Soccer's Golden Fleece

Given an interesting sleeping schedule I only watched a minute or so of Portugal vs. North Korea before nodding off on the sofa. Since I liked the Korean team in their first match, against Brazil,the seven goals against it would probably not have been an edifying spectacle anyway. Besides dancing on the grave of the vanquished has scanty charm; even Germany's 4-0 win against Australia was a little depressing for me.

When I woke up again Switzerland began its match against Chile, which I followed intently during the second half. I found myself hoping that the Swiss would win though the Chileans looked marginally better and, either because of the red card against the Swiss or for other reasons, the players in white kit were clearly on the defensive in a tacit admission of subordination. Even then the defense, though staunchly arrayed in its two rows every now and then, was not so agile and indeed dreadfully porous. Which may have been an "offside trap" (today's the first time I really took note of the term; I imagine it means that the defense loiters toward midfield so that any opposing players who break through are offside and may not attempt a goal). Either way the Swiss, even with one player down, doughtily preserved their 0-1 loss, as was the fate of the similarly disadvantaged Germans in their ridiculously, pedantically refereed game last week, so good for them. The Chilean team may be all right but I don't find it either very sympathetic nor brilliant, and the lovely fluent passing which distinguished its match against Honduras and was brilliant appeared to clash and vanish against the methodology of the Swiss, with the result that the game was a fairly unenlightening 90+overtime minutes of deconstructed brawling over a wide area.

***

Intermittently I played the final movement of Schubert's sonata D959 until 2-4 pages before the end. The theme is lovely but the rest of it is an example of what is commonly remarked, that Schubert can't bring himself to finish his sonatas at times. Why people don't say this more often of Beethoven compositions I can't fathom, and personally I haven't felt bored, precisely, by the three last sonatas of Schubert's. Besides I am unfairly inclined to grumble that whoever minds hearing out a Schubert sonata is deficient either in soul or in the elementary talent of tuning music out and daydreaming if you are bored. But in this case, considering that it was sightreading and therefore not the pinnacle of musical fluidity, I had to concede that enough is as good as a feast.

Three or four years ago I listened to Alfred Brendel's recordings and, though with the very last sonata Papa's and Clara Haskil's versions fortunately come to mind, and though at the time I liked his recordings, the memory of it in my ear is a tremendous obstacle to finding my own approach, and a hopefully characteristic approach, to Schubert. One thing that doesn't come out in recordings as much, I think, as in quotidian sightreading, is that Schubert can be immensely weird. The second movement of D959, which is in my view initially bitter and melancholic (I think that the saddest movements of Schubert are most faithfully rendered when they pluck at the heartstrings in a jarringly wrong and discordant way, though of course the composer resolves this with a happier movement or key soon afterward), but also uncomplicated and lovely, is tangled chaos by the second page.

* * *

Inspired by its match against Chile, and pending egregious displays of ineptitude or of poor sportsmanship, I have adopted Honduras as the World Cup team for whom to cheer. In the game against Spain, though they appeared overwhelmed at times, they gave a good battle. They passed well amongst each other and even did the billiard-like passes (which I love) where the ball deflects off the foot of one teammate to surely arrive at another's. Besides they were diligent and courageous about running for and through the ranks of Spanish defenders, and parrying for the ball with even multiple opponents, instead of just passing off the ball to a teammate in a freer position. And I have the impression that Honduras's goalkeeper is really quite good. Though evidently better than Honduras, I didn't think that Spain showed glimmerings of especial brilliance; yet its first goal was, to borrow from the British(?) vernacular, a corker. Fortunately the game was not sabotaged by silly refereeing, though the incident of the nose-stubbing of an Honduran by a Spanish player did suggest a yellow card, since neither player was near the ball and it was a disagreeable piece of aggression. But the nose didn't bleed, so the principal sanguinary spectacle was the split lip and spewing blood of a Spanish player.

It's not very saintly but I think that fouls have their place in soccer, if they aren't done with intent to inflict pain or debilitate (the jargon for debilitating fouls is evidently a "reducer"). It was funny in Spain vs. Honduras how the experienced players simply hopped over extended feet, etc., so that the shabby tricks were rendered ridiculous; what was even lovelier was the way the Hondurans and Chileans tumbled like acrobats during their game against each other, and gave as good as they got instead of one side victimizing the other. On the other hand it is simple to cause a nasty injury, so it's best not to tempt fate. And I really detest fouls as a risky, lazy shortcut in lieu of acquiring the ball through classic footwork and speed, and of running as quickly as possible to head off an opponent.

What I detest even more is the pretense of having been fouled. A little ankle-clutching now and then may have no further effects if the referee is unimpressed, and sometimes players who indulge in acting have really been fouled and are only seeking redress (though if the foul was really that bad they wouldn't have to act out suffering). And of course soccer players are genuinely injured and put at risk of losing their careers from time to time in a way which the casual television viewer cannot feel through the screen. But the dramatic facsimile of agonizing pain which would not look out of place in medieval paintings of inventive martyrdom — glass shards and heated iron grilles and all — is an insult to real injuries; it unfairly biases the game in favour of the ham; and depending on the circumstances it could give the other player involved a totally undeserved sense of guilt. Not to mention that it's unkind to deceive the referee and make him an accomplice to one's cheating.

Lastly, as a certain player who obtained the second yellow card which turned into a red card for Kaká proved, in the age of video and replays it is a stupid step, though it must be confessed that there are supposed fouls or handballs or so on which I watch over and over again and thereafter still don't know what happened.

* * *

Which brings me to the sorry quandary of France at the World Cup. The following may be entirely made up, partly because of the vagaries of reading comprehension and memory and partly because the press isn't always reliable, but here is a version of events:

Thanks to the gossip on the Guardian blogs I gather that Zinedine Zidane was really the coach for France during the last Cup here in Berlin, and that he and Raymond Domenech (who is himself sketchy as a coach also because he has used astrology to decide for instance which player is placed where on the line-up, like Louis XI in Quentin Durward, and in any case is not much respected by the team) are at loggerheads. Besides I'm guessing that it may have demoralized the team that they advanced into the World Cup because Thierry Henry's handball in the game against Ireland wasn't acted on by the referee. Before the game with Uruguay two players asked Domenech to change the formation to a different one and he agreed, only to find out that the formation had been suggested by Zidane, whereupon he rescinded. Then came the inglorious tie.

In the next match came the inglorious defeat against Mexico, in which Thierry Henry, punitively kept on the bench, sat in his thick dark blue jacket and crossed his arms in Achilles-like disgruntled exile from battle. So the France was deprived of a good striker and played with what I thought were flashes of genius and of effort for instance on the part of Franck Ribéry, but with a resignation to failure, middlingness, and a gaping lack of cooperation. I admit to feeling somewhat weepy after that game. And every time the camera went to Domenech, he just stood there, leaning against the pole and looking inscrutable, except for one time where he gestured in exasperation.

Afterwards, of course, it turns out that the striker Nicolas Anelka had flared up at the manager during halftime and indulged in a very rude sentence, which I imagine to be common if sadly unimaginative language in the sports milieu, even if directing it against a coach is unwise. For some reason French officials, though they hail from a nation which might be thought to view these things in blasé fashion, declared themselves shocked! and Anelka has been sent home. In the meanwhile, Patrice Evra, captain of the French team (I'm glad not to be in his shoes), professed himself understandably disappointed at the weak effort exemplified in the game against Mexico. Regarding Anelka's remarks both he and Zinedine Zidane stated to the press that they were out of place and that no one was seeking to defend them as proper behaviour, but that removing him from the French team was going too far.

And of course in the next training session the French team showed up but refused to train in support of their fallen banished comrade, leading to an altercation whereafter the field fitness coach (a self-appointed intermediary) stormed off in a huff and threw down his badge in the process. Then intervention of Sarkozy, and so on and so forth, and now they've trained again, though on an inauspiciously thunderous day where, according to the AP video footage I saw, the sky was about as lively in tint as the cellar of an Irish grey stone mansion. What is questionable is whether the team will appear in full number (aside from Anelka, of course) for the match against South Africa tomorrow. [Which, it seems, I'll have to mostly miss because of a summons to the bank. )c,: What rotten, rotten luck.]

*

Anyway, what I don't understand is the puritanical slant of the animosity against the French players. The World Cup is not a pristine event.

There is corruption and match-fixing, the betting around the game outcomes has its shadows like any other gambling, the staff are partly ill-paid, the funds expended on the stadium will hopefully bring joy to many South Africans but may also have deprived many others who live on welfare and so on, and it is to a great extent likewise a capitalist orgy of dubiously ethical companies seeking to put their brand on the "beautiful game." The fans are maybe serious devotees of the game; others seem like self-aggrandizers who expect people they've never met to live out their dreams, and some hound the players and deprive them of their right to privacy. Maybe they have enough money to buy tickets to the game without pain, maybe they are dipping into household funds or denying themselves better things for the privilege of taking chaotic transportation to an enormous arena and then taking their place on the hard and loveless benches of the modern amphitheatre. The soccer players themselves are on a strict training regimen, constricted in what they eat and what they do and where they go, and even if they are rich, wealth brings its own problems and I doubt if it is any substitute for freedom, uninterrupted schooling, and the time to develop other interests and skills. Besides they have to play so many games with their teams (Chelsea, Bayern München, Real Madrid, etc.) and then in regional competitions and then in the qualifiers and friendlies before the World Cup; after a while, why should they care? The commentators on the game may, like the fans, be serious devotees of the game; others are resentful pedants who are envious of the players or who look down on them as numbskulled pawns or who always believe that the players could and should have done something better.

If someone tires of the hypocrisy of the game, of their powerlessness to determine how they play even though they are the ones who must carry it out, or of the illusion that the Cup is of transcendent importance compared to different issues (even mundane ones of leading a reasonable life), I am glad that they have the courage to rebel, and I am glad if their teammates support them in this rebellion. I never thought I'd quote this approvingly, but after all the devise of France is Liberté, égalité, fraternité!

A Humming Piano and Soccer Stadia

Since the inaugural game between South Africa and Mexico I have determined to plunge wholeheartedly into the World Cup, and so have seen I believe at least two minutes, and read the entire minute-by-minute reports on the guardian.co.uk, for every game so far. J., Ge. and I have taken to reading the reports out loud, by turns, and intoning "Gooooaaal!" in unison whenever it occurs.

I find that it is not making me much wiser as to the rules of the game, strategy, etc., or indeed about soccer in general, but it is interesting nonetheless and I like observing everything. Today I woke up toward the end of the Holland-Denmark match and saw maybe the last ten minutes, watched the Japan-Cameroon game more, and then followed the Italy-Paraguay game for the first half before being forced to desist in the second half because someone thought that an episode of Tatort was must-see television. At which point I threw a play-tantrum and stormed off to find something else to do.

For much of the remaining time the computer which I prefer for internet activities was occupied (by T., unobjectionably dispatching university coursework and being an example to us all). So I nursed a headache with much holding of cool hand to forehead (like a Victorian lady with the vapours, come to think of it), drinking of salted water and a tiny glass of port, lying down, and at long last an aspirin. On the piano I went through the Kinderszenen, other little Schumann works, one of Chopin's Etudes ("Revolutionary," for the first time) and the Raindrop Prelude, a movement or three from Bach Partitas 1 and 3, etc. Last evening I watched music clips from medici.tv's YouTube channel, and even though they were samplers of perhaps three to four minutes' length at most, they were inspiring. (Though I will not be playing a keyboard arrangement of Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee" any time soon, and listening to the four-piano version of Vivaldi's Four Seasons was like four tiny pneumatic drills taking up residence in my brain; you really need the varied timbre and flexibility of a chamber orchestra to render the music endearingly.)

Then I basted together more of the torn lace in the collar of a nightgown, prepared a fresh batch of homemade moth paper (letter-size printer paper left over from Canada + cloves + dried thyme leaves + considerable smashing so that spice/herb oils soak into paper, dusted off and folded in half and cut into strips to lay in between the clothing), and shook out a pair of pants which had lain in the moth-infested pile. I must find a clever way to store clothing. The best way has the disadvantage of being inelegant and musty, and I am still skeptical if it works; I have not seen a solitary moth in clothes when I bundle them into plastic shopping bags and hang them from doorknobs, our clothes-rack, etc. . . . On second thoughts, my quibbles are insane.

[Pause while I scramble off to remove some of the piled-up clothing into a bag and hang it up.]

Besides I've been going through Teach Yourself Beginner's Latin again, which was one of my projects during the year after high school graduation. I haven't made much progress yet, but most of this is mindless review; for instance the uses of the nominative, accusative, dative, genitive and ablative are still present in my mind even if my knowledge of their endings even in the first and second declensions is faltering. Either way I'm still in the "equus laborat - equi laborant" stage. But I did reach a set of quotations from Latin literature, some of which I already memorized during the gap year and have been pompously citing to Mama when they seem apposite ever since. "Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant," is one, and "O tempora, o mores! Senatus haec intellegit, consul videt," is another. But "Verberat nos et lacerat fortuna" can be used in many situations too, and then there's a long one with "Interea Eos"* or something, from Virgil, which though a pain to memorize might replace the refrain of "Cast off the shackles of yesterday" from Mary Poppins as my all-purpose quotation a propos of toil.

*[*cough* I meant "Aurora interea miseris mortalibus," etc. The other quotations are from Tacitus, Cicero, and Seneca, respectively.]

Anyway, to return to the World Cup, I did find the Germany-Australia match last evening very good, and though it irritated me greatly when the ARD channel's commentator kept bemoaning the horridness of the Japan-Cameroon match (now that was a chaotic mess, and I thought it highly unfair that it wasn't a draw because they were both tremendously lousy) especially in comparison to the German performance yesterday, I have to admit that it did set a high bar. Its specific merits: the precision of the passes, intricate set-ups for goal attempts, way in which the players would not just roll the ball to the closest teammate when they were haplessly stuck in midfield but would really look for an opening and also pass the ball far across to a teammate if he was in a good position, clever footwork, and the absence of impatient kicks in the general direction of the goal whenever a forward became tired of fending off the opposing team's defence. It was also a pretty clean game where diving and fouling were concerned. The Australian team was clearly not as good but they didn't give up hope, were fast and reasonably agile, and played in a strong aggressive spirit without committing horrid fouls. (As far as I could tell.) But the straight red card for the Australian Tim Cahill did seem disproportionate and mean.

Where the teams are concerned, I am not "rooting" for any one in particular, though it would be highly reprehensible of me not to support Germany. The three teams which have impressed me are Germany and Argentina and Paraguay, though in the latter case it was admittedly because my expectations had been low. I still dislike Italy's team from the last World Cup, and specifically have not gotten over the resentment about the Materazzi-Zidane incident; besides which I am suspicious about their ethics regarding diving and the like. But if they prove a good team I wouldn't want them to lose unfairly. Altogether I tend to find myself being "for" a team in the course of a match, only to forget all about the preference when someone from the opposite team is launching himself on a good run for the goal.

As for the vuvuzelas, I can still hear them sometimes when I'm not watching the game at all, but for some reason am heatedly in their favour. Having lived in the countryside/suburbs I've been surrounded and menaced by my fair share of buzzing flies and wasps, and have felt a visceral dislike of the noise, but these horn-thingies sound benign and are relatively easy to ignore. Perhaps it's snobbish, but I've never been fond of the mindless colosseum roar anyway. If the horns seriously bother someone, though, I'll understand if they're banned. Anyway, as many others have pointed out, the "expert" soccer commentary on TV is all too often far more irritating, boring, and mindnumbing. And tediously condescending to Africa (which is evidently still considered as a country instead of a continent).

The Third Estate; or, a House Divided

It is the early morning again. I've spent much of the night reading the letters of Madame du Deffand, a booklet entitled Les prérogatives du Tiers-Etat, and the elucidations on proper attire in "Horseback Riding 101" (Suite 101.com), looking at photos from Brittany which are much beautified by the sunshine and the May flowering of the gorse on the cliffs, and listening to music in the background as usual.

The following is a reaaallly long discursion on what I've been reading in the way of historical source material, and if the boredom becomes overpowering, please feel free to skip it!

***

Les prérogatives du Tiers-Etat is an oddity, its stated author being an anonymous duchess who had been elevated from low birth to her title by virtue of fortune, and its actual author apparently being Louis-Antoine de Caraccioli. Published apparently in 1789, in the thick of the Estates-General, it is a heated defense of the Third Estate and its right to political representation. It begins with the narrating duchess's indignant statement that many noble houses have contracted marriages to commoners so that their dignity and possessions and lifestyle are shored up by the wealth which they previously did not possess, and that therefore the aristocracy has no right to distance itself from the supposed lower class.

In History 120, I think, we were told that while in the English aristocracy the law of primogeniture governed inheritances — which means that the property and title would pass on to the eldest son, while the younger sons had to become clergymen, officers, or something else respectable to earn their living, as any Jane Austen reader will know well —, in France the property was divided among the children. I had difficulties understanding how the French system works until I remembered fairy tales where for example the eldest son gets the house, the middle son the mill, and the youngest the donkey. So it may be absurdly untrue, but I'm guessing that over time properties were divided up until the parcels of inherited land were too little to generate much revenue to live upon. But I hadn't heard of marriages between aristocrat males and plutocrat females in this century and country at all, and at first found it difficult not to feel as if I had hopped into an Edwardian satire (or tediously lachrymose portrait à la Henry James) of marriages between crude but loaded Americans with useless but titled Britishers.

At times I found the Duchess character far too strident, but I did laugh at this scene:

[M. le Duc, mon cher époux] apprit dès ce moment à me connoître. Je commençai par lui prouver, d'un ton encore plus fier que le sien, qu'il n'y a de vraie grandeur que celle de l'ame; que nous sommes tous égaux dans le premier principe, & que l'incomparable Métastase n'a jamais mieux parlé que lorsqu'il a dit il nascere e caso, & non virtu: la naissance est une chose fortuite & non une vertu : je terminai la leçon par me faire apporter des sacs d'or, par en répandre les rouleaux avec profusion sur la table & les remuer à grand bruit, tout en disant, voilà mon aïeul, mon bisaïeul, mon quadrisaïeul, &c.

Le stratagème réussit, comme je m'y attendois [. . .].

In English: "[The Duke, my dear spouse] learned to know me from this moment. I began by proving to him, in tones prouder still than his, that there is no true grandeur but that of the soul; that we are all equal in the foremost principle, & that the incomparable Metastasio has never spoken better than when he said il nascere e caso, & non virtu: birth is a fortuitous thing and not a virtue. I concluded the lesson by having sacks of gold fetched, by profusely spreading the rolls on the table and stirring them with great noise, whilst saying, here is my grandsire, my great-grandsire, my great-great-grandsire, &c. The stratagem succeeded, as I had expected [. . .]."

After this the booklet, the author shedding the lusty persona of the duchess, takes a detour into a gentle allegory. A king is contemptuous of commoners (roturiers) until the day when he lands in a pool and is on the point of drowning, the gentlemen of the court standing about impotently since they cannot swim, until a couple of low-born men dive in and fish him out.

Much surprised to find that his valiant courtiers had not come to the rescue, he listens with interest as his jester suggests that the Third Estate does quite as much for him as the nobility, and decides to test this idea the following day. Of course the moment he awakens the servants are already pulling open the curtains, lighting the fire, bringing his clothes, cooking his breakfast, etc., and when all dressed he goes to conduct business with his two secretaries, of course these are commoners. Later he reads books and wanders in the gardens tended by, and hunts with the assistance, basks in the art and architecture and theatre, and listens to the music of commoners. In the newspapers, written by . . . commoners, he is instructed of the grand patriotic contributions of . . . commoners. When narrative expediency ignites a fire underneath the king's window, it is extinguished by . . . commoners. Etc.

Overwhelmed by the burden of empirical evidence, and not much impressed by any magnificent contribution on the part of his courtiers, the king is converted to an admirer of the Third Estate. But when during a hunt his life is imperilled at the tusks of the boar, a gentleman leaps in to save him, and the king recognizes that the First Estate likewise serves its purpose and has its merits. ("[ . . ] alors il reconnut que toutes les classes des citoyens sont également nécessaires; qu'il seroit absurde d'en rejetter une, pour en élever une autre.")

The narrator draws this lovely — and, in my opinion, very thought-provoking — tale to a close, and then goes on to paint a highly improbable (satirical?) picture of the saintly commoners, who are kinder to the impoverished aristocrat than many of his peers, etc. And then he describes the meek ambitions of the Third Estate and its absolute respect for the nobility:

il sait que la Noblesse a des priviléges incontestables auxquels les Rois mêmes ne peuvent ni doivent toucher. Eh! qui doute, que les Gentilshommes sont les remparts de la Monarchie, qu'ils l'ont toujours soutenue aux dépens de leur propre vie, & qu'il n'y a rien de plus respectable & de plus grand qu'une longue succession d'aïeux, qui, de père en fils, maintiennent la Couronne, & sont les suppôts de la Royauté. L'histoire se plaît à rapporter les epoques honorables pour la Noblesse, & le Tiers-Etat se plaît à les lire. Loin d'en être jaloux, il se félicite d'appartenir à une Royaume, où des noms consacrés par une antique bravoure éternisent sa splendeur.

In translation: "it knows that the Nobility possesses incontestable privileges which the Kings themselves neither can nor may touch. Well, who doubts that the Gentility are the ramparts of the monarchy, which they have always supported at the expense of their own life, & that there is nothing more respectable & greater than a long succession of ancestors who, from father to son, tend to the Crown & are the supports of the Monarchy? History pleases itself by reporting the honourable periods for the Nobility, & the Third Estate pleases itself by reading them. Far from being jealous, it felicitates itself upon belonging to a Kingdom, where the names consecrated by antique bravery immortalize its splendour."

It must be confessed that, while copying out this passage into my notes, in between the first sentence and the second, I inserted a note:

[N.B.: Choppy, choppy.]

Simply to evoke what precisely happened in the years after M. de Caraccioli or whoever published this effusion, and how the Nobility escaped this time without a hair on its collective head being hurt and with its inalienable privileges being preserved with utmost care.

Either way I like being made to think about the role of the aristocracy, and the role of the working class, and the ideal role of both. Besides which the booklet is an insight into the snobbery which characterized some of the upper class, and is in my view, though firmly entrenched in the mentality of the former, poised on the knife-edge where the Ancien Régime ends and the Republic begins.

***

I could go on and on. But I won't, for now. (c:

Euterpe and the Toad

It's late or early enough that the birds are twittering in great concentration and the sky has turned a bluer shade of midnight, and I guess that the volume of street traffic will swell soon.

This afternoon Uncle Pu came to visit, and to the accompaniment of chocolate and ice cream (I poured a little cognac over mine as an experiment and liked it) we all talked about matters political and otherwise for hours as usual.

Then Pudel and Papa and I had a chamber music session for the first time in months. First there were Haydn's trios in C, D and G major, and then a movement or so each of two Beethoven trios. Haydn went swimmingly and as far as I could tell we were easily and wholly absorbed in the congenial music. The portions where the piano has the melody didn't inspire as much terror because of the pressure to be note-perfect as they once did.

But the first Beethoven trio we tried was confusing. I don't know it well and didn't have the melody of the opening movement in my ear. Besides I found the theme of that movement a trifle meandering and boring. Whereas Papa and Pudel clearly like it. I guess that when playing chamber music it is harder to indulge one's enjoyable prejudices without trampling on the joy of other people. Zut alors!

Fortunately the Archduke trio is familiar. But in the Andante there are broken arpeggios in triplets or whatever they're called, which I had to painstakingly play through and couldn't fudge because the violin and cello were depending on me to keep the time (why are you asking me of all people to do that? was my unspoken question) and deliver the right cues.

In one of the Victorian/Edwardian-era books on music at gutenberg.org, I (mis)remember reading something to the effect that everyone has a scale or two which he plays unusually well. I like this positive outlook on the music pupil's capacities, meant to describe the humble beginner as much as the great performer, but it must be confessed that the reverse side of the coin is hopeless mediocrity in certain other scales. I am terrible at playing arpeggios, so they straggle along in ungainly manner and rarely if ever attain the dignity of melody. There is a Scarlatti sonata whose second half I often cravenly avoid playing just because the left hand is full of arpeggios and so it is usually twice as slow and half as delightful to hear as the rest of the piece.

Playing an instrument is a cycle of thinking and feeling the music, hearing the music as it is played, and the fingers carrying it out; one confirms the other, and problems that appear trivial can throw a decisive spanner in the works. As far as I can tell it doesn't matter if you are animated by the purest wellspring of inspiration which ever swelled the song of Euterpe, if your fingers are having a clumsy day; you feel the clumsiness, hear the clumsiness whereby it interferes with your guiding idea of the music and erodes your confidence, and so the clumsiness infects and muddies even your inspiration until everything is middling. Or, the other way around, if your fingers are nimble and ready, they can ignite an inspired mood even if you sat down at the piano with the soul of a disgruntled toad.

E.T.A.: The titles of these blog posts appear to be becoming very pretentious. My apologies.

A Mile-Long Essay by the Wayside

Over the weekend we celebrated J.'s and Gi.'s birthdays. The feasting comprised above all a chocolate chip cake, lemon cake, and marble cake, decorated with Smarties or M&Ms as the tradition demands.

Then I also spent much of Saturday baking Bienenstich, a pastry which is very popular in this household and which is concocted of a biscuity or yeasty dough, cut in half and filled with vanilla pudding, and topped with a caramelized layer of sliced almonds. I use the recipe in the Dr. Oetker Grundbackbuch. The pudding filling is too much of a fuss for me, so we always have pudding on the side. My preparation of the yeast dough (which intimidates me despite the dozens of times I've made it) was eccentric and would have struck horror into the soul of any professional baker, but once it was out of the oven the taste, texture and appearance were so perfect that they honestly did embody the Platonic ideal. We had no almonds so I substituted ground hazelnuts, which were equally delicious and looked like a baklava filling after they were mixed into the butter and sugar and milk.

***

At the piano I've been looking at Chopin's ballades and études and so on, but haven't so far managed to sightread the first pages or two with much justice, so I mostly give up and leaf on to the Raindrop Prelude and try yet again not to overpedal and to slur the chords in the left hand properly. Then, after coming across Schumann's Piano Concerto in a minor maybe a week ago (it's undoubtedly a major work, but I was ignorant of its existence) and bookmarking the recordings by Dinu Lipatti and Sviatoslav Richter on YouTube, I found a score in a pocket-book-sized edition on top of the piano, and played bits of it today for the first time. It is kind of fascinating seeing what all the other instruments are doing, especially because the scores for the other concertos I practice are all transcribed so that the orchestra's part is smushed into a second piano part. (Some day I'll have to learn the proper musicological terms for that.)

The reason why I've been playing the piano more than usual is because the attack on the Gaza flotilla knocked me for an emotional loop. After brooding about politics unhealthily during the Bush years I don't want to say or think hateful things, or lose sight of what actually goes on, or feel terrible every day again. So instead I played Beethoven's early sonatas, Chopin's Polonaise Héroïque, and Rachmaninoff's Prelude in g minor.

***

To return to politics, I thought a lot about writing to the Israeli government, simply expressing sorrow at what occurred, but vacillated too much and ended up not sending anything. Reading commentary on Gawker and Jezebel (especially the latter) lowered my blood pressure because it was often clear-eyed and sympathetic, and the news coverage in general reassures me that the press is fulfilling its task and that governments like the UK's, Spain's and Greece's are adequately defending the law. (Even the New York Times forbore from muttering about bad public relations in its first editorial on the subject, but instead wrote fairly and reminded its readers about the poverty and hunger in the Gaza Strip.)

But I am disappointed in the American and Canadian governments for suggesting that the Israeli government carry out its own probe into the incident. Practically no government could be trusted with such a probe at any level, and even the courts often fail with such cases. An example that comes to mind (though maybe there are extenuating circumstances I don't know about) is when New York police officers got away with shooting 50 bullets into an unarmed man (Sean Bell). So the suggestion is stupid, biased, and callous toward the people who died and their friends and relatives. It's not that I want to see revenge done; I just think that the propaganda must be effectively disproven so that the memory of the dead is not traduced, and perhaps some remorse instilled in the people who are responsible.

I'm surprised anyway that an Israeli voter would put up with the country's soldiers being ordered to commit outright piracy. But too many people evidently subscribe to the brainless belief that you can "ambush" soldiers who are illegally trying to take over your ship in international waters. Assigning the aggression to the people on board the Mavi Marmara is like walking into the wall of a library and then suing the municipality for building the wall there in the first place.

Which is not to say that I don't have huge problems with calling oneself a peace activist and then hitting someone with a baseball bat; I think if an activist does not decide to unresistingly endure imprisonment and ill-treatment should the situation befall him, he cannot call himself a peace activist. In this case I especially see a problem with hitting soldiers who are bearing weapons and boarding your ship but have not physically assaulted you (yet) or unequivocally signalled their intentions to do that. But maybe the "peace" label was fixed on the activists by someone else. Besides I don't quite understand why it takes 600 people to deliver the aid, except if they are trained in its distribution or if the principle was to have safety in numbers (that went well).

I think that a pragmatic approach to aid is best, basically acquire the supplies and make sure that they will actually be useful, find a direct and safe way to deliver them, deliver them, then leave. Besides I think that ordinary people can participate in cultural and other exchanges to relieve the isolation of those who live in the Gaza Strip. Political pressure has to go through diplomatic channels behind closed doors, I guess, and though I'm not sure if it has much of an effect in practice I think that unbiased reporting on events in Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip is intensely valuable. But I think that personal pressure might work, too; if you're friends with an influential member of any government, I think that letting him or her know quite clearly and unaggressively what you've observed and which conclusions you've drawn, and if he really makes a wrongheaded decision making your disappointment succinctly but decidedly clear, could have a good effect on policy. Sensationalism and opinionmongering and righteous ranting are sometimes justified and effective but they do make something of a circus out of the suffering of others, the irony being that many people seem to like this circus and wouldn't care much about politics if that aspect were missing.

Anyway, I hope these thoughts weren't too inaccurate or offensive.

***

As for my French Revolution research (I could probably have led into this subject in some subtly clever way, but anyway), I've gone off on a tangent to read up on horses. It's reminding me of the two weeks spent in a children's horseriding camp with T. when I was ten years old or so, on the initiative of my grandmother. The camp was run a little like a cult: the trainers were hierophants, the older children or the ones who already had lessons the knowledgeable acolytes, and we the lowly neophytes. We had to navigate the intricacies of grooming and caring for the horses, and were threatened with dire anecdotes of wrongdoing which led to injury and death in the complex and fragile animals; I didn't like this fear-of-God pedagogy so much and would have liked friendlier explanations of how to treat horses kindly and without making honest and disastrous mistakes. What also played into the hierarchical character of the camp was the presumptive fact that many of the children were in private schools and wealthy, and rightly or wrongly I had the impression that they were a little snobby and spoiled and prone to Gossip-Girl-style backbiting, and frighteningly self-assured and well-educated, as the stereotype goes.

Either way it is unsurprising that I never caught the horse fever, though I did start drawing horses, diagramming the "tack" (saddle, girth, bridle, etc.), and borrowing a handful of relevant books from the library. Which effect even the moving literary travails of Black Beauty never had.

But considering how integral transportation by aid of horse was historically, I thought it high time to learn about it, and besides I still harbour fantasies of spending three to six months working on a horse or dude or cattle ranch in Australia or New Zealand or the US, or any kind of farm in North America or Europe outside of Germany (for reasons of the grass seeming more exciting on the other side of the border). Being jobless first of all it's difficult to grasp the reality of hard work, and secondly one feels the need to overcompensate for the inactivity. I've recognized to a degree that I genuinely prefer to sit around at home, but I think that this very preference is a problem in itself, though not one which I care for people to sit around in judgment on. The principal cause is that I don't expect to find anything worthwhile if I emerge from the apartment, because I've tried it and it wasn't fruitful; and until there is a job description or a job interview or anything that convinces me otherwise, that's the way it will remain.

An Epistolary Flower by the Wayside

Discovered this afternoon in the course of further French Revolution research:

Lettres de la Marquise Du Deffand à Horace Walpole, Tome III
(published in Paris, 1812)
Extract from a letter, CLXIII, written on Sunday, October 25th, 1773

Mon projet est de vous envoyer toutes sortes de rapsodies par M. Craufurd; je ne pénetre pas ce qui le retient ici [en France] si long-temps; ce n'est certainement pas parce qu'il s'y amuse. Il s'ennuie à la mort, et prétend toujours être fort malade; il n'y a jamais eu deux êtres plus différents que vous et lui. Je le vois tous les jours; je me crois un prodige de raison en comparaison de lui.

Source: Gallica.bnf.fr

Rightly or wrongly, Mme. du Deffand reminds me a little of my paternal grandmother. Certainly she is an ideal letter-writer and wit and warm friend to Walpole, even if the constant ego-stroking seems indelicate. When glimpses of sentimentality appear, it is neither sickly nor exaggerated.

I like the passage quoted above because it is so blunt but finely expressed, and does awaken some curiosity as to the personality of "M. Craufurd" even if based on the brief description his particular brand of recalcitrant obstinacy sounds like the petulance of a thoroughgoing bore.

But if he is (as a cursory websearch leads me to suspect) indeed Quentin/Quintin Craufurd, his life — spanning a sojourn in India, literary pursuits, and being a cook in the broth of the French monarchs' flight to Varennes — must have been lively.

In hasty, 18th-century-esque translation:

My project is to send to you all manner of rhapsodies by M. Craufurd. I cannot discern what retains him here [in France] so long; it is certainly not because he is well entertained there. He is languishing of boredom and always pretending to be greatly ill; never have there been two beings more different than you and he. I see him daily; I believe myself a prodigy of reason in comparison to him.