Character and Inspiration

Today it was sunny again, a really smiling day that tempted an unusual number of people out onto the sidewalks. When I went grocery-shopping with Gi. I also saw that the median of the street in front of our apartment was bright with striped red and yellow tulips; further up there are yellow crocuses. I also noticed for the first time that the branches of the oak (or relative thereof) that grows in front of our living room window are full of buds.

Perhaps it's the spring that gives me the feeling that I can write something again, but so far I have no idea for a short story, which I'd rather do. My French Revolution and scion-of-noble-family-living-in-Victoria books are something I'd rather postpone until ideas and information have gathered, but my subconscious and conscious are working away particularly at the latter. For the second book, I've decided to give the main character misanthropic leanings. Which reminds me that I've been thinking that it's safest to give my characters at least one glaring shortcoming each. It's an easy way to make them more interesting, and to keep me from describing them in a bland and idealized way. Since I want my writing to be realistic, I don't want to have any of my characters embody my ideals, though I do want to like them. One problem I have is that I really don't want to put anyone whom I know well into my stories, which cramps me especially because my circle of acquaintances is so small.

I've also found that, as with knowledge of all sorts, that the more I know people, the more I see that I don't truly know them. This is not to say that they deceive or disappoint, but rather, to the contrary, that people have so many more sides to them than one believes, and that they can, for example, show compassionate vulnerability when one least expects it. It's already incredible what different sides of the same personality can be shown in a situation depending on its details. Take a stressful journey, for example. The car breaks down and the driver must hike to the next gas station. The mood, the behaviour of the driver can be very different based on what day it is. On Monday the driver might be in a foul mood; on Tuesday stoic; on Wednesday struck by the humorous side of the situation; on Thursday impatient; on Friday overcome with tears of disappointment and exhaustion. Then many small factors in the environment might play a role. If the day is sunny, the behaviour of the driver might be different from what it might have been if it had been rainy. If another automobilist comes up to help, depending on the impression that automobilist makes, the behaviour will be different again. Small factors in the history of the day and week preceding also make a difference.

That's also why I really dislike it when people judge others based on an insignificant action. Human nature is too complex to be judged based on a small acquaintance. It's a sad fact that people can act in ways contrary to their nature for their whole lives, or nearly their whole lives, mostly because their environment or upbringing is adverse.

Anyway, I hope that a short story idea will come to me soon. I believe very much in inspiration, though I also believe in writing fairly regularly even without inspiration for practice and on the off-chance that something will come up after all. Perhaps the Scarlatti sonatas will spark something, or the opera I've been watching on YouTube (after many clips of Joan Sutherland, Marilyn Horne, Renée Fleming, Luciano Pavarotti, etc. I'm starting to see that opera has its good points despite terrible sentimental plots and frequently lousy acting after all). Today, by the way, I found an old black and white clip of Arturo Toscanini conducting the NBC orchestra in 1944; the performance of the overture of Verdi's Forza much impressed me.

In terms of the piano, I've been experiencing plenty of inspiration today and yesterday, the source of this inspiration probably being the fever. It feels disconcertingly devilish when I'm playing with 4/3 my usual agility and speed, and fingering snarls are dissolved as if by magic. Yesterday I had one of my "genius days," which only come about perhaps twice a year -- pieces by Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann and Schubert all went phenomenally well, though pieces by Mozart and Mendelssohn and the scherzo in Schubert's B flat major sonata didn't. But today I played "soullessly," so I broke off after a while. It's rather annoying that when I play very well it's a product of the subconscious and not the conscious, and that I have essentially no control over it. I think this lack of control is what gave me the "devilish" feeling. I suppose that if one is a genius one has this feeling often, and it's one reason I'm glad I'm not a genius.

I Become An Ailing Dickensian Orphan

Today is my second full day of a fever-cold combination that has thoroughly outdone my previous achievements in the category, as far as I can remember. While I feel full of energy most of the time, I sometimes feel very warm and perspiry or a little dizzy, my mind is working quickly (I can't say unusually quickly, because "quickly" doesn't describe its usual state anyway), my throat and head sometimes hurt, I cough and sneeze, and my temperature at one point reached 39.4 degrees Celsius. J., for once, made orphan jokes about me, and not vice versa.

But because of the energy, the nice sunny weather, my healthy appetite, the presence of every necessary comfort and remedy, the contrast to more painful physical and emotional ailments, and at least a week of excellent sleep beforehand, the illness is quite bearable. Also, the increased speed at which my neurons are firing mean that my memory, concentration, and ability to play the piano are all unquestionably in good shape, and I've been able to think matters over with greater distance and objectivity than usual. Sometimes, admittedly, the matters had best go unthought-of. I was thinking yesterday evening what would happen if I went blind; the day before yesterday I was worried that I might develop pneumonia. The things that perhaps more reasonably worry me is that I haven't clearly found out how serious the illness is (I think I'm exaggerating its importance), that my mind may be a little aberrant without my knowing it (for example, I've felt like crying and tried not to start because I feared that I wouldn't be able to stop), and that I am worried that people are angry at me (I would have tried to clear this up yesterday already, but I didn't feel clear-minded and strong enough to do it). I was with my uncle and aunt in the countryside until yesterday evening so I've felt rather disorientated too. Besides, I find losing my voice very unpleasant.

Anyway, it was nice today, though. I slept soundly, had a bath, lay down in the living room, played pieces by Mozart and Chopin and Schumann and Bach and Beethoven fairly slowly and quietly, read another chapter of Waverley, ate brunch with Papa, and talked a lot with T. and Ge. There are, it seems, many people in Ge.'s and Gi.'s classes who have colds. But in this family so far only J., Mama, and I have been stricken; Mama went to work anyway, and J. to school. The real event of the day was a work meeting to which Papa went, at a company that converts old computers and computer parts into new ones to be used for specific technical purposes.

Hopefully the next time I post, I will be cured! Then, instead of describing my symptoms for the benefit of a reluctant audience, I might write about Waverley. In the countryside I took a look at the Decameron too, and was much disappointed to find that it is perhaps 90% about women cheating on their husbands, which for some reason I find neither hilarious nor interesting except in a transient sensationalist way (I'm trying to put this as snobbily as possible). So I read too little of it to be able to discuss it. I did read the short tale of the woman who roused a king from his apathetic modus regendi by asking him to give her some of his power to bear the unbearable. Given the clearly violent nature of the regenerated king's rule, I don't know if the ending is meant to be good or not. Perhaps it is simply realistic.

The Adventures of a Night Owl

Today it was a special day in that I had stayed up the whole preceding night. Mostly I watched classical music videos on YouTube -- Gregor Piatigorsky, Artur Rubinstein, Jascha Heifetz, Martha Argerich, Evgeny Kissin, Vladimir Horowitz, Emil Gilels, etc. I alternately have bits of Beethoven's Sonata appassionata, Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 and a prelude, and one of Scarlatti's sonatas stuck in my head. There was a video in Japanese about the Polish pianist Mieczyslaw Horszowski, with whose interpretation of pieces from the Well-Tempered Clavier I really like, and whose interpretation of Mozart I like too. Then there was Horowitz's February 1, 1968 Carnegie Hall recital in full; I was struck again how beautifully he brings Scarlatti's sonatas to life. At the same time I read online novels and checked up on an online forum. Also, I began to take a look at photos of as many French castles as I could, hoping to find a closer prototype for my Revolution story. There is one tall, stately chateau with nearly a Scottish air standing splendidly erect on an outcropping in front of the stern, towering backdrop of the Alps. On its website there is a photo of the chateau library, which is essentially my ideal, and gave me the same teary-eyed feeling that some of the most touching music did.

By the time that everyone else unwillingly began to awaken (with the exception of T., who had shared my vigil) I was in very good spirits, though my eyes were somewhat tired and the mirror informed me that I was looking pale. I prepared porridge and eggs, and mentally planned to clean up the kitchen later on. But the awakening sleepers were woefully tired. As for Mama and J., they were and are in the throes of a bad cold. J. usually looks pale and wan, but today he has unquestionably outdone himself. He took Dickens-orphan jokes in good part as he reclined on the sofa. I read out the first chapter of A Tale of Two Cities and the first three and a half pages of Thucydides's Peloponnesian War to him while (or should I say whilst?) attempting a British accent, after which he looked quite cheerful. Then he had to go to school, having had only the first hour off.

I went shopping and amused myself on the internet again and played the piano while the others were at school. The piano went quite well, perhaps because the bad-playing-patch has just naturally faded away, or because I was in a receptive mood for music, or because my mind was too tired for uncertainty about notes. First of all I copied down and analyzed the first few measures of Claude Daquin's "Coucou." This means, for example, that I noted the key, saw how and where the sound of the cuckoo is imitated, and realized that I should probably make the second bar be a fainter echo of the first. Then I played Bach inventions and sinfonias, pieces from the Well-Tempered Clavier, Chopin mazurkas and bits of waltzes as well as polonaises and nocturnes, and bits of Mozart and Haydn sonatas, followed by pieces from my Grade 7 and 8 conservatory notebooks. Also, for the very first time I sight-read (slowly and painfully) all of Chopin's "Heroic" Polonaise, which I have determined to master, though I am still undecided whether it is merely a show-off piece or not.

Then I prepared dinner: chicken soup, rice, asparagus (from Spain, and very pale-looking with a purplish tinge that seemed to turn greenish during cooking), and apple sauce. The "Suppenhuhn," or "soup chicken," that I got, turned out to be a particularly meagre specimen. My battle with it when I tried to separate meat from bone and skin (the skin did separate beautifully, though) was, in my view, a fairly convincing argument for vegetarianism. Papa, who ended up doing the majority of the dissection work, said that the chicken was unusually rubbery. At least the broth tasted good, aswim as it was with leek and onion and carrot and chicken flavour. It had been a peculiar experience to shop before ten o'clock. New stock had apparently been recently delivered to the store, and it was a quintessential consumerist experience to see a wonderful array of products crowding the shelves of which I usually behold only a sad contingent after its ranks have already been much reduced.

Anyway, in the evening Mama and J. weren't much better. J. lay sleeping for a while on the sofa, colourful silk scarf around his throat, pillows behind him, and a blanket over him, with a water-soaked white washcloth on his forehead, with his head at an angle. For some reason I was reminded of one of Goya's paintings of the Spanish Civil War. He was and probably still is quite pale (as was or is Mama), the skin somewhat shiny, the mouth unusually dark, and the hollow around his eyes reddish. The effect was heightened by his very dark shirt. Based on my online novel reading, I might say that he looked like a consumptive, and I was much impressed by the ghastliness of his looks. I admit I made quite a few flippant remarks in the vein of my earlier orphan jokes, but J. doesn't really seem to mind it. And certainly I didn't (and couldn't reasonably) accuse him of hypochondria. Poor miserable little fellow.

The only other thing of note to me that occurred in the day was that someone from an environmental organization was going door to door. I've been worrying about doing my part for the environment, and the person was nice, so I agreed to shell out 100 Euro annually (the recommended donation being 2-3 Euros monthly) for the organization. It turns out from a speedy consultation of the website that the work of the organization is more in the lobbying/eco-friendly-social-gathering direction than much of the practical assistance I prefer, but it is certainly reputable and I haven't felt remorse yet.

Hail, Hardy, and Musical Introspection

To start yet again with the weather, today was a most interesting spring-like day. I woke up before nine, when it was cloudy. In the course of the morning -- which I spent reading about the Academy Awards and looking at the dresses, drying the dishes, doing beginners' Latin exercises (exciting stuff, about the domina receiving convivae at her villa), and leafing through the Feuilleton section of the Berliner Zeitung -- the sun intermittently appeared. I eventually went for a walk, blithely expecting the sun to emerge again from what I realized at the Rathaus (Schöneberg) to be a sky entirely blanketed with pearly grey. After turning a small round at the Rathaus, where isolated flower and clothing and bakery booths formed the remnants of the matinal market, I returned. Then a light sprinkling of rain began, intensifying into pelting precipitation, and rapidly reaching the stage of thick driving hail. I did not mind this at all, though the hail forced me to blink. By the time I had taken off my scarf and jacket back in the apartment, the hail was perhaps half a centimeter deep, and the green Hauptstraße median and the rooftops looked as if it had lightly snowed. But then the sun did come out again, and a universal dripping began -- quite lovely, in fact.

Throughout the rest of the day I was inclined to be cross, especially because I've been hanging around at home too much, but I didn't become openly disagreeable. I read articles in the New York Review of Books about the Hungarian Uprising in 1956 (which we learned about in History 12) ; Thomas Hardy; James Laughlin, the publisher; and Pedro Almódovar and Volver. Of Thomas Hardy's books, I've read The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, and the Return of the Native. When I first read the first and third books they were a sort of revelation to me, because there was something (I don't know what) in Hardy's writing that I felt I had missed everywhere else without knowing that I had. At the same time I'm still uncomfortable with the moral turbulence of the books. On the whole I like The Mayor of Casterbridge the best, probably because I am callous as to what happened to the unfortunate mayor so long as his daughter didn't meet some tragic end. Also because Donald Farfrae and Elizabeth provide the matter-of-fact grounding that I like every book to have -- and that is, for instance, a trait that I find really appealing in Jane Eyre. By the way, I don't think that my opposition to the ending of Tess of the D'Urbervilles is solely based on the fact that it is unhappy; I think that it is melodramatic and unfair to the character of Tess, even in a desperate state.

I found the article on Thomas Hardy interesting and there was much information that was new to me. But parts of it verged on "too much information." Altogether the articles in the NYRB that deal with the private lives of well-known cultural figures interest me to a certain extent and repel me beyond that. One might say that I shouldn't read them then -- well, I do skip over parts or stop reading. I don't really care about the sex lives of great people, for instance. It may be my years of Victorian-era reading, but I think that there is much of the personality and the intellect that has nothing to do with sex, and that can be discussed interestingly, tastefully, and with respect for privacy. It similarly annoys me when character flaws of the dead and living are picked out with annihilating efficiency. Is it really fair that people who are famous are not only besieged with scrutiny while they live, but also subject to scrutiny and more often than not misinterpretation when they are dead? That said, the character criticisms of the Review are probably mostly just and sometimes amusing, but I think they could be more sparing.

For dinner Papa made delicious sweet and sour pork and chicken. The colours, appearance, flavours -- everything was harmonious. I made rice on the side; it turned out beautifully, though my method only consisted of boiling the salty water, dumping in the rice, stirring it twice, then leaving and forgetting it so that Papa had to take care of it. It contrasted agreeably with the irregularly done brown rice I made a few days ago, which much resembled gruel.

In the evening I played the piano, but not very well. My fingers are cold, and above all I'm not attuned to the music. I have been thinking a lot lately how well I can play, and my browsing of classical music clips on YouTube has greatly helped. In the end, I think, my understanding of the music and the originality with which I sometimes interpret it are unusually good, but my technique and lack of incisive intelligence as well as mental clarity present obstacles that I could only overcome if I really, truly wanted to pursue it. My pedalling is bad, trills and ornaments of every sort uneven, tone often muddy, fingers uneven and not strong or agile or quick, hands not able to reach more than an octave plus one, arpeggios particularly bad. I still tend to think of notes one at a time, rather than as sets of four, for example; my mind is not quite quick enough to play notes in quick succession above a certain low level. I haven't properly memorized a piece in years. I don't know anything about harmony or counterpoint, and little about the history of music, though I do know the "rudiments" of theory. And I don't have the patient, relaxed persistence that allows me to experiment with fingering, for example, as I should. Instead I rely on flashes of intuition and general mental development over time to correct my playing. All in all, when I play at the piano, it seems to me that the music emerges in spite of my hands, and not through their mediation.

Well, I'll see again tomorrow, but it seems to me that this is not an attempt at self-deprecation but an honest assessment as far as I can make it. Either way, I'm not in bad spirits, because I've read a nice online novel.

A Visit and a Story

It's a cloudy, rainy, sombre day. I only woke up at around two o'clock, though I had gone to sleep at around midnight, perhaps because I hadn't slept very well.

But when I did wake up, my aunt S. came for a visit, followed by uncle W. and my cousin A. Over cake and coffee, we talked about German television (the crime shows Tatort and Ein Fall für Zwei, people's-judge and Jerry-Springer-type shows, as well as the American-Idol-imitation Deutschland Sucht den Superstar), Japanese animé and culture in general, literature in school (Gi. and Ge. have to read Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf), shao lin, etc.

Now Papa and Mama, perhaps with help from Gi. or Ge., are setting up the metal storage boxes that we will use to hold art supplies, papers inherited from our grandfather, and other odds and ends left in our moving boxes.

In the meantime I am revolving a new story idea in my mind. The main character, based on one of the students at UBC who seemed quite unusual and interesting, is the scion of the royal family of an imaginary country. His parents were killed by radicals in the eighties, so he is being raised by his grandparents in a sort of "splendid isolation" in their large, rambling rural house. This house, to be precise, is located on the northern shore of Elk Lake (I have a specific one in mind; a light brown one surrounded by cottonwoods, perceptible in the distance from Brookleigh Rd.), in Victoria. His grandparents are very aristocratic in their tastes; they have the best food, listen to the best music, read the best books, and so on and so forth, trying in essence to live their lives as if they were still in Europe. So their grandchild's existence is completely out of touch with the surroundings, though he is intelligent, well-read, and he has many interests. He goes to a normal school (I need to figure out some reason why he wouldn't go to a private school, which I don't want to describe because I don't know what it's like), and, while respected by everyone, keeps mostly to himself. Then one or both of the grandparents die(s) during the main character's last year in school. And then he enters university, intending to study medicine. That's as far as I've gotten.

To be quite clear, I'm not killing off so many characters to add superficial excitement, and I certainly hope that I won't write about it callously. It is simply easier to write about the difficulties of life if they have a tangible cause; I think that many people only understand trouble if it comes in the shape of a bad relationship, death, poverty, or disease. I, on the other hand, agree with George Eliot's comment in the Mill on the Floss that the sorrows of childhood, even from trivial causes by adult standards, are as real and severe to a child as any other. Or, to quote Shakespeare, "The poor beetle that we tread upon / In corporeal suffering feels a pang as great / As when a giant dies." But in this case I think that outright tragedy -- though not in the simplified and etherealized form common in theatre -- is permissible.

Piano, Homework, Dinner and Virtuous Resolves

Today it was a quiet, busy, cloudy day. I got up in the afternoon, well rested and not at all uneasy of conscience. I played the piano, starting with Czerny exercises and continuing with scales and the fourth Preludium in the Well-Tempered Clavier, Vol. I. It wasn't a brilliant session by any means, and I was absentminded most of the time, but I enjoyed it. I went shopping for dinner later on; the dinner consisted of oven-grilled lamb, couscous, Greek salad, flatbread left over at Mama's work, olives, figs, and feta cheese baked over with paprika. Now I make the Greek salad without any onion, and I think it is no great loss.

I've been thinking as usual about pulling myself together and undertaking something. The day before yesterday I decided to try to have a short story published in the New Yorker. I want to write several short stories, decide which is the best, leave that one alone for a month and then proofread it again, and then submit it per e-mail. Since the magazine staff prefer to have only two short story submissions per year, I was planning to have one story written by May, and another written by September. I do also want to take a look at the published stories in the magazine from time to time, so that I know what they're looking for.

Another way of pulling myself together is to start learning things again. One of the things that was good in university is that I had to read a certain number of pages and absorb a certain amount of information regularly. I want to do this at home, too. I think that it is really the lack of mental occupation that brings out the slow-witted, self-absorbed, and whiny elements in me. At the same time I do want to go to lectures, concerts, museums, art exhibitions, etc. It is not so easy because I feel ill at ease spending money, whether it is logical to do so or not, and because, oddly enough, there is not always something going on that interests me. But it doesn't bother me so much any more if no one comes with me, though I would certainly prefer if someone did.

Anyway, in the evening J. and I did part of his Spanish homework. He had to look up websites of different large Spanish shopping centres where one can also buy products online, and answer questions about them. First of all, I thought that the assignment is advertising, which has no place in a school. Secondly, I thought the assignment is impractical. J. groaned much of the time. Stupid school. Soon uncle W. came to visit, and, procuring a handful of pistachios, J. decided to stop working, and retired from the field with a listless and weary expression. Such is life.

And now I shall return to my pious nineteenth-century novel, A Face Illumined (I am now reading Gutenberg books by authors whose last names start with R). Not the author's best, I would say.

Stirrings of Spring, and Schoolyard Psychology

Today it was bright and sunny, altogether spring-like. Before I went to sleep yesterday night I already heard the birds twittering outside. When I went to the St. Matthäus graveyard in the Großgörschenstraße yesterday, small but very pretty purple crocuses were growing all over, three daisies grew bravely from their flattened leaves, a cluster of white hellebores ("Christrosen") was in full bloom, the drooping branches of a low tree possibly belonging to the cherry family were beaded with pale pink buds, a row of Oregon grape bushes was crowded with fringy yellow blossoms, the birds were singing and a fly buzzing, and a tiny brown shrew was scampering to and fro around one of the graves.

I played the piano, went to the Staatsbibliothek at the Kulturforum and blogged about it, and read the beginning of the Principles of Chemistry (published 1970 but still helpful today (c: ). It was only today that I realized that isotopes, having different numbers of neutrons, must necessarily also have different atomic weights. In my defense, I never took Chemistry in school and my knowledge derives from my Science classes from grades 7 to 10 (we were introduced to the atom in Grade 8, if I remember correctly; Chemistry 11 is where I would have learned the sad truth that an atom does not truly look like a planet with electrons orbiting around it circularly like moons). In the afternoon W. came over, and we ate "Berliner" (jam-filled doughnuts sprinkled with sugar) and drank coffee as well as champagne in honour of Rosenmontag ("Rose Monday," which is a significant day for Catholics but I don't know why).

For the piano lessons, I've tried to develop a new routine. I'll begin with finger exercises, continue with a set of scales (D major and minor today), play a prelude and fugue from the Well-Tempered Clavier, then go on to practice my pieces as intelligently as I can. The day before yesterday I watched delightful lectures by Leonard Bernstein analysing Shostakovich's ninth (?) as well as Beethoven's pastoral symphony, and they gave me a whole new perspective (or more than one) on music. So today I looked at the first movement of Schubert's B major sonata with this approach in mind: I tried isolating different motifs, identifying the key of these motifs as well as the key's relation to the tonic key, and looking for transformations of the motifs. I'm not generally fond of theory, but this, in moderation, proved quite acceptable. Then I worked on technically difficult bits, such as the transition between chords without using the pedal.

But I am generally in a discouraged mood. My life still hasn't changed much from the way it's been for fifteen years -- it's still isolated and not very fruitful. I've been thinking about this isolatedness and the underlying problem, I believe, is this:

Even though I'm not in school any more, I still understand society the way I got to know it there, and it has really gotten in the way of getting to know people around my age -- or any people at all. The unspoken rule, especially for girls, was that an unpopular person should not speak to or in any way approach people higher in the social hierarchy unless he is spoken to first or unless it is absolutely necessary. It is an honour to associate with popular people, and a disgrace (leaving one open to teasing) or at best a necessary evil to associate with unpopular people. The exception to the rule of non-communication: an unpopular person may carefully ask popular people (indirectly, of course) to take him on at least as a second-class friend. If they are receptive, they might still ask him directly or indirectly to change his appearance or behaviour -- e.g. his clothing (as my friends did at my 13th birthday party), the type of music he listens to or the television shows he watches -- in order to have more in common with them. Usually the unpopular person changes these things of his own initiative. I was too inflexible to do this, and I don't think that a friendship on such terms is worth much anyway.

Sometimes I did want to be friends with popular people in school and university; some were really unusually nice, and some were not only nice but also intellectually my superiors. But I was too fearful of being obtrusive to even speak to them. Besides, in school (not in university) it would have been impractical to be friends with a popular classmate because I would have had to fit in with the friendship circle of that classmate. And, to be honest, out of the hundreds of students whom I've known and usually liked in school and university, only a handful really interested and impressed me.

Anyway, this analyzing has probably much reduced the workload for a future psychotherapist, and now I feel that I can move on to a delightful pious nineteenth-century novel. (c:

My Hundredth Post

To celebrate the occasion, I will make this an odds-and-ends post.

Music

Yesterday evening Papa, Mama and I watched (on television) Daniel Barenboim performing three Beethoven sonatas at the Staatsoper. He began with the Moonlight Sonata, though we only heard the second and third movements, the latter of which was faster than I had thought, but it worked except that there didn't seem to be much of a point to the movement. He continued with Sonata No. 19 (?), one of the pleasant short sonatas that I know well because Papa played it often when we were little. At the end, appropriately enough, he played Les Adieux (earlier today Papa tried it out too). I must say that I prefer Papa's way of playing Beethoven's sonatas; when his mood is right he plays them fairly slowly, so that the music has time to sink in, without any artificial attempts at effect, and in a very sympathetic and nice way. But Mama remarked this morning that she did find Mr. Barenboim's playing quite "empfindsam" (sensitive, I suppose it would be in English). Anyway, the camera angles for the concert were occasionally hilarious, zooming in on Mr. Barenboim's thumb or on his pinkie, or rotating from above so that Mama and I made jokes about feeling seasick.

Travel

In the New York Times there was a nice article about Oxford, where T. and I went nearly two years ago. I enjoyed the following anecdote:

One 20th-century student reputedly demanded a flagon of claret during his exams, having discovered an ancient rule in the University Statute Book entitling him to. The invigilator was able to annul the request because the student was improperly dressed: according to another statute, he should have been wearing a saber.

Politics

This evening Mama and I went to a lecture by an Israeli professor, Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, about binationalism. It turns out that the term binationalism is not synonymous with a two-state solution. Instead it is an older concept, in circulation before the modern Israeli state even existed, propounded first in the 1920s by a small circle of intellectuals within the group Brit Shalom. An opposite of the colonialist concept of planting a Jewish state in the middle of Palestinian territory, the idea was to find a common cultural and, if I understand correctly, even national identity with the Arabs. It also means a rejection of a "two-state solution" in which Israel and Palestine become wholly alienated neighbours, which simply cannot work out well. The professor brought up the dichotomies inherent in the present-day Israeli population, even the non-"Arab" portion, and Jews in the past: Western vs. Eastern, Ashkenazi vs. Sephardim, secular vs. religious. There is no reason why a middle ground should not be found. Gershom Scholem, for instance, seems to have identified the West with colonialism and oppression, and exhorted the Jews to stand with the East. And, just as Jewish does not inevitably mean Western, religion does not inevitably mean ultra-Zionist. So binationalism addresses not only the rift between Israeli and Palestinian but also the rift between Israelis of different origin. Binationalism would be very difficult to translate into political reality, but using it as a premise for discussion would, the professor argued, be helpful today, and such a discussion is certainly still relevant at a time where the unilateral-Jewish-state vision has brought about such an unendurable situation.

Weather

Rainy and cold. Cotton wool clouds in night sky.

Film

At the Konzerthaus at the Gendarmenmarkt there was evidently a Berlin Film Festival (Berlinale) event. A fenced in corridor, a tented photo shoot area, an umbrella-carrying crowd, shouting, camera flashes, and a red carpet leading all the way up the really high stairs of the Konzerthaus. I must confess that I have rather felt like "gawking at celebrities," as I like to put it -- the Sony Centre is just up the street. And I read lots of news articles today about the Grammy and Bafta Awards. A profound intellectual on an elevated plane of existence I am not.

Books

I've reached the "M" authors on gutenberg.org again. I was re-reading bits of Harold McGrath's books. Yesterday I did also read part of a review-essay by Thomas Macaulay about a historical book by Henry Hallam, which -- even a hundred and fifty-odd years after it was written -- made me want to read the book. I've never understood how the authors of certain Victorian history books that I've read could justify perpetrating so many implied lies and half-truths in their pursuit of a moral view of the past, so Mr. Hallam's apparent impartiality much appeals to me. It was also interesting thinking about the role of a historian.

Then I began reading the memoirs of a French aristocrat, who was born in 1772, married a M. de Lescure at the age of 18, when the Revolution began fled to Paris (of all places!) and was well received by the Princesse de Lamballe and stayed on until the Louvre was overrun and until clergymen and aristocrats were being murdered in the street, then went to the south of France where her husband fought and died in the Vendée. To me the woman seemed incredibly stupid despite her intelligence, with some inexplicable predilection for the most dangerous areas in France. To be fair, she stayed on in Paris out of loyalty to Their Majesties. Later, however, I kept on expecting her to emigrate, but she didn't! The strongest argument in her favour is, I think, the contrast between her as well as her husband and the aristocracy of Poitiers. As she describes it, the young Poitevin nobles were plotting a grand rebellion, but at the news of the king's failed flight to Varennes (if I remember correctly), though the Poitevin peasantry supported them, they stampeded out of the country like a flock of scared sheep.

Poem

Perhaps there is
some page of some book,
or some tablet in a mind,
where it is written
who fails
and
who succeeds.

The tiny steps
an author takes
-- the books he reads,
the poems he writes,
the way he revises line after line
(criticism heard and acted on) --
do these steps tend to some end
or are they simply progress on a road
that, neverending, leads nowhere?

What is it we are looking for?
-- To others, fame; to others, fortune.
What it is that I am searching
is some expression of the world
that is all mine, yet open to all,
and something good and something true
that will give my life some meaning,
that will give my life some end.

All that I can do at present
is ponder shadows of the future.
What will be real and what illusion?
When will the answer at last be given?

Reading, Riches, and Poverty

Today it was a delightful sunny day. Of course I stayed immured in our apartment like the lazy mole I unfortunately tend to be. But at least my mood was lifted, if my feet were not.

I've showered, made my bed, played Chopin mazurkas and waltzes, read The English Orphans by Mary Jane Holmes online, read newspaper articles online, and eaten. My hands are not perfectly healthy yet, but they're much better. Yesterday I read the introduction and first chapter of a book (my uncle's Christmas present) by Rick Gekoski entitled Eine Nacht mit Lolita. It's about the author's encounters with various books, and the history of the books' publication.

I also read two articles from the New York Review of Books, one being David Grossman's speech at a memorial service for Yitzhak Rabin, and the other being about Marie Antoinette and fashion. There was an interesting phrase in the latter article about the court being a place where affected sentimentality took the place of any real emotion; also, I found it illuminating to read that the Queen could not reach for a glass of water herself if she wanted one, and was forced to request someone else to give it to her. Of course neither idea is an innovation, but I hadn't thought of them as clearly before.

The general idea about Versailles and other courts is that it has little relation to the "realities of life." But certainly the life of a court lady or gentleman would not have been any more unnatural and un-human than the life of a pauper of the slums. If the "realities of life" means "the unpleasantness experienced by the lower classes," certainly the pauper would know more about those; but that is not, I think, all that reality is about. I often wonder what reality is. Most people seem to think of it as a set of shared experiences. But, after all, everything that happens is reality. Anyway, I think that if I actually read philosophy I would be able to spare everyone my tentative speculations! (c:

I'm still thinking about my French Revolution story. The d'Eules family is currently expecting an elderly aunt from Paris, who will hopefully turn out not to resemble Betsy Trotwood or Lady Catherine de Bourgh or any other pre-existing ladies of literature. But I've been thinking that I haven't been writing the book "in my own voice" so far, and I want to re-write it anyway.

As for other projects, I want to donate blood some time soon, and research more about applying to university (personally, I find the former less painful). I still have "existential angst," or whatever it is, off and on (though not as badly as just before I wrote my last post), and I've been seriously considering doing volunteer work for the very selfish aim of not feeling that my life is useless. I've been wondering, for instance, if there are any orphanages in Berlin. That may sound like I'm still stuck in Dickens and that I'm trying to emulate Little Dorrit or some other pious heroine, but the real reason I'm wondering about them is that I've read unsettling things about orphanages in Russia. The other thing is that I have no real idea what's going on in the poorest parts of the society in which I live, and I think I should. But it seems to be so difficult to really help. For example, is it really helping to serve food in soup kitchens to homeless people? Couldn't some of them do this themselves, and be paid for doing it? Still, maybe if I actually tried it out I would see the rationale for it, instead of which I am still entirely an armchair philanthropist, who doesn't even donate money to charities.

The Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Fortune

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

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

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

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

Literary Oddments

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


An eighteenth-century novel . . .

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

-- Cecilia, by Fanny Burney

two eighteenth-century courts . . .

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

-- Memoirs of Mme. de Campan

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

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

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

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

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

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

. . . and twentieth-century wisdom

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

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


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

A Most Eventful Non-Event

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

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

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

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

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

A Brief Celebration

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

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

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

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

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

The Tempest, Papa's Birthday, and Literature

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Day of Sloth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

School and Sentimentality

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

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

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

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

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

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

Buckets and Buckets of Artistic Blood

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dinner, Hobbes, and Ideal Wifehood

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

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

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

Here is the opening quotation of the book:

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

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

The Restored Picture of Health

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

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

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

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

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

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

Resolutions: Or, An Adventure in Predictability

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