully old-fashioned. Anyway, last of all, it is evident that there are many paintings which do not, or do not only, reflect the time of their origin.
My main activity today was helping J. on his homework. It took an unnecessarily long time, but we enjoyed ourselves until we came to the last question of his recent Spanish exam, where he had to write a dialogue with a friend whom he wants to invite to a film. At that point we squabbled about the wording and other matters. I kept on wanting J. to use the phrase "Que lástima!", but J. had a wholly undeserved prejudice against it. And so on and so forth.
T. was, in the meantime, better employed; she made crêpes for dinner, which we then consumed with apricot marmalade and cinnamon sugar and apple sauce. We also have bowls full of fresh fruit, whose summery poeticness is marred by the flocks of fruit flies that visit them. Fruit flies, by the way, behave differently here than they did in Canada. They don't only fly but also crawl around with cockroach rapidity (they look like flightless insects then); in Canada they were much more laid back, and they were always either flying or stationary on whatever attracted their interest. It is nice not to see any ants here, except for a small red ant that painfully bit me perhaps a month ago. The juicy big black termites that overran our house one May, and smaller normal black ants that did the same in another year (where, in single file, they trekked across the grand expanses of the living room and continued to my room, at which point they flocked under the electric heater until pools of ant poison put an end to that) are entirely absent here.
I'm also reading Nature's Serial Story, another Roe book that goes into detail about the four seasons on a farm. The atmosphere is marred by the bird-hunting anecdotes at the beginning, because surely someone with a true love of nature would not approve of birds being shot down indiscriminately, especially rare ones. Nature is also idealized in a moralistic way that probably sounded as unconvincing when the book was written as it does today. Besides Mary Robinson's Beaux and Belles of England (which I might discuss in another post) my other major online reading was the news, in the Guardian. There was an article about the Australian government's intention to ban alcohol and pornography for the Aborigines in the Northern Territory. My first reaction was that it is indeed a paternalistic proposal; the second, that it wouldn't work anyway (vide Prohibition in US, or modern-day drug laws) and would lead to criminalization; the third, that the sudden deprivation of alcohol might have adverse medical effects. Wouldn't it be far better to work on reducing unemployment?
As for last evening, I continued writing on my England-in-the-time-of-Bloody-Mary story. William Lamington and Lady de Plessy (aunt of the hero, and the new guardian of the heroine) are having a cryptic conversation, in which they first trade witticisms about jousting, and then use metaphors from the classics to refer to certain people and events. The Calydonian Boar, for example, represents Her Majesty's minions. Lamington (who has insider knowledge) warns Lady de Plessy that Queen Mary's emissaries are imminent, and that they must be greeted with disarming hospitality. As for the hero (code-named Meleager), he is plotting away in exile in the Netherlands; but I've just read that they were under Spanish rule then, so I'll have to change that to France. I used the Netherlands because that's where one of the villains intends to go in Children of the New Forest, and because the ports made it fairly easy to travel to, and because I figured that it must have been Protestant at around that time. Anyway, the mythological references were crudely done, so I'll have to rewrite all of that later. And, though the heroine is beginning to be a trifle boring, the plot should become less so as the Boar arrives.
Anyway, some day I would like to write a really well-researched historical book, or series of short stories. It would not be a regurgitation of my research, but it would be well-rounded and naturally written because I would have a comfortable grasp of detail about the politics, education, art, literature, science, fashion, and society of the day, and I would try to capture some of the Zeitgeist. I think that, in historical novels, the present mentality is usually superimposed on the previous time; in my books I don't want to do this (consciously, at least). But my present theory is that people and their lives are basically alike no matter what the century or decade; certain material characteristics alter but, in the main, the routines and mentalities are the same.
To digress further, perhaps the idea is rubbishy or trite, but I've long thought that the atmosphere of a time is most clearly perceptible in its paintings. From the subjects one can tell the preoccupations of the times -- religion, for instance, or fashion --, from the faces one can tell how acute the psychological insight of the painter was, and from the clothing and surroundings one can, of course, gather the physical realities of the time. Medieval paintings, for instance, give me the impression of a lively, squalid time, where the average mind was perhaps solid but often rough. The paintings of Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael suggest a time where beauty of the highest sort was appreciated, and a deeper thought was prevalent, but the surroundings were still squalid. In this context, I must admit that I often regret it when paintings are restored so that the paint is as bright as if it had been applied yesterday, instead of being interestingly aged and subdued. (For example, if I remember correctly, the green in Holbein's "The Ambassadors" is quite glaring in the original.) But most painters probably never intended their paintings to be delightfully old-fashioned. Anyway, last of all, it is evident that there are many paintings which do not, or do not only, reflect the time of their origin.
Monday, June 18, 2007
Thoughts on Self-Reliance
Last evening I did read the first part of Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay "Self-Reliance." I had expected a feel-good essay full of inspirational thoughts, so I was surprised when it turned out to be, in my view, a rather aggressive, personal rebuttal against the pressure of mainstream thought.
The idea that I particularly came away with is that we each have "genius" (or "inspiration" or "intuition") and that we should listen to it, and not allow ourselves to be intimidated by self-doubt or by the contrary belief of others. Nor should we yield to pressure to conform. Here is a good quotation about acting according to our own instincts, even without an evident course or aim to guide us:
But altogether I thought that Emerson's philosophy here verges on the self-absorbed and grandiose. I think that anyone would be insufferable who truly thought that he was a receiver of truth and "immense intelligence." If I am to consider myself as a medium for some sort of greater wisdom, I, at least, believe that the human a distorting medium. By the time that the beams of justice and of truth have passed through us, as Emerson puts it, they will have been modified by our natures. I started Emerson's essay "History" once, too, and I think that it has the same problem of being very self-centred. He seems to consider history as being a sort of pageant that has been put on for the special benefit of the future reader, instead of being an often terrible reality. I certainly hope that I never develop such a "God's-eye view" of the world.
Similarly, I think that anyone would be insufferable who followed Emerson's suggestion of freely and openly criticizing the world whenever we see something to criticize. I disagree, for example, with this statement: "Your goodness must have some edge to it,--else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be preached, as the counteraction of the doctrine of love, when that pules and whines." It reminds me of the lines in the Bible: "And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye?" We are, after all, a part of the world (even if we live in erudite New England seclusion), and improvement, like charity, might as well start at home. Well, I think that the world should be criticized; however, I think that we should not see ourselves as being in opposition to the world, or as being raised above it, but rather as being in our own sphere within it, just as everyone else is.
Sometimes I thoroughly misunderstood Emerson, too. For example, he writes: "Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper in the world which exists for him." I thought that he literally meant that the world belongs to everyone and, that every individual has the right to get out of it what he can, however he can, no matter how he harms others. But from the context it seems that he was merely criticizing the class system. Before that he wrote:
It is rather an irony that, while he discourages expressing one's religion in the words of the Bible, and prefers reformulating it in one's own words, his rather brief, polemical style resembles that of the Bible. Concerning the above quotation, I'd consider that the strong word "wicked" would be better applied if he did not to give any money under any circumstances.
The main reason why this essay interests me so much, even if I haven't finished it, is because it is so applicable to my own life and my thoughts about where it will go. School was, after all, principally about conformity, and, since I could neither conform, nor trust in my own way of thinking and acting, I had a very miserable time of it. I think that one of the most cruel things about conformity is that those who conform treat those who don't as if they weren't in their right minds. As George Eliot puts it in Middlemarch, "Sane people did what their neighbours did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them." I can understand that on a very basic level, because "survival of the fittest" implies fitting in (except in the fortunate case that a new niche emerges), and it would therefore seem that any rational creature would try to fit in. But surely the modern human is more highly organized than that.
Now, at any rate, I do want to act according to my own sense of what is fit, but first I need to fully regain this sense, and I need to reconcile it to reality; I can't act as if I were in a vacuum, because I'm not. In many ways my parents and I have often discussed the above-mentioned ideas of self-reliance, and both Papa and Mama say that I should not let myself be pressured and that I should do only what I really find best, without undue reference to what anyone else thinks or what it is expected that people in my situation do.
Anyway, I should read more philosophy, not only for the obvious reasons but also so that I can train myself to consider and summarize the thoughts of others more dispassionately. I was clearly antagonistic to Emerson's way of expressing himself (though I had forgotten about my unfavourable impressions of "History" when I started "Self-Reliance"), and it probably came in the way of understanding him.
The idea that I particularly came away with is that we each have "genius" (or "inspiration" or "intuition") and that we should listen to it, and not allow ourselves to be intimidated by self-doubt or by the contrary belief of others. Nor should we yield to pressure to conform. Here is a good quotation about acting according to our own instincts, even without an evident course or aim to guide us:
There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural in their hour. For of one will, the actions will be harmonious, however unlike they seem. These varieties are lost sight of at a little distance, at a little height of thought. One tendency unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency.I like this exhortation to be individualistic, and to follow one's instincts. I think that one could argue that instincts are another form of wisdom, anyway, because they may be the expressions of a subconscious reasoning process that is faster than conscious reason -- though it is not safe to rely on them entirely. And I do think that is the trait of genius (in the limited modern sense) to continue seeing the world in one's own way, and acting according to one's own sense of what is fit.
But altogether I thought that Emerson's philosophy here verges on the self-absorbed and grandiose. I think that anyone would be insufferable who truly thought that he was a receiver of truth and "immense intelligence." If I am to consider myself as a medium for some sort of greater wisdom, I, at least, believe that the human a distorting medium. By the time that the beams of justice and of truth have passed through us, as Emerson puts it, they will have been modified by our natures. I started Emerson's essay "History" once, too, and I think that it has the same problem of being very self-centred. He seems to consider history as being a sort of pageant that has been put on for the special benefit of the future reader, instead of being an often terrible reality. I certainly hope that I never develop such a "God's-eye view" of the world.
Similarly, I think that anyone would be insufferable who followed Emerson's suggestion of freely and openly criticizing the world whenever we see something to criticize. I disagree, for example, with this statement: "Your goodness must have some edge to it,--else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be preached, as the counteraction of the doctrine of love, when that pules and whines." It reminds me of the lines in the Bible: "And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye?" We are, after all, a part of the world (even if we live in erudite New England seclusion), and improvement, like charity, might as well start at home. Well, I think that the world should be criticized; however, I think that we should not see ourselves as being in opposition to the world, or as being raised above it, but rather as being in our own sphere within it, just as everyone else is.
Sometimes I thoroughly misunderstood Emerson, too. For example, he writes: "Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper in the world which exists for him." I thought that he literally meant that the world belongs to everyone and, that every individual has the right to get out of it what he can, however he can, no matter how he harms others. But from the context it seems that he was merely criticizing the class system. Before that he wrote:
Then again, do not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee thou foolish philanthropist that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong. There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots, and the thousand-fold Relief Societies;--though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold.To me this sounded like Cain's query, "Am I my brother's keeper?" and I was rather shocked. But I'm sure that Emerson meant that generosity and charity should not be given just for their own sakes, but for the sake of doing actual good.
It is rather an irony that, while he discourages expressing one's religion in the words of the Bible, and prefers reformulating it in one's own words, his rather brief, polemical style resembles that of the Bible. Concerning the above quotation, I'd consider that the strong word "wicked" would be better applied if he did not to give any money under any circumstances.
The main reason why this essay interests me so much, even if I haven't finished it, is because it is so applicable to my own life and my thoughts about where it will go. School was, after all, principally about conformity, and, since I could neither conform, nor trust in my own way of thinking and acting, I had a very miserable time of it. I think that one of the most cruel things about conformity is that those who conform treat those who don't as if they weren't in their right minds. As George Eliot puts it in Middlemarch, "Sane people did what their neighbours did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them." I can understand that on a very basic level, because "survival of the fittest" implies fitting in (except in the fortunate case that a new niche emerges), and it would therefore seem that any rational creature would try to fit in. But surely the modern human is more highly organized than that.
Now, at any rate, I do want to act according to my own sense of what is fit, but first I need to fully regain this sense, and I need to reconcile it to reality; I can't act as if I were in a vacuum, because I'm not. In many ways my parents and I have often discussed the above-mentioned ideas of self-reliance, and both Papa and Mama say that I should not let myself be pressured and that I should do only what I really find best, without undue reference to what anyone else thinks or what it is expected that people in my situation do.
Anyway, I should read more philosophy, not only for the obvious reasons but also so that I can train myself to consider and summarize the thoughts of others more dispassionately. I was clearly antagonistic to Emerson's way of expressing himself (though I had forgotten about my unfavourable impressions of "History" when I started "Self-Reliance"), and it probably came in the way of understanding him.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Resting, Writing and Grumbling
Today has been an appropriately quiet and restful Sunday, and it was no less agreeable because it was cloudy as well as sunny.
I woke up very late; Mama was phoning with my uncle B., and I find it very comfortable to hear people talking when I'm lying down and half-asleep (but not because I want to eavesdrop on the conversation). Then I played the piano for hours; the Chopin pieces went very well, so did Mozart, and the parts of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier (Book I), which I played for the first time in months. I searched for Tchaikovsky's Seasons again (I often played them during my second year at UBC) but they seem to have vanished entirely. I also continued reading A Knight of the Nineteenth Century.
Papa is reading to Mama from a book by Sir Peter Ustinov now. Before that they began to watch a concert by the Berlin Philharmonic at the Waldhütte, with its cheerful rendition of a piece by a Spanish composer. The white double-peaked concert tent, the masses of people arranged into bright rows, and the softer dark green of the trees formed a nice scene. J. is working away at his German poster, and Mama helped him. Fortunately there was no Spanish homework this weekend. (c:
I've begun my Friedrich story, and it is coming together nicely. It is, after all, a case of writing about what I know. As the story begins, Friedrich is reading the newspaper on a hot July day. He interrupts his reading in order to clean up his apartment and go grocery-shopping. (The story will be interesting later.) I'll figure out the central plot as I go along. The story should become as realistic as possible, but I want to write it from a sympathetic but detached perspective, and, while I don't mind being open about my own life, I don't want to write too much about the lives of everyone around me. So, for example, I don't know whether I should write about Friedrich's father losing/quitting his job, even though it would be for different reasons and in a different context than in Papa's case.
But the peculiar thing is that my French-student-story, which is the prototype of this story, anticipated some of my real life since I began to write it. The father did lose (or rather quit) his job, the family moved into an apartment, someone in the family got a job working in a cafeteria (Mama did it in real life, but I was thinking about having François do so in the story), and the eldest child (François in the story, and me in real life) felt pressured by circumstances to get a job to help support the family (the difference being that François would actually have gotten the job). At least, therefore, the story was quite realistic.
As for my other stories, I did continue my French Revolution tale when I was at the Rathaus on Friday (where, by the way, I could only get certified copies of my German documents, so I have a whole new round of bureaucratic acrobatics ahead of me). The great-aunt, who had already arrived in her carriage from France, is about to tell the news of Paris. The youngest d'Eules child, Pierre, had slipped into the Méran River, and now he is being cared for by Mme. d'Eules. It strikes me now that the heroine Geneviève should be cared for, too, because she went into the water to fish her brother out. I'll have to change or add other things too. The great-aunt, Mlle. de Laurèges, should have a lapdog -- Maltese, perhaps. Her good-natured but silly and gushing companion (a weak imitation of a "précieuse ridicule") will resemble a lady in an English painting in the Gemäldegallerie, the pained-looking one with a neck-ribbon that looks like a collar. Anyway, I really need to rewrite what I have, and need still more to continue the research.
Now Papa and Mama are watching another crime television show, probably Monk. When the voices sound twice as fake as normal, as they did just now, it usually means that the show is dubbed. Speaking of dubbed crime shows, yesterday evening we watched part of Death on the Nile with David Suchet as Poirot. I don't get why people had to make that film again; I think that the one with Peter Ustinov, Mia Farrow and Simon MacCorkindale was much, much better. I'll admit that I only watched a few minutes of the new version, but I'll criticize it anyway: First of all, there was a disagreeable flippancy and staginess. There is usually a satiric element in Agatha Christie adaptations, and a "campy" element too, but here the satire was leaden and the campiness far too broad. The characters were utterly stereotyped, and murder treated essentially as comedy. I think that in the Murder on the Orient Express with Albert Finney there is a certain exhilaration because there are so many strong actors playing strong roles, but it is kept in dignified bounds. In the old Death on the Nile there was humour, too, like the character of Salome Otterbourne, but it was also kept in bounds. In this Death on the Nile there was just silliness that arose from playing exaggerated characters and from dressing up and pretending to play someone from the past in an exciting context. It also contrasted to the best years of the Poirot television series, in which I particularly admire the seriousness, and the way that the actors are wholly submerged in their characters. And the music was appropriate, but consistently middling in quality and expressionlessly played. Altogether, though I know this sounds terribly snobby, it seems as if it were an American film.
Anyway, I guess I'm working off my pent-up aggression against period films that just don't get it. Of course it isn't only an American phenomenon. The British are equally capable of doing their cultural history an utter disservice, and I've seen the Persuasion, Mansfield Park, and Jane Eyre adaptations to prove it -- besides, the film I've just criticized is a British production.
So, now I can get back to the Knight of the Nineteenth Century (who is converted, but who is not yet married off). (c: Here is a quotation that I copied out from the book: "If you will, you can still achieve a strong, noble character. [. . .] Heaven would ring with your praise, however unfriendly the world might be." I think it expresses the idea of self-reliance well -- which reminds me that I should finally read Emerson's essay on that subject. Perhaps it will change my presently invertebrate state. So I'll end with the opening quotation of that essay:
Source: Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance," Essays, First Series
I woke up very late; Mama was phoning with my uncle B., and I find it very comfortable to hear people talking when I'm lying down and half-asleep (but not because I want to eavesdrop on the conversation). Then I played the piano for hours; the Chopin pieces went very well, so did Mozart, and the parts of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier (Book I), which I played for the first time in months. I searched for Tchaikovsky's Seasons again (I often played them during my second year at UBC) but they seem to have vanished entirely. I also continued reading A Knight of the Nineteenth Century.
Papa is reading to Mama from a book by Sir Peter Ustinov now. Before that they began to watch a concert by the Berlin Philharmonic at the Waldhütte, with its cheerful rendition of a piece by a Spanish composer. The white double-peaked concert tent, the masses of people arranged into bright rows, and the softer dark green of the trees formed a nice scene. J. is working away at his German poster, and Mama helped him. Fortunately there was no Spanish homework this weekend. (c:
I've begun my Friedrich story, and it is coming together nicely. It is, after all, a case of writing about what I know. As the story begins, Friedrich is reading the newspaper on a hot July day. He interrupts his reading in order to clean up his apartment and go grocery-shopping. (The story will be interesting later.) I'll figure out the central plot as I go along. The story should become as realistic as possible, but I want to write it from a sympathetic but detached perspective, and, while I don't mind being open about my own life, I don't want to write too much about the lives of everyone around me. So, for example, I don't know whether I should write about Friedrich's father losing/quitting his job, even though it would be for different reasons and in a different context than in Papa's case.
But the peculiar thing is that my French-student-story, which is the prototype of this story, anticipated some of my real life since I began to write it. The father did lose (or rather quit) his job, the family moved into an apartment, someone in the family got a job working in a cafeteria (Mama did it in real life, but I was thinking about having François do so in the story), and the eldest child (François in the story, and me in real life) felt pressured by circumstances to get a job to help support the family (the difference being that François would actually have gotten the job). At least, therefore, the story was quite realistic.
As for my other stories, I did continue my French Revolution tale when I was at the Rathaus on Friday (where, by the way, I could only get certified copies of my German documents, so I have a whole new round of bureaucratic acrobatics ahead of me). The great-aunt, who had already arrived in her carriage from France, is about to tell the news of Paris. The youngest d'Eules child, Pierre, had slipped into the Méran River, and now he is being cared for by Mme. d'Eules. It strikes me now that the heroine Geneviève should be cared for, too, because she went into the water to fish her brother out. I'll have to change or add other things too. The great-aunt, Mlle. de Laurèges, should have a lapdog -- Maltese, perhaps. Her good-natured but silly and gushing companion (a weak imitation of a "précieuse ridicule") will resemble a lady in an English painting in the Gemäldegallerie, the pained-looking one with a neck-ribbon that looks like a collar. Anyway, I really need to rewrite what I have, and need still more to continue the research.
Now Papa and Mama are watching another crime television show, probably Monk. When the voices sound twice as fake as normal, as they did just now, it usually means that the show is dubbed. Speaking of dubbed crime shows, yesterday evening we watched part of Death on the Nile with David Suchet as Poirot. I don't get why people had to make that film again; I think that the one with Peter Ustinov, Mia Farrow and Simon MacCorkindale was much, much better. I'll admit that I only watched a few minutes of the new version, but I'll criticize it anyway: First of all, there was a disagreeable flippancy and staginess. There is usually a satiric element in Agatha Christie adaptations, and a "campy" element too, but here the satire was leaden and the campiness far too broad. The characters were utterly stereotyped, and murder treated essentially as comedy. I think that in the Murder on the Orient Express with Albert Finney there is a certain exhilaration because there are so many strong actors playing strong roles, but it is kept in dignified bounds. In the old Death on the Nile there was humour, too, like the character of Salome Otterbourne, but it was also kept in bounds. In this Death on the Nile there was just silliness that arose from playing exaggerated characters and from dressing up and pretending to play someone from the past in an exciting context. It also contrasted to the best years of the Poirot television series, in which I particularly admire the seriousness, and the way that the actors are wholly submerged in their characters. And the music was appropriate, but consistently middling in quality and expressionlessly played. Altogether, though I know this sounds terribly snobby, it seems as if it were an American film.
Anyway, I guess I'm working off my pent-up aggression against period films that just don't get it. Of course it isn't only an American phenomenon. The British are equally capable of doing their cultural history an utter disservice, and I've seen the Persuasion, Mansfield Park, and Jane Eyre adaptations to prove it -- besides, the film I've just criticized is a British production.
So, now I can get back to the Knight of the Nineteenth Century (who is converted, but who is not yet married off). (c: Here is a quotation that I copied out from the book: "If you will, you can still achieve a strong, noble character. [. . .] Heaven would ring with your praise, however unfriendly the world might be." I think it expresses the idea of self-reliance well -- which reminds me that I should finally read Emerson's essay on that subject. Perhaps it will change my presently invertebrate state. So I'll end with the opening quotation of that essay:
Man is his own star; and the soul that can
Render an honest and a perfect man,
Commands all light, all influence, all fate;
Nothing to him falls early or too late.
Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.
(Epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher's Honest Man's Fortune)
Source: Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance," Essays, First Series
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Moralism and Names
Today was a pleasant, restful day. I woke up rather late, but got up speedily, because rain was coming in the windows -- though only for a short time before the sun came out again -- and I had to close them.
Then I spent a good while online (re-)reading A Face Illumined, by Edward P. Roe. It is, I suppose, kitschy, but -- as with all of the author's books -- while I wouldn't recommend it because most people would probably see its flaws more than its virtues, I enjoy it. Seldom have I read more sympathetic and unbigoted nineteenth-century moralization. The clergyman author is anti-slavery, pro-reconciliation of the American North and South (he lived through the American Civil War, but bears no grudges), willing to admit that people may be good who are not Christian (though, by the end, they are always "converted"), and nuanced in his portrayal of good characters as well as bad characters. The characters are mostly of a sort that one would never meet in reality, but I sense that he is aware of it, and has done this deliberatively to avoid resemblance to real individuals, and out of a certain love of idealizing them, while he still tries to make the psychology realistic. His are (usually) the sort of sound, healthy and open-minded moral books that I most like to read.
Good moral books are a rare phenomenon, but when I come across them they do make me happier than anything else, because they keep my ideals alive, and even create new ones, and encourage me to become better, as few real-life outside influences do. I think it is nearly as good as being surrounded with noble and intelligent people. On the other hand, this course of reading probably contributes to a large disconnect between the world as I read about it and the world as I know it. Of the everyday sort of morality I think there is plenty nowadays, just because people are in comfortable circumstances, and conscientiousness about the environment is high; but I think that fewer people discuss morality, or think of it on higher levels, than in previous times. And I think that learning and culture, while they're held in higher conscious regard in some places than others, are altogether not as cherished as they were when they were believed to be intrinsic characteristics of high society. At the same time I'm sure that there were many in the upper class who "wangled" the learning; no doubt, for example, many a nineteenth-century gentleman went through college and obtained a "liberal education" but, the moment he graduated, promptly forgot all of his Latin and Greek and philosophy besides a few show-off phrases. I suspect that the larger part of society was content with that.
Anyway, I also shopped for and prepared dinner: a cheese soufflé that turned out excellently (to my surprise), a salad of lettuce with avocado and tomato, a cucumber salad; and strawberries and nectarines, with (organic) vanilla and chocolate ice cream, for dessert. Shortly thereafter I took my notebook and a pen to the door of our pseudo-balcony and prepared to write a story. The story will be a renewed attempt at my French-student/Friedrich-von-Tautzick tale. Scenes that could take place in the story have been running through my head for a day or two now, but yesterday I was stuck on the appearance of the hero, and today I was stuck on the name of the hero. So far I have postponed deciding about the hero's appearance. It must, however, fit the personality of someone who is very good-hearted and easy-going, rather quiet and absorbed in his own life, and approximately nineteen to twenty-five years of age. The name will be "Friedrich," shortened to "Fritz," but I want to substitute "Tautzick" with a less humorous-sounding name, and I'm wondering whether to keep the "von." So I tried going through names of German writers, and thought that "Keller" came closest to what I wanted. I don't really have an ear for what sounds good in German. I wanted a noble-sounding -- not aristocratic, but dignified-sounding -- name, but couldn't think of any. Anyway, I am looking forward to writing about a character whom I already respect and like very much. I also suspect that this story could become my Great Novel.
But I've been thinking that for now I should, first of all, write as much as I can, as well as I can, and, secondly, concentrate on getting short stories published in magazines. There I am certain of reaching an audience, which is not the case with a book. Then, once I have a certain number of stories published and my writing has matured, I can try writing a book, and it will be likelier that people will read the book because they know the name and know what to expect. This doesn't sound much like I want to write for pure motives, but I think it would be depressing if I published a book only to have no one read it, while hundreds of copies cumber the Earth until they finally make their way to the recycling bin. Besides, I want to write my books the way I think is best, and I think that I would be allowed this autonomy if I have an established reputation.
I am also crossing the authorship bridge before I come to it by pondering on possible noms de plume. I wouldn't mind writing under my own name (it is, I think, fairly sonorous in its full extent), but I do like a certain privacy. Every time I think about this I start out with "Dorothea" (my middle name) and then try to find some last name that is either very common or unique, and related to my real one. I explore the permutations of "Berg," or climb up and down the family tree in search of last names that are not linked to famous people (like the von Arnims and Mendelssohns) and therefore would not be a pretentious acquisition. I do think that "Dorothea Mendelssohn" has a ring to it, though I don't particularly like the story of the daughter of Moses Mendelssohn who bore that name (kind of; I just read that she was really baptized "Brendel") and abandoned her nice husband for someone else. But I'd like to try to bring honour to my real family name; it has nearly died out, though (according to Google) there are still Austrian scientists and soccer players and a cookbook author carrying it on in other branches. I think I'll leave the "von" in, though it really only represents the fact that one of our forebears got into the Emperor's good graces by being a fiery reactionary who even exiled his own liberally inclined son to Venezuela (well, that's how the story has been passed down to posterity).
After my attempted writing, I played the piano, which went well. Though Schubert's B flat major sonata has gone badly lately -- I only realized recently that I have, after all, been playing it almost daily for a year -- it went decently today. So did bits of the D558 and D559 sonatas. Bach went well, especially the theme of the Goldenberg Variations, though I fear that the tempo and intonation and everything were pale reproductions of Glenn Gould's 1980s recording, which I often listened to at university. Chopin also went well, even Nocturne No. 6 (which had also grown "stale" in a much shorter time than the Schubert sonata), and a waltz where I also find it very hard to play slowly enough throughout the piece. Lately I think about other things when I play, and, because I am so absorbed, the music goes much better than when I consciously try to figure out how to play it (life isn't fair). Also, because of the warm weather, my fingers are stronger and nimbler than usual. Yesterday the Beethoven sonatas, Chopin mazurkas, and pieces from Schumann's Album für die Jugend and Albumblätter and Phantasiestücke, went unusually well.
Anyway, I should go to sleep soon. There is a moderately impressive thunderstorm going on outside, with driving rain that has now stopped, a stiff breeze, bright and close lightning, and thunder that either rumbles slowly or actually "claps." One or two times I was startled. Now it is beginning to be light anyway, and I've been writing for some three or four hours.
Then I spent a good while online (re-)reading A Face Illumined, by Edward P. Roe. It is, I suppose, kitschy, but -- as with all of the author's books -- while I wouldn't recommend it because most people would probably see its flaws more than its virtues, I enjoy it. Seldom have I read more sympathetic and unbigoted nineteenth-century moralization. The clergyman author is anti-slavery, pro-reconciliation of the American North and South (he lived through the American Civil War, but bears no grudges), willing to admit that people may be good who are not Christian (though, by the end, they are always "converted"), and nuanced in his portrayal of good characters as well as bad characters. The characters are mostly of a sort that one would never meet in reality, but I sense that he is aware of it, and has done this deliberatively to avoid resemblance to real individuals, and out of a certain love of idealizing them, while he still tries to make the psychology realistic. His are (usually) the sort of sound, healthy and open-minded moral books that I most like to read.
Good moral books are a rare phenomenon, but when I come across them they do make me happier than anything else, because they keep my ideals alive, and even create new ones, and encourage me to become better, as few real-life outside influences do. I think it is nearly as good as being surrounded with noble and intelligent people. On the other hand, this course of reading probably contributes to a large disconnect between the world as I read about it and the world as I know it. Of the everyday sort of morality I think there is plenty nowadays, just because people are in comfortable circumstances, and conscientiousness about the environment is high; but I think that fewer people discuss morality, or think of it on higher levels, than in previous times. And I think that learning and culture, while they're held in higher conscious regard in some places than others, are altogether not as cherished as they were when they were believed to be intrinsic characteristics of high society. At the same time I'm sure that there were many in the upper class who "wangled" the learning; no doubt, for example, many a nineteenth-century gentleman went through college and obtained a "liberal education" but, the moment he graduated, promptly forgot all of his Latin and Greek and philosophy besides a few show-off phrases. I suspect that the larger part of society was content with that.
Anyway, I also shopped for and prepared dinner: a cheese soufflé that turned out excellently (to my surprise), a salad of lettuce with avocado and tomato, a cucumber salad; and strawberries and nectarines, with (organic) vanilla and chocolate ice cream, for dessert. Shortly thereafter I took my notebook and a pen to the door of our pseudo-balcony and prepared to write a story. The story will be a renewed attempt at my French-student/Friedrich-von-Tautzick tale. Scenes that could take place in the story have been running through my head for a day or two now, but yesterday I was stuck on the appearance of the hero, and today I was stuck on the name of the hero. So far I have postponed deciding about the hero's appearance. It must, however, fit the personality of someone who is very good-hearted and easy-going, rather quiet and absorbed in his own life, and approximately nineteen to twenty-five years of age. The name will be "Friedrich," shortened to "Fritz," but I want to substitute "Tautzick" with a less humorous-sounding name, and I'm wondering whether to keep the "von." So I tried going through names of German writers, and thought that "Keller" came closest to what I wanted. I don't really have an ear for what sounds good in German. I wanted a noble-sounding -- not aristocratic, but dignified-sounding -- name, but couldn't think of any. Anyway, I am looking forward to writing about a character whom I already respect and like very much. I also suspect that this story could become my Great Novel.
But I've been thinking that for now I should, first of all, write as much as I can, as well as I can, and, secondly, concentrate on getting short stories published in magazines. There I am certain of reaching an audience, which is not the case with a book. Then, once I have a certain number of stories published and my writing has matured, I can try writing a book, and it will be likelier that people will read the book because they know the name and know what to expect. This doesn't sound much like I want to write for pure motives, but I think it would be depressing if I published a book only to have no one read it, while hundreds of copies cumber the Earth until they finally make their way to the recycling bin. Besides, I want to write my books the way I think is best, and I think that I would be allowed this autonomy if I have an established reputation.
I am also crossing the authorship bridge before I come to it by pondering on possible noms de plume. I wouldn't mind writing under my own name (it is, I think, fairly sonorous in its full extent), but I do like a certain privacy. Every time I think about this I start out with "Dorothea" (my middle name) and then try to find some last name that is either very common or unique, and related to my real one. I explore the permutations of "Berg," or climb up and down the family tree in search of last names that are not linked to famous people (like the von Arnims and Mendelssohns) and therefore would not be a pretentious acquisition. I do think that "Dorothea Mendelssohn" has a ring to it, though I don't particularly like the story of the daughter of Moses Mendelssohn who bore that name (kind of; I just read that she was really baptized "Brendel") and abandoned her nice husband for someone else. But I'd like to try to bring honour to my real family name; it has nearly died out, though (according to Google) there are still Austrian scientists and soccer players and a cookbook author carrying it on in other branches. I think I'll leave the "von" in, though it really only represents the fact that one of our forebears got into the Emperor's good graces by being a fiery reactionary who even exiled his own liberally inclined son to Venezuela (well, that's how the story has been passed down to posterity).
After my attempted writing, I played the piano, which went well. Though Schubert's B flat major sonata has gone badly lately -- I only realized recently that I have, after all, been playing it almost daily for a year -- it went decently today. So did bits of the D558 and D559 sonatas. Bach went well, especially the theme of the Goldenberg Variations, though I fear that the tempo and intonation and everything were pale reproductions of Glenn Gould's 1980s recording, which I often listened to at university. Chopin also went well, even Nocturne No. 6 (which had also grown "stale" in a much shorter time than the Schubert sonata), and a waltz where I also find it very hard to play slowly enough throughout the piece. Lately I think about other things when I play, and, because I am so absorbed, the music goes much better than when I consciously try to figure out how to play it (life isn't fair). Also, because of the warm weather, my fingers are stronger and nimbler than usual. Yesterday the Beethoven sonatas, Chopin mazurkas, and pieces from Schumann's Album für die Jugend and Albumblätter and Phantasiestücke, went unusually well.
Anyway, I should go to sleep soon. There is a moderately impressive thunderstorm going on outside, with driving rain that has now stopped, a stiff breeze, bright and close lightning, and thunder that either rumbles slowly or actually "claps." One or two times I was startled. Now it is beginning to be light anyway, and I've been writing for some three or four hours.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Stories and Statesmen
This morning I slept from about eight to noon, because I had stayed up the whole preceding night for no particular reason. Mama came home shortly after 6 a.m., and didn't seem too tired despite her long nighttime train ride, though she went to sleep soon enough. The reunion was, it seems, most agreeable.
She brought along a present from my godfather, namely a Moleskine notebook, which will hopefully inspire another story. I'm still continuing my England-in-the-time-of-Bloody-Mary story, and I've regained momentum with the introduction of a new character, the worldly courtier William Lamington -- astute of mind, interesting, and not entirely unsympathetic. The story is still rubbishy, though. Besides writing on this story, I am taking many notes on names and places and situations that I might use. There is an old classmate whose picture I recently saw in the newspaper; I might write a story about someone resembling her, because she was so fascinating. She could be genuinely friendly at some times but at other times seemed immoral -- treacherous and scheming, and a potential "belle dame sans merci," though I don't remember her actually doing anything to justify these impressions. We didn't much like each other. The photo itself reminded me of Shelley's "Ozymandias" --
". . . a shatter'd visage [. . .], whose frown
And wrinkled lips and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read . . ."
But I think she was and probably still is perfectly capable of becoming a nice girl, even though she evidently calls forth my moralizing instincts.
Anyway, most of my story ideas tend to be about historical times; yesterday, reading a book review, I thought of writing a story set in the Spanish Inquisition, though I'll read up about it beforehand. The worst thing for me to do is to try to write anything remotely autobiographical -- at least right now. It gives rise to the most boring and subjective tripe. And that's part of the reason why it's difficult for me to "write about what I know." Besides, I've realized more than ever that I haven't found my real personal writing style yet -- at least not in fiction -- though my story "Out of Heaven," set in the Canadian prairies, comes close. The solution is, of course, to write and grow (or grow and write).
In the evening I watched the end of an interview with Richard von Weizsäcker and Helmut Schmidt, ex-President and ex-Chancellor of Germany respectively; Papa and Mama had, I think, watched most of it. I found Helmut Schmidt particularly interesting, because his manner of speaking and his bearing were so trenchant and intelligent and dryly humorous -- quite French, in this respect; but perhaps a little too acerbic -- and also mildly anachronistic. He could have been a statesman in the fifties or twenties or perhaps even earlier and not seemed out of place. I couldn't really tell if I would find him an agreeable acquaintance or not. But, regardless of personality, I admire anyone who is in their seventies or older who still has a clear mind. Where I did not agree with him was that he said that he did not rely on God any more because God allowed things like the Holocaust to occur. Mama's thought was that the Holocaust was a result of human and not divine action, and that's the first thought that came to my mind, too. As for Richard von Weizsäcker, it was more difficult to get an idea of his character; perhaps his public and private selves are divergent anyway.
As for my paperwork, I copied my passport and high school diploma today; I did not go to the Rathaus yet, nor did I go to the bank. Mañana, I suppose!
She brought along a present from my godfather, namely a Moleskine notebook, which will hopefully inspire another story. I'm still continuing my England-in-the-time-of-Bloody-Mary story, and I've regained momentum with the introduction of a new character, the worldly courtier William Lamington -- astute of mind, interesting, and not entirely unsympathetic. The story is still rubbishy, though. Besides writing on this story, I am taking many notes on names and places and situations that I might use. There is an old classmate whose picture I recently saw in the newspaper; I might write a story about someone resembling her, because she was so fascinating. She could be genuinely friendly at some times but at other times seemed immoral -- treacherous and scheming, and a potential "belle dame sans merci," though I don't remember her actually doing anything to justify these impressions. We didn't much like each other. The photo itself reminded me of Shelley's "Ozymandias" --
". . . a shatter'd visage [. . .], whose frown
And wrinkled lips and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read . . ."
But I think she was and probably still is perfectly capable of becoming a nice girl, even though she evidently calls forth my moralizing instincts.
Anyway, most of my story ideas tend to be about historical times; yesterday, reading a book review, I thought of writing a story set in the Spanish Inquisition, though I'll read up about it beforehand. The worst thing for me to do is to try to write anything remotely autobiographical -- at least right now. It gives rise to the most boring and subjective tripe. And that's part of the reason why it's difficult for me to "write about what I know." Besides, I've realized more than ever that I haven't found my real personal writing style yet -- at least not in fiction -- though my story "Out of Heaven," set in the Canadian prairies, comes close. The solution is, of course, to write and grow (or grow and write).
In the evening I watched the end of an interview with Richard von Weizsäcker and Helmut Schmidt, ex-President and ex-Chancellor of Germany respectively; Papa and Mama had, I think, watched most of it. I found Helmut Schmidt particularly interesting, because his manner of speaking and his bearing were so trenchant and intelligent and dryly humorous -- quite French, in this respect; but perhaps a little too acerbic -- and also mildly anachronistic. He could have been a statesman in the fifties or twenties or perhaps even earlier and not seemed out of place. I couldn't really tell if I would find him an agreeable acquaintance or not. But, regardless of personality, I admire anyone who is in their seventies or older who still has a clear mind. Where I did not agree with him was that he said that he did not rely on God any more because God allowed things like the Holocaust to occur. Mama's thought was that the Holocaust was a result of human and not divine action, and that's the first thought that came to my mind, too. As for Richard von Weizsäcker, it was more difficult to get an idea of his character; perhaps his public and private selves are divergent anyway.
As for my paperwork, I copied my passport and high school diploma today; I did not go to the Rathaus yet, nor did I go to the bank. Mañana, I suppose!
Monday, June 11, 2007
A Weekend's Homework and Paperwork
Today was not yet one of the "dog days of summer," but it was quite warm. The fruit flies and regular flies are lively again, the odours that arise from the courtyard are hardly salutory, the empty water and Coke bottles in the kitchen have exponentially increased, and blankets are becoming a nuisance except during the coldest hours of the night. At least the apartment is a good, cool refuge from the heat. Yesterday was worse, and everyone felt listless and lethargic; I had headaches and the others probably did, too.
Mama is still in the Niederrhein, where she went on Friday in order to attend a high school reunion. She'll be arriving in Berlin early next morning, instead of at midnight as intended.
The weekend was moderately busy. On Saturday Papa was at one of the tables at the Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften. J. and I went to visit him in the main building of the Technische Uni, partly out of curiosity and partly to make Papa's eight hours there livelier. Our trip there was a minor odyssey, but the weather was cool enough for us to wander about without much discomfort. The event seemed to be very North American and child-orientated in approach; loud music (not particularly good music, either), food, lots of balloons, and a focus on fashionable consumer goods (cell phones, computer games, etc.) for children. There were music education sessions, too, and two ladies with resplendent white wigs and period gowns stood on guard at the entrance to an event about Händel. The whole thing reminded me of the career fairs that we went to in high school: headache-inducing, noisy, and rather mercenary events, where visitors flocked to the various booths in an irregular, rather cruelly selective way, and I tended to go to the less frequented booths if I didn't find the displays utterly incomprehensible to a layman like me. Anyway, J. and I, having found Papa, spent a good quarter hour refreshing ourselves with drinks and talking, and then went home again.
Cousin E. and uncle W. came in the evening; we had white wine, champagne, cookies, and chocolate-covered hazelnuts and raisins. And -- since Windows Media Player refused to let us watch the film 21 Grams -- we turned to YouTube and watched music clips of the Beatles, Elvis Presley, Pete something-or-other, KT Tunstall, Chuck Berry, and Norah Jones. Speaking of the Beatles, I think that the music video for "The Walrus" is very funny; we also watched "Don't Let Me Down," "Instant Karma" (which we didn't know yet), and then early songs like "Love Me Do" which formed a most amusing, naive contrast. But I also liked the other videos. Somehow I've mostly been exposed to more commercial music (Spice Girls, Shania Twain, Beyoncé, 50 Cent, Gwen Stefani, Kelly Clarkson, etc.), and I wasn't as aware of the less slick, more meaningful, and more genuine contemporary music of people like KT Tunstall and Norah Jones. After we had watched the videos, we had a nice, long discussion about the different genres of music, and whether some genres are better than others.
Yesterday Gi. and Ge. had a pile of work. The first task was a joint presentation on Canada for their Geography (Erdkunde) class. So Gi. and Ge. and I delved into Encyclopaedia Britannica and Wikipedia, then I translated the notes into German, and last of all Gi. prepared a powerpoint presentation. At this point I had gone to sleep; Gi. stayed up the rest of the night and hurriedly scratched together a short lecture about daily life in Australia. Today, I might as well mention now, I also did Spanish homework with J., who has a test in the subject tomorrow. He kept at it with admirable persistence and good-humour.
Anyway, this morning I received a nice reply from the Regierungspräsidium Stuttgart, which has to process my academic record before I can apply to the Uni Heidelberg, and to which I had written for information. Tomorrow I'll go to the Rathaus Schöneberg and get official copies of documents such as my passport, and then I'll send it all off. The other task for tomorrow is to go to the bank and authorize the payment of interest onto my savings account (I don't quite understand if there is a more lucrative alternative to interest, or why the bank would assume that I don't want the interest, and would prefer that my lump of money sits around losing value as time passes and inflation gradually rises).
But, to return to university, I've looked up the current information on applying to the Humboldt Uni, and I think I'd like to go there, too. The language on the website was not too bureaucratic or long-winded, the regulations were reasonable, I liked the study programme descriptions, and there are no entry barriers ("numerus clausus") after the first semester (in the programmes that interest me). I also decided that, if all else fails, I will simply get an auditing card ("Gasthörerkarte") for the Humboldt Uni, and spend my time on the waiting list that way. As for the Freie Uni, I've looked at the updated information; I still think that there is no sense in sifting through the bureaucratically-worded application information, filling out quires of paperwork, and being aware the whole time that my chance of being accepted is fractional, and that the application of any but stellar students is seen as an unmitigated nuisance anyway. I'd probably feel like a crawling worm by the end of the process, and the subsequent rejection would be the proverbial icing on the unpalatable cake.
Mama is still in the Niederrhein, where she went on Friday in order to attend a high school reunion. She'll be arriving in Berlin early next morning, instead of at midnight as intended.
The weekend was moderately busy. On Saturday Papa was at one of the tables at the Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften. J. and I went to visit him in the main building of the Technische Uni, partly out of curiosity and partly to make Papa's eight hours there livelier. Our trip there was a minor odyssey, but the weather was cool enough for us to wander about without much discomfort. The event seemed to be very North American and child-orientated in approach; loud music (not particularly good music, either), food, lots of balloons, and a focus on fashionable consumer goods (cell phones, computer games, etc.) for children. There were music education sessions, too, and two ladies with resplendent white wigs and period gowns stood on guard at the entrance to an event about Händel. The whole thing reminded me of the career fairs that we went to in high school: headache-inducing, noisy, and rather mercenary events, where visitors flocked to the various booths in an irregular, rather cruelly selective way, and I tended to go to the less frequented booths if I didn't find the displays utterly incomprehensible to a layman like me. Anyway, J. and I, having found Papa, spent a good quarter hour refreshing ourselves with drinks and talking, and then went home again.
Cousin E. and uncle W. came in the evening; we had white wine, champagne, cookies, and chocolate-covered hazelnuts and raisins. And -- since Windows Media Player refused to let us watch the film 21 Grams -- we turned to YouTube and watched music clips of the Beatles, Elvis Presley, Pete something-or-other, KT Tunstall, Chuck Berry, and Norah Jones. Speaking of the Beatles, I think that the music video for "The Walrus" is very funny; we also watched "Don't Let Me Down," "Instant Karma" (which we didn't know yet), and then early songs like "Love Me Do" which formed a most amusing, naive contrast. But I also liked the other videos. Somehow I've mostly been exposed to more commercial music (Spice Girls, Shania Twain, Beyoncé, 50 Cent, Gwen Stefani, Kelly Clarkson, etc.), and I wasn't as aware of the less slick, more meaningful, and more genuine contemporary music of people like KT Tunstall and Norah Jones. After we had watched the videos, we had a nice, long discussion about the different genres of music, and whether some genres are better than others.
Yesterday Gi. and Ge. had a pile of work. The first task was a joint presentation on Canada for their Geography (Erdkunde) class. So Gi. and Ge. and I delved into Encyclopaedia Britannica and Wikipedia, then I translated the notes into German, and last of all Gi. prepared a powerpoint presentation. At this point I had gone to sleep; Gi. stayed up the rest of the night and hurriedly scratched together a short lecture about daily life in Australia. Today, I might as well mention now, I also did Spanish homework with J., who has a test in the subject tomorrow. He kept at it with admirable persistence and good-humour.
Anyway, this morning I received a nice reply from the Regierungspräsidium Stuttgart, which has to process my academic record before I can apply to the Uni Heidelberg, and to which I had written for information. Tomorrow I'll go to the Rathaus Schöneberg and get official copies of documents such as my passport, and then I'll send it all off. The other task for tomorrow is to go to the bank and authorize the payment of interest onto my savings account (I don't quite understand if there is a more lucrative alternative to interest, or why the bank would assume that I don't want the interest, and would prefer that my lump of money sits around losing value as time passes and inflation gradually rises).
But, to return to university, I've looked up the current information on applying to the Humboldt Uni, and I think I'd like to go there, too. The language on the website was not too bureaucratic or long-winded, the regulations were reasonable, I liked the study programme descriptions, and there are no entry barriers ("numerus clausus") after the first semester (in the programmes that interest me). I also decided that, if all else fails, I will simply get an auditing card ("Gasthörerkarte") for the Humboldt Uni, and spend my time on the waiting list that way. As for the Freie Uni, I've looked at the updated information; I still think that there is no sense in sifting through the bureaucratically-worded application information, filling out quires of paperwork, and being aware the whole time that my chance of being accepted is fractional, and that the application of any but stellar students is seen as an unmitigated nuisance anyway. I'd probably feel like a crawling worm by the end of the process, and the subsequent rejection would be the proverbial icing on the unpalatable cake.
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
The Second Birthday
Today I woke up between eleven and twelve, when our cousin E. from Switzerland came to visit. It's rather awkward hearing visitors come in, then getting up and creaking on the wooden floor as one gathers one's clothing and furtively scampers to the bathroom in order to make a respectable appearance. Anyway, I did the necessary scampering, wandered over to the corner room, then (when E. was about to leave again) returned to the kitchen where I started reading the newspaper (I read all of the first section today, minus the advertising).
J. needed help with his homework; he was trying to sketch characters from Dorothy L. Sayers' Murder Must Advertise, which he must discuss in a poster for his German class. He was stuck trying to draw a not unpleasant and attractive, but worldly, woman who was becoming involved in the drug scene; he did one sketch, which looked (he said) as if she were a witch, and then another that looked right, but was difficult to copy on a larger scale. We also spent a long time (it made me slightly grumpy) looking for proper quills so that J. could go over the lines in ink. J. was in a good working mood today, and the fact that it is his birthday did nothing to disturb it.
After that I shopped for, and cooked, dinner. The menu was broiled chicken (from yesterday, but still tender), chicken broth, white asparagus soup, potatoes (which were done too late), romaine lettuce with tomato and vinaigrette, and cherry pudding with whipping cream and ladyfingers. The broth and vinaigrette were Papa's and Mama's contributions (well, Mama did also take care of the chicken). The cherry pudding was really just "Sauerkirschen" out of a jar, brought to a boil without additional sugar and then thickened with cornstarch. It was a little sour indeed, but I had put a package of vanilla sugar into the whipping cream, which made the combination subtly sweet. It really is a challenge, though, to make nice, well-rounded dishes from scratch, with good ingredients, without having to buy twenty million different items, without making the same thing all the time, and without having to slave away for hours.
J.'s birthday has altogether been a modest one. The main ceremony took place over dinner, when we sang "Happy Birthday" (J. joined in to good comic effect with his "opera voice") as well as this German song:
Der (J.) hat Geburtstag,
Wir wünschen ihn viel Glück,
Wir wünschen ihn viel Glück:
Alt soll er werden,
Kugelrund und dick.
Then there was a phone call from Aunt L., and just now T. and Ge. are trying to set up our North American VCR and beamer in order to see Limelight (which T. borrowed from the Amerika Gedenkbibliothek, and which J. is about as eager to watch as she is). I'll probably stop writing now and play the piano as quietly as I can . . .
What I should be doing is writing an e-mail to the student advisors at the Uni Heidelberg, asking for more information about transferring from UBC, but I'm a little fearful of taking the responsibility of formulating it properly and so on. Yesterday I saw that a provisional list of the BA and MA programmes has been put up, so I made a shortlist (not nearly short enough, in my opinion) of twelve programmes I'd be interested in. The problem is that, whenever I see lists of fields, I usually feel like taking them all, but then I have to concentrate and consider what I'm really unquestionably interested in and good at. It's more difficult since I never, for example, had Philosophy classes in school or university, or had a unit on Ancient Egypt since Grade 7; I'm sure that everyone has that problem, but it still doesn't make much sense to me to have to choose two fields and two fields only in such a situation.
So, here are the choices:
Ägyptologie
Alte Geschichte
Englische Literaturwissenschaft
Englische Philologie
Englische Sprach, Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft
Französistik
Klassische Archäologie
Klassische Philologie; Gräzistik
Klassische Philologie; Latinistik
(Lusitanistik; I only put that down because I found the name interesting, and I'd forgotten that "Lusitania" refers to "Portugal")
Ur- und Frühgeschichte
Vorderasiatische Archäologie
At UBC I already took three English Literature courses, an Archaeology course, one year-long Classical Studies course, two French Literature courses, one year-long History course, and one year-long Ancient Greek course. So that's the relevant experience I have to work with.
-- I just heard a soft sizzling noise, saw a flare of yellow-orange light, and heard the sounds of Ge. and T.'s dismay. I went to the living room door, and saw narrow plumes of grey smoke rising steadily from the VCR, with the two culprits regarding it unhappily from either side. Fortunately the videocassette wasn't inside.
T.'s comment: "That was such a waste of effort."
Ge.'s comment: "You did learn something from all this," (with a rising and doubtful inflection).
J. needed help with his homework; he was trying to sketch characters from Dorothy L. Sayers' Murder Must Advertise, which he must discuss in a poster for his German class. He was stuck trying to draw a not unpleasant and attractive, but worldly, woman who was becoming involved in the drug scene; he did one sketch, which looked (he said) as if she were a witch, and then another that looked right, but was difficult to copy on a larger scale. We also spent a long time (it made me slightly grumpy) looking for proper quills so that J. could go over the lines in ink. J. was in a good working mood today, and the fact that it is his birthday did nothing to disturb it.
After that I shopped for, and cooked, dinner. The menu was broiled chicken (from yesterday, but still tender), chicken broth, white asparagus soup, potatoes (which were done too late), romaine lettuce with tomato and vinaigrette, and cherry pudding with whipping cream and ladyfingers. The broth and vinaigrette were Papa's and Mama's contributions (well, Mama did also take care of the chicken). The cherry pudding was really just "Sauerkirschen" out of a jar, brought to a boil without additional sugar and then thickened with cornstarch. It was a little sour indeed, but I had put a package of vanilla sugar into the whipping cream, which made the combination subtly sweet. It really is a challenge, though, to make nice, well-rounded dishes from scratch, with good ingredients, without having to buy twenty million different items, without making the same thing all the time, and without having to slave away for hours.
J.'s birthday has altogether been a modest one. The main ceremony took place over dinner, when we sang "Happy Birthday" (J. joined in to good comic effect with his "opera voice") as well as this German song:
Der (J.) hat Geburtstag,
Wir wünschen ihn viel Glück,
Wir wünschen ihn viel Glück:
Alt soll er werden,
Kugelrund und dick.
Then there was a phone call from Aunt L., and just now T. and Ge. are trying to set up our North American VCR and beamer in order to see Limelight (which T. borrowed from the Amerika Gedenkbibliothek, and which J. is about as eager to watch as she is). I'll probably stop writing now and play the piano as quietly as I can . . .
What I should be doing is writing an e-mail to the student advisors at the Uni Heidelberg, asking for more information about transferring from UBC, but I'm a little fearful of taking the responsibility of formulating it properly and so on. Yesterday I saw that a provisional list of the BA and MA programmes has been put up, so I made a shortlist (not nearly short enough, in my opinion) of twelve programmes I'd be interested in. The problem is that, whenever I see lists of fields, I usually feel like taking them all, but then I have to concentrate and consider what I'm really unquestionably interested in and good at. It's more difficult since I never, for example, had Philosophy classes in school or university, or had a unit on Ancient Egypt since Grade 7; I'm sure that everyone has that problem, but it still doesn't make much sense to me to have to choose two fields and two fields only in such a situation.
So, here are the choices:
Ägyptologie
Alte Geschichte
Englische Literaturwissenschaft
Englische Philologie
Englische Sprach, Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft
Französistik
Klassische Archäologie
Klassische Philologie; Gräzistik
Klassische Philologie; Latinistik
(Lusitanistik; I only put that down because I found the name interesting, and I'd forgotten that "Lusitania" refers to "Portugal")
Ur- und Frühgeschichte
Vorderasiatische Archäologie
At UBC I already took three English Literature courses, an Archaeology course, one year-long Classical Studies course, two French Literature courses, one year-long History course, and one year-long Ancient Greek course. So that's the relevant experience I have to work with.
-- I just heard a soft sizzling noise, saw a flare of yellow-orange light, and heard the sounds of Ge. and T.'s dismay. I went to the living room door, and saw narrow plumes of grey smoke rising steadily from the VCR, with the two culprits regarding it unhappily from either side. Fortunately the videocassette wasn't inside.
T.'s comment: "That was such a waste of effort."
Ge.'s comment: "You did learn something from all this," (with a rising and doubtful inflection).
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
The First Birthday
Today (or rather yesterday, considering that it is past midnight) it was Gi.'s birthday. When he and Ge. came home from school, Uncle Pu came up the stairs with them, and had a nice visit. There were two large bowls of candy and one of cookies that gradually diminished in the course of the day. In the evening Papa prepared two birthday cakes, with chocolate chips in them and melted chocolate on top, of which the first rapidly disappeared. Then Papa prepared two delicious broiled chickens with bread stuffing. I also made a salad with avocado and egg (Mama used to make it on special occasions, and this is my second and more successful attempt to recreate it) and tomato. And, to transcend the merely gastronomic aspect of the feast, we were all mostly in a good mood today -- with the sadly ironic exception of the "birthday boy," whose cold made an unpleasant return in the evening -- and talked and laughed together rather than sitting apathetically in front of our respective computers. Besides, there were at least two phone calls for Gi., and an evening visit from uncle W.
J., for whom Mama and I just sang "Happy Birthday," spent much of the day reading The Count of Monte Cristo (which we unfortunately only have in an abridged version). He found it gripping reading, though he couldn't pronounce any of the names properly (T. and I didn't mind correcting him, anyway). (c: Earlier on we did a few Math questions together; the Spanish homework, which is (so to speak) a bête noire where J. is concerned, somehow failed to materialize.
As for my studies, I did read the caption of a 13th-century map of England in my English Literature textbook, and spend some time looking at it. It was peculiar how completely absorbed I became in it. The proportions of the map were rather off. For instance, the Caledonian Channel, which cuts a deep groove in Scotland, was shown as being much broader than it is, whereas the Wash was a shrivelled appendix of the North Sea instead of the generously-sized near-lagoon it is now. The rivers were rather crude, indiscriminately broad, blue squiggles. Towns that became prominent later, like Oxford, were nowhere to be seen, but London and St. Alban's were distinct. There were no dots that marked the exact location of cities, just the names with a box around denoting a castle or cathedral, I think. The sea was, as is usual with old maps, a nice subdued green instead of the modern blue. On northern Scotland the map-maker had written a comment in Latin that ran more or less like this: "A mountainous and wooded region inhabited by an uncivilized people." I thought it was interesting that the concepts of "civilized" and "barbarian," which I last heard of in connection with the ancient Greeks and their Persian foes, should come up here too. I guess it's a sort of propaganda that works in any age and nation; if I were to read any books on mass psychology I would probably come across something about it.
So, I'm not sure how far I am getting toward my aim of devoting myself to studies. The best scenario is that I am building momentum. But the true test is time, and the next lazy/depressed mood that comes up. What I'm guessing is that I'm truly tired of idling now, and that for the rest of my life I will be continuously active. Even when I'm being idle, I do try to develop certain habits, because it is likely that I will be in a situation again (e.g. retirement) where I won't necessarily have many outside stimuli and I'll have to rely on myself to occupy my time and mind properly. But I've decided, already a long time ago, that I'm not going to retire to the countryside when I'm in my seventies and eighties. That's basically the surest way to get the brain to degenerate, I think, in my case; though I do think that there are many admirable, intelligent people whose brains do not suffer in the least from being in a pastoral environment. Anyway, to return to the subject announced at the beginning of the paragraph, I think that there is no harm in beginning to learn things slowly again, if that means that I remember them better and don't attempt to do more than I have the energy and interest for.
I guess it's peculiar that I should be so fixated on studying and the mind, but to me it means more than a rabid interest in knowing dates and facts. It means seeing the world in a more rounded and clear way, getting to know what occupies people in the present and what occupied them in the past, and above all to avoid ever again being confined to learning and doing as little as I did during my later school years. And, as I discovered in university, the more one learns in books and from other people -- learns facts and learns to use one's mind --, the more one can grow to appreciate and understand one's real-life surroundings. I find it liberating, and also a sort of pure thing because it takes one beyond oneself.
As for the piano, it went partly badly and partly very well today. It's easy now to get into the spirit of the music and to play each note with a proper expression, if I put my mind to it. And to a great extent this is nicer than when the good playing just comes automatically, which is pleasant when it does happen but which doesn't lead to any real improvement. I'm resigned to not having a teacher now, because I see that there are still many things I can work out on my own, in a way where the music is not driven out by intensive work on the technique. And, quite frankly, my playing is in such a rough state (I should really play scales again), that I doubt that any teacher would want to attempt the task of bringing order into the chaos. That may sound like false modesty, but in this case it isn't.
J., for whom Mama and I just sang "Happy Birthday," spent much of the day reading The Count of Monte Cristo (which we unfortunately only have in an abridged version). He found it gripping reading, though he couldn't pronounce any of the names properly (T. and I didn't mind correcting him, anyway). (c: Earlier on we did a few Math questions together; the Spanish homework, which is (so to speak) a bête noire where J. is concerned, somehow failed to materialize.
As for my studies, I did read the caption of a 13th-century map of England in my English Literature textbook, and spend some time looking at it. It was peculiar how completely absorbed I became in it. The proportions of the map were rather off. For instance, the Caledonian Channel, which cuts a deep groove in Scotland, was shown as being much broader than it is, whereas the Wash was a shrivelled appendix of the North Sea instead of the generously-sized near-lagoon it is now. The rivers were rather crude, indiscriminately broad, blue squiggles. Towns that became prominent later, like Oxford, were nowhere to be seen, but London and St. Alban's were distinct. There were no dots that marked the exact location of cities, just the names with a box around denoting a castle or cathedral, I think. The sea was, as is usual with old maps, a nice subdued green instead of the modern blue. On northern Scotland the map-maker had written a comment in Latin that ran more or less like this: "A mountainous and wooded region inhabited by an uncivilized people." I thought it was interesting that the concepts of "civilized" and "barbarian," which I last heard of in connection with the ancient Greeks and their Persian foes, should come up here too. I guess it's a sort of propaganda that works in any age and nation; if I were to read any books on mass psychology I would probably come across something about it.
So, I'm not sure how far I am getting toward my aim of devoting myself to studies. The best scenario is that I am building momentum. But the true test is time, and the next lazy/depressed mood that comes up. What I'm guessing is that I'm truly tired of idling now, and that for the rest of my life I will be continuously active. Even when I'm being idle, I do try to develop certain habits, because it is likely that I will be in a situation again (e.g. retirement) where I won't necessarily have many outside stimuli and I'll have to rely on myself to occupy my time and mind properly. But I've decided, already a long time ago, that I'm not going to retire to the countryside when I'm in my seventies and eighties. That's basically the surest way to get the brain to degenerate, I think, in my case; though I do think that there are many admirable, intelligent people whose brains do not suffer in the least from being in a pastoral environment. Anyway, to return to the subject announced at the beginning of the paragraph, I think that there is no harm in beginning to learn things slowly again, if that means that I remember them better and don't attempt to do more than I have the energy and interest for.
I guess it's peculiar that I should be so fixated on studying and the mind, but to me it means more than a rabid interest in knowing dates and facts. It means seeing the world in a more rounded and clear way, getting to know what occupies people in the present and what occupied them in the past, and above all to avoid ever again being confined to learning and doing as little as I did during my later school years. And, as I discovered in university, the more one learns in books and from other people -- learns facts and learns to use one's mind --, the more one can grow to appreciate and understand one's real-life surroundings. I find it liberating, and also a sort of pure thing because it takes one beyond oneself.
As for the piano, it went partly badly and partly very well today. It's easy now to get into the spirit of the music and to play each note with a proper expression, if I put my mind to it. And to a great extent this is nicer than when the good playing just comes automatically, which is pleasant when it does happen but which doesn't lead to any real improvement. I'm resigned to not having a teacher now, because I see that there are still many things I can work out on my own, in a way where the music is not driven out by intensive work on the technique. And, quite frankly, my playing is in such a rough state (I should really play scales again), that I doubt that any teacher would want to attempt the task of bringing order into the chaos. That may sound like false modesty, but in this case it isn't.
Sunday, June 03, 2007
A Castle-in-the-Air
Today was, as it should be, a day of rest. I got up late, showered, and then (after reading the end of one online novel and the beginning of another) played the piano for hours. During this session I didn't mind if I made mistakes, so I made hundreds of them, but got into the spirit of the pieces much more easily. Altogether this was very nearly one of my "genius" days. But in the end I played everything too quickly and carelessly, so I had to stop. It was also hard to play genuinely; I was thinking alternately self-satisfied and worried thoughts, which was not conducive to good music.
Tomorrow I will hopefully start properly studying on my own again, mostly in English and History. The inspiration for this is my internet research about Heidelberg; I now like the idea of studying there very much, and I've already looked up entrance requirements and so on. The ideal thing would, I think, be to take Englische Philologie and history (possibly Ur- und Frühgeschichte). One of the things that's nice about that is that my previous knowledge will help me so much here, which has not been the case much in school or university so far. I already know the English and French I'd need for the history programme, and some of the Latin I'd need for both programmes, and I've no objection to learning the third modern language that I'd need for the history programme. The problem is, of course, that the University of Heidelberg is an elite university and that I hardly qualify as a brilliant scholar. But I am sure that I would do very good work there, and I'd do what I can beforehand to make that more likely.
One may well ask why I don't just go to one of the universities in and around Berlin. The thing is that the documents that I've read so far from the Freie Uni seem far more bent on narrowing down the number of applicants than on welcoming them; of course there are thousands upon thousands of applicants, of which only a seventh are accepted, but once this fact is clear one doesn't have to be unfriendly about it. And I don't feel like going to the Humboldt Uni; I'm not sure why. Perhaps studying out in Baden-Württemberg simply seems more adventurous, and, I think, more challenging. There is a line in Tennyson, "We needs must love the highest when we see it," which accurately expresses my feelings in this case. I know it's not sensible, but until I see a good reason against it, that's how I feel. As for the boarding-money, I am quite prepared to get a job to be able to pay it (I have no intention of getting a student housing loan, affectionately known here as BAföG, because I don't want to study with a sword of Damocles hanging over me). Finally, as for waiting a year or two to get in, I'm sure that I am ready for that too.
Anyway, even if all of this dreaming comes to nothing, I have something to work toward, and be hopeful about. And as I dream I can prod my mind into some semblance of activity again.
Tomorrow I will hopefully start properly studying on my own again, mostly in English and History. The inspiration for this is my internet research about Heidelberg; I now like the idea of studying there very much, and I've already looked up entrance requirements and so on. The ideal thing would, I think, be to take Englische Philologie and history (possibly Ur- und Frühgeschichte). One of the things that's nice about that is that my previous knowledge will help me so much here, which has not been the case much in school or university so far. I already know the English and French I'd need for the history programme, and some of the Latin I'd need for both programmes, and I've no objection to learning the third modern language that I'd need for the history programme. The problem is, of course, that the University of Heidelberg is an elite university and that I hardly qualify as a brilliant scholar. But I am sure that I would do very good work there, and I'd do what I can beforehand to make that more likely.
One may well ask why I don't just go to one of the universities in and around Berlin. The thing is that the documents that I've read so far from the Freie Uni seem far more bent on narrowing down the number of applicants than on welcoming them; of course there are thousands upon thousands of applicants, of which only a seventh are accepted, but once this fact is clear one doesn't have to be unfriendly about it. And I don't feel like going to the Humboldt Uni; I'm not sure why. Perhaps studying out in Baden-Württemberg simply seems more adventurous, and, I think, more challenging. There is a line in Tennyson, "We needs must love the highest when we see it," which accurately expresses my feelings in this case. I know it's not sensible, but until I see a good reason against it, that's how I feel. As for the boarding-money, I am quite prepared to get a job to be able to pay it (I have no intention of getting a student housing loan, affectionately known here as BAföG, because I don't want to study with a sword of Damocles hanging over me). Finally, as for waiting a year or two to get in, I'm sure that I am ready for that too.
Anyway, even if all of this dreaming comes to nothing, I have something to work toward, and be hopeful about. And as I dream I can prod my mind into some semblance of activity again.
Saturday, June 02, 2007
A Quintet
Favourite music recordings from YouTube:
Mendelssohn, Trio in d minor, Mvt. 1
Piatigorsky, Rubinstein, Heifetz
*
Bruch, Kol Nidrei
Jacqueline du Pré (accompanied by Gerald Moore)
only sound, no video
*
Schubert, Piano Sonata D 959, Mvt. 4, Part One
Alfred Brendel, 1988
*
Scarlatti, Sonata in E (L. 23) & G (L. 335)
Vladimir Horowitz, 1968
*
J.S. Bach, Cello Suite No. 1
Pablo Casals
only sound, no video
I also just discovered recordings by Joseph Joachim from 1903. There is, for example, Brahms's Hungarian Dance No. 1 and Bach's Sonata No.1. Incredible that they should have been made and survived (more or less). The recording quality is naturally low, which is a pity. But it has a certain sad charm too. I think that the Bach sounds like some faint, tearful, wavering echo out of the very distant past. At the same I found a recording of Eugene Ysaye playing the third movement of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor, with much light charm, I think. And, last of all, here is a Chopin Nocturne played with beautiful simplicity by Zino Francescatti.
Mendelssohn, Trio in d minor, Mvt. 1
Piatigorsky, Rubinstein, Heifetz
*
Bruch, Kol Nidrei
Jacqueline du Pré (accompanied by Gerald Moore)
only sound, no video
*
Schubert, Piano Sonata D 959, Mvt. 4, Part One
Alfred Brendel, 1988
*
Scarlatti, Sonata in E (L. 23) & G (L. 335)
Vladimir Horowitz, 1968
*
J.S. Bach, Cello Suite No. 1
Pablo Casals
only sound, no video
I also just discovered recordings by Joseph Joachim from 1903. There is, for example, Brahms's Hungarian Dance No. 1 and Bach's Sonata No.1. Incredible that they should have been made and survived (more or less). The recording quality is naturally low, which is a pity. But it has a certain sad charm too. I think that the Bach sounds like some faint, tearful, wavering echo out of the very distant past. At the same I found a recording of Eugene Ysaye playing the third movement of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor, with much light charm, I think. And, last of all, here is a Chopin Nocturne played with beautiful simplicity by Zino Francescatti.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
