Several books

Kristin Lavransdatter, by Sigrid Undset, 1928 Nobel Prize for literature, a massive trilogy taking place in 14th century Norway. She was an expert on that period, her father had been an archaeologist. The work is monstrously big, and have just read that in fact it was cut short in the translation  I read - by Charles Archer - where she had experimented with stream of consciousness, which is something that has been restored in a recent prize-winning translation, which I'll have to look at some time. Sigrid Undset is a master at describing human character and the way it changes as a result of life's experiences. When I started the book I found it a little insipid - the love of the father for the daughter, the daughter for the father, so perfect, but when the first imperfections were described I was captivated, because she manages to hint and show and for a while nothing much changes, and one's awareness grows gradually. Some of the characters are not able to change at all, though as a reader one does wish they would. The Wikipedia article describes her as unsentimental, and that is true as far as the historical description is concerned. This book took up far too much of my time, and yet am very glad I've read it.
One of her early books published in the 1920s Fru Marta Oulie starts with the sentence: "I have been unfaithful to my husband". I am impressed. Reading about her life, I am aware how little I am writing.
 
The next important book was Yann Martel's  The Facts behind the Helsinki Roccamatios, (1993) four not very short, short stories...Under-statements about life and death. The third story - my favourite at the moment - is entitled Manners of Dying and is a series of ten letters from Harry Parlington, warden at a Correctional Centre where the death penalty is carried out by hanging.The letters are all addressed to a Mrs Barlow and relate the manner of death of her son Kevin. But each death is different and carries a different number, an increasing series - "Manner of dying 18, manner of dying 213, manner of dying 319, 534, 541, 760, 985, 991, 1096." (The number 18 is chai  in Hebrew and stands for life).
I've just looked up the name Kevin Barlow on Wikipedia: he was an Australian on an initial drug run to/from Malaysia, who was caught and sentenced to death. He was hanged on 7 July 1986. Harry Parlington is not there, though there is a Parlington Hall in Ireland with an arch celebrating the independance of the United States. And I wonder if Harry is a reference to Harry Houdini, who knew how to set himself free from fetters...The letters are supposedly typed by a person whose initials are ym. Is there a link between Yann Martel and Kevin Barlow?

The Struggle for Religious Freedom in Germany, by A.S. Duncan Jones, Dean of Chichester, published in 1938, and stored in the stack room of Wellington Central Library, in somewhat battered condition. Someone has underlined it heavily in pencil and when I tried to rub out the pencil, the print went as well...
A gift for someone wanting to understand what was happening in Germany after Hitler's 1933 access to power. Have made notes and photocopied bits. Some very telling details - including one sentence right at the end...(p.267)

"It does not become us to utter one word of reproach for those who have not been able to rise to those sacrificial heights. Nor may we criticise those who have so risen, because they have not done something else as well: because, for example, they have not made a violent protest against the shameful treatment of the Jews or the horror of the concentration camps."

The Bishop of Chichester was George Bell, promoter of oecumenism. He was against carpet-bombing of German cities, and spoke out against it. Churchill was not pleased. It may well be he who said in the British Parliament that the first nation which was conquered by Hitler was the German nation - that bit was written by Wilfrid Israel for him - it's in the eponymous biography of Wilfrid Israel, also to be found at the Central Library.

More dreams

Dreams: I dreamt that P and I were moving, we seem to move a lot in my dreams. Last time we were with the children, leaving a place where we had been a while, and people were saying good-bye, but nothing hysterical, just quiet and we were ready to go without any anxiety, I am not sure where we were going to, but it was fine. The children were there too, as children. Next dream: we move into a house which has a retro 50s style, a lot of red and blue and white - lighter than the family room for instance, fully furnished with gadgets, almost too full. It is very satisfactory.
And Tamsyn rang because she had a bad dream, she woke up and wanted to come to me/us. Nice. The dream itself felt scary to her but had bits that seem very positive like wanting to turn on a light switch.

March 2019
I dreamt that I was married to Donald Trump (now President of the USA) . He lay in bed and moaned and was very demanding. I had to look after him and I wondered: How on earth did I allow myself to get into this situation? I then discovered that he could draw most beautifully, very precise drawings in pencil, though some were just the outline of breasts as seen from above, the line breaking where the nipples should be. That seemed to make me reconsider, but why?

Dreaming of evil

She was already awake when he stirred beside her in the dark. He moaned, then threw his arms about and shouted, a long open sound without articulation, getting higher and stronger, a sound of resistance and defence, his legs beginning to kick. This had happened before: she shook him to wake him up, to cut short the agitation and distress.
He woke up enough to embrace her. Their bodies intertwined.
You were shouting, she murmured into his chest.
There was a reason, he said, still half in it.
Evil?
Yes.

* * * *

Am back from sesshin, a week in Rotoiti with a good leader. Somewhat euphoric, waiting for that to pass. I think that I must write something every day, even if it is as short as the above.

Korach and divisiveness

A wonderful translation from German by Carol Brown Janeway, wittily written, Measuring the World, by Daniel Kehlmann, the lives of two geniuses from 19th century Germany: a real treat, published as pure fiction, despite being about Gauss and Humboldt. I started re-reading it as soon as I'd finished.
He uses the device of no quotation marks, just like Saramago does, and I love it here just as much.

I'm taking part in an online translation pool: tricky expressions are sent in...I've used it successfully for my own translations, when technical terms arose, for instance in finance or engineering. German to English. Am also interested in the French to English and Hebrew to English. Now I look to see what others are sending in, see if I can contribute too - another participant warned me that it was addictive. It is.

I wrote a sermon about Korach, who was Moses and Aaron's cousin and rebelled against them (Numbers,  Ch 16 and ff.) and after two attempts by Moses and God, to convince K that he was wrong, "the earth opened her mouth and swallowed them" (Korach and his followers). Here is what the Lubavitcher Rebbe says about that portion:
"If Korach is the essence of divisiveness, says the Rebbe, then an understanding of the dynamics of conflict and harmony will explain Korach's challenge to Moses. Conversely, an understanding of the subtleties of Korach's argument will shed light on the very fine line separating divisiveness from true peace.

For although divisiveness and peace look very different from each other in their full-blown, actual states, in their essence and origins they are amazingly similar. In fact, they are very nearly indistinguishable from each other."

I wish I understood that. And there is more, also hard to understand.

Michael Ondaatje's best book: Anil's Ghost. (2000)

Am at the moment unable to speak well in any depths.
Unable to sieve my speech.
Toads jump out of my mouth.

About Goodness

I've been reading about the Holocaust and came across a book which made an impression on me - less despair, more uplift.

One of the lessons which can be drawn from the Holocaust may be that if such horrendous evil is possible, amazing good must occasionally happen as well. The book is called Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust, by Carol Rittner and Sandra Myers, eds. (NYU Press, 1986).

Of particular note: an entire village in France saved thousands. It is called Le Chambon, may it always be remembered for a blessing.

Also a Bavarian army officer called Major Julius Schmahling who saved many people in the Haute Loire. He is linked to the village and helped them.

Receiving a revelation

Part I.

The wonderful city library and the joys of being an autodidact, at least as far as this poetry is concerned. It is so much fun to find things out for oneself.

From the library: two old tired books about Gerard Manley Hopkins, one an analysis of  a selection of his poetry, (Landscape and Inscape, Vision and Inspiration in Hopkins's poetrey, by P. Milward, SJ and R Schoder, SJ, 1975) and another a collection with an introduction (Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, 4th edition, revised and enlarged,  W H Gardner and N H MacKenzie, eds, 1967). Am learning The Windhover by heart. It is not in my main poetry book (Poetry of the English-Speaking World, R Aldington, ed., 1950), though others which I loved are - among them Pied Beauty, and In the Valley of the Elwy.

Today is Shabbat and on Shabbat I do not read about the Holocaust or other horrifying stories, nor do I work on the computer (It is now after dark, so officially no longer Shabbat).

Today for once there was absolutely nothing else to do. Always interesting to see what happens when nothing is planned. So: a nice long meditation, and a quiet morning lying on the sun-warmed patch on the floor, with Gerard Manley Hopkins. Peter was in his office, so I could read the poems out loud.

I was very happy.

I realise that the rest of the educated English-speaking world will know this poem. The more I read about Hopkins, the more interested I became. A Jesuit. A mystic. A great need for peace. An equally great love for nature. One of the commentaries said he had influenced the next generation's use of English.

Then a vigorous walk up Mt Kaukau with P and friends. I am fortunate.

Part II
 
I have not managed to keep up my blog writing, so a quick tour of recent reading:
A not good enough book by Amin Maalouf, entitled Baltasar's Odyssey, which is a voyage through parts of the Ottoman Empire and Europe in 1666, when many people believed that the end of the world was nigh. I don't know why he wrote it, except that it was published shortly after 2000, when people also worried about what would happen if all the computers stopped working.
 I had the recurring feeling that he himself travelled along the same route and wrote in all the little details he noticed about people's behaviour in the 20th centurey into his book, adapting the material things around them to the 15th century. One of the reviews says "Sparkling and erudite". It did nothing for me.

Now quite different and a stunner: Peter Hobbs' The Short Day Dying (2005) - what a tour de force, and his first book too. It was shortlisted for the Whitbread Best First Novel - I wonder who won that year, this book would have been hard to beat.
A well-meaning relatively uneducated man is struggling with his faith and his life. He writes in the style of the Bible, for that is all that he knows. Meaning, he never reads anything else. His syntax is Biblical and this is done with great skill. I found it wonderful. The character of this man is completely believable and his story is compelling.

Pushing Time Away: My grandfather and the Tragedy of Jewish Vienna by Peter Singer  (2003). This is the Peter Singer, the ethics specialist, writing about his family. I read it as part of research on Teresienstadt, which I promised a friend  I would do for her. What a relief to read a book like this where someone remembers to put in the details that one wants to know, they did so and so, why did they choose to do that just then, and how did they go about it, that sort of stuff is often not covered well enough by people who experienced it. He has done thorough research, and I am grateful to him. Also: I recognise the feelings he describes - he went to the school where his grandfather taught and he says, I walked into the entrance hall, the same place my grandfather will have gone through many many times, it is unchanged...This is a recurring event through the book, an experience I had when I was in Nuremberg, My mother was here and here and here, I am standing on the same place where she will have stood. Intensely moving.

And a book launch at the Goethe Institut: Wildes Licht,  a translation of NZ poetry into German, by Dieter Riemenschneider (2010). Bill Manhire read one of his Arctic poems (in English) with great emotion. A mystery.