A Hoppy Holiday

Today I woke up incredibly early, namely at around 9:15. Our guest G., Papa, and Mama were already awake; T. swiftly followed; J. eventually got up after I prodded him (one nice thing about J. is that he tends to be good-humoured when prematurely roused from sleep); and Gi. and Ge. persisted in slumbering on. Ge. was, it turns out, labouring under the delusion that it was only Saturday. Mama put on the "Hallelujah" chorus of Händel's Messiah -- she searched for our CD in vain and had to play a YouTube film instead -- and T. and I played "He shall feed his flock" on the recorder and piano.

Then those of us who were awake enjoyed an Easter feast: Mama's "Hefezopf" (braided yeast bread) in raisin-less and raisin-filled variants, salami and Schinkenspeck and cheeses, marmalade, painted hard-boiled and freshly cooked soft-boiled eggs, and chocolate, marzipan, and candy Easter eggs. We drank tea or coffee. The table looked lovely, too, with the purple tulips that G. had brought, decorations that Mama's co-workers had given her, the fine white linen tablecloth, the Gmundener plate, and the bright Easter eggs that were scattered over it. And, before I humanely decapitated my chocolate Easter bunny with my knife, I solemnly pronounced, "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears," and pretended to tweak off the rabbit's auricular appendages. I've used the joke rather often, but still enjoy it. Outside snowflakes were drifting through the air and failing to establish themselves on the wet asphalt, and it was oddly quiet on the street.

After a short boxing match with J., I then began to paint two Easter eggs, on which I had sketched designs yesterday evening, with characteristic lousiness. One egg has a motif of spiral bands, intended to be dark blue, green, red, and yellow; the other has a small church nestled in bare trees on one side, and on the other side there is a woodland scene with dead leaves covering the soil, a daffodil, tree stems, and a golden-green lawn and pale blue sky glowing from behind them, inspired by the Volkspark scene that I described in the last post.

Having rapidly run out of motivation, I turned to the piano, in a bad mood because I've been playing it lousily lately. In the past two months I've started playing ragtime pieces by Scott Joplin -- not only the "Entertainer," which I had learnt when I still had piano lessons -- and these went well, since I find them congenial: light but not superficial, innocent, and cheerful, and pleasantly atmospheric. As I play them I often picture a non-demimondaine saloon in the Wild West.

Then, in contrast, there was the "mighty crash of harmonies" (as an early-twentieth-century story for schoolgirls once put it) of Beethoven's later sonatas, and of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 (i.e. the first third of that piece). I've started playing the Sonata appassionata in its entirety, largely because I heard part of a Sviatoslav Richter recording of the third movement and it lingered pleasantly in my memory -- Beethoven's longer sonata movements occasionally still seem interminable, so it helps to have a sense of how to make it sound good, and to know that there are interesting motifs and developments later on. Now I also play the Moonlight Sonata and Waldstein Sonata in their entirety. What bothers me is that, though I can sightread these well enough, I don't play them very profoundly or inventively -- and, as usual, if I have a bad day I play these absolutely horridly.

As for the Hungarian Rhapsody, I sightread the whole thing once, but it was pointless and endless and charmless, because there are so many infinitesimal notes that make no sense unless played with the utmost speed. So I play up to the "Friska" and bring as much panache into it as is reconcilable with good taste and sincerity, the mood being somber and stern and passionate at the same time. But, like in Chopin's pieces, I wangle the little notes; for example, where one should play eight notes of equal length in the right hand over three notes of equal length in the left hand -- which doesn't even work cleanly in mathematics -- I divide the right hand's notes into one duplet and two triplets.

Anyway, before I went to sleep yesterday I read about the life of the Roman emperor Vespasian in Suetonius's Twelve Caesars. It was, like all of the preceding lives, a rattling good yarn. My Classical Studies course's teaching assistant once remarked that Suetonius was the "National Enquirer of Roman historians," but this assessment does him an injustice. It's true that, beginning with Tiberius's life, there are salacious tales of doubtful veracity, but the facts are well-rounded and solid, the style condensed and good, and the anecdotes well-chosen and interesting; and I think that the book is a fine introduction to Roman history. Besides, I think that the dramatic quality is great; it is not surprising that Shakespeare evidently took much material for his play Julius Caesar from the Twelve Caesars. Nero's life is tragi-comedy at its best -- as Sir Peter Ustinov proved in Quo Vadis?, despite the general historical inaccuracy of the film -- and Suetonius is unbelievably good at painting his character.

Vespasian seems comparatively congenial, an unaffected and even reluctant emperor, gifted with bluff good humour and the ability not to take himself too seriously; his main failing, as Suetonius stresses, is his tendency to financial exploitation that coexisted oddly with his tendency to generosity. There were two passages that I found particularly funny, one because of its exceedingly concise illustration of the abrupt ups and downs of Roman fortunes, and of the way that "mighty contests rise from trivial things"; the other in its rapid descent from the general to the specific, the serious to the ironic, and, above all, the sublime to the ridiculous, which is quite typical of Suetonius:

"He toured Greece in Nero's retinue but offended him deeply, by either leaving the room during his song recitals, or staying and falling asleep. In consequence he not only lost the Imperial favour but was dismissed from Court, and fled to a small out-of-the-way township, where he hid in terror of his life until finally offered the military command of a province."

"In the distribution of provinces Vespasian drew Africa, where his rule was characterized by justice and great dignity, except on a single occasion when the people of Hadrumetum rioted and pelted him with turnips."*

Last of all, the sun eventually emerged today, so Mama, G., Ge. and I went for a walk in the Kleistpark, past the St. Matthäus graveyard, to the Königin-Luise-Gedächtniskirche and the Zwölf-Apostel churchyard, then back (the whole route unfortunately adorned with copious dog droppings). It was frigid, and tiny drifts of snow remained in the crevices of the tree bark and on the ivy, but the blossoms were as bountiful as ever, and the sky was full of billowing white clouds and glimpses of serene blue. I've noticed that the silhouettes of the trees are not so harsh any more because of the tiny twigs and buds that have emerged; a few days ago this rendered the route to the Volkspark much more attractive than usual, because the tints of the trees blended in so well with the dark brick and brown and beige hues, and contrasted so nicely to the white, of the ambient buildings. And now the trees are a delicate lattice-work against the sky, instead of rakes.

*Source: Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, trans. by Robert Graves (Penguin Classics, 1969)

P.S.: I know that the post title is lame, but I couldn't think of a better one.