"And then...

...one fine day the bourgeoisie is awakened by a terrific reverse shock: the gestapos are busy, the prisons fill up, the torturers around the racks invent, refine, discuss.
    People are surprised, they become indignant. They say: “How strange! But never mind — it’s Nazism, it will pass!” And they wait, and they hope; and they hide the truth from themselves, that it is barbarism, but the supreme barbarism, the crowning barbarism that sums up all the daily barbarisms; that it is Nazism, yes, but that before they were its victims, they were its accomplices; that they tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples; that they have cultivated that Nazism, that they are responsible for it."

Notes: The extract is drawn from the english edition of "Discours sur le colonialisme" (1955) by French poet, author and politician Aimé Césaire. / The neon installation is by the contemporary Italian artist Maurizio Nannucci, found in the garden of the Guggenheim Museum in Venice. 

Man of a Universe

In 1995, The Face magazine approached Stephen Hawking and asked him for a time travel formula to use in an article in their forthcoming 15th anniversary issue.

They soon received the following response by fax.

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics
Silver Street, Cambridge, England CB3 9EW

FAX

 
 

From: Sue Masey, Personal Assistant to Professor S W Hawking
To: Johnny Davis

Number of pages: 1 (Including this one)

Date 6 April 1995

 

Thank you for your recent fax. I do not have any equations for time travel. If I had, I would win the National Lottery every week.

S W Hawking

  

*

Notes: The information was drawn from here. The photomosaic of Prof. Hawking is made by the acclaimed Greek visual artist Charis Tsevis.

On the Road

“The notion that I had walked twelve hundred miles since Rotterdam filled me with a legitimate feeling of something achieved. But why should the thought that nobody knew where I was, as though I were in flight from bloodhounds or from worshipping corybants bent on dismemberment, generate such a feeling of triumph? It always did.”

Patrick Leigh Fermor is trying to make sense of his ever-constant zest which, I suppose,  led him to flee England when he was just 18 and cross Europe on foot: from the port of Rotterdam to Constantinople, in 380 days. Leigh Fermor is considered Britain's greatest contemporary travel writer, and his books have earned him praise for their lyricism, rich vocabulary and the unusual way he portrays his thoughts. His narrative has the same pluralistic élan vital as he himself had as a character – when, in 1966, he undertook to write a small article about the famous kidnapping of General Heinrich Kreipe –he  led the team that captured the German commander in 1944–, Leigh Fermor gave a text of 36,000 words that almost caused his editor a nervous breakdown. I don't know if an extra-ultra abridged version of this went on to be published. The full text, though, was published for the first time three years after his death, in 2014.

 "Abducting a General – The Kreipe Operation and SOE in Crete"  is written like a contemporary adventure. The liveliness and versatility of Leigh Fermor's prose, his spontaneous and crystalline inner perception of the situation create quite a thrilling text –  the scenes are switched in a stable, constant rhythm that promotes the plot; and lyricism is limited to the minimum by the action a resistance operation requires. There are also moments of fine irony and fun but the bravery and seriousness of this war record and his intellect are undeniable. Reading it was like taking part in a spy film. No wonder –  P.L.F. has also written the screenplay for a film of the sort  that great John Houston directed. Not to mention the small publishing house that published his  first travel project on Greece ("A Time to Keep Silence") – it was owned by  Ian Fleming  (that's right, the well-known "father" of James Bond).

The second travel book Leigh Fermor wrote about Greece is "Mani".  Like the rest of his books, this is not an ordinary travel guide. Paddy, as the English call him, did not limit himself to a formal recording of a place but mixes, instead, his spirit and his impressions as a traveller with pieces of history, snapshots of mythology and stories of the ordinary people of each place he visits creating thus an almost automatic sense of familiarity with the reader. It must be the same feeling with that of the people who personally met him - for the Cretans, he was their Michalis or Filedem while the people of Mani called him Pandeli (> Patrick/Paddy Leigh).

Leigh Fermor has also written "The violins of St. Jacques"  a novel which suprised me with its distinctively intense lyricism and elaborate vocabulary. 

However, no matter  how lyrical, adventurous or travelling Patrick Leigh Fermor's prose is, it is indeed extraordinary. "Abducting a General...", as well as the rest of his work, is a memorable reading experience.

 




Notes: The first photograph shows the author disguised as a shepperd while in the Resistance, in White Mountains, Crete (1943). The last one is Patrick Leigh Fermor's stamp with his signature in Greek. / Most of P.L.F.'s books have been translated in Greek. You can take a look of them here. 

Best Wishes

for

Peace, prosperity and ambition, 

good luck, persistence and curiosity, 

real interest and care for people, places, books

in 

2018!

Note: The painting is by Ilya Gefter (from the series Shapes & Figures)

The Rustling of History

Not only rage, but art as well is what emerges from authoritarian times – rage, as a reaction to supression and uncertainty, is easily understood and more easily witnessed while art, although equally obvious, it is not as easily accomplished or perceived. The latter, combined with the political power, is the issue Julian Barnes takes on in his recent novel "The Noise of Time" – a fictional biography of the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovitch, one of the most distinguised and prolific artists of a very tumultuous period – Stalin's rule in Russia.

Each of the three chapters of the novel captures a critical moment of Dmitri Shostakovich's life. The first is situated "On the landing" of a Leningrand appartment. It's 1937, Stalin is in power and implementing his Big Clearup – a massive operation of his regime,  in cooperation with the armed forces and the Russian Secret Service, to suppress "the enemies of the working class", using fast-track options. The composer is already in target – his opera "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk" has been called a confusing noise, and himself "a formalist, a leftish petty-bourgeois". Every night, Shostakovich stands by the lift, "at his feet a small case containing cigarettes, underwear and tooth powder; standing there and waiting to be taken away." Afraid but still self-conscious, he wants to protect his family (wife and daughter) of the violence his arrest entails. While waiting, his mind wanders in the past – memories of his puberty, his first love, his marriage and his music, i.e. his life up until the moment comrade Stalin decided to go to the opera, and not like it.

Twelve years later, Dmitri Shostakovich is "On the plane" returning from New York where he took part in a Cultural and Scientific Convention for Peace representing the Russian regime. Once again, filled with fear and shame for his being so timorous, he recalls what has just happened: in the Convention, he read the speech he was given in a “muttered monotone”, he replied to the poignant questions of the American journalists in an equally awful manner, and he was publicly humiliated by the anti-communists demonstrating outside his hotel. What's more, he met his  much admired role model, composer Igor Stravinsky, only to receive his contempt.

In the third chapter of the novel, we move to 1960. The regime has become less person-centred since Nikita Khrushchev has come in power and he is now implementing his own strategic plan – the De-Stalinization of the country and the rehabilitation of the victims of the previous regime. Shostakovich is an elderly, sitting in the back of a chauffeur-driven car, trying once again to achieve a balance between the moral objections to his bitter compromise and the authoritarian reality. Despite the reasons and justifications he draws from his childhood, the guilt he feels is not softened.
 

All three periods have two things in common: a “Conversation with Power” – i.e. interrogation by the NKVD –, and a dickensian opening line: "This was the worst of times". It was, in fact, the time when, according to Anne Applebaum in her latest book, the Stalinist system was perfect for creating large groups of people who did not like the regime and knew that the propaganda was all lies but, still, felt obliged to collaborate.  Dmitri Shostakovich was one of those "reluctant collaborators" and he, despite all –doubts, guilt, disagreements– complied with whatever the regime suggested:  he represented it in public events, he denounced fellow-artists (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Vladimir Zakharov, his dear Anton Chekhov) and, in the days of Khrushchev, he became a member of the party thus breaking what could oppose the permanent sense of personal defeat: the feeling that he lived and worked, for so many years, without being one.  

 
The title of the book is borrowed from the memoirs of Osip Mandelstam – a Russian poet, one of the most outspoken critics of Stalin's regime and therefore, arrested and displaced to a labour camp in Siberia. In contrast, Shostakovich –throughout his life– did not rebel against the regime and enjoyed the specially conditioned freedom it provided him with. Having accepted his weak nature, Shostakovich transcribes all of his gloomy thoughts and feelings into irony, often becoming self-sarcasm, and music – Shostakovich composed numerous concerts, operas and soundtracks for films and ballets, and gave concerts not only in Russia but also abroad. This continuous creativity makes me think that Sostakovich did react afterall – subconsiously, as his music was not always according to the comrades' taste. He even wrote a number of jazz opuses – as a genre, jazz was considered odious at the time.

In the last pages of the book, Julian Barnes writes that the novel was based on an extensive literature on the composer. However, "The Noise of Time" is not an entirely historical biography hence, taking some license, he changed some particular details of his life.  For example, in the novel, Shostakovich appears to have more friendly relationships with women when, in fact, male friends were very important to him. What's more, the author casts some light to intimate aspects of the composer's life that are not so obvious to a historian: Dmitri Shostakovich did have a social life, even though limited, a family life, an extramarital one and many happy moments with his children. He had a sports life, too – as a certified football referee that he was, he took part in quite a few matches and sporting events. He had, also, attempted to commit suicide but he was too naive to succeed. 

Shostakovich, as we read, lived under a continuous internal conflict. The author uses interior monologues interchanged with a third person narration to emphasize the ruthless way the composer critised his integrity and self-consiousness. It works fine – the intimacy created between the narrator/Shostakovich and the reader is imposing. Julian Barnes, who has skillfully authored biographies before (> "Arhtur & George", "Flaubert's Parrot" and, the preceding of both, "Porcupine") takes a deep look in Shostakovich's cowardice giving a rare, sober, picture of the Russian composer. He combines historical facts and fiction masterfully, pointing out on one hand, the personal cost of compromise; and on the other, the relation between power, artists and their work.  

Bottom line: this is a powerfull novel of remarkable detail on the burden of not-resisting and compromise, and the way it does not thrash the artistic survival of a creator. 






 




Note: In the first photograph, an extraordinary piece of cloth woven by Nadia-Anne Ricketts – it depicts the sounds of Piano Concerto No.2 by Sergei Rachmaninoff. The photograph of Dmitri Shostakovich in the early '70s is drawn from here and the one of  the author from here.

Bird of Christmas

Dawning

    (... ...)
    The bird of dawning singeth all night long;
    And then, they say, no spirit
    dare stir abroad;
    The nights are wholesome;
    then no planets strike,
    No fairy takes, nor witch hath
    power to charm,
    So hallow'd and so gracious is that time.

   

  William Shakespeare

Hamlet
(Act One, Scene One)

 

Note: The title of the extract is "Bird of Dawning" / In the photograph, there is a goldcrest (Regulus regulus) or the "king of the birds" as it's called in European folklore; it was taken by archaeologist, bird-watcher and photographer Kiki Birtacha // Have the best of Times!

"May your choices... 

 ...reflect your hopes."

 Nelson 

Rolihlahla 

Mandela