Freelance writer and radio presenter
If only it was just in the 1940s. Fascism is capable of a kind of plasticity so that in various forms it lingers today. There are areas where the gruesome original lurks about today.
Conrad Veidt & Claude Rains in Casablanca
Stories about fighting fascists always make for fascinating movies.Look at the legendary Casablanca (1942), for instance, or the low-key but surprisingly tense The Mortal Storm (1940). Like many Hollywood war films of the early 1940s, these productions have…
You can get on and live your life. This was what I once was severely told by one lively lady. I have rather fretted about this remark ever since-more especially nowadays. More especially during lockdown. I have had a partiality for biography for quite a long time. I have always wanted to understand how others perceive life. Some of my interest in poetry came from reading a book about W.H.Auden -well illustrated with pictures that I borrowed donkey’s years ago from Dulwich Library in Lordship Lane. It was near a splendid little gramophone record shop where I spent money on what seemed expensive long-play records. Reading about W.H.A. I was attracted by the thirties political poetry in particular. It has to be said that Auden was photographically interesting from his languid youth to his craggy face in old age.
A couple of years before this following a minitrek visit to Russia I took an A-level correspondance course in History (1815-1945) and the tutor recommended an approach as expounded by the works of Lord David Cecil. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_David_Cecil Accordingly I went on to read his illustrious book on Lord Melborne. Picking quite at random:-
Tis curiously-blended life produced a curiously-blended type of character. with so many opportunities for action, its interests were predminently active. Most of the men were engaged in politics. And the women- for they lived to please the men were political too. They listened, they sympathised, they advised; through them two statesmen might make overtures to each other, or effect a reconciliation. But politics were not then the sentence to hard labour that in our iron age they have become.
It is not difficult to discern the power and style of Cecil’s prose style. Though in between the carefully balanced sentences, a degree of what is now termed overt sexism appears to the present day reader. On the other hand the power of women in high politics- though by high, I refer to the level of power rather than degree of integrity- emerged here in No 10 last weekend. The relation between Marlborough and the young Queen Victoria emerges as a major theme in this important work. This brings me on to that biographer par excellence Lytton Strachey.
Strachey’s Eminent Victorians as well as his other works were a pleasure to read as well as an education in aspects of political history. It did not exactly give me any particular figure that one might wish to emulate-far from it. These were eloquent and elegant pen-portraits which often showed the neuroticism underneath the surface of the Victorian work ethic. Strachey was immersed in Gibbon and turned wry phrases and ironic comments. In short his wit deeply impressed and his erudition was quite something to attempt to emulate. Then came the marvellous biography by Michael Holroyd whose final pages so portrayed the deep and strange relationship with Dora Carrington. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jan/16/100-best-nonfiction-books-no-50-eminent-victorians-lytton-strachey-manning-nightingale-arnold-gordon
Here is George from Ireland on Strachey
So my interest in biography has often turned towards political figures. Returning once again to the outstanding Cecil family, it is worth noting that there is a magnificent biography of Lord David Cecil’s Grandfather,Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, KG, GCVO, PC, FRS, DL (3 February 1830 – 22 August 1903) who had been Prime MInister for over 13 years and is considered a master strategist in Foreign Affairs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Gascoyne-Cecil,_3rd_Marquess_of_Salisbury Lord Salisbury by Andrew Roberts is another fascinating biography. It shows how after a somewhat tremulous beginning at Eton, he employed his many abilities in numerous fields became perhaps to what might be called a Tory intellectual. Robert’s biography is truly engaging and shows for instance, his fascination with amateur scientific experiments, his comfortable but busy life at Hatfield House and his relatively warm relationship with his children.
Should you have time to visit the National Portrait Gallery, you will find the painting of the !st Lord Cecil which bears the motto ‘Sero, Sed Serio’ inscribed on the portrait and translates as ‘late but in earnest‘. Cecil was subsequently appointed Viscount Cranborne in 1604, Earl of Salisbury in 1605
Really love this pot!!
1968 / Earthenware / Dimensions not available
National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, OK
I think Steppenwolf is a truly fascinating book. Amongst other things it is a portrait of the intellectual as an outsider. It is also a picture of the loneliness of ageing. There are very imaginative pieces of writing rather a forerunner of magical realism. The final passages achieve a kind of dramatic resolution. It is true to say that it is not a comfortable read. It is possible you will enjoy Siddartha more- thanks for posting.
An occasional series, cross-posting my reviews from Read the Nobels.
To see my progress with completing the Read the Nobels Challenge, see here.
Translated by Basil Creighton, revised by Walter Sorrell, Penguin, 1965, 1979 reprint.
I am almost too embarrassed to share the excruciating naïveté of this review, but there it is at Blogspot for all to see anyway, and those who’ve read the book may enjoy an opportunity to chat about it set me straight. To redress my sins, I’ve added excerpts from its citation in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die which, (obviously) I didn’t own when I wrote this review. I apologise too, for the use of the term ‘schizophrenic’… these days I would use ‘bipolar disorder’.
Hesse says in his introduction that this is the…
View original post 498 more words
The novella seems to be a German form which you see in Schnitzler and Hesse too.
Image from publisher’s website Grieshuus: The Chronicle of a Family was originally published in 1884 as Zur Chronik von Grieshuus. This translation, by Denis Jackson, who sadly died earlier this year, was published by Angel Classics in 2017. The events in Storm’s novella take place in a northen Schleswig town and covers four generations of an aristocratic Junker family, roughly covering the period of the mid-seventeenth century to the early eighteenth century.
The novella begins with the narrator recalling an incident in his youth when he went out walking on the heathland and discovered a few remains and foundation stones of what he was convinced was once Grieshuus manor; after discovering a book abou the manor the narrator had tried to find out more about the manor and its inhabitants. The first book mainly concerns the twin sons of the current Junker, Hinrich and Detlev. Although quite similar…
View original post 749 more words
That reminds me so much of the famous Wim Wenders film “Wings of Desire”. Walter Benjamin too writes fascinatingly about the “Angel of History”.
I hear an army charging upon the land, And the thunder of horses plunging, foam about their knees; Arrogant, in black armour, behind them stand, Disdaining the reins, with fluttering whips, the charioteers. They cry unto the night their battle-name: I moan in sleep when I hear afar their whirling laughter. They cleave the gloom of dreams, a blinding flame, Clanging, clanging upon the heart as upon an anvil. They come shaking in triumph their long, green hair: They come out of the sea and run shouting by the shore My heart, have you no wisdom thus to despair? My love, my love, my love, why have you left me alone?
There is a discussion of this poem at-
https://poemanalysis.com/james-joyce/i-hear-an-army/
I had to study this book for O-levels donkey’s years ago. Without doubt it is imperialist through and through. However, I feel it was powerfully written and gave a magnificent insight to Indian cultures and the Great Game. I feel it was educative and in recent years I enjoy Kipling’s poetry.
An occasional series, cross-posting my reviews from Read the Nobels.
To see my progress with completing the Read the Nobels Challenge, see here.
I enjoyed this. It’s one of those classic books I always meant to read, one that’s part of my British heritage which is known around the world because of Kipling’s influence on the scouting movement.
Kim is a boy enlisted by chance to work for the British Secret Service in India. He is orphaned by a sick mother and a feckless Irish father in service in India, and he lives in the streets. One day he is captured by the British, who find his ID papers in a scapula around his neck – and they send him off to school. A certain Commander recognises his potential as an…
View original post 169 more words
A couple of summers ago I read a very moving and interesting novel based on the lives of writers in exile in Ostend fleeing from the Nazis. This book which I started in German is called Ostende. 1936, Sommer der Freundschaft came out quite recently and is another example of a novel based on historical research which some critics call faction. It is written by the erudite and clever Volker Weidermann who has since written this equally brilliant book on the Munich Republic, Dreamers: When the Writers Took Power, Germany 1918 I recall from the opening chapter of Ostende,1936 an initial impression of Stefan Zweig looking seawards which I have retained almost as though it were a magical memory of my own visit. This together with the descriptions of the paintings and studio of James Ensor had engaged my interest in this town, which must have changed considerably since the 1930s. Having been sensitised in this manner, I was delighted to come across the lyrical, magical and perhaps a little ominous. Perhaps capturing the ambience of this latest lockdown in November.
The Guardian has an excellent review of a recent exhibition at the R.A. earlier this year.
If your French is up to it -or your translation engine there is also this blog
Bent and bearded, distantly gathered
in plush deep armchairs we blinked.
Outside the hazy morning sunlight obscured the horizon.
Inside, we calculated the cost of the room
and for the fragile biscuits passed around.
Cafeterias at elbows we made a stab at
the Natural Rights of Man-the declared topic,
“But what about animals?” one lady wondered.
5 heads with 250 years of work experience,
pondered Nietzsche and eternal recurrence.
Social skills recollected at a forlorn separation.
“Sorry, I didn’t hear a word of that,
what shall we discuss next time?”
I wanted to add a line about antimacassars too – on the armchairs. I found from the Urban Dictionary, perhaps an unusual source for this that,”The name is derived from an Indian unguent for hair commonly used in the early 19th Century , macassar oil- the poet Byron called it, thine incomparable oil, Maccassar“
penwithlit