tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88762062680579024892024-03-27T14:46:15.186+00:00AMAZING GRACEa place for all things literary, by Grace AndreacchiGrace Andreacchihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08700993085214709393noreply@blogger.comBlogger106125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8876206268057902489.post-10918468935881921772024-03-03T14:57:00.003+00:002024-03-03T20:26:03.569+00:00Else Lasker-Schüler - Black and Blue<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoMvjhr59e-aDLAJBwP6UwZk_4RbToQ8TZC75GisK5NYWO57qD1v1wIRHyfLZovNHQFJtMMPWWdyptPW9xRdA3M_e3IhoF1rbPx0RhAvHU3MdKHG07HzelKiwz1Ju049cKF0GYRYL4xfOj7WivSzNn6FRV7VtZk8vaUlrybfDro6OC9QF_cv1Rm6KWYfs/s1500/SF_Lasker_Schueler_Jussuf_prince_Tiba_1913.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="979" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoMvjhr59e-aDLAJBwP6UwZk_4RbToQ8TZC75GisK5NYWO57qD1v1wIRHyfLZovNHQFJtMMPWWdyptPW9xRdA3M_e3IhoF1rbPx0RhAvHU3MdKHG07HzelKiwz1Ju049cKF0GYRYL4xfOj7WivSzNn6FRV7VtZk8vaUlrybfDro6OC9QF_cv1Rm6KWYfs/w418-h640/SF_Lasker_Schueler_Jussuf_prince_Tiba_1913.jpg" width="418" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><div>Today two poems from another of those remarkable women from the German Jewish pre-war world - a world that vanished forever in the Nazi horror. Else Lasker-Schuler was a woman of great spirit who lived a life full of colour and fantasy. She invented various alter egos for herself, one of which was an Arab prince - so a bit ahead of her time then. The first of these poems dates from her early years, just before the founding of the Weimar Republic.</div><p><br /></p><p>TO THE GRAIL PRINCE</p>When our eyes meet<br />they bloom like flowers<br /><br />And we stand amazed<br />at our own miracles – don’t we?<br />and it’s all so sweet<br /><br />We’re surrounded by stars<br />and vanish from the world<br /><br />I think we must be angels.<br /><br />[Else Lasker-Schüler: <i>Gesammelte Gedichte</i>, Leipzig 1917]<div><br /></div><div>The second is one of her most famous poems, written after she had been forced into a most unwilling exile. Eventually she was to take up residence in what was then Palestine. Already seventy years old at the time, she found the transition to not only a new counry, but a whole new way of life difficult. Here she is yearning for her lost world...</div><div><br /></div><br />THE BLUE PIANO <br /><br />At home I have a blue piano <br />And yet I can't play a note. <br /><br />It stands in the dark by the cellar door, <br />Since the world began to rot. <br /><br />Four-handed play of starry hands <br />─ the Moon Lady sang in the boat ─ <br />Now the rats are performing a jingling dance. <br /><br />The keyboard all is smashed and broke… <br />I weep for the blue that are dead. <br /><br />Oh Angel dear, open to me ─ <br />─ for I've eaten a bitter bread ─ <br />Heaven's door, though I’m living still ─ <br />Yes though the Lord forbid. <br /><br />[from <i>Mein Blaues Klavier, Neue Gedichte</i>, 1943]<div><br /></div><div>Translations © by Grace Andreacchi<br /><div><br /></div><div>*</div><div><br /></div><div>Picture: Yousef Prince Tiba, by Else Lasker Schüler, from a postcard to Franz Marc, 1913</div><div><br /><div><br /></div></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Copyright © Grace Andreacchi</div>Grace Andreacchihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08700993085214709393noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8876206268057902489.post-58325140972164695002024-02-06T12:57:00.007+00:002024-03-03T20:30:07.951+00:00The Half Life of Friedrich Hölderlin<p> </p><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyqkWUIwnisJ21_4-wpncdDm208VxTyr6Scv62X7iPnM0aE-RlKq4Ku2Hx5YjfUB4yrhW24DWQGMcTxypVIM9DTZdSESw1zAnJXwAcXeBOA8xZ-rizQqeFi_CeYXs8qA6_vL0IEsJO0Bs9vi-x_3RAUIfs3YA_NZB28BPAxRPpav_D0O4e0fXt0OKzeik/s1243/H%C3%B6lderlinturmT%C3%BCbingen.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="793" data-original-width="1243" height="408" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyqkWUIwnisJ21_4-wpncdDm208VxTyr6Scv62X7iPnM0aE-RlKq4Ku2Hx5YjfUB4yrhW24DWQGMcTxypVIM9DTZdSESw1zAnJXwAcXeBOA8xZ-rizQqeFi_CeYXs8qA6_vL0IEsJO0Bs9vi-x_3RAUIfs3YA_NZB28BPAxRPpav_D0O4e0fXt0OKzeik/w640-h408/H%C3%B6lderlinturmT%C3%BCbingen.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><div>Friedrich Hölderlin was a German poet, writing just on the cusp between classicism and Romantik. His childhood was marked by repeated bereavements and attendant grief. After inconclusive studies for the ministry, he took up employment as private tutor to a young boy, and fell into crazy love with the child's mother.He was always a fragile reed, and her death precipitated a mental breakdown from which he never really recovered. Abandoned by friends and family alike, he was adopted by a local carpenter and his wife, who gave him a home in this appropriately picturesque tower overlooking the River Neckar. They were to look after him for the rest of his life.</div><br /><div>Hölderlin's poetry is dense, rich and strange. He writes much of the gods, both Christian and pagan, and of his mystical love for the ineffable 'Diotima', his name for the poor dead lady and object of his desire. He wrote with that freedom that is sometimes born of madness, and his poetry was little regarded in his lifetime. Later he was championed by no less a light than Rilke, and became a major influence on modernist German poets. The following is now one of the most famous poems in German literature. Like the images floating on the surface of rippling water, it covers hidden depths with exquisite ease.<br /><br /><br />HALF A LIFE <br /><br />Full with yellow pears <br />and roses wild hangs <br />the land in the lake <br />as you, lovely swans, <br />drunk on kisses, <br />dip your heads <br />in chaste and holy water. <br /><br />Woe to me, for where shall I find <br />once winter comes, the flowers, <br />shining sun <br />and shadows of the earth? <br />The walls stand <br />speechless and cold, in the wind <br />the banners are crackling. <br /><br />-Friedrich Hölderlin, 1804, translation © by Grace Andreacchi<br /><br /><br />*<br /><br /> <div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Photo: The Hölderlinturm on the Neckar riverfront in Tübingen, Baden-Württemberg, <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:H%C3%B6lderlinturmT%C3%BCbingen.jpg">copyright free</a>. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #202122; font-size: 14px; text-align: center;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span face="sans-serif" style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #202122; font-size: 14px; text-align: center;"><br /></span></div><br /><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Copyright © Grace Andreacchi</div>Grace Andreacchihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08700993085214709393noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8876206268057902489.post-86834472388139416332023-10-23T19:29:00.012+01:002023-12-25T09:04:50.159+00:00Am Yisrael Chai<div><i><br /></i></div><i><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWEGgAPoqmwK-8c6-Re7L85HRLdttX2nhnV1EMH3yNRVF4_NYo9h5a7ZfnP7ASMWiYZV8OTbgEFXkked9FNAasanzCuOJYY4hHeA68OHqsRthXB9DVov_iMlw2UoYzRerVs7GW0zMl1_bOFW6iDkG-rEmoB6DXCEwe9iqhflAAyoriz4n0282gh7NW6Yw/s600/nicolas-rubens.jpg!Large.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="479" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWEGgAPoqmwK-8c6-Re7L85HRLdttX2nhnV1EMH3yNRVF4_NYo9h5a7ZfnP7ASMWiYZV8OTbgEFXkked9FNAasanzCuOJYY4hHeA68OHqsRthXB9DVov_iMlw2UoYzRerVs7GW0zMl1_bOFW6iDkG-rEmoB6DXCEwe9iqhflAAyoriz4n0282gh7NW6Yw/w319-h400/nicolas-rubens.jpg!Large.jpg" width="319" /></a></div><br /><i><br /></i></div> A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping; Rahel weeping for her children refused to be comforted for her children, because they were not.</i><div><br /></div><div>Where to even begin? This is meant to be a literary blog, not one occupied with current affairs. But when the world explodes, surely literature has a part to play, even an important part. Since 7 October 2023 I too have been weeping for lost children. First of all for the Jewish children, and all those brutally slaughtered in the Hamas terrorist attacks. Then for the children of Gaza, on whom the wrath of Israel is bound, alas, to fall. How do you strike back at a deadly enemy who hides among their own children? This is modern warfare, even more evil than that we have known in centuries past. Ignorant armies no longer clash upon the darkling plains, but kill one another's children in their beds. And lest we get too high and mighty, we too, the so-called civilised ones, the self-styled good guys, have done this thing, and not so long ago. If Tod was a <a href="http://poets.org/poem/death-fugue" target="_blank">Meister aus Deutschland</a>, he also had some handy apprentices working for the Royal Air Force and the Americans. German cities were flattened with the express aim of killing as many civilians as possible. No warnings were given, that people might get out of harm's way. They <i>wanted</i> as many to die as possible. They thought it might shorten the war. See also Hiroshima. Nagasaki. Men in rooms sat down and added up the numbers of possible dead and decided that other people's children were expendable! This is the greatest danger of war, that you become the thing you hate. You become the Enemy. </div><div><br /></div><div>That said, slaughter of the innocents is sadly nothing new. In centuries past crops were burned in the fields, wells poisoned, cities burned to the ground, the weak and defenseless killed as it were in passing. The Bible contains numerous exhortations to murder the children of one's enemies. Other examples are too numerous to need enumeration, and include people from all quarters of the globe, and all of human history. But modern warfare, with its massive engines of death, has certainly raised the kill rate. </div><div><br /></div><div>I fear for Israel now. I tremble. I want Israel to survive, to thrive. It is the only logical answer to a world in which this great people have never been allowed merely to live. As if the pogroms and death camps of past centuries were not enough, this is demonstrated once again by the disgusting spectacle of resurgent antisemitism on the streets and campuses of New York, London et al. Now the refound Homeland that was to be the place of safety has suddenly proved itself no longer safe. Jews are not going to go meekly to the slaughter this time. Never again. I don't presume to know how they should conduct their necessary war. Certainly no government can tolerate the murder of its people. But how not to become the thing you hate? </div><div><br /></div><div>The people of Palestine also need a place of their own, to live in dignity and peace. Is this problem really so impossible to settle? Is all this squabbling and death really serving them well? This descent into barbarism and chaos? Sometimes we need to take a deep breath, admit that things don't always work out quite the way we would have liked, that life is not always completely fair, and move on. Grant that the Jews too have a right to live. A few square miles of desert this way or that, does it really have to be such a big deal?</div><div><br /></div><div>I weep too even for the terrorists. Those young men high on violence, drunk on the blood of infants, the thrill of rape, the delirious drug of blood lust. Soiled and sullied for the rest of their lives, be they long or short, by the sordid evil they have done. They too were children once. Little boys with sweet piping voices, innocent eyes. How will they sleep at night? How hold their own children in their arms? </div><div><br /></div><div>Are we nothing more than chimpanzees with bigger vocabularies? Is this really what we must do, again and again, as if we had never done it before? And been sorry before. </div><div><br /></div><div>Today I listened to an Israeli scholar, his voice shaking with emotion, explain that it was necessary for Israel to teach its enemies to fear it once again. That only fear and trembling could bring security to the state of Israel, and, by extension, to the Jewish people. Maybe so. But in the long term, a security built on fear is only as strong as the weakest link in that wall of fear. We saw on 7 October how that works out. When all the slaughter is over, as sooner or later it must be, and the bodies of the innocents on both sides have been offered up to men's hatred and fear and folly, then peace will come at last. The only guarantee of peace, the only possible guarantee of peace with one's neighbour, is love. My neighbour will not attack me because he loves me. I will not attack my neighbour because I love him. I cherish him, and he cherishes me. We share this little blue marble. We truly have nowhere else to go. As the poet Rosa Ausländer so rightly observed, <a href="/graceandreacchi.blogspot.com/2008/10/rose-auslnder-motherland-word.html">the answer word is Love</a>. </div><div><br /></div><div>Am Yisrael Chai.</div><div><br /></div><div>*</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Grace Andreacchi proudly acknowledges her Jewish heritage. </b></div><div><br /></div><div>*</div><div><br /></div><div>Picture: Portrait of his son Nicholas by Peter Paul Rubens, circa 1619</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Copyright © Grace Andreacchi</div>Grace Andreacchihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08700993085214709393noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8876206268057902489.post-25591257147794356192023-01-03T17:42:00.012+00:002023-01-18T09:11:39.818+00:00Nancy, The One Who Writes<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="609" data-original-width="970" height="402" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFJSSKejoA1oQi0Yu5yGHmEtUOZW_KC3JGX_ceRbpTGFHxWT5EPHOVPaak_zi2deQfclO_teTIbPqyovTOtNfC14uKLAFnoLLDWYfAlBpjBobV4QgqNYJui05AT3pEH-x54fIwByWUehDg_njgFKKko8rkdW9iNIbmxBckkqzmWSM6G3oxauraom6A/w640-h402/44025e2c76fffa42a76cf25cea8dd2f3.jpeg" width="640" /></div><br /><p></p><br />'There they are, held like flies, in the amber of that moment – click goes the camera and on goes life; the minutes, the days, the years, the decades, taking them further and further from that happiness and promise of youth, from the hopes Aunt Sadie must have had for them, and from the dreams they dreamed for themselves. I often think there is nothing quite so poignantly sad as old family groups.' -<i>The Pursuit of Love</i><div><br /></div><div>In the photo above of the numerous and remarkable Mitford family, Nancy is the sulky teenager in the back row, on the left. I think she must be about eighteen in this photo, for the littlest daughter, Deborah or 'Debo' looks about two, and was born in 1920. There's nothing here to indicate that Nancy was to become a bright star among the Bright Young Things, a brilliant wit, a style icon and a beauty, and one of the most enduringly beloved authors still today. Truly the fairies must have been feeling particularly generous when they gathered round her cradle. Not because she was born into wealth and privilege, though she was that too. But the Mitfords were small fry - minor country gentry and, consequently, impoverished. Nancy never had money to burn until the stunning success of her autobiographical novel, <i>The Pursuit of Love</i>, and that was in 1945.<br /><p>It's easy to underestimate Nancy Mitford, if only because it's hard to believe anything this much fun can actually be that good. She shares that distinction with several other seriously good writers - Charles Dickens, John le Carré, Frances Hodgson Burnett, one could go on. Few books are as consistently delightful as <i>The Pursuit of Love</i> and its sequel, or continuation, <i>Love in a Cold Climate</i> (for really they are one book in two volumes). It's a marvelous saga of the intertwined lives of a small set of people, all related by blood or proximity. The books are achingly funny, but also melancholy, sweet and deep. Like the thrush, she gives us that fine, first careless rapture of youth and innocence, of a world where one feels safe and cherished and beloved. Where parents may be strict, but are also loving, and there's always honey for tea, not to mention the 'usual five o’clock paraphernalia of silver kettle on flame, silver teapot, Crown Derby cups and plates and enough sugary food to stock a pastrycook’s shop'. How eagerly a public wearied by the privations and atrocities of war embraced this world. How eagerly we embrace it still. For what peace, what safety could ever attain that state of perfection of a remembered childhood idyll?</p><p>And yet. What gives the books their depth is the sadness. The idyll, upon closer inspection, is perhaps not quite that perfect after all. There is a prolonged and rather sickening description right at the beginning of the many torments inflicted upon animals as part of the country way of life. The children attempt to save their beloved wild creatures from the traps laid by the gamekeeper, knowing their efforts to be in vain. The poor things will only limp off into the woods to die horribly of their bloody wounds. And the great house itself is something like a trap. The heroine, Linda, longs to escape to a life of freedom and independence, so much so that she makes a very foolish marriage at the age of eighteen just to get away. Only to find herself caught in another trap. Polly, the beautiful protagonist of <i>Love in a Cold Climate</i>, has lost her heart to her Uncle Boy, whose paedophilic fumblings she has mistaken for true love. The girls, and later women, again and again mistake this or that hapless male for the genuine article, again and again are bitterly disappointed, and again and again somehow recover and go bravely on, keeping up 'a wonderful shop-front', ever in the pursuit of that elusive chimera, love. Fanny, the narrator, is the exception, but Fanny is a straw woman and just along for the ride. Nonetheless her role is indispensable, for she tells us the truth, and her po-faced mask occasionally slips as Nancy's wry voice comes out of her mouth. She tells the truth about women's lives, hemmed round by harsh constraints both social and biological. And about the compensations, sometimes illusory, sometimes real enough.</p><p>‘What I do enjoy,’ I said, truthfully, ‘is the dressing up.’ - <i>Love in a Cold Climate</i></p><p>Mitford's dialogue is unbeatable, her style lapidary. Here is a grand society gathering awaiting the arrival of a very rich French Duke.<br /><br />‘Have the Sauveterres not arrived yet, Sonia?’ said Lord Montdore coming up for another cup of tea. There was a movement among the women. They turned their heads like dogs who think they hear somebody unwrapping a piece of chocolate. - <i>Love in a Cold Climate</i><br /><br />Some of the jokes go on a bit too long, or labour a bit too hard. I never really buy Uncle Davy's flamboyant hypochondria. The perfection of Linda's utterly implausible lover, Fabrice, is touching once you know that the model for this romantic hero was the great love of Nancy Mitford's life, a certain Gaston Palewski. He was no Duke, but a son of Jewish immigrants, an ugly, pock-marked man, an infamous womaniser, and an important aide to DeGaulle during the war. He treated her abominably, and eventually married somebody else, quite breaking her heart. But this is the way he <i>ought</i> to have been, the way it all ought to have been. To be showered with designer frocks and jewels, to be kept in a glorious Paris apartment, to be doted upon and spoiled and proposed marriage to. And let him be a very rich Duke from one of France's oldest families while you're at it. And to be capable of real love and fidelity, once the right woman comes along. In fact Nancy bought her own frocks, and rented a small jewel of a place on the <a href="http://lvbmag.wpcomstaging.com/2021/10/20/nancy-mitford-7-rue-monsieur-paris/" target="_blank">Rue Monsieur</a> where she lived, if not happily ever after, certainly happily for rather a long time. Eventually the owner chucked her out and she moved to Versailles to be closer to the court of her beloved Sun King. But alas she soon fell ill there, and things were never quite the same. What saves the mad romance of these novels from silliness is the hard reality lurking just under the frothy champagne. Wisely, she kills off her lovebirds, Linda and Fabrice, so they have no time to grow out of their unlikely idyll. This is how she sums it up for us, in a conversation between Fanny and her mother 'The Bolter', a prototype for Linda, and for every woman who goes chasing off, full of unquenchable hope, in pursuit of love.<br /><br />'But I think she would have been happy with Fabrice,’ I said. ‘He was the great love of her life, you know.’ ‘Oh, dulling,’ said my mother, sadly. ‘One always thinks that. Every, every time.’ <br /><br /><br />*<br /><br /></p><p>Photo: the Mitford family, circa 1922</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Copyright © Grace Andreacchi</div>Grace Andreacchihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08700993085214709393noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8876206268057902489.post-91515837493756489072022-11-07T18:55:00.003+00:002024-03-03T18:38:01.048+00:00Winter Joy<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyff375uXNB7vhYuKrQK9Ob1eSda_HAy4WebtvYzTcNhI8GLud2WLxgitKTsifOukhLeWARHQtAtY8rHRnF3osSlWC8eiaQI89lsmpVd-_0YpeowRhy0UMlsSsniK1Smnfne1a8ZanOMFQ9lDbxmYpSqvWA1LntzYakaybuGsco4NAKNOyLgob1XDv/s1704/1024px-Les_Tr%C3%A8s_Riches_Heures_du_duc_de_Berry_f%C3%A9vrier.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="1704" data-original-width="1024" height="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyff375uXNB7vhYuKrQK9Ob1eSda_HAy4WebtvYzTcNhI8GLud2WLxgitKTsifOukhLeWARHQtAtY8rHRnF3osSlWC8eiaQI89lsmpVd-_0YpeowRhy0UMlsSsniK1Smnfne1a8ZanOMFQ9lDbxmYpSqvWA1LntzYakaybuGsco4NAKNOyLgob1XDv/s600/1024px-Les_Tr%C3%A8s_Riches_Heures_du_duc_de_Berry_f%C3%A9vrier.jpg" /></a>
</div>My heart is so full of joy <div>all is changed for me. </div><div>Like a white flower, vermilion </div><div>and gold this wintry cold. </div><div>For with the wind and the rain </div><div>my good fortune grows, </div><div>my song rises up, and my worth increases. </div><div>I have so much love in my heart, </div><div>so much joy and sweetness, </div><div>that the ice seems to me like flowers, </div><div>and the snow like the green leaves.</div><br />I go about without clothes <br />bare in my shirt <br />for this fine love protects me <br />from the hurt of cold winds. <br />Still it’s mad to wander at will, <br />unbounded by custom. <br />Thus have I taken care <br />since first I dared try <br />for the loveliest of loves, <br />from whom I await much honour, <br />for in place of her treasures <br />I'd not take even rich Pisa. <br /><br />Truly I’ve hope <br />but that’s little help <br />for she holds me up in the scales <br />like a ship tossed on the waves. <br />I find no escape <br />from the dark thoughts that oppress me. <br />All night long I turn and toss <br />on my bed of sorrows. <br />I’ve more pain from love <br />than that great lover Tristan <br />who suffered famous loss <br />for the fair Isolde.<div><br />(But alas false snakes have brought me <br />far from her country <br />and he is now a spy <br />who ought to have stood by me <br />in times so ill. <br />Ah, if only he knew <br />our two souls have but the one will.)<br /><br />- Bernart de Ventadorn, circa 1130-1200, translation © by Grace Andreacchi <br /><br />*<br /><br />Picture: Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry février, Limbourg Brothers (1402-1416)</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Copyright © Grace Andreacchi</div>Grace Andreacchihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08700993085214709393noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8876206268057902489.post-62918984161890816702021-12-05T14:44:00.004+00:002024-03-03T18:38:43.128+00:00Rilke - By Night I Want to Talk to the Angel<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgchWfuprdgmo3UZbRj6DJG1JQ7OJUvh-X8hs9f0fmRw35E1G406yUfdGtoZydvJWn1Dubzi95zyl28hpF0n6enbasDckbQzBrkpGe9mg1UpWMBESMk0mCd3p8OTG3WGB7DxD98mg0N1Yc/s1396/Paul_Klee___Engel%252C_%25C3%25BCbervoll___1939.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1396" data-original-width="1024" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgchWfuprdgmo3UZbRj6DJG1JQ7OJUvh-X8hs9f0fmRw35E1G406yUfdGtoZydvJWn1Dubzi95zyl28hpF0n6enbasDckbQzBrkpGe9mg1UpWMBESMk0mCd3p8OTG3WGB7DxD98mg0N1Yc/w470-h640/Paul_Klee___Engel%252C_%25C3%25BCbervoll___1939.jpg" width="470" /></a></div><br /><p></p><br />By night I want to talk to the angel <br />to ask him, does he recognise my eyes. <br />If he should suddenly ask: Do you see Eden? <br />Then should I tell him: Eden burns <br /><br />I long to lift my hard mouth to him, <br />hardened by the lack of all desires. <br />And should the angel say: Do you feel life? <br />Then should I tell him: Life destroys<br /><br />If he should find a certain joy within me <br />that in his ghost becomes eternities – <br />and lift it shining in his hands before me <br />then should I tell him: Joy deceives <br /><br /><div>*</div><div><br /></div><div>Translation © by Grace Andreacchi <br /><br />Rainer Maria Rilke, from ‘Gedichte für Lulu Albert-Lazard’, Irschenhausen, 25 September 1914; translation © by Grace Andreacchi. This translation forms part of 'Angel', a continuing collaboration with <a href="https://www.operaatelier.com/" target="_blank">Opera Atelier, Toronto</a> and composer <a href="http://www.edwinhuizinga.com/#" target="_blank">Edwin Huizinga</a>. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Image: Paul Klee, Engel, übervoll,1939, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons</div><div><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Copyright © Grace Andreacchi</div>Grace Andreacchihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08700993085214709393noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8876206268057902489.post-8270363848024825732021-11-01T15:59:00.005+00:002024-02-16T15:11:44.429+00:00Rilke's Adam<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt2I1KbgnBKMitphiMTjmn8tvKep9r8hpnA-YWHVA4bqstAnv7xyK47hMs9etlRyVMZY4mvYN-w2frF5UFpZmLHukwSnF_Iflfv8NFuRi7nwTd5TUlsvGf_z1fbZTN-WDH8qbMfmE7h3Q/s1365/Adam%252C_tour_nord.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="1024" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt2I1KbgnBKMitphiMTjmn8tvKep9r8hpnA-YWHVA4bqstAnv7xyK47hMs9etlRyVMZY4mvYN-w2frF5UFpZmLHukwSnF_Iflfv8NFuRi7nwTd5TUlsvGf_z1fbZTN-WDH8qbMfmE7h3Q/w480-h640/Adam%252C_tour_nord.JPG" width="480" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 150%;">Astonished he stands at the cathedral’s<br />cliff edge, close by the glassy rose<br />as though with terror struck, an Apotheosis<br />that grew and grew then all at once<br /><br />set him down over these and those.<br />So he glories, glad in his tenure,<br />simple and sure, as the ploughman<br />who knew not the way, yet arose<br /><br />from Eden’s full-fleshed garden<br />to seek a path to the new made land.<br />God was hard to convince;<br /><br />threatened, more and more, to grant<br />not his wish, but that he would die.<br />Still the man stood firm: She will bear a child.<br /><br /> *<br /><br />By Rainer Maria Rilke, from ‘Neue Gedichte, Anderer Teil’, 1908; translation © by Grace Andreacchi. </p><p class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 150%;">This translation forms part of 'Angel', a continuing collaboration with <a href="https://www.operaatelier.com/" target="_blank">Opera Atelier, Toronto</a> and composer <a href="http://www.edwinhuizinga.com/#" target="_blank">Edwin Huizinga</a>. The statue above is the same that inspired Rilke's poem. See, for example, Norbert Fisher,<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=wQ6KDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT158&lpg=PT158&dq=Dem+Gedicht+Magnificat+folgen+die+Adam-und+Eva-Gedichte,+die+sich+bekanntlich+in+ihren+einander+%C3%A4hnelnden+Anfangsversen+auf+die+Skulpturen+an+der+Westfront+der+Kathedrale+Notre+Dame+in+Paris+beziehen,+und+in+dieser+Hinsicht+zu+den+sogenannten+%E2%80%BADinggedichten%E2%80%B9+Rilkes+z%C3%A4hlen+k%C3%B6nnen.&source=bl&ots=_QLtrE3Bjl&sig=ACfU3U2RfD-FBe3ekB2phS3bFVflLaitOA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi3iL6eubDvAhVHiFwKHYULAqcQ6AEwAXoECBMQAw#v=onepage&q=Dem%20Gedicht%20Magnificat%20folgen%20die%20Adam-und%20Eva-Gedichte%2C%20die%20sich%20bekanntlich%20in%20ihren%20einander%20%C3%A4hnelnden%20Anfangsversen%20auf%20die%20Skulpturen%20an%20der%20Westfront%20der%20Kathedrale%20Notre%20Dame%20in%20Paris%20beziehen%2C%20und%20in%20dieser%20Hinsicht%20zu%20den%20sogenannten%20%E2%80%BADinggedichten%E2%80%B9%20Rilkes%20z%C3%A4hlen%20k%C3%B6nnen.&f=false" target="_blank"> 'Gott in der Dichtung Rainer Maria Rilkes'</a>; "The poem 'Magnificat' follows the Adam and Eve poems, which, their first verses closely resembling one another, are well known as relating to the sculptures on the west front of Notre Dame, Paris, and in this sense may be said to belong to Rilke's 'poetry of things'." The statue is a freely imagined copy, the original having been destroyed during the Revolution. Viollet-le-Duc placed these statues of Adam and Eve, sculpted by Jean-Louis Chenillon, on either side of the central rose as part of his massive restoration programme. See here for<a href="https://www.notredamedeparis.fr/decouvrir/architecture/la-facade-occidentale/" target="_blank"> la Galerie de la Vierge</a>.</p><div><br /></div><div><div>Image: by LPLT, <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Statue_of_Adam_on_the_west_facade_of_Notre-Dame_de_Paris#/media/File:Adam,_tour_nord.JPG" target="_blank">CC via Wikimedia Commons</a> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" target="_blank">license here</a></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Copyright © Grace Andreacchi</div>Grace Andreacchihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08700993085214709393noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8876206268057902489.post-12971918524519379722021-10-07T12:07:00.005+01:002024-02-20T18:34:45.799+00:00Rilke's Eve<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3pv2li0Nvd3j5TrjdQ1qQgON5hLWTtKWR1bqLQAA5AOsGUILey7CCPi24VXz3rwZ8dPttB4fPxHhNcHd-rAVR6sfjQF1-CRfxwF2J0JmWDSmkhNw2brliF3ZaSykXv4o-jhLRMzDK24zNeSoqv5SCkoIAX7rwxjh3HuJF37sUGC2QTxG9TOeZ1i8cm9s/s1024/Paris_-_Cath%C3%A9drale_Notre-Dame_-_Fa%C3%A7ade_ouest_-_Statue_-_PA00086250_-_007.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="682" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3pv2li0Nvd3j5TrjdQ1qQgON5hLWTtKWR1bqLQAA5AOsGUILey7CCPi24VXz3rwZ8dPttB4fPxHhNcHd-rAVR6sfjQF1-CRfxwF2J0JmWDSmkhNw2brliF3ZaSykXv4o-jhLRMzDK24zNeSoqv5SCkoIAX7rwxjh3HuJF37sUGC2QTxG9TOeZ1i8cm9s/w426-h640/Paris_-_Cath%C3%A9drale_Notre-Dame_-_Fa%C3%A7ade_ouest_-_Statue_-_PA00086250_-_007.jpg" width="426" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 150%;">Simple she stands at the cathedral’s<br />cliff edge, close by the glassy rose<br />holding the apple in the apple-pose <br />guilty-guiltless once and for all time <br /><br /><br />of that growing thing she bore <br />since she, all loving, left <br />the circling Eternities, to fight her way <br />through the earth like a fresh new year. <br /><br />Oh, gladly would she have lingered <br />a while in that land, watchful of <br />beasts’ harmony and quiet mind. <br /><br />But the man would go <br />so she went beside, death in her eyes; <br />God she had not yet begun to know. <br /><br />* <br /><br /></p><p class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 150%;">By Rainer Maria Rilke, from ‘Neue Gedichte, Anderer Teil’; 1908, translation © by Grace Andreacchi.</p><p class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 150%;">This translation forms part of 'Angel', a continuing collaboration with <a href="https://www.operaatelier.com/" target="_blank">Opera Atelier, Toronto</a> and composer <a href="http://www.edwinhuizinga.com/#" target="_blank">Edwin Huizinga</a>. The statue above is the same that inspired Rilke's poem. See, for example, Norbert Fisher,<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=wQ6KDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT158&lpg=PT158&dq=Dem+Gedicht+Magnificat+folgen+die+Adam-und+Eva-Gedichte,+die+sich+bekanntlich+in+ihren+einander+%C3%A4hnelnden+Anfangsversen+auf+die+Skulpturen+an+der+Westfront+der+Kathedrale+Notre+Dame+in+Paris+beziehen,+und+in+dieser+Hinsicht+zu+den+sogenannten+%E2%80%BADinggedichten%E2%80%B9+Rilkes+z%C3%A4hlen+k%C3%B6nnen.&source=bl&ots=_QLtrE3Bjl&sig=ACfU3U2RfD-FBe3ekB2phS3bFVflLaitOA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi3iL6eubDvAhVHiFwKHYULAqcQ6AEwAXoECBMQAw#v=onepage&q=Dem%20Gedicht%20Magnificat%20folgen%20die%20Adam-und%20Eva-Gedichte%2C%20die%20sich%20bekanntlich%20in%20ihren%20einander%20%C3%A4hnelnden%20Anfangsversen%20auf%20die%20Skulpturen%20an%20der%20Westfront%20der%20Kathedrale%20Notre%20Dame%20in%20Paris%20beziehen%2C%20und%20in%20dieser%20Hinsicht%20zu%20den%20sogenannten%20%E2%80%BADinggedichten%E2%80%B9%20Rilkes%20z%C3%A4hlen%20k%C3%B6nnen.&f=false" target="_blank"> 'Gott in der Dichtung Rainer Maria Rilkes'</a>; "The poem 'Magnificat' follows the Adam and Eve poems, which, their first verses closely resembling one another, are well known as relating to the sculptures on the west front of Notre Dame, Paris, and in this sense may be said to belong to Rilke's 'poetry of things'." The statue is a freely imagined copy, the original having been destroyed during the Revolution. Viollet-le-Duc placed these statues of Adam and Eve, sculpted by Jean-Louis Chenillon, on either side of the central rose as part of his massive restoration programme. See here for<a href="https://www.notredamedeparis.fr/decouvrir/architecture/la-facade-occidentale/" target="_blank"> la Galerie de la Vierge</a>.</p><p class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SqLTxKDpBD0" width="320" youtube-src-id="SqLTxKDpBD0"></iframe></div><p class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 150%;"><br /></p><div>*</div><div><br /></div><div>Image: Eve, detail, west facade of Notre Dame de Paris, via Wikimedia, <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paris_-_Cath%C3%A9drale_Notre-Dame_-_Fa%C3%A7ade_ouest_-_Statue_-_PA00086250_-_007.jpg" target="_blank">by the supermat</a> </div><div><a href="https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/licensing-considerations/compatible-licenses/" target="_blank">CC license 3.0</a></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Copyright © Grace Andreacchi</div>Grace Andreacchihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08700993085214709393noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8876206268057902489.post-18166438113858543732021-06-11T18:33:00.013+01:002024-02-16T15:15:46.712+00:00Another Country<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkz9TRzYysuFIreVUNUMN0JxeBhTSogsCmoFP4OLw4QEK8qKu_xxz7NfZExEeWkjrL-0Q-lLGtyC0OxaRQ9svCnVy1RZBpvFJA-56tUE3NZON1jLiE1cX6Gcrn7U6ew_RjqZlBexxpDWvPeyG26maNb8aYB8D-ta4kd2iksrxNfnjXlPCLc0GVBR54UmE/s600/cover%20image.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="420" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkz9TRzYysuFIreVUNUMN0JxeBhTSogsCmoFP4OLw4QEK8qKu_xxz7NfZExEeWkjrL-0Q-lLGtyC0OxaRQ9svCnVy1RZBpvFJA-56tUE3NZON1jLiE1cX6Gcrn7U6ew_RjqZlBexxpDWvPeyG26maNb8aYB8D-ta4kd2iksrxNfnjXlPCLc0GVBR54UmE/w448-h640/cover%20image.jpg" width="448" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p>The past is, famously, another country. I've been thinking about the way geography so often plays an uncredited but leading role in so much literature, and not just the geography of place but that of time as well. For a geography of place is incomprehensible without the added dimension of time. There are Proust's Paris, Edith Wharton's New York, Scott's Riviera. You can visit Paris, New York, and Cap d'Antibes, but you will search in vain for these vanished countries. The literary pilgrim is bound for disappointment for, to paraphrase, they did things differently there. The horse carriages and cattleyas are long gone. But one need look no further than the recent past, to find oneself looking in vain. Where is the Berlin of Christa Wolf? Or the New York I remember?</p><p>I grew up in Inwood, a little known region at the tip of Manhattan Island. Despite its location on that densely inhabited and universally acclaimed island, Inwood never seems to quite get on the radar. Every few years the New York Times announces its <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/11/realestate/inwood-green-space-and-budget-friendly-apartments.html" target="_blank">imminent gentrification</a>, but it never seems to happen. (It may yet of course!) And yet the Inwood I knew has vanished just as completely as Proust's Paris or the Berlin of the DDR. In my girlhood Inwood was an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnG6pLwOflQ" target="_blank">Irish village</a>, with a sprinkling of well-to-do Jewish families living on 'the hill'. We lived on the hill too, but we weren't Jewish, and we weren't Irish either. We were misfits. When I graduated from Good Shepherd School in 1968 I was one of only two non-Irish girls. The other was a Puerto Rican girl; a poor spindly, pock-marked child, she was relentlessly persecuted for her otherness. I, being clever and pretty and white, was only mildly persecuted. But the following year saw the first Mass in Spanish at Good Shepherd Church. The writing was on the wall, white flight was in the air. Today Inwood is still basically a working class village, but nowadays the workers hail not from the sodden counties of Tipperary and Sligo but from another, equally impoverished island, the Dominican Republic. </p><p>For many years I did not write about Inwood. I feared to revisit that lost country of the soul, for much had happened to me there, and much of it was bad enough. In my work you can find the Paris of 1989 (<a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1852422998/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i23" target="_blank">Music for Glass Orchestra</a>), the Berlin of the post-wall era (<a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1409236420/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i14" target="_blank">Poetry and Fear</a>, <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/144521640X/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i17" target="_blank">Berlin Elegies</a>) as well as those countries of the imagination that lie beyond the geography of ordinary space and time (<a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1409236439/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i22" target="_blank">Scarabocchio</a>). This last is interesting for, while it is set in Sicily, it was written in France. I was living at the time in St. Martin l'Aiguillon, a tiny, obscure village in the region of Orne, and something of this place leaked into the novel and helped to form it, so that it is as much a creature of those dark, windy nights in the moonlit and desolate farmhouse as of the baroque splendours I had seen in Palermo. Yes, for a long time I did not write about Inwood. It might have remained forever submerged beneath the waves of lost time. Then one day I awoke to see it rising, unbidden, from the beneath the waters like the Invisible City of Kitezh. You can take the A-train right up to the end of the line at 207th Street, but you won't find the Inwood of my childhood there. Still, you can see its reflection shining in the water, and hear the bells ring out as they once did in the dim Jansenist twilight of times past, for I have written of it at last.</p><p><br /></p><p><span class="aw5Odc" face="Lato, sans-serif" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #475c66; font-size: 14.6667px; font-variant-ligatures: none; text-decoration-line: underline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a class="XqQF9c" href="https://www.google.com/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.co.uk%2Fdp%2FB096W9X344&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNHoXToAzn-XcQqghXJOyAYPI63-Dw" style="box-sizing: border-box; pointer-events: all; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">YOU ARE THERE BEHIND MY EYELIDS FOREVER</a></span><span face="Lato, sans-serif" style="color: #212121; font-size: 14.6667px; font-variant-ligatures: none; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is out now. A semi-autobiographical novel set in the gritty world of uptown New York in the 1970s, this is an erotic, dizzying, frankly feminist coming of age story.</span></p><p><span face="Lato, sans-serif" style="color: #212121; font-size: 14.6667px; font-variant-ligatures: none; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B096W9X344?asin=B096W9X344&revisionId=f325558e&format=1&depth=1" target="_blank">READ AN EXCERPT HERE</a></span></p><p><span style="color: #212121;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; font-variant-ligatures: none; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://www.lulu.com/en/gb/shop/grace-andreacchi/you-are-there-behind-my-eyelids-forever/paperback/product-1wker9dy.html?page=1&pageSize=4" target="_blank">Print version also available here.</a></span></span></p><p><br /></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Copyright © Grace Andreacchi</div>Grace Andreacchihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08700993085214709393noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8876206268057902489.post-52817196608006489982021-05-03T19:45:00.007+01:002024-03-03T14:08:26.393+00:00Peggy Guggenheim - Portrait of a Lady<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtG2Ln5eI2Jv81poJu5GRLEcSI2sEUYlTnT0NmVnl__-I6vF7aY9hrkIc-UGxtME04e53kzZbSHsDIxJSVDGWHTlv01jKPyXlMubQ8rH-h4-Ukp4ifGsib3JCJOG0uwCbcDanPlDJdoY0EvLDvkOOP-BVfGh_BOKU-77ktBCLd8aKfJETd-bCQeYBOeNs/s1158/Portrait_of_Ena_Wertheimer_A_Vele_GonfiePortrait%20of%20Ena%20Wertheimer%201905.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1158" data-original-width="750" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtG2Ln5eI2Jv81poJu5GRLEcSI2sEUYlTnT0NmVnl__-I6vF7aY9hrkIc-UGxtME04e53kzZbSHsDIxJSVDGWHTlv01jKPyXlMubQ8rH-h4-Ukp4ifGsib3JCJOG0uwCbcDanPlDJdoY0EvLDvkOOP-BVfGh_BOKU-77ktBCLd8aKfJETd-bCQeYBOeNs/w414-h640/Portrait_of_Ena_Wertheimer_A_Vele_GonfiePortrait%20of%20Ena%20Wertheimer%201905.png" width="414" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">At the very opening of Henry James's magnificent ultimate novel, The Golden Bowl, the Prince is reflecting to himself on the precise nature of the charm his fantastically rich American bride-to-be imparts to his life. He likens it to 'exquisite colouring drops'.</div><p>'They were of the colour—of what on earth? of what but the extraordinary American good faith? They were of the colour of her innocence, and yet at the same time of her imagination, with which their relation, his and these people’s, was all suffused.'</p><p>One need hardly add, they were of the colour of money. Peggy Guggenheim, who might have been one of James's most beguiling heroines, was five years old when The Golden Bowl was published in 1904. Born into one of the wealthiest of Jewish American families, she grew up among the gilded mansions of New York, much like another James girl, the doomed Millie Theale, that eponymous 'dove' whose wings are covered with gold. 'She couldn't dress it away, nor walk it away, nor read it away, nor think it away; she could neither smile it away in any dreamy absence nor blow it away in any softened sigh. She couldn't have lost it if she had tried—that was what it was to be really rich. It had to be the thing you were.' Poor Peggy! It was the thing she was, to so many people, for all of her life. Despite the fact that her father had distanced himself from the family business, made some rather dodgy deals, and then gone down on the Titanic, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUrJ_Huk5so" target="_blank">a legend of gallantry</a>, when she was only thirteen. Consequently, Peggy wasn't even all that rich, not compared to what she should have been, not compared to her cousins.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQznLWh4pt9fmp1U6e_E87VL-NyszaMzlQZDcekLzpQ_zlLxJjtkqsC-rGciYeLSzVFtQtc7b6S_l3t3fF9ey3CwgZLMUPy6zLprtxRm_ESNLw9uTCDz_NE9RCu5wJoAIxUVQlIJCp5_w/s1773/DTa_UlGXUAIiC3H.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1773" data-original-width="1502" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQznLWh4pt9fmp1U6e_E87VL-NyszaMzlQZDcekLzpQ_zlLxJjtkqsC-rGciYeLSzVFtQtc7b6S_l3t3fF9ey3CwgZLMUPy6zLprtxRm_ESNLw9uTCDz_NE9RCu5wJoAIxUVQlIJCp5_w/w339-h400/DTa_UlGXUAIiC3H.jpeg" width="339" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Peggy Guggenheim, age 13</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p>Later in life she would even forgo new clothes in order to afford the upkeep on her private gondola, which she called 'my last remaining joy'. But she was rich enough to attract, like flies to the honeypot, lots of disreputable and interesting people. And she was rich enough to buy quite a few lovely things she wanted: husbands, lovers, houses, and, most of all, art.<br /><br />'The young ladies of this country have a dreadfully poky time of it, so far as I can learn; I don’t see why I should change my habits for THEM.' - Daisy Miller.</p><p>Peggy Guggenheim took a long hard look at the life that lay ahead of her as a proper young lady from one of New York's most prominent families and said, not for me thanks very much! She was determined not to have a poky time of it. So imagine this Daisy Miller, all grown up, with a highly developed taste for sensuality and sex, and a passion for artists and art. She's smarter than anyone gives her credit for. She dresses well. She gets involved with dreadful men, most of whom beat her and all of whom take her money and abuse her, behind her back as well as to her face. Here she is speaking of her first husband, the dilettante, Laurence Vail: 'But what I hated most was being knocked down in the streets, or having things thrown in restaurants. Once he held me down under water in the bathtub until I felt I was going to drown.' And here of her second husband, the artist Max Ernst: 'Max began beating me violently, and Marcel looked on with his usual detached air...' Marcel is Marcel Duchamp, a close friend and confidant, briefly a lover as well, and one of the very few who seems to have appreciated her. You may be familiar with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QL6KgbrGSKQ" target="_blank">the little ditty</a> apropos of the much married Alma Mahler (that's Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel), also the sometime lover and/or muse to Alexander Zemlinsky, Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka... Tom Lehrer was inspired by what he called 'the juiciest, spiciest, raciest obituary it has ever been my pleasure to read'. But seriously, Alma was a fairly boring person next to Peggy. Alma was a beautiful woman who slept with a lot of talented men. Which is cool, and sounds like it was fun. But Peggy's list of friends, lovers and acquaintances takes it to a whole new level. Who else could possibly unite Kenneth MacPherson, Emma Goldman and Samuel Beckett? Peggy never considered herself beautiful, but photos show a striking woman, tall and shapely, with rich dark hair and an overabundance of vitality. Having taught herself as much as she could from the study of Roman frescoes, she persuaded Vail to make love to her before they were married, and in her eagerness feared she had put him off. 'I think Laurence had a pretty tough time because I demanded everything I had seen depicted in the Pompeian frescoes.' Judging by the level of sheer craziness in her lovelife, she certainly inspired passion on an operatic scale. </p><p>But Peggy was so much more than a tearaway rich girl and Kultur courtisane (pace Alma!). She had vision. She longed to do something striking and original with her money, and with her life. She had the genius to put together all the things she had bought, all the things she had loved, and to make of them something so much more than the sum of their parts. This is the <a href="https://www.guggenheim-venice.it/en/the-museum/" target="_blank">Peggy Guggenheim Collection</a>, one of the most magical small museums in the world. It's in Venice, of course, on the Grand Canal. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8NvkRH1sssHhJsARlSeO9Y1TGHxB40Zv8m2UoFHOYx4j1YSLnQjEFZJxk2NXxwOQNO_dKWieHjoipRXtYshR-73q2bW0XttO2ibOhc8lQti8UbShQG3nct7JdOlEXXbl9RH4taMSrkss/s1385/24129366_88b1f6293b_h.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="739" data-original-width="1385" height="342" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8NvkRH1sssHhJsARlSeO9Y1TGHxB40Zv8m2UoFHOYx4j1YSLnQjEFZJxk2NXxwOQNO_dKWieHjoipRXtYshR-73q2bW0XttO2ibOhc8lQti8UbShQG3nct7JdOlEXXbl9RH4taMSrkss/w640-h342/24129366_88b1f6293b_h.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p>Peggy Guggenheim, a real life Jamesian heroine, didn't die tastefully off-stage in her youth like poor little Daisy and poor little Millie. She didn't take refuge in domesticity and the elaborate deceptions of conjugal bliss like the Princess, Maggie Verver. But perhaps she gives us some idea of what might have happened to Isabel Archer after the book ends, that is if Isabel Archer is as original and brilliant as James says she is. See her now, with all her beautiful coloured drops, and all her lovely American innocence intact, able to strike the authentic tone. She wanders around Europe - Paris, Rome, London, Capri, Venice, the south of France, doing exactly as she likes, and paying for it. She befriends and fucks and patronises like a golden goddess. She suffers intolerable tragedies, including the death of her wayward, beautiful artist daughter by suicide. She drifts the quiet back canals of Venice at sunset, 'past warehouses and closed shops and rats and floating garbage', <a href="https://www.vogue.co.uk/gallery/peggy-guggenheim-style" target="_blank">dressed fantastically</a> because 'in this fantastic city only fantastic clothes should be worn'. She puts together a world-beating art collection in a dazzling palazzo in the most dazzling city in the world. And then she writes her memoirs. How much would you give <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Out-This-Century-Confessions-Addict/dp/0233005528/ref=pd_lpo_14_t_0/262-1214968-5294411?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0233005528&pd_rd_r=2562335c-cad6-4573-a181-b9414ac5f66e&pd_rd_w=ECyCu&pd_rd_wg=vUZHS&pf_rd_p=3366510f-1771-44b5-99e2-20c1889506ac&pf_rd_r=DYY67NH1PZTPF4V1S6Q9&psc=1&refRID=DYY67NH1PZTPF4V1S6Q9" target="_blank">to read them</a>? </p><p>*</p><p>Images: Portrait of Ena Wertheimer, <i>A Vele Gonfie</i>, by John Singer Sargent; Portrait of Peggy Guggenheim, 1913; <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/stanbury/24129366" target="_blank">The Peggy Guggenheim Museum, Venice, by Howard Stanbury</a> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/" target="_blank">CC 2.0</a></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Copyright © Grace Andreacchi</div>Grace Andreacchihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08700993085214709393noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8876206268057902489.post-20449394240074356622021-03-15T17:25:00.007+00:002024-02-16T15:01:35.626+00:00Rilke's Terrible Angels<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbQL9vDTFhm1flP6CB-jGpNh3txb3y5du9ZngkpeB0ZbJLsoIurPp7ALbKgbV43aiLIBQYJSTM2rD4picaXla3m5z7M6kQi61Lk9nrGehZy6Lkx2Nubfac2zyTmvrXTSdv-sLJz2S3kZM/s1024/1541519956_19f098a042_b.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="684" data-original-width="1024" height="429" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbQL9vDTFhm1flP6CB-jGpNh3txb3y5du9ZngkpeB0ZbJLsoIurPp7ALbKgbV43aiLIBQYJSTM2rD4picaXla3m5z7M6kQi61Lk9nrGehZy6Lkx2Nubfac2zyTmvrXTSdv-sLJz2S3kZM/w640-h429/1541519956_19f098a042_b.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><br />DUINO ELEGY NO. 1<div>[extract] <br /><br />Who, if I cried out, would hear me now <br />among the Orders of Angels? And even should one <br />suddenly hold me to his heart: how I'd perish beneath <br />that mighty Being. For what is beauty but <br />the beginning of terror, almost unbearable, <br />still we long for it so, as it turns lazy eyes upon us, <br />forbears to destroy us. Every Angel is terrible. <br />So I stop myself, choke down this birdsong <br />of blackened sobbing. Ah but whom then shall we call <br />in the hour of need? Angels? No. People? No. <br />And the clever beasts can see <br />that we're not much at home <br />here in the world we have made. <br /><br />*<div><br /> From Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegy No. 1, translation © by Grace Andreacchi<div>This translation forms part of 'Angel', a continuing collaboration with <a href="https://www.operaatelier.com/" target="_blank">Opera Atelier, Toronto</a> and composer <a href="http://www.edwinhuizinga.com/#" target="_blank">Edwin Huizinga</a>. </div><div><br /></div><div>*</div><div><br /></div><div>Rilke has a thing about angels. He claims one of them spoke to him out of the stormy tempest, one dark night when he was out wandering upon the walls of his borrowed castle, as one does. His angels are not recognisably a part of the Christian tradition, but seem to reach back to something altogether more primal, more terrible. Some have taken issue with the use of 'terrible' in English to stand in for 'schrecklich': that which 'erschreckt', terrifies, amazes, fills with fear and awe. But this is precisely the older meaning of the word 'terrible', as found, for example, in that inexhaustable font of splendid usage, the King James Bible. <br /><br />Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible. Daniel 2:31<br /><br />The Lord thy God is among you, a mighty God and terrible. Deut.7.<br /><br />Let them praise thy great and terrible name, for it is holy. Ps.99.<br /><br />And so on. I like the way 'terrible' plunges us into the archaic world of 'men and angels', and mirrors quite accurately Rilke's use of 'schrecklich', which has also acquired a very similar common currency in modern colloquial German as meaning 'just awful' in a banal sort of way. Rilke's angels are definitely not <i>that</i> kind of schrecklich, nor that kind of terrible. This little hill is, at the moment, one on which I'm prepared to die.<br /><br />Moving on. He does go on and on about those angels. The Duino Elegies are not short. Perhaps, not unlike another famous poetic text featuring a cast of the supernatural, no one has ever wished it longer. Both feature an idiosyncratic use of language, and a less than orthodox approach to angels, good and bad. The second elegy begins thus:<br /><br />Every angel is terrible. And yet, woe is mine,<br />I sing to you, near deadly birds of the soul...<br /><br />Which seems pretty unequivocal. It was this second elegy that partly inspired my own 'Angels Over Berlin', a poem that attempts to describe the experience of an altogether kinder, gentler angel. I speak here from experience! Nowadays I tend to find my encounters with angels limited to the four footed, soft and furry variety. Wild and free spirits they are too, but by no means terrible, in either sense of the word. May good angels watch over us all.</div><div> <br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_gH7maNbOdA" width="320" youtube-src-id="_gH7maNbOdA"></iframe></div></div></div><br /><div><br /></div><div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Image: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/buou/1541519956/in/photostream/" target="_blank">Tadao Ando, Church of the Light, Osaka, by Chris HE</a>, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/" target="_blank">CC</a> via flickr</div><div><br /> </div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Copyright © Grace Andreacchi</div>Grace Andreacchihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08700993085214709393noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8876206268057902489.post-88630774372921234902020-10-02T20:37:00.018+01:002022-07-11T12:29:48.957+01:00The Wonderful World of Free Audiobooks<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzLPjCwRlxHXRd25Xe_jciikNMfA6JIJJO1kYoP5fbn71Ed_6AUm5r977oOxhGUM6A_anXoHqb_8C4PiffzaHfb9plbDPcbbyV_yk229b9JyFA54IgBsp8LezaCl3U92jWcaY58F7DsKs/s493/rackham.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="493" data-original-width="400" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzLPjCwRlxHXRd25Xe_jciikNMfA6JIJJO1kYoP5fbn71Ed_6AUm5r977oOxhGUM6A_anXoHqb_8C4PiffzaHfb9plbDPcbbyV_yk229b9JyFA54IgBsp8LezaCl3U92jWcaY58F7DsKs/w520-h640/rackham.jpg" width="520" /></a></div><br /> 'Tell me a story...' It's an age old urge, to snuggle down by the fireside or under the duvet or perhaps just at the kitchen table and listen to a tale well told. Now, more than ever, as the nights are drawing in, and the world is in even more than its usual turmoil, the time is right for listening. And, fortunately, some of the best things in life really are free. Librivox is an Aladdin's cave, filled to overflowing with jewels, some mere paste to be sure, but many the genuine article. <p></p><p>I take great pleasure in the way the internet has made it possible for me to make my own work <a href="https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/andromachebooks" target="_blank">available for free</a> to readers everywhere, and I wonder sometimes why more people don't share my enthusiam. But the folks at Librivox clearly do. Audible is out there too, but if you'd rather not give Mr. Bezos even more of your money, here is a list of some of the very best free recordings I've found. Some of the readers are trained actors, some are not, but all are splendidly on show in these superb renditions. There are also many fine recordings available on youtube, including many from Librivox, and others that shouldn't really be on there (copyright issues!) so I'm certainly not going to list those here. If you enjoy a touch of old-fashioned fantasy, <a href="http://thewelltoldtale.buzzsprout.com/" target="_blank">The Well Told Tale</a> is a lot of fun. Robert reads these stories with just the right degree of fun and fantasy.</p><p>So here you have my Librivox picks. I'm sure there are many others equally fine, and you can have fun hunting them down, like violets in a mossy wood.</p><p><a href="https://librivox.org/vanity-fair-version-2-by-william-makepeace-thackeray/" target="_blank">Vanity Fair</a> - read by Helen Taylor. I've always been a big admirer of Becky Sharpe. She takes no shit from anybody, and she's out there on her own, a girl of eighteen without money or family. She works with what she's got, and what she's got are brains - but in a world where the only careers open to educated women are those of governess (notoriously horrible) or wife. Watch Becky scheme her way to stardom. Helen Taylor reads this perfectly, bringing out every bit of the deliciously black humour.</p><p><a href="https://librivox.org/moby-dick-by-herman-melville" target="_blank">Moby Dick</a> - read by Stewart Wills. A marvelous, slow, thoughtful reading of this weird and marvelous book. Mr. Wills allows himself time to savour the richness and strangeness of Melville's mighty tale. The humour and the philosophizing ring equally true. A wonder.</p><p><a href="https://librivox.org/wuthering-heights-by-emily-bronte-2/" target="_blank">Wuthering Heights</a> - read by Ruth Golding. Wuthering Heights is not an easy book to read. It might so easily degenerate into a crazed melodrama, but in Ruth Golding's capable hands it is pitch perfect. The voices of the different narrators are carefully differentiated - Lockwood's pettiness, Nelly Dean's matter of factness and hard hearted partiality, Cathy's reckless daring, allowing us to grasp all the nuances of the tragedy. A story of traumatic bonding that has lost none of its power.</p><p><a href="https://librivox.org/jane-eyre-version-3-by-charlotte-bronte/" target="_blank">Jane Eyre</a> - read by Elizabeth Klett. Another pitch perfect performance. Elizabeth Klett is a definite Librivox star, and can also be heard reading Edith Wharton, Jane Austen, and even Henry James. Thank you Elizabeth!</p><p><a href="https://librivox.org/a-study-in-scarlet-version-6-by-sir-arthur-conan-doyle/" target="_blank">A Study in Scarlet</a> - read by David Clarke. For something in a lighter vein why not turn to the great detective of Baker Street, Mr. Sherlock Holmes and his perpetual sidekick/love interest (or is he?) Dr. Watson. Something odd in the shrubbery, damsels in distress, telegrams from Lestrade - the game is afoot! David Clarke brings exactly the right vein of pauky humour to these evergreen tales, and he has given us the entire Holmes canon, all but the very weak last set which he wisely eschews. Begin with Scarlet and keep listening all the way through to <a href="https://librivox.org/his-last-bow-version-3-by-sir-arthur-conan-doyle/" target="_blank">His Last Bow</a>.</p><p><a href="https://librivox.org/little-dorrit-by-charles-dickens-2/" target="_blank">Little Dorrit</a> - read by Mil Nicholson. One of Dickens's finest, a tale of prisons of the body and the spirit. Mil Nicholson is a legend, and has recorded most of the Dickens oeuvre. She has the gift of bringing each character to life, in all the fantastic grotesquerie of which Dickens is capable. Unmissable.</p><p><a href="https://librivox.org/david-copperfield-by-charles-dickens-version-2/" target="_blank">David Copperfield</a> - read by Tadgh Hynes. This is the big one that Ms. Nicholson has not recorded, presumably on the wise principle that you can't improve on perfection. I generally prefer an English reader for an English writer, and Mr. Hynes is emphatically not English but Irish. But somehow this works. His beautiful, rich, musical voice has just the right air of pathos for poor little Davy, that hapless fellow, who may or may not be 'the hero' of his own story. I could listen to this every night. Mr. Hynes has also recorded James Joyce and Thomas Hardy, among other delights.</p><p><a href="https://librivox.org/persuasion-by-jane-austen-4/" target="_blank">Persuasion</a> - read by Karen Savage. This is my favourite of all Jane Austen's novels. Anne Elliot is not a girl, but a grown woman, and not even a little bit silly. It's a bit of a 'what if' story. What if the silliness of one of Austen's girlish heroines had in fact prevented her from that fairy tale ending? What would have become of her? Karen Savage has a wonderfully balanced way of reading that works equally well in her children's recordings. And you certainly don't have to be a child to enjoy her version of <a href="https://librivox.org/a-little-princess-by-frances-hodgson-burnett-2/" target="_blank">A Little Princess</a>.</p><p><a href="https://librivox.org/the-golden-bowl-by-henry-james/" target="_blank">The Golden Bowl</a> - read by Lee Ann Howlett. I don't know how many times I've read The Golden Bowl. It's one of those books that only unveils itself to you slowly, over many years, and always seems to have a few more subtle surprises to reveal. A beautiful reading with just the right tone of cool intelligence needed for this material.</p><p><a href="https://librivox.org/treasure-island-by-robert-louis-stevenson-2/" target="_blank">Treasure Island</a> - read by Adrian Praetzellis. Another marvelous reading from another marvelous Brit. Was ever a book written to be read aloud, surely that book is Treasure Island. Mr. Praetzellis is another Librivox star with many titles to his name, including Kipling's <a href="https://librivox.org/kim-by-rudyard-kipling/" target="_blank">Kim</a>. </p><p><a href="https://librivox.org/the-adventures-of-pinocchio-by-carlo-collodi/" target="_blank">Pinocchio</a> - read by Mark F. Smith. Long before Maurice Sendak ever thought of it, the original wild boy and Id personified is surely Pinocchio. Much more than a mere children's story (though children certainly relish it) this is a masterpiece of surrealism avant la lettre. Mark F. Smith is a sheer joy in this, and in many other titles. Or, if you prefer, it's also brilliantly <a href="https://librivox.org/le-avventure-di-pinocchio-by-c-collodi/" target="_blank">read here</a> in the original Italian by Simona.</p><p>Addendum: Librivox is not just for English. If, whether by virtue of good fortune or personal application, you are fluent in more than one language, there are even more fine recordings available. I'll highlight just a few:</p><p><a href="http://librivox.bookdesign.biz/book/110865" target="_blank">Mémoires d'Outre Tombe de Chateaubriand</a> - read by Christiane-Jehanne. A first hand account of the most exciting and terrible events in modern French history, an early example of romantisme, and a vivid window into a vanished world. The reader is sharp, nuanced and very clear.</p><p><a href="https://librivox.bookdesign.biz/book/102821" target="_blank">À la recherche du temps perdu</a> - read by Monique Vincens. Proust's massive epic of sensibility begins here with Du coté de chez Swann. Delicious reading.</p><p><a href="https://librivox.org/anna-karenina-deutsch-by-leo-tolstoy/" target="_blank">Anna Karenina</a> - read by Eva K. (auf deutsch) Possibly the best novel ever written. I find this German reading better than anything available in English. </p><p><a href="https://librivox.org/faust-der-tragodie-erster-teil-by-johann-wolfgang-von-goethe/" target="_blank">Faust</a> - read by redaer. In the mood for some heavy-hitting German Kultur/superb poetry? The modest man who styles himself simply 'redaer' does a fine job here. Discover the price of that very long spoon...</p><p>A big thank you to all these lovely people. The best things in life are free! Hurrah!</p><p>And if you'd like to hear me reading from my own work, both poetry and prose, visit my <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/graceannecatherine" target="_blank">Youtube</a> channel.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HD5tyat_L68" width="320" youtube-src-id="HD5tyat_L68"></iframe></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><p style="text-align: left;">Picture: Satyr Reads to Wood Nymph While Trees Observe, Arthur Rackham, 1923</p><p><br style="text-align: left;" /></p></div><br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">Copyright © Grace Andreacchi</div>Grace Andreacchihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08700993085214709393noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8876206268057902489.post-26154241166169887572020-07-07T17:34:00.002+01:002021-04-18T18:47:54.384+01:00Elena Ferrante's Girl Power<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I didn't want to read Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend. I knew I didn't want to read it because 1) it had a stupid cover and 2) everybody seemed to be reading it. These were very good reasons, based on long experience. But as all good philosophers know, induction is a flawed system. Follow it and you'll be right most of the time, but sooner or later you'll be horribly wrong. I was wrong. Sometimes it's wonderful, being wrong.<br />
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I let myself be intrigued by the reports of the Italian television series. I watched the first episode. It was not at all what I was expecting. (What was I expecting?) I got hold of the book and began to read. It was not at all what I was expecting. I was expecting sentimentality, something lightweight, a bit stupid, the sort of thing derisively albeit deservedly labelled 'chick lit'. This is not chick lit. This is brilliant stuff.<br />
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I have now devoured the entire very long novel, for in fact the four volumes are really one long book. I have read parts of it in Italian and all of it in English. I've found it hard to put down, and I rarely feel that way nowadays. Let me tell you about it.<br />
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First of all, it's not beautifully or brilliantly written. It reminds me a bit of George Eliot, another brilliant woman novelist whose prose often leaves something to be desired. It seems to me that Ferrante actually reads better in English. The translations by Ann Goldstein are largely faithful but I think more graceful than the Italian originals. Still, one is faced with a decent, clear-eyed prose, and the occasional flights into poetry are sometimes, if not always successful. Ok, so you don't go to Ferrante for a fancy prose style. Go to her because she has something to say.<br />
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By God has the woman got something to say! She's got a hell of a lot to say, and she's not afraid to say it. There's a Dickensian sprawl about this epic, and a Dickensian urgency - it really is impossible to put down. She uses the full tool kit, melodrama, fairytale, soap opera, or perhaps one should say good old-fashioned Italian opera. Maidens are seduced, and do a fair amount of seducing. Confidences are betrayed, hearts broken, children hurt, lost, abandoned. Mothers loom, larger than life, dragging their impossible burdens. Villains crush and maim and kill. We hear a lot these days about the female gaze. This is the female gaze, writ large. I want every man in the world to read it. Most of the women have read it already, and need no urging from me.<br />
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Elena Ferrante herself, is, notoriously, not a real person, though obviously a real person or persons wrote these books. I won't join in the game of is she or isn't she, this person or that. Let her enjoy in peace whatever anonymity remains to her. The books really do speak for themselves, as indeed what book does not, for good or for ill? Do we really need to be told, after reading The Brothers Karamazov, that Dostoyevsky was not a nice person?<br />
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For me this Neapolitan Quartet has a particular resonance, for on my father's side I'm pure Italian. I recognise, in the wild cadences of her desperate Neapolitan housewives, those of my own mad Calabrian grandmother. <i>The earth should open up and swallow you! Come here and let me kill you now! </i>So much anger. So much. And lest we think it's any different now, the beautiful, talented, educated and successful Lenù also howls in fury at the impossiblity of life as a woman. Read it and weep. But most of all, read it.<br />
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Photo: Street Art, Napoli, 2010, by Grace Andreacchi<br />
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">Copyright © Grace Andreacchi</div>Grace Andreacchihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08700993085214709393noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8876206268057902489.post-54284541560608328492020-04-03T18:51:00.004+01:002022-12-02T13:50:28.613+00:00Rapunzel, Rapunzel!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4RVjEifjY9n_aM3dN2ehFWWhKYZGVqlHOZzckrWy2y8LDkezTRLWswnx9MsyCmsK_rdxO2iEKtzJerFogTyYGAgWL600Dw8R1YIA68CZsM2ycr6X04S8QZH1JpYKpFktWRsFg-WkcDodtdjhZkFMpU9rmhWhUhSv_JjBQkMqEc45Z2DD69D94bQa_/s836/512px-Arthur_Rackham_Rapunzel.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="836" data-original-width="512" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4RVjEifjY9n_aM3dN2ehFWWhKYZGVqlHOZzckrWy2y8LDkezTRLWswnx9MsyCmsK_rdxO2iEKtzJerFogTyYGAgWL600Dw8R1YIA68CZsM2ycr6X04S8QZH1JpYKpFktWRsFg-WkcDodtdjhZkFMpU9rmhWhUhSv_JjBQkMqEc45Z2DD69D94bQa_/w392-h640/512px-Arthur_Rackham_Rapunzel.jpg" width="392" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>
With something like half the world locked up at the moment thanks to a rogue virus, it seems like a good time to remember Rapunzel, the original Princess in the Tower. She doesn’t start out as a princess, but as the unfortunate child of poor peasants. Her mother, heavy with child and clearly under some kind of spell, becomes desperate for the rampion that grows in the garden of a powerful witch. Without this rampion she’s sure to die. The child is promised to the witch in return for the rampion, and no sooner is she born than said witch appears to claim her prize. She locks Rapunzel up in a tower and doesn’t seem to ever mean to let her out. But Rapunzel does get out in the end, as everybody knows, and we will too, no doubt.<div><br /></div><div><a href="https://crashtestddummy.blogspot.com/2022/12/rapunzel.html" target="_blank">Read my poem about Rapunzel here. </a><br />
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Another princess locked up in a tower was Maid Maleen. She made the mistake of refusing to marry the man chosen by her father, preferring a certain handsome prince instead. This got her locked up for seven years in a tower whose walls were so thick she had no idea of the world outside. When at last she emerges, having prised loose a stone with a breadknife, she finds the kingdom in ruins and no sign of her evil father or anyone she used to know. Eventually she becomes a kitchen maid at the court of her old love, the handsome prince, and it all turns out well in the end. <br />
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May it be so for all of us! Meanwhile, it's as well to remember, in the midst of all the hype and hysteria, as well as the genuine suffering and dread, that some of those who succumb - well - how shall I put it? They never will be missed. I don't know about you, but I've definitely got a little list.</div>
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Picture: Illustration to Rapunzel, The Brothers Grimm, by Arthur Rackham, 1909<br />
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</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Copyright © Grace Andreacchi</div>Grace Andreacchihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08700993085214709393noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8876206268057902489.post-65509278823329245882019-12-04T17:00:00.000+00:002019-12-04T17:08:15.166+00:00Our Mutual Friend: Dickens' Surrealistic Pillow Book<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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There isn’t anything quite like <i>Our Mutual Friend</i>, Charles Dickens’ last completed novel. A masterpiece of surrealism avant la lettre, it behaves like the crazed lovechild of Gogol and Georges Bataille. The invisible narrator, who inhabits a permanent state of rage, attacks everything and everybody from the highest to the lowest with equal ferocity. The eponymous hero is, for all practical purposes, another invisible man. Having been fished dead from the river at the start of the action, he chooses to remain so for the rest of the book, only reclaiming his place among the living at the final hour. One heroine is in a bizarre incestuous relationship with her father, another inspires a vicious murder, while a third, the most interesting of all, is a crippled child with a deformed mind and a box full of talking dolls. And then there’s Mr. Venus, the amorous articulator of bones human and animal, who keeps a shop full of re-animated corpses. We have travelled a very long way from the Dickens of ‘God bless us, every one’, even from the self incriminations of <i>Great Expectations</i>. <i>Our Mutual Friend</i> makes a wonderful antidote to the spirit of too much Christmas, be it past, present, or to come. If you haven’t read it, you should. <br />
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Photo: Victorian street child</div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">Copyright © Grace Andreacchi</div>Grace Andreacchihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08700993085214709393noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8876206268057902489.post-74355083189567193302019-07-20T09:00:00.000+01:002019-07-20T18:49:58.028+01:00Voyage to the Moon<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglt2bbKHUeAvSr85xQyx1Nn_DnCbNvFbZrXAOIBq1F_YXHiNL64zL7B6tJ5doHoyb8RXqMBEW3ajk_E5fS9u9CqtBj0Jg9EKZ7YeRjMDJW8S84eHnoLBpywhpjnz9ZOoV7698xnl6kavs/s1600-h/voyage+to+the+moon.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" height="640" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5359445447020827058" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglt2bbKHUeAvSr85xQyx1Nn_DnCbNvFbZrXAOIBq1F_YXHiNL64zL7B6tJ5doHoyb8RXqMBEW3ajk_E5fS9u9CqtBj0Jg9EKZ7YeRjMDJW8S84eHnoLBpywhpjnz9ZOoV7698xnl6kavs/s400/voyage+to+the+moon.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" width="640" /></a>Nobody who was there will ever forget it - the day men walked on the moon. Mere poetry is inadequate to express the enormity, the wonder of it. Fifty years ago I was a fourteen-year-old girl. I sat with my family round a small black-and-white TV set in the little cabin where we spent the summer months, as together with all the world we watched the first steps of men on the moon. Ghostly figures they were, in their ungainly suits, bouncing like happy bunny rabbits across the screen. <span style="font-style: italic;">They are on the moon... </span>Later I went outside and stood on a sand bluff looking up at the moon shining there in the sky as if nothing unusual were happening at all. And yet there were people on it now! The silver goddess had opened her arms to welcome these audacious sons of men. And fifty years later it doesn't really matter that there was nothing up there after all, that we found only rocks and dust and desolation - all that matters is the voyage itself. We came in peace for all mankind.<br />
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Much poetry has been written about the moon - poetry of all ages and peoples. From the earliest days of mankind to the present, her bright face and silvery light have inspired us to dreaming. But in this instance, I turn to the words of the men who made it there and back, culled from the <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/home/index.html" target="_blank">NASA Mission Transcripts</a>. For another take, this time from the ground crew, see <a href="https://crashtestddummy.blogspot.com/2019/07/apollo-11-mission_20.html" target="_blank">HERE</a>.<br />
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APOLLO 11 – VOYAGE TO THE MOON<br />
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It just feels like we're going around upside down<br />
Focus is on infinity<br />
Jesus Christ, look at that horizon!<br />
Isn't that something?<br />
God damn, that's pretty; it's unreal.<br />
Get a picture of that.<br />
Ooh, sure, I will. I've lost a Hasselblad ....<br />
Has anybody seen a Hasselblad floating by? <br />
It couldn't have gone very far – <br />
big son of a gun like that.<br />
Trees and a forest down there<br />
it looks like trees and a forest or something<br />
Looks like snow and trees. <br />
Fantastic. I have no conception of where<br />
we're pointed or which way we're going <br />
or a crapping thing, but it's a beautiful <br />
low pressure cell out here.<br />
Yes, I didn't know when the hell we were airborne<br />
I just took his word for it. It was sure shaking,<br />
rattling, and rolling, son of a bitch!<br />
Boy, look at that ... crater<br />
Hope none of those meteors come by right now<br />
Well, where's the freaking earth going to be now?<br />
I 'm confused.<br />
God, look at that moon l<br />
Fantastic. Look back there behind us<br />
sure looks like a gigantic crater<br />
Look at the mountains going around it<br />
My gosh, they're monsters<br />
Yes, there's a moose down here you <br />
Just wouldn't believe. <br />
Yes, there's a big mother over here, too.<br />
Come on now, Buzz,<br />
don't refer to them as big mothers<br />
Give them some scientific name.<br />
It sure looks like a lot of them have slumped down.<br />
A slumping big mother.<br />
Hmm - here comes the moon.<br />
Really beautiful.<br />
Hey, you-<br />
I wonder where we are.<br />
We're going to stop here pretty soon, right?<br />
Boy, there must be nothing more desolate <br />
than to be inside some of these small craters<br />
these conical ones<br />
People that live in there probably never get out.<br />
Boy, look at that big mother coming up there.<br />
Looks like we're heading for – <br />
... over the horizon.<br />
Oh, that is weird – <br />
that crazy moon out there again, huh?<br />
Funny-looking thing.<br />
Doesn't it look like some of these crater walls<br />
had scallops inside like a design in a fan – <br />
like feathers<br />
Seashells<br />
Like seashells - very pretty, very symmetrical.<br />
Where the hell is the horizon with the world coming<br />
over it? I guess it's behind us, huh?<br />
Houston, Columbia. Do you read?<br />
Sure seems like we're going the wrong way.<br />
Coming down already.<br />
And, one thing I'd appreciate if you could - see<br />
if you could - find the -<br />
What?<br />
The map.<br />
Hear that, too, huh?<br />
Sounds like wind whipping around the trees.<br />
40 feet, down at 30 . . . down at 15 . . . <br />
400 feet down at 9 . . . forward . . . <br />
350 feet down at 4 . . . <br />
300 feet down 3 1/2 . . . <br />
47 forward . . . 1 1/2 down . . . 13 forward . . . <br />
11 forward? coming down nicely . . . <br />
200 feet, 4 1/2 down . . . <br />
5 1/2 down . . . 5 percent . . . <br />
75 feet . . . 6 forward . . . <br />
lights on . . . down 2 1/2 . . . <br />
40 feet? down 2 ½ kicking up some dust . . . <br />
30 feet, 2 1/2 down . . . faint shadow . . . <br />
4 forward . . . 4 forward . . . <br />
drifting to right a little . . . O.K. . . .<br />
Houston - Tranquility Base here. <br />
THE EAGLE HAS LANDED.<br />
Look at that, would you? Look at that.<br />
Isn't that beautiful?<br />
Pretty good.<br />
A thing of beauty is a Joy forever.<br />
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Words taken from the <a href="http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/mission_trans/apollo11.htm" target="_blank">NASA Onboard Voice Transcription</a></div>
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For another 'found'poem', based on the words of the Apollo 11 Ground Crew see <a href="https://crashtestddummy.blogspot.com/2019/07/apollo-11-mission_20.html" target="_blank">HERE</a></div>
Picture: from <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZV-t3KzTpw" target="_blank">Le voyage dans la Lune, Georges Méliès, 1902</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZV-t3KzTpw" target="_blank"><span style="border-collapse: separate; color: #ffcc99; font-family: "arial"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"></span></a><div class="blogger-post-footer">Copyright © Grace Andreacchi</div>Grace Andreacchihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08700993085214709393noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8876206268057902489.post-73896392062949317462019-02-08T20:04:00.000+00:002019-03-06T16:59:49.502+00:00Brantwood - Notes on the Lake District<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The long and eventful life of John Ruskin, writer, critical genius, prophet in his own country, began two hundred years ago on the 8th of February, 1819. Truly an occasion to celebrate! I draw the reader's attention to what promises to be a fascinating exhibition at Two Temple Place, <a href="https://twotempleplace.org/exhibitions/john-ruskin/">John Ruskin, the Power of Seeing</a>. My own thoughts on my beloved 'Papa John' can be found <a href="https://graceandreacchi.blogspot.com/search/label/John%20Ruskin">here</a>. Below a few notes I made on visiting his home at Brantwood. <a href="https://crashtestddummy.blogspot.com/2019/02/two-poems-for-john-ruskin.html" target="_blank">Two Poems</a> in his honour were also inspired by this journey.<br />
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I. On the road. <br />
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Today we drove through much country to the north and west, then south to Furness. A never-ending spectacle of soft and bright variegated hills, infinitely delicate in their colouring, infinitely varied in their softly moulded shapes. A hair-raising climb up the Honister Pass, all slate and scree in driving rain, gave way to a rose-gold fairyland as we crossed over to Derwentwater. The lake not so much blue as purple rose in the trembling light. As rain and sun alternate with one another constantly, as clouds shift and re-shift overhead, the landscape is dappled with light and shade in ever-changing patterns – here a hillside glowing golden orange and porphyry, there a neighbouring hillside plunged in blackest shadow. <br />
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II. Coniston <br />
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The small town is dominated by a great rearing head of volcanic rock known as ‘the Old man of the Mountain’. From a distance the hills are intensely coloured – russet with great golden slashes of wild gorse , purple bracken, mossy green, chocolate , lavender and black – very black at the summits drifting in and out of white mist. I followed the course of a little waterfall, perhaps five feet across at the widest part, but moving very fast, the water clear and smooth as glass, tumbling over black slate stones. In a desolate high hollow of the hill are the ruins of the old copper mine – a few tall heaps of slag and a lonely house that must once have served as a shelter for the mine workers. It’s set so far back into the hill that both the town and the lake are invisible. Cut off from the world, a dark place, and somehow terrible. <br />
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Viewed from above, the slate-coloured town nestles firmly in its niche beside the lake, very much a part of the landscape. The birds were singing like mad, and all the streams full and gushing. Even much of the footpath uphill was covered over with running water about an inch deep, despite the numerous devices in place to drain it away. The long, slow spring twilight set in as I began my descent, the lake appeared dark as slate and a cold, high wind was blowing. <br />
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I stayed in an old farm house, painted white and with massive slate floors worn smooth with age. A pair of pure white doves were fluttering in the garden. The landlady’s family came to this area four hundred years ago to work the copper mines, having previously been employed as tin miners in Cornwall. Thus she thought of herself as an ‘outsider’! I saw many sheep grazing on the mountain, even very high up, and many lambs as well, some with shaggy coats and curly horns, others very neat, with black faces and trim black legs like can-can girls. Many of the smallest lambs were completely black. There are a few cattle here as well, mostly russet with great broad faces, and a few of the classic ‘black and whites’. The view from my bedroom window includes a very small calf, no bigger than a dog, and soft brown all over. <br />
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III. Brantwood <br />
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When I crossed the threshold at Brantwood and stood in the entry hall with its slate blue walls, Ruskin's drawings on the walls and silvery waterfall just outside the door, a lump came in my throat and tears in my eyes – he was that close. The house and setting are very beautiful but somehow terribly melancholy – how could it be otherwise? The spirit of my beloved ‘Papa John’ Ruskin is everywhere to be felt here. Most especially in the large, light dining room which he designed himself, complete with a seven bay Venetian window which manages to achieve something of the aspect of a piano nobile transported to the frozen north. The windows look out onto the lake, which must do service for the Canal Grande but alas, senza palazzi! The wild scenery could not be more different from that quintessentially civilised blue lagoon, and the contrast between these two holds a mirror to Ruskin’s own split soul and divided loyalties. It is nonetheless a superb room – high and well proportioned, exquisitely lit with the pale blue ethereal light off the lake. Ruskin turned his hand to practically everything here, and it is wonderful to see how his genius, so well known to me through words and drawings, expresses itself with comparable eloquence in everything here. For example a design for wallpaper: taken from a bit of Italian renaissance drapery, a scrap of negligent loveliness upon the sleeve of a bending figure, perhaps a High Priest. The paper shows bright blue diamond-figured patterns on an ivory ground accented with flecks of scarlet. Most of this paper would have been covered with his innumerable paintings, though! <br />
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His genius also expresses itself in the many additions: a new coach house, graceful and elegant; an extraordinary coach with ‘secret compartments’ that must have recalled childhood journeys across the Alps and those first glimpses of a world beyond the narrow confines of Britain; a bright blue skiff with a white wave pattern painted along the side. He even designed the fire shovel, a veritable pattern in domestic ironmongery in the yet-to-be born Bauhaus style! (The joiner’s cottage, of the same who made the coach, lies directly beside the house in which I am staying, still in the same family, still in the same business, with a row of wooden doors for sale in the yard.) <br />
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The walls are hung with a fine selection of his drawings and watercolours – rocks, trees, plants and flowers, Venice and the Alps, Coniston and the lake... and the lovely portrait of poor little Rosie LaTouche with a garland of wild roses in her hair. At Brantwood wild roses, his secret symbol for Rose, are everywhere. The gilded picture frames in his bedroom that once held his favourite Turners (and now hold prints of the same) were designed by Ruskin as wild roses entwined. In his own favourite garden, a secretive place high on a hill, the same wild roses grow upon the low trellised walls that enclose it – he would have been surrounded and enfolded by them here. Several of his drawings also show the wild rose, alone, or in a landscape. <br />
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His study, on the ground floor, is a bit grim, as rooms in old houses can sometimes be. It has a fine view of the lake but is dark, a bit close, and smells dreadfully of damp. It must have been freezing most of the year. There’s an odd, perhaps somewhat random collection of Ruskin’s old books, everything from ‘Arabian Nights’ to ‘Rogers’ Italy’ to the minor Greek poets, and curio cabinets full of, well, ‘curios’, mostly rocks and seashells, mostly in a jumble. <br />
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Last of all I dared mount to the bedroom, which is ghostly indeed, with its famous turret (a Ruskinian addition ça va sans dire) where he used to sit for hours looking out at the lake once illness and sadness had overwhelmed him. It’s built in the form of a broad octagonal platform, glass-paned round about, and you are like a bird in its nest there, or perched high on the mast of a ship at sea. What strange thoughts must have visited him here, the man who once said ‘Never, if you can help it, miss seeing the sunset and the dawn. And never, if you can help it, see anything but dreams between them.’ Not many sunsets, nor many dawns, I fear, in this rainy country, and as for dreams – what shattering nightmares attended upon him here, in this little room! This modest little room – it looks such a simple place to have witnessed such horror. After his first serious breakdown in this house he moved his sleeping quarters to a smaller bedroom across the landing. It seems what he had suffered here made the room unbearable to him, although he continued to use the turret. But how much more suffering was to come! Poor Papa John – how much more. I briefly touch the knob of his mahogany bedstead, which once troubled him in his deluded fantasies. <br />
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The whole house is constantly murmuring with the sound of rushing water, which falls in channelled rivulets from the rocky hills above, a thousand tiny waterfalls of quicksilver. One hears as well the constant lapping of the lake upon the shore, and these perpetual watery sounds are another reminder of Venice. Lying in bed at night, eyes closed in the darkened room, the sounds would be familiar yet different, like the view from the dining room through ‘gothic’ windows – the same but not the same, a Venice made in a magic mirror, transplanted, altered, an illusion that almost works but it the end eludes you. <br />
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The sound of birdsong is everywhere, so many sweet calls, twitters, replies, echoing around the house and through the gardens. And then there’s the sound of the wind in the trees, a swift rustling as if someone were running up the path to meet you, but there is no one... <br />
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The gardens are so very beautiful! Wildly beautiful rather than tamed or civilised, set among the woods and the hard slate hills. There’s a riot of bloom this time of year – you approach the house through a forest of towering azaleas – yellow, orange and fiery pink, and absolutely reeking with perfume. Then the softer apple blossom, the dark, silky red maples, and, best of all, high in the wooded hills, a whole cloud of bluebells like a quivering blue veil cast upon the ground. In the cups of the leaves were crystal drops left by the rain, no mere poetic conceit but actual crystal drops, in appearance prismatic and hard as glass, but dissolving at a touch to dew. The streams run quick among the hills, very fine between steep banks of blackest slate. There’s an odd sort of ‘chair’ made from great slabs of stone where Ruskin used to sit. I tried it and found it hardly congenial! I feel how sad he was here. It’s a hidden place, where a wounded man might hide. <br />
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The whole effect of the house, of its furnishings and gardens, is one of great taste and great simplicity. All the more remarkable when one remembers the Victorian fashion for copious adornment, and moreover, that Ruskin was a very wealthy man. It is a much simpler place than I’d imagined it, indeed, the study, which I’d pictured as something rather grandiose – a fit setting from which my sage Papa would pontificate – isn’t grand at all but low-ceilinged, homey, a bit cramped. The uncompromising, unselfconscious modesty of all his arrangements gives a rare insight into his character, especially as he often accuses himself of being ‘soft’. <br />
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Poor Papa John! For all its loveliness I think it would make one sad to live here. It’s so cold and gloomy, and the hills don’t look very friendly. I think my poor Papa ought to have retired to Italy. I can imagine a whole alternative existence for him: Instead of freezing to death and going mad among these sodden hills, he moves to Italy, Naples perhaps, or even Sicily, takes an exquisite twelve-year-old bride, and spends his declining years roaming the sun-drenched hills and writing up the local mineralogy. But I suppose it would never do... <br />
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In the churchyard at Coniston I find his grave. There’s a very lovely cross in stone, unostentatious, and beautifully carved with symbols of his life’s many works: the Angel of ‘Fors’, the Lion of San Marco, the wild rose... the whole the work of the loyal Collingwood, who lived close at hand. I left a sprig of wild lilac and said a prayer – May he rest in peace at last.<br />
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I visited Brantwood in May 2006.<br />
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For fiction and poetry inspired by John Ruskin <a href="https://crashtestddummy.blogspot.com/search/label/John%20Ruskin" target="_blank">see here</a><br />
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Picture: Brantwood from the edge of Coniston Water, John Ruskin 1871.<br />
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">Copyright © Grace Andreacchi</div>Grace Andreacchihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08700993085214709393noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8876206268057902489.post-35476825651041326742018-12-24T18:26:00.000+00:002019-01-07T17:09:51.833+00:00Rilke - The Annunciation to Mary<br />
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Just in time for Christmas, here is a fresh new translation of Rainer Maria Rilke's 'Mariae Verkündigung' or Annunciation to Mary, from his poem cycle Das Maria-Leben (The Life of Mary). Particularly intrigued by Rilke's odd story of the unicorn's origin in this poem, I've chosen an equally odd illustration - not Mary (with or without Angel) but Raphael's mysterious Lady with the Unicorn. Now everybody knows the unicorn can only be caught by a pure virgin, although what business anybody has catching one at all remains unclear. Thus a lady with a unicorn was showing a kind of guarantee of chastity. (The picture may well be a wedding portrait, for this very reason.) Mary was sometimes depicted with a unicorn, particularly in medieval Germany, but I can find no basis for Rilke's story, which makes her actually, as it were, the unicorn's father. The German word 'zeugen' means to seed, and is the word used for male fertilization of the female. A curiously feminist idea, and one I rather like. Think about it... The picture hangs in the Galleria Borghese, where I had the privilege of encountering the lady's cool gaze several times during my recent sojourn in Rome. It's quite a small picture, and not much regarded, hanging, as it does in a room full of larger, even more glorious things. They don't call it the Eternal City for nothing. </div>
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ANNUNCIATION TO MARY</div>
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Not that an angel entered (note it well),<o:p></o:p></div>
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frightened her. As little as to others when</div>
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a sunbeam or the moon by night<o:p></o:p></div>
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stealing into their room are startled at the sight<o:p></o:p></div>
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so little feared she the form <o:p></o:p></div>
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barely guessed the heaviness of place<o:p></o:p></div>
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to an Angel (Oh if we knew<o:p></o:p></div>
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how pure she was. Did not once a doe<o:p></o:p></div>
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resting there in the wood, catch her eye,<o:p></o:p></div>
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and in that eye lost itself to her so,<o:p></o:p></div>
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without a mate the unicorn was made,<o:p></o:p></div>
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the beast of light – the pure beast.)<o:p></o:p></div>
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Not, that he entered but that he bent<o:p></o:p></div>
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so close his youthful face <o:p></o:p></div>
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his look and hers so suddenly collide<o:p></o:p></div>
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the world outside is rent - now emptied of its all.<o:p></o:p></div>
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What millions saw and did and had to bear<o:p></o:p></div>
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pressed deep inside this pair - Just she and he<o:p></o:p></div>
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The Seeing and the Seen, the Eye and Eye’s Delight<o:p></o:p></div>
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Alone in this place alone – that fright -<o:p></o:p></div>
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That frightened both of them.<o:p></o:p></div>
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And then the Angel sang his melody.<o:p></o:p></div>
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- Rainer Maria Rilke, (translation © by Grace Andreacchi )</div>
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<a href="http://rainer-maria-rilke.de/10a003mariaeverkuendigung.html" target="_blank">German text</a><br />
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For my translation of another Rilke poem on the Annunciation see <a href="https://graceandreacchi.blogspot.com/2009/03/annunciation.html" target="_blank">HERE</a><br />
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These translations are part of the multi-disciplinary project <i>The Angel Speaks</i>, a production of <a href="https://operaatelier.com/" target="_blank">Opera Atelier</a>, Toronto. The next performance is on 21 February - tickets <a href="https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/opera-ateliers-the-angel-speaks-tickets-51758000573?aff=ebdssbdestsearch" target="_blank">HERE</a><br />
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The Angel Speaks at l'Opéra Royal, Palais de Versailles, Photo: Bruce Zinger</div>
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Picture: The Lady with the Unicorn, Raffaello Sanzio, circa 1505-6<div class="blogger-post-footer">Copyright © Grace Andreacchi</div>Grace Andreacchihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08700993085214709393noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8876206268057902489.post-42750223153720774992018-09-09T17:42:00.000+01:002018-09-10T14:15:37.579+01:00Literary Mothers<br />
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Many years ago in a rare interview I was asked which writers had influenced me the most. I brought out a list, fairly meaningless, more or less of writers I had enjoyed reading. I didn't even stop to reflect at the time that all of them were men. Can this be true? Were the writers who influenced me the most all men? I ask myself that question now, older and at least a little bit wiser, more self aware, more secure, and I see how wrong it is.<br />
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I have been influenced by so many writers, good bad and indifferent or middling, and men and women both figure here. And certainly the great 'canonical' male writers are and always have been important, influential for all of humanity. But what about those women? Because one of the things I've grown to appreciate more fully as I grow older is just how much men dominate every conversation. One grows so weary of the endless masculine point of view on absolutely everything! Women's voices may not be as loud, but they are out there and they are shaping us and making us, as surely as our bodily mothers have done.<br />
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Thinking back, I can see that my own delight in reading began with books by women. Laura Ingalls Wilder, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Dorothy Canfield Fisher of <i>Understood Betsy</i>, Kate Douglas Wiggin of <i>Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm</i>, and Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne books - these are the treasures I discovered for myself, browsing the dusty shelves of the New York City Public Library, Inwood Branch. They were big substantial hardbacks, library editions no doubt, with cloth covers usually faded blue or pea green, and thick glossy illustrations to pour over. Some of these books comforted me by their truth and some by their invitation to fantasy. I could escape into the great wilderness with little Laura Ingalls, or wander to far away St. Edward's Island with red-haired Anne. I still remember the thrill the first time I read Burnett's <i>A Little Princess</i>, and found that my pain and desolation at being a sadly abused little girl was not unique - what a revelation that was! And the promise that, no matter how bad things were, I could still be a princess in disguise. The next time I suffered a brutal beating I thought of the Princess Sarah in her attic and tried to be as brave. And <i>The Secret Garden</i>, with its mystical tale of healing through the magic of animals and flowers, who could doubt that such things were possible, no matter how far away they seemed to a little girl growing up on the grimy streets of uptown Manhattan. Then there was the marvelous Louisa May Alcott - I read just about every word she ever wrote. The sequels and the sequels to the sequels and the books about the long lost cousin Rose. I couldn't get enough.These women spoke to me of hope and beauty and the power of truth when my own mother was silent. Truly this was girl power avant la lettre.<br />
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And of course it did not stop there. I was eleven years old when I picked up a copy of <i>Wuthering Heights </i>at a school book fair. A slender paperback with a badly drawn cover showing a seated woman in a green shawl, and a tall, powerful man in long boots and white breeches standing just behind her. I'd never heard of it. I read it all in one gulp and came up gasping for air. I read it again. And again. The violence, the twisted passions, the maltreated children, the whole world of cruel extremes matched my experience exactly. Nelly, I <i>am</i> Cathy! And I was Jane too, when she stands up to Mr. Brocklehurst and to Aunt Reed and shows that even a small powerless girl child can be the embodiment of honour.<br />
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"How dare I, Mrs. Reed? How dare I? Because it is the <i>truth</i> . You think I have no feelings, and that I can do without one bit of love or kindness; but I cannot live so: and you have no pity. I shall remember how you thrust me back — roughly and violently thrust me back — into the red-room, and locked me up there, to my dying day; though I was in agony; though I cried out, while suffocating with distress, 'Have mercy! Have mercy, Aunt Reed!' And that punishment you made me suffer because your wicked boy struck me — knocked me down for nothing. I will tell anybody who asks me questions, this exact tale. People think you a good woman, but you are bad, hard-hearted. <i>You</i> are deceitful!"<br />
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I think I may have cheered out loud when I read that. I still do. And today, more than ever, as we examine women's lives and women's silences, and men's lies and men's threats and brutalities, more than ever the spirit of little Jane Eyre speaks up for us all - speaking truth to power. She was asking for it. She's exaggerating. She had it coming. She's lying. It is <i>You</i> who are deceitful!</div>
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Later it was the great Jean Rhys who taught me to value my own experience, to see that to be a victim of male violence and oppression is just what happens to so many of us, and that writing well is the best possible revenge. It re-balances the equation. I don't think anyone taught me more about narrative style either. She has a feline grace that's like a panther on the page.</div>
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When I was at university back in the 70's there was a literary theory going around led by one Harold Bloom that held the act of writing to be one of Oedipal rebellion against the father. The exclusively male writer had to slay his literary fathers with his phallic act of the pen. Or something. This kind of crap was sadly the currency back then. And I wrote a letter to said Mr. Bloom, asking him where exactly this left women who write? Rather surprisingly he wrote back, if only to say he had no idea, he hadn't really considered the question. I thought then, and I think now, baby you'd better! Because we're here and we're not going anywhere.</div>
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So here's to literary mothers! Those women who wrote first had it hardest, but it's still no picnic. Men still hog more than their share of the limelight, the big contracts, the prizes. But thanks to these women, who nurtured me and showed me the way, I have a voice too, and I know how to use it.</div>
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Picture: Illustration by Ethel Franklin Betts for <i>The Little Princess</i></div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">Copyright © Grace Andreacchi</div>Grace Andreacchihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08700993085214709393noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8876206268057902489.post-248695640486729972018-04-05T11:47:00.002+01:002020-11-19T07:23:09.776+00:00Every Picture Tells a Story<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Caravaggio - Rest on the Flight into Egypt</b></div>
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A few months ago I decided the time had come to devote some serious time to Italy. In the spirit of all those splendid Jamesian heroines - though unfortunately without their decidedly deep pockets - I have pitched up first of all in Roma. And spent the better part of the last few months looking, feeling, 'vibrating' to reference the Master. But sooner or later one has something to say in response to so rich an onslaught of experience. So here we go...<br />
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What are pictures for? Look at that thing, hanging there on the wall - what is it doing? It's obviously more than a mere piece of decoration. And while dates, attributions, all the tedious armory of the critic, may tell us something - they emphatically do not tell us anything at all about that.<br />
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Every picture tells a story. It doesn't tell it in words, for if it could tell it in words it wouldn't be a picture but a book. The most important question facing us as we face a masterpiece is exactly this: <i>What is this picture about? </i>To begin to answer it one must first of all look, long and hard and carefully, and above all with a quiet mind. Don't you speak, nor your audio guide, nor your teacher nor anybody at all. Open up a silence into which the picture may tell you its story. Let it speak to you. So I wander the gilded palazzi of the fine old town listening to these stories - always remarkable or they would not be worth listening to! A sort of holiday from words, in thrall to another kind of story telling. Let us begin.<br />
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Now here's a picture for you [above]. What on earth is going on here? Right smack in the middle of the holy subject is a beautiful bum boy showing us (most of) his bum. Oh dear. This naked truth was completely ignored by all the learned professors, and there were several during the course of my looking, who stopped and spoke at some length to their circles of eager young minds. Mostly lady professors from America, dogged, determined, packed out like well furnished portmanteaux with facts. But what about the naked bum boy ladies? I wanted to shout. I was beginning to get the giggles listening to their determined American obstinacy in the face of so much naked European depravity. Perhaps they were tender for the care of young minds. Let us entertain that gentle supposition.<br />
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Because really you would have to be blind not to notice this. It's the first thing that hits you in the eye. One has seen many Flights into many Egypts, and none of them has ever featured a naked bum boy as the centre of attention. We are not delicate young creatures from some midwestern finishing school, and we know a bardassa when we see one. We are not going to shy away from a good dose of homoerotic when we have it thrust upon us. There's a great deal of unnecessary coyness around the whole question of Caravaggio and pederasty. As in did he, didn't he? I wasn't there, and I'm not conducting an inquiry into his personal behaviour. Art is about what goes on in your head. And what was going on in Caravaggio's head was very often lust for beautiful underage boys. End of.<br />
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OK, so why stick one right in the middle of what ought to be a quiet family moment? Mary and Jesus and Joseph all having a rest on the way to Egypt, usually there's a donkey (there's a donkey - you can just catch his melancholy eye shining like a dark mirror out of the foliage behind Joseph's shoulder), there's usually some fruit or other suggestion of refreshment - here we have no fruit, no refreshment but a deep sleep for mother and child. And we have this angel, who is all but showing us his lissome young bum as his preternaturally white draperies swirl about his limbs in a breeze that seems to affect him alone, and who is very definitely showing Joseph his genitals. Joseph's not looking there thank goodness, but directly into the angel's face, and the angel is looking at the piece of music that Joseph is holding up for him while he plays on his viol. The actual piece of music has been identified but I won't tell you that - you can look it up for yourself. It's a text from that most sensual of all biblical texts, the Song of Songs.<br />
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Here's what a Rest on the Flight into Egypt is supposed to look like.<br />
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That one's by Federico Barocci, a big favourite of mine. Notice how Joseph is handing the Child something to eat (cherries). Donkey, check. Picnic check.<br />
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Here's another, much earlier, by Gerard David.<br />
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Donkey, check. Picnic, check. There's even a picnic basket. This time Joseph stands well in the background, where he can be seen knocking some more edibles out of a tree. No bum boys anywhere in sight, not even any angels of the decenter sort. These pictures, both of them extraordinary, have each a story to tell as well, but you can see at a glance it's going to be a radically different story from the one Caravaggio is telling.<br />
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So what is this picture about? It is split right down the middle by the figure of the bum boy angel, so it's about a split of some sort, we can see that. On the right hand side, receding a bit into the plain, are Mary and the Christ Child. They are both asleep, caught in a moment of just about perfect tenderness. Mary's left arm cradles the child in that universal maternal gesture of protection, her right hand lies slack upon her lap, her cheek rests where it has fallen on the baby's forehead. His little face is slightly creased in the deep peace of infant slumber. Around them a shadowy garden can be seen, green plants in abundance cluster around them, trees bend softly behind them, another tree forms a soft canopy above them and a sky that might be evening is just beginning to darken over the green hills. In the centre of the picture the angel stands on stony ground. Rocks lie scattered in the space between his feet and those of Joseph. Not a plant in sight, though among the rocks lie a pair of dead and withered leaves. The angel's soft, fair hair billows gently back from his face, caught in that same personal wind source that agitates his garment. His face, glimpsed only in profile, is softly sensuous and his wings, most unusually, are black. I can think offhand of no other example of an angel with black wings, unless it be a fallen one. Joseph slouches forward, holding that music, looking into the boy's beautiful, indifferent face. He looks tired, and old, and sad. Especially sad. What is he sad about? Behind him the space is entirely taken up by the head and then the flank of the donkey. The donkey looks sad too, in that way donkeys often do. But Barocci's donkey doesn't look remotely sad, he actually looks like he's smiling. David's donkey too for that matter. But this one's sad. Very sad. And so is Joseph. So, what are they sad about? What is this picture about?<br />
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The loss of innocence. On the right we see the vanished paradise of infancy, the perfect bond of loving mother and beloved boy child. The world is fresh and green and alive, but alas, that was a long time ago! The sun is already going down on that world, and in its stead we are presented with this angel of light, or say rather of darkness. This angel who brazenly displays his beautiful young body and invites us, with a song of songs, to adore him. The words of the song?<i> Quam pulchra es...</i> How beautiful you are! And the world around this false angel is stony and the spirit is turned to that of a low beast, and a sad one at that, poor donkey! Caravaggio did not live to be an old man. He led, famously, a wild life, and was dead at 38, probably of fever. But he has imagined, in this picture, the sadness of an old man presented with the temptation of a beautiful naked boy, and cut off by age and sin from the innocence that shone round him once, as in Eden.<br /><br /></div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">Copyright © Grace Andreacchi</div>Grace Andreacchihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08700993085214709393noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8876206268057902489.post-74757167558254657422017-11-24T13:19:00.000+00:002017-11-24T18:29:10.478+00:00Maxim Gorky and Grandmother's God<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Of all the painfully beautiful accounts of life in Mother Russia before the Revolution, I think none is as truthful, as painful or as beautiful as Maxim Gorky’s autobiographical work <i><a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/g/gorky/maksim/g66my/complete.html" target="_blank">My Childhood</a></i> and it’s equally remarkable sequel,<i> <a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/g/gorky/maksim/g66in/" target="_blank">In the World</a></i>. The first volume opens with the five year old boy’s experience of his father’s death. The child sits beside the corpse in ‘a darkened room’ while his mother weeps and combs her dead husband’s hair.<br />
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‘My mother, only half clad in a red petticoat, knelt and combed my father’s long, soft hair, from his brow to the nape of his neck, with the same black comb which I loved to use to tear the rind of watermelons...’<br />
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Overwhelmed by grief, she has no thought for the child, but all the time his hand is being held by his grandmother, ‘a dark, tender, wonderfully interesting person’. He is soon whisked off to the city of Nizhny to live with this same grandmother, his brutal grandfather and their equally violent sons in an extended household that makes the Karamazov family look like the Waltons.<br />
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Little Maxim (or Lexei as he is called in the book) will have much to endure in the course of this childhood, but Grandmother, it soon becomes apparent, is to be his source of uncompromising love in all this darkness. Drunkenness, vicious beatings, even murder – nothing can dim the light of goodness that shines from her strong, homely face. She teaches the child about God, not by preaching but by loving. This God, whom he comes to know as ‘Grandmother’s God’ is distinctly different from ‘Grandfather’s God’. I think perhaps many of us are all too familiar with Grandfather’s God!<br />
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‘Grandfather used to take me to church to vespers on Saturday, and to High Mass on Sundays and festivals but even in church I made a distinction as to which God was being addressed; whatever the priest or the deacon recited that was to grandfather’s God; but the choir always sang to grandmother’s God. Of course I can only crudely express this childish distinction which I made between these two Gods, but I remember how it seemed to tear my heart with terrific violence, and how grandfather’s God aroused in my mind a feeling of terror and unpleasantness. A Being Who loved no one, He followed all of us about with His severe eyes, seeking and finding all that was ugly, evil, and sinful in us. Evidently He put no trust in man, He was always insisting on penance, and He loved to chastise.’<br />
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Grandfather is fond of long prayers out of the prayer book, and begins every day bowing before the icon and reciting the prescribed litany. Then he beats and terrorises his entire family, as he himself was once beaten. Compare this sorry spectacle of male stupidity to Grandmother at prayer:<br />
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‘She straightened her crooked back, and raising her head, gazed upon the round face of Our Lady of Kazan, and after crossing herself reverently, said in a loud, fierce whisper:<br />
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“Most Glorious Virgin! Take me under thy protection this day, dear Mother.”<br />
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Having made a deep obeisance, she straightened her back with difficulty, and then went on whispering ardently, and with deep feeling:<br />
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“Source of our Joy! Stainless Beauty! Apple tree in bloom!”<br />
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Every morning she seemed to find fresh words of praise; and for that reason I used to listen to her prayers with strained attention.<br />
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“Dear Heart, so pure, so heavenly! My Defense and my Refuge! Golden Sun! Mother of God! Guard me from temptation; grant that I may do no one harm, and may not be offended by what others do to me thoughtlessly.”<br />
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With her dark eyes smiling, and a general air of rejuvenation about her, she crossed herself again, with that slow and ponderous movement of her hand.<br />
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“Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner, for Thy Mother’s sake!”<br />
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Her prayers were always non-liturgical, full of sincere praise, and very simple.<br />
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She did not pray long in the mornings because she had to get the samovar ready, for grandfather kept no servants, and if the tea was not made to the moment, he used to give her a long and furious scolding.<br />
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Sometimes he was up before her, and would come up to the attic. Finding her at prayer, he would stand for some minutes listening to her, contemptuously curling his thin, dark lips, and when he was drinking his tea, he would growl:<br />
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“How often have I taught you how to say your prayers, blockhead. But you are always mumbling some nonsense, you heretic! I can’t think why God puts up with you.”<br />
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“He understands,” grandmother would reply confidently, “what we don’t say to Him. He looks into everything.”<br />
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“You cursed dullard! U u ugh, you!” was all he said to this.<br />
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Her God was with her all day; she even spoke to the animals about Him. Evidently this God, with willing submission, made Himself subject to all creatures to men, dogs, bees, and even the grass of the field; and He was impartially kind and accessible to every one on earth.’<br />
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I too was raised in the shadow of Grandfather’s God, was taught early and long by the Catholic Church to hate and fear Him. Was taught that I am in every way vile and my only hope to please Him lies in total abnegation of the self. This has brought me, and so many others, a lifetime of needless suffering. But somehow, gradually, I saw the light, and today it is Grandmother’s God who smiles upon me. A severe illness brought to a crisis decades of appalling domestic abuse, leading me to a process of examination, of the past, the present and of myself, and that in turn wrought momentous changes. This examination brought me to see how a multiplicity of things conspire together to oppress and destroy women. The patriarchy. The Catholic Church, and many others like it in wickedness if not in scale. The institution of marriage. Even our motherhood is used against us.<br />
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Woman and child, I have suffered much violence at the hands of men. All my energy was concentrated on survival at any cost. I embraced my suffering as pleasing to Grandfather’s God. But something sane and decent survived to live another day. Now I see, after a lifetime of mute, pointless suffering, that survival is not enough. That I am not here on this earth merely to survive, but to thrive. Only free beings can ever thrive, for slavery is spiritual death to every living thing.<br />
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I have freed myself at last, after decades of misery, from the tyranny of ‘holiness’. A ‘holiness’ that demands the complete annihilation of the self. I no longer believe in this so-called ‘holiness’, that to ‘give up all is to gain all’, that in the constant abnegation of the self some higher good is served. After a lifetime of abuse, physical and sexual, psychological and moral, I found one day I’d simply had enough. Now I no longer aim for holiness, but for mere happiness. I smile a lot more than I used to do. I don’t get sick so much anymore either. I live alone now, or rather something much better than alone, for I have the privilege to share my life with a magnificent little cat. Oddly enough, remarkably like the cat in <i>My Childhood</i>, for she too is 'smoke-colored, with golden eyes'. But then her cat mother was a Russian blue, so she can claim a sort of commonality with Gorky's 'artful, pretty, coaxing creature'. To live and thrive one must begin with a modicum of self respect. I watch carefully my little cat Mimì to see what I ought to be. If anybody messes with her dignity, well, she’s got her claws and she knows how to use ‘em. And some very sharp teeth. And she’s fast – God she’s fast! The only way to love her is on her own terms. I shall never again settle for less dignity than a cat.<br />
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I struggle to forgive myself for all those wasted years, all that wasted energy. Overwhelmed with pity for the little child lost inside some of the worst men in the world, I let myself be used. Because somewhere there was indeed a little child whose terrible cries went unheeded, a child left alone in the dark to cry in absolute despair. And I was the only one who could hear her. In the twisted logic of the heart, this became my martyrdom. Now I don’t think that way anymore. I’ve thrown open the door to that room and found that child and taken her to my heart for good. And the worst men in the world henceforth must look elsewhere for their unearned solace. I have stepped outside the cage of false compassion, compassion for the tormentor, tears shed again and again for the man who’s always sorry and always does it again.<br />
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I stepped outside the cage and drew my first breath of free air. I beat my cramped wings in the unaccustomed sunlight. I didn’t know what I’d been missing! I feel shame for having been so stupid, so complicit in my own captivity. But as the twig is bent, so the poor crooked tree must grow. I allow myself some small pride at having found the courage, now, in my sixties, to step outside that dark familiar cage at last. It’s never too late to claim your life. <br />
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I no longer believe in Grandfather’s God, who did his best to beat me into submission, using as his agents a succession of selfish loveless fearful men, all hammered upon an anvil by loveless hands into his own loveless image. He may well exist – he may even be in charge – it would explain a lot – but I will never again be his servant. The only God I believe in now is ‘Grandmother’s God’, that good and gentle spirit who asks for nothing but our gentle love. She is the apple tree in bloom, she is the breath of spring, she is the light in the eyes of my little cat, Mimì. She is the God of beauty, of innocence, of joy, and though she is not able to protect us from Grandfather’s God, still <i>she is on our side.</i><br />
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Grandfather’s God and his minions will tell you there is no such thing as happiness. That suffering is our destiny and our grim privilege. I say fuck that. I have tried it and it’s tedious and life destroying. It almost killed me. Happiness is real and I have it here in the palm of my hand and what’s more I can even show it to you. It’s here in the fresh wind that blows from the sea, it’s here in the whispering pines, in the silvery olive branches basking in golden sunlight, in the sweet flesh of a peach, in the soft purr of my little cat as she nestles here upon my lap. Here and now, this quiet moment, is our happiness. This is what we have, and no man and no false God shall take it from us.<br />
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We are living through dark times, when the patriarchy is once again in hideous ascendance. But this time women everywhere are fighting back. Me too. I'm fighting back too, #MeToo! I can and do add my voice to that endless chorus of those who have suffered abuse and belittlement, humiliation and violence. I've been raped too and more than once. I've been beaten too. I've been humiliated and used and abused and I didn't even know how to fight back. But I can learn. And if you're reading this and it strikes any chord at all with your own life - get out. Don't wait till you're over sixty, do it now. Fight back. Say no. And if you're over sixty, even if you're over eighty - get out. Don't settle for less dignity than a cat.<br />
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Grandmother's God has given us a beautiful world. Grandfather's God does his best to destroy it with hate and fear and posturing and violence, Trumpification, Brexitization and all the sad little gods of sad little men and their wounded pride. We women are the apple trees in bloom and the last best hope for humanity. Never give up. Remember, Grandmother's God has blessed us.<br />
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I close with a quote from the second volume of Gorky's memoirs, <i>In the World</i>, in which he recounts his passage from child to youth, a process that turns out to be equal parts terrifying and exhilarating. To an encounter with the Old Believers, a strange self-obsessed cult who initially impress him by their dedication, he has the following reflections:<br />
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'Thought and feeling become accustomed to the narrow and oppressive envelope of prejudice and dogma, and although wingless and mutilated, they live in ease and comfort. This belief founded on habits is one of the most grievous and harmful manifestations of our lives. [...] But before I was convinced of this, I had to live through many weary years, break up many images in my soul, and cast them out of my memory.' Me too.</div>
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Excerpts from Maxim Gorky, <i>My Childhood</i>, 1915 edition and <i>In the World</i>, 1917, translated by Gertrude M. Foakes.<br />
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Pictures: Maxim Gorky at work, Icon of Our Lady of Kazan, 16th century, Mimì Andreacchi photographed by Grace Andreacchi<br />
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">Copyright © Grace Andreacchi</div>Grace Andreacchihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08700993085214709393noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8876206268057902489.post-32105944578728906952016-05-05T16:35:00.001+01:002024-03-03T18:40:09.682+00:00The Road to Heaven: An Indonesian Folktale<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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There was once an old couple who lived in a little tumbledown house, right at the edge of the forest. There they had a little plot of land, and it yielded them just enough to live upon. The house lay far from any village, as though it had wandered off one day and got lost, and could never hope to find its way back to the other houses again. The old couple were well advanced in years, and living, as they did, a life far removed from the hustle and bustle of this world, there grew in their hearts a great desire to know God.<br />
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One night as they sat together gazing into the meagre fire, the old man let out a heavy sigh. ‘Ah! What’s to become of us, Nini? If only we could go to school and study the Holy Koran, then we might not end up in hell. But as things stand…’ and he shook his head in despair. The old woman shoved another piece of wood on the fire before she answered. <br />
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‘Yes, this is our fate, to live blindly, like dumb animals. In this manner we’ve lived, and in this manner we’ve grown old. The grave is getting closer every day. It’s high time we studied the Holy Koran, and that’s the truth, for we’ve no time to lose.’<br />
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‘Just what I was thinking,’ answered her husband. ‘When can we go off to study the Koran?’<br />
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‘When can we go off to study the Koran? Why, if we go off to study the Koran, who, I ask you, is going to look after our field? And without anyone to look after our field, how shall we live?’ answered his wife.<br />
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‘True enough!’ said the old man. ‘True enough,’ and he let his head sink down upon his chest. He really did not know what to do. The two of them sat quietly for a while, listening to the gentle crackling of the fire. Then the old man looked up again, for he’d had an idea.<br />
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‘How would this be, Nini? I’ll go off to school to study the Koran, while you stay here and look after the field.’ But the old woman looked at him with eyes of fire.<br />
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‘Oh ho, what a clever fellow you are!’ she cried. ‘You’ll go off and study the Koran, and you’ll go straight to heaven without me, where those forty virgins will be waiting for you. Meanwhile I’ll be left here all alone to dig and delve, only to be sent straight to hell when my time comes. Oh no! I won’t be left behind! I won’t on any account. Better we go together to study the Koran, or not at all.’<br />
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Once again the old man let his head sink down upon his chest. He thought and thought and at last he had an idea. ‘Listen, Nini,’ he said. ‘You might go first to study the Koran, while I stay here and look after the field. Then later, when you’ve learned all there is to know, you’ll come back and teach it to me.’ At this the old woman burst into tears.<br />
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‘Oh oh oh! What a hard-hearted man you are! You would send your own wife away?’ At this moment there was a knock at the door. <br />
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‘May we come in?’ a strange voice called out.<br />
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‘Who can that be?’ said the old man, ‘Come in, please, come in and welcome…’ No sooner had the old man spoken these words than several young men entered the house. The old woman rolled out a mat and bid them sit down, then rushed off to the kitchen to prepare a hasty meal from their small store. Meanwhile the old man sat open-mouthed before these unexpected visitors. Never before had there ever been guests in that house. At last he spoke, stumbling over the unaccustomed words.<br />
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‘Ah, ah - you’ve given us a fright, young gentlemen. We don’t get visitors here much you know. Where have you gentlemen come from, that you should come to grace our our little, tumbledown house?’ One of the guests answered:<br />
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‘We’re on our way from the seminary, for we’ve only just ended our studies. Our home is still a long journey from here, and our money’s all gone. We saw the smoke from your chimney and thought we’d turn in here.’<br />
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When the old man heard that his guests were students from the seminary, his heart was filled with delight. He called out at the top of his voice to his wife in the kitchen. ‘Nini, Nini! Truly God is good, truly He is the all-merciful! Quick, heat the water and bring us food and drink, Nini!’<br />
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‘What’s all the hurry? The vegetables are not yet cooked,’ answered the old woman. <br />
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‘Bring at least the coffee then!’ he cried. ‘A great miracle has befallen us! Only listen - our guests are all of them students from the seminary! They’ve only just finished their studies!’<br />
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‘What! All from the seminary!’ cried the old woman from the kitchen, her voice trembling with joy. ‘Who would have thought it possible? Surely you children must be thirsty? Just a moment, a little moment and the water shall be really hot.’ The young men were astonished at the old people’s delight, and looked from one to another in great puzzlement. It was the oldest among them, a clever boy with a reputation as a wit, who asked the old man: ‘Why so glad to see us, Aki? Surely we are nothing but trouble to you?’<br />
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‘Not at all, my children, not at all!’ said the old man. ‘The water is already on the fire, and the vegetables are from our own garden. Of course we’re delighted to have you as our guests, my children.’<br />
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‘But why?’ said the young man, more puzzled than ever.<br />
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‘Why? Are you not all students just come from the seminary, where you study the Holy Koran?’ And the old man beamed at them.<br />
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‘And why should that make such a difference to you, Aki’ asked the eldest, speaking again for them all. The old man positively laughed with delight.<br />
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‘Because although we’re old folks, still we’re as blind as little children! We want to study the Koran! But we can’t do it, for we must look after our field.’ By now the food was ready, and the old woman brought steaming coffee and a plate of hot sweet potatoes and set these before them.<br />
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‘Please, eat first, my children,’ she said, not only her voice but her whole body quivering with delight. The young men were indeed hungry and thirsty, and fell greedily upon the simple fare. When they had sated their hunger somewhat, the eldest among them again posed a question.<br />
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‘Tell me, Aki and Nini, what reason have you for wishing to study the Koran now? Isn’t it a bit late in life for such things?’<br />
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‘This is the way of it,’ said the old man. ‘We’ve grown old without ever having had time to study the Holy Koran. Now our time is running out, and soon we’ll be in our graves. Possibly very soon…’<br />
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‘Yes, but why study the Koran?’ said the young man.<br />
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‘We’re afraid of going to hell,’ said the old man. ‘We’d much rather go to heaven.’ At the old man’s explanation all the students burst into noisy laughter, so that coffee and sweet potatoes burst from their lips and spattered the walls of the little room. Once the laughter had died down, the eldest had another question for the old man.<br />
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‘If all you want it to go to heaven, why study the Koran?’ he said.<br />
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‘Why, how else should we ever manage it?’ said the old man, quite astounded by the mysterious laughter of his guests.<br />
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‘Listen Aki,’ said the young man. ‘At the far edge of your field, isn’t there a great bamboo that reaches right up to the sky?’ The old man and the old woman answered together: <br />
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‘Indeed there is!’<br />
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‘That’s the way to heaven,’ said the young seminarian. ‘If you really want to go there, all you have to do is climb to the very top of that bamboo. The topmost branch leads directly to the heavenly stairway, just outside heaven’s door.’<br />
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‘God be praised!’ cried the old man. ‘I never would have thought of it! So that’s no ordinary bamboo! Oh my dear Nini, how blind we’ve been! All these years we’ve lived right on top of that bamboo and never once thought of it!’<br />
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‘We’re just naturally stupid,’ said the old woman. ‘Right here under our very noses and we never noticed a thing!’<br />
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‘Ah, but now we know it, Nini. Thanks to these children, young in years but already old in wisdom,’ said the old man. ‘How would it be if we waste no time, but follow that road to heaven right now?’<br />
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‘Yes indeed! What are we waiting for?’ answered his wife. ‘We’re already old enough. Now that we know the way to heaven – let’s go!’<br />
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The two of them ran towards the bamboo as fast as their old legs would carry them. Looking neither to the left nor to the right, the old man took hold of the slippery trunk and began to climb. Looking neither to the left nor to the right, his wife followed right after him. The students stood under the tree, laughing heartily at the joke they had managed to play on the old couple. Higher and higher and higher… When they were at the very top of the tree the eldest of the students called out to them: ‘Aki! Nini! The birds are eating your corn!’ But neither the old man nor the old woman so much as looked round.<br />
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‘If the birds want our corn, they can have it and welcome!’ they cried. The wind began to blow, and the bamboo began to sway – back and forth, back and forth – and the old man and the old woman were rocked first this way and then that at the very top of the tree. Surely the branch must break beneath their weight in such a whirlwind! The old couple showed no fear, but held fast to the very top of the bamboo as the wind blew harder and harder, it blew right into their faces, it blew as hard as ever a wind has blown. Then just as suddenly the wind fell, the branches gave a last sigh and stood still, and the old couple - had vanished. They simply weren’t there any more – who knows where they had gone?<br />
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When the students saw that the old couple had disappeared, they were filled with fear. Open-mouthed, they stood and stared, first up into the tree, and then at one another. It was the eldest who spoke first.<br />
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‘How about that! This bamboo really is the way to heaven after all! The old folks are gone! I see no reason I shouldn’t follow them.’<br />
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‘Now we know the way to heaven, what reason to linger here on earth?’ said one of the others. ‘I’m coming with you!’ The two of them began to climb, and were soon followed by the rest of their companions, for nobody wanted to be left behind on earth now that they had found the road to heaven. As fast as they could they climbed to the very top of the bamboo. <br />
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Now the wind began to blow, and the tree began to sway – back and forth, back and forth! The young men were rocked this way and that till it seemed that not only the tree, but the sky itself had begun to sway, and the very mountains to float away like clouds. Their eyes wide with terror, the students clung to the branches and screamed with fear. They no longer had any thoughts of heaven. Their eyes grew fiery, their lips twitched. On their bodies there grew thick hair. They screamed as loud as ever they could, but to no avail! For it was no longer the voices of men that rang out across the little field. All of them had been turned into monkeys. Then they scrambled nimbly down from the tree and helped themselves to the fruits in the old man’s garden.<br />
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This is my rendition of a traditional Javanese folktale, based on the translation by Ernst Ulrich Kratz, 'Indonesische Märchen'.<br />
<br />Translation fron the German © by Grace Andreacchi </div><div><br />
Also available: <a href="http://crashtestddummy.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/bidadari.html" target="_blank">Bidadari</a>, the story of the Angel that fell to earth in Banggai Laut, Indonesia</div>
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Photo: Sculpted relief from a temple in Bali, Indonesia, by Grace Andreacchi</div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">Copyright © Grace Andreacchi</div>Grace Andreacchihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08700993085214709393noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8876206268057902489.post-1798421142754705002014-11-25T21:41:00.001+00:002016-01-27T16:39:23.726+00:00Iron Hans or The Wild Man of the Woods<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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'If you are ever in need, go into the woods and cry out, 'Iron Hans,' and then I will come and help you. My power is great, greater than you think, and I have more than enough gold and silver.'<br />
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Who doesn't remember the first books that were one's very own? Among my early treasures was a beautiful illustrated edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales, and thus began a lifelong fascination with those dark tales from the womb of time and the shadows of the ancient forests. The frontispiece of this book showed a tall, strong, muscular man , nearly naked, and covered with long, matted hair. This was <a href="http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm136.html">Iron Hans</a>.<br />
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There can be few myths as powerful as that of the Wild Man of the Woods, for we can follow him right back to the before-the-before time. He haunts the forests of Germany as Eisenhans and those of ancient England as the Woodwose, in Mongolia he is known as the Almas, in the wild Basque country as the Basajaun or 'Lord of the Woods', a roguish genie who inadvertently taught men the secrets of cultivation. Among the Slavic peoples he is the Leszi, the Forest Lord, shape-shifter, protector of wild things, and friend to the wolf and the bear. When European settlers entered the great forests of the New World, they brought with them the legend of the wild man, and it persists even to this day. The <a href="http://www.damnedct.com/the-winsted-wildman">Winsted Wild Man</a> was supposed to be living in the Connecticut woods as recently as the 1970's.<br />
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Typically the Wild Man is said to be covered with thick, matted hair, to be of extraordinary height, and carrying a large club. Is he good or evil? Like the forest itself, he is neither of these things completely, but rather seems to gather into himself all our fears of the dark, wild wood and all our admiration and longing for its magic.<br />
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In the story Iron Hans people have been disappearing at an alarming rate into a forest. Another huntsman disappears, and another, until it becomes apparent the forest is enchanted. 'From that time on, no one dared to go into these woods, and they lay there in deep quiet and solitude, and all that one saw from there was an occasional eagle or hawk flying overhead.' As the tale unfolds, it transpires that a wild man is hiding there, and a clever huntsman manages to capture him and bring him out of the forest alive. The King now decides to keep the wild man in an iron cage in the courtyard of the castle. Significantly, it is the Queen who holds the key in safekeeping. So a wild man is kept under lock and key by Woman, the frail hand tames the beast within.<br />
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There are echoes here of another strange tale from the Brothers Grimm - in <a href="http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm003.html">Mary's Child</a> a little girl is adopted by the Virgin Mary herself and taken to live in heaven until she reaches the age of puberty. Like the boy in Iron Hans, the little girl disobeys her adoptive parent, and again like the boy she is punished by having her finger turned to gold. She also falls mute, and, like the brave little Princess in <a href="http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm049.html">The Six Swans</a> is nearly burned at the stake for a cannibal witch before matters are straightened out. But to return to our wild man...<br />
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The King's small son is in the habit of tossing his golden ball about in the courtyard and one day what must happen does happen - it rolls into the cage. The exchange between the wild man and the boy is well worth repeating:<br />
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The boy ran to the cage and said, ‘Give me my ball.’<br />
‘Not until you have opened the door for me,’ answered the man.<br />
‘No,’ said the boy, ‘I will not do that. The king has forbidden it,’ and he ran away.<br />
The next day he came again and demanded his ball.<br />
The wild man said, ‘Open my door,’ but the boy would not do so.<br />
On the third day the king had ridden out hunting, and the boy went once more and said, ‘Even if I wanted to, I could not open the door. I do not have the key.’<br />
Then the wild man said, ‘It is under your mother's pillow. You can get it there.’<br />
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Who hasn't heard that wild, sweet whisper tickling the ear... Your mother will never know...run and get it, quickly - before she comes back! And now comes the moment in the story that always sends a delicious chill down my spine. The wild man, now free, is about to hurry off to the woods and the boy addresses him once again.<br />
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'Oh, wild man, do not go away, or I shall get a beating.’<br />
The wild man turned around, picked him up, set him on his shoulders, and ran into the woods.<br />
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We are off! Off into the woods, to a terrifying, magical adventure that will not end until the boy has learned many hard lessons and travelled many weary roads. Set to watch over the golden pond, the boy proves to be of no use whatsoever - he lets first a finger, then a single hair, and at last his entire head into the pond, which was to be kept pure, and guarded so carefully.<br />
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Iron Hans already knows what has happened (he's clever that way) and banishes him from the forest. But not before he has given him a promise.<br />
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‘You have failed the test, and you can stay here no longer. Go out into the world. There you will learn what poverty is. But because you are not bad at heart, and because I mean well by you, I will grant you one thing: If you are ever in need, go into the woods and cry out, 'Iron Hans,' and then I will come and help you. ...' <br />
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Iron Hans is as good as his word, and helps the boy to armour and horses and what-not by which he is able to catch the three golden apples and win the hand of the beautiful Princess. When they are seated at the wedding feast the doors suddenly fly open, but no - I won't spoil it for you.<br />
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So the boy learns to be a man, with the help of the Wild Man of the Woods. Who would not wish for such a father as this? A father who can test you, can trust you, but who will be there when you need him if you only go to the edge of that great dark wood and shout - Iron Hans! as loud as ever you can. The poet <a href="http://www.robertbly.com/">Robert Bly</a> used the story as the starting point for his re-examination of masculinity in modern, perhaps overly feminized American society. Poets have always loved the Wild Man - he puts in a brief appearance in the medieval masterpiece <a href="http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/gawain.htm">Sir Gawain and the Green Knight</a> where he can be assumed to have put up a good fight.<br />
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Sumwhyle wyth wormez he werrez, and with wolues als,<br />
Sumwhyle wyth wodwos, þat woned in þe knarrez,<br />
Boþe wyth bullez and berez, and borez oþerquyle,<br />
And etaynez, þat hym anelede of þe heȝe felle...<br />
<br />
Sometimes with dragons, and with wolves he warred<br />
Sometimes with wild men of the woods who dwell in rocks,<br />
With bulls and bears, with bristling boars<br />
And giants of the high moorland fell...<br />
<br />
Which dark encounter under the trees helped <a href="http://www.poetseers.org/poets/ted-hughes-poetry">Ted Hughes</a> to his own dark musings on the Woodwose.<br />
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<br />
WODWO<br />
<br />
What am I? Nosing here, turning leaves over<br />
Following a faint stain on the air to the river's edge<br />
I enter water. Who am I to split<br />
The glassy grain of water looking upward I see the bed<br />
Of the river above me upside down very clear<br />
What am I doing here in mid-air? Why do I find<br />
this frog so interesting as I inspect its most secret<br />
interior and make it my own? Do these weeds<br />
know me and name me to each other have they<br />
seen me before do I fit in their world? I seem<br />
separate from the ground and not rooted but dropped<br />
out of nothing casually I've no threads<br />
fastening me to anything I can go anywhere<br />
I seem to have been given the freedom<br />
of this place what am I then? And picking<br />
bits of bark off this rotten stump gives me<br />
no pleasure and it's no use so why do I do it<br />
me and doing that have coincided very queerly<br />
But what shall I be called am I the first<br />
have I an owner what shape am I what<br />
shape am I am I huge if I go<br />
to the end on this way past these trees and past these trees<br />
till I get tired that's touching one wall of me<br />
for the moment if I sit still how everything<br />
stops to watch me I suppose I am the exact centre<br />
but there's all this what is it roots<br />
roots roots roots and here's the water<br />
again very queer but I'll go on looking<br />
<br />
- Ted Hughes<br />
<br />
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*<br />
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Pictures : Ilustrations for Der Eisenhans by Ignaz Taschner, 1871-1913, Virgin and Child, Lorenzo di Credi<br />
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">Copyright © Grace Andreacchi</div>Grace Andreacchihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08700993085214709393noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8876206268057902489.post-51428952695970411082013-08-02T14:08:00.003+01:002024-02-24T21:06:03.768+00:00The Triumph of Evil - The Short Life and Horrible Death of Daniel Pelka<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh1FsSVW0wOk6uvr1T364GOnlcetg7cdbAAoRnrnVjYitYxo1i-tdd4o02tKmDBwmMaDNi9TwyyqtAG79bhF75oxyVnI98CGuWk_LKrlV19eE6NNHpmszMKhG8W2IA4TngTkUDHTwV6veS7jPXmqS-oyP38h1plRsn9SxfkQehyphenhyphenZesioVYmsdVBja9x1g/s3696/Kapadokya'dan_Nazar_Boncu%C4%9Fu.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2448" data-original-width="3696" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh1FsSVW0wOk6uvr1T364GOnlcetg7cdbAAoRnrnVjYitYxo1i-tdd4o02tKmDBwmMaDNi9TwyyqtAG79bhF75oxyVnI98CGuWk_LKrlV19eE6NNHpmszMKhG8W2IA4TngTkUDHTwV6veS7jPXmqS-oyP38h1plRsn9SxfkQehyphenhyphenZesioVYmsdVBja9x1g/w640-h424/Kapadokya'dan_Nazar_Boncu%C4%9Fu.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>
<a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2381922/Daniel-Pelka-trial-Haunting-final-image-boy-4-starved-beaten-death-parents.html" target="_blank">Daniel Pelka </a>was four years old when he died. He was beaten, tortured, locked in a closet, starved to the point of extreme emaciation. He was left in that closet without any toilet facilities, left to sleep on a bare, stinking mattress on the floor. He was held under in a cold bath until he lost consciousness. He was deliberately poisoned with salt. In the end he died of his injuries, slowly, over several hours, alone in that closet. The handle had been removed from the door, so that he had no chance of escape - not that a four year old child would ever have had a chance to escape anyhow. Police, when they finally came to Daniel's closet, found his tiny handprints smeared across that door. This week, Daniel's mother and her partner in crime were convicted of his murder.<br />
<br />
<i>10.21am - Sent by Luczak: 'Well now he's temporarily unconscious because I nearly drowned him. He's already in bed covered with the duvet and asleep and I am having some quiet time.'</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>10.24am - Sent by Luczak: 'I won't be hitting him but if I hear him when he later wakes up then he's going back to the bathtub. I didn't let the water out.'</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>12.11pm - Sent by Luczak: 'I'm leaving these marks of yours to you as they aren't coming off.'</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>4.34pm - Sent by Luczak to Krezolek, as Daniel lay dying of a brain injury: 'He'll get over it by tomorrow. There is no point to stress ourselves out and to call an ambulance because that will cause proper problems.'</i><br />
<br />
Daniel Pelka went to the Little Heath Primary School in Coventry, right up to the time of his death. He was seen by teachers every day. He was starving to death before their eyes. The doctors who examined his corpse said it was similar to that of 'a concentration camp victim'. The teachers say they did all they could. They 'referred the case' along the proper channels. His mother said he had a rare eating disorder.<br />
<br />
"In January, Daniel’s class teacher Lisa Godfrey wrote in a school concerns book that he had bruises around his neck which she feared Luczak had caused while trying to ‘strangle him’.The following month, she alerted Mr Clews [the school head] when Daniel had black eyes. But, in court, Mr Clews claimed it was not serious enough to go in the concerns book."<br />
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[<a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2382890/Daniel-Pelka-murder-Headteacher-Daniel-Clews-says-pleasant-time-anyone.html" target="_blank">from the press</a>]</div>
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I repeat, Daniel Pelka was FOUR YEARS OLD. Four. He comes into school with two black eyes and it's 'not serious enough'?</div>
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The people who murdered this child were evil. I have no hesitation in using that word. Evil is real, Satan's power is also real. We need only assent to it, and we are his. That is why these powerful words are part of the Christian baptismal liturgy:</div>
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<br /></div>
V. Do you reject Satan? <br />
R. I do. <br />
V. And all his works? <br />
R. I do. <br />
V. And all his empty promises? <br />
R. I do. <br />
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“But I’ve still better things about children. I’ve collected a great, great deal about Russian children, Alyosha. There was a little girl of five who was hated by her father and mother, ‘most worthy and respectable people, of good education and breeding.’ You see, I must repeat again, it is a peculiar characteristic of many people, this love of torturing children, and children only. To all other types of humanity these torturers behave mildly and benevolently, like cultivated and humane Europeans; but they are very fond of tormenting children, even fond of children themselves in that sense. It’s just their defenselessness that tempts the tormentor, just the angelic confidence of the child who has no refuge and no appeal, that sets his vile blood on fire. In every man, of course, a demon lies hidden—the demon of rage, the demon of lustful heat at the screams of the tortured victim, the demon of lawlessness let off the chain, the demon of diseases that follow on vice, gout, kidney disease, and so on."<br />
<br />
"This poor child of five was subjected to every possible torture by those cultivated parents. They beat her, thrashed her, kicked her for no reason till her body was one bruise. Then, they went to greater refinements of cruelty—shut her up all night in the cold and frost in a privy, and because she didn’t ask to be taken up at night (as though a child of five sleeping its angelic, sound sleep could be trained to wake and ask), they smeared her face and filled her mouth with excrement, and it was her mother, her mother did this. And that mother could sleep, hearing the poor child’s groans! Can you understand why a little creature, who can’t even understand what’s done to her, should beat her little aching heart with her tiny fist in the dark and the cold, and weep her meek unresentful tears to dear, kind God to protect her? Do you understand that, friend and brother, you pious and humble novice? Do you understand why this infamy must be and is permitted? Without it, I am told, man could not have existed on earth, for he could not have known good and evil. Why should he know that diabolical good and evil when it costs so much? Why, the whole world of knowledge is not worth that child’s prayer to ‘dear, kind God’! I say nothing of the sufferings of grown-up people, they have eaten the apple, damn them, and the devil take them all! But these little ones! I am making you suffer, Alyosha, you are not yourself. I’ll leave off if you
like.”<br />
<br />
“Never mind. I want to suffer too,” muttered Alyosha.<br />
[<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/28054/28054-0.txt" target="_blank">The Brothers Karamazov</a>]</div>
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Me too, I want to suffer too. And want you, my dear Reader, to suffer for at least a minute or two for the sake of Daniel Pelka. I have a son named Daniel myself. He's a man now, but he was once a small defenseless child. Nobody locked him in a closet. Nobody beat him or starved him, The demon was not fed. The child was. This other little Daniel was not so lucky.<br />
<br />
We know that men and women can do terrible things. And we know that God, in his supposed wisdom, permits us to do these things. Personally, I've got a few questions for Him about that. Personally, I am with Ivan, and return Him the ticket to a paradise that was built on this cruelty.<br />
<br />
But God is beyond our reach. The teachers at the Little Heath Primary School, the Head Teacher at the time of Daniel's murder, Mr. Darren Clews, the medical team who closed his case when his mother said he broke his arm falling off a sofa (no - he didn't fall off a cliff, or out of a tree, but 'off a sofa'), the parents who saw him day after day in the schoolyard - these are not inscrutable gods, but men and women with children of their own whom, presumably, they love and cherish. People who go home, after the spectacle of this starving, suffering child before their eyes all day long, and cuddle their own children, and feed them their dinners, and tuck them in at night in warm beds (no, surely they don't lock them into freezing closets to sleep upon filthy mattresses alone in the pitch dark, surely their little handprints will not be found in the morning smeared across handleless doors...) these people, who saw Daniel Pelka dying before their eyes every day, did nothing.<br />
<br />
Oh, no sorry, that's not right. They followed the proper procedures. They made the proper referrals.<br />
<br />
<i><b>February 2012:</b> Daniel attends school with two black eyes. He is seen eating a discarded pancake covered in dirt and grit.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i><b>Thursday, 1 March 2012:</b> Daniel takes a half-eaten piece of fruit from a rubbish bin at school, and eats it. Sometime during the following hours he is beaten about the head and left to die in his closet.</i><br />
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It has been said that all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. During the reign of terror that the Nazi regime brought to a large part of Europe in the mid-twentieth century there were a few people (not many, but a few) who risked their lives to save others. When asked why they had done it, risked their lives, their livelihoods, the lives of their own families to save strangers they give always the same answer. 'I only did what I had to. I did what anyone would have done. I really had no choice...'<br />
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Here's what <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/mar/15/secondworldwar.poland" target="_blank">Irena Sendlerowa</a>, to name just one, has to say about her role in saving hundreds of Jewish children from certain death:<br />
<br />
"I was brought up to believe that a person must be rescued when drowning, regardless of religion and nationality."<br />
<br />
"The term 'hero' irritates me greatly. The opposite is true. I continue to have pangs of conscience that I did so little."<br />
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If Daniel Pelka had been run over in the street outside the Little Heath Primary School, can we imagine that the teachers, or the Head, or the parents who saw this happen would have thought - 'No, I won't phone an ambulance - it's not my job...' There is something about a system that makes cowardice appear plausible, even wise. Suppose for a moment that one person - just one! A teacher, a nurse, a parent - <i>anybody</i> - had stuck his neck out for Daniel. Had gone to the police, to 'social services', to somebody, anybody and screamed and insisted and stood there not once, but day after day, until <i>something was done</i>. Daniel would have been rescued from the beast that feeds upon the tears of children. Daniel would be alive today. And what would have happened to that brave person who made a stand and saved a human child? Would he have been taken off and shot? I don't think so. He might well have lost his job. Nothing worse.<br />
<br />
There are no heroes in this story, only greater and lesser villains. No heroes except for little Daniel Pelka, who suffered what he could not escape with the dignity of innocence wronged. Daniel's story probably would not have made the news were it not the 'silly season', midsummer when news is slow and slower. A child is killed by his parents at the rate of one a week in this country. Good people continue to do nothing.<br />
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*<br />
<a href="http://crashtestddummy.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/alia-beautiful.html" target="_blank">ALIA, THE BEAUTIFUL</a> - a poem in memory of yet another child's needless death<br />
<br /><br />Picture: Nazar (protection against the Evil Eye, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_eye#/media/File:Kapadokya'dan_Nazar_Boncu%C4%9Fu.jpg" target="_blank">The View from Cappadocia y AlevAkin</a> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" target="_blank">CC by 4.0</a><br /><div class="blogger-post-footer">Copyright © Grace Andreacchi</div>Grace Andreacchihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08700993085214709393noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8876206268057902489.post-40730567985081650592013-06-24T09:38:00.001+01:002024-03-03T18:40:32.441+00:00Breasts Are Beautiful - Virgo Divino Nimium<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCuvajflBj898O8CFlhccckRlyAwjN4hd_pnQMNTg0x_riPa3vJp237SvxlJ_OstPRlxNiaViIBXFbb-pzEot02zNhY2l1vSwt4FPYLb0Ji6mc2GQ0EnytC8TqruJ0EVVyfIb6qo1UYXc/s1600/fouquet+madonna.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCuvajflBj898O8CFlhccckRlyAwjN4hd_pnQMNTg0x_riPa3vJp237SvxlJ_OstPRlxNiaViIBXFbb-pzEot02zNhY2l1vSwt4FPYLb0Ji6mc2GQ0EnytC8TqruJ0EVVyfIb6qo1UYXc/s640/fouquet+madonna.jpg" width="582" /></a></div>
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The beautiful image of the nursing mother, an eternal image if ever there was one, has almost been erased from modern Christian iconography. When did we decide there is something 'dirty' about a woman's breasts? Something to make us <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/22/breastfeeding-uk-babies-prejudice-unnatural" target="_blank">snigger and point</a>? Presumably some time shortly after the appearance of the feeding bottle. The Virgin feeding the infant Jesus at her breast has a long history in Christian art and iconography, and is celebrated in the little poem 'Virgo Divino Nimium', known nowadays, if at all, for its delicate musical setting by the 16th century Spanish composer, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Guerrero_(composer)" target="_blank">Francisco Guerrero</a>.<br />
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Even today, Mary engaged in this simple human act of nourishing her baby is able to inspire love and devotion. In <a href="http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/254228/devotion-growing-for-breast-feeding-virgin-mary">the </a><a href="http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/254228/devotion-growing-for-breast-feeding-virgin-mary" target="_blank">Philippines</a>, such an image is now frequently to be found in the neonatal wards and hospital chapels. Our Lady of le Leche, as she is known, is honoured as the patroness of mothers and mothers-to-be, just as Guerrero set out to honour her with his lovely motet, all those years ago.<br />
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Over the years corruptions crept into the text, and the version published today has several errors that rob the verses of their original meaning. So when I heard it performed recently at a concert of sacred music at Christ Church Spitalfields, I was sure that what I was hearing could not be right! Fortunately help was close at hand. Many thanks to Daniel Hadas of King's College London, who has emended the text and provided the following translation. And thanks as well to the fine musicians of <a href="http://www.cardinallsmusick.com/" target="_blank">the Cardinall' Musick</a>, for bringing this beautiful music back into the light.<br />
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<br />
Virgo divino nimium favore plena,<br />
mortalem supra diva sexum,<br />
salva sis. Tecum Dominus.<br />
perenne accipe votum.<br />
<br />
Sancta pro nobis genitum precator.<br />
Quippe tu sola poteris benignum reddere<br />
et sontes facere expiatos<br />
si ubera monstres.<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
Virgin, most full of divine favour,<br />
holy above the mortal sex,<br />
May you be well. The Lord is with you.<br />
Receive an eternal prayer.<br />
<br />
Holy one, pray to the (one you have) begotten for us.<br />
Indeed, you only can make him kindly<br />
and make the guilty forgiven,<br />
if you show your breasts.<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />Translation © by Grace Andreacchi <br />
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Picture: Madonna surrounded by Cherubim and Seraphim, from the Melun Diptych, Jean Fouqet, c. 1452</div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">Copyright © Grace Andreacchi</div>Grace Andreacchihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08700993085214709393noreply@blogger.com