"Be sensible"

More quotable bits from of The Doll, by Bolesław Prus, which I'm now done with and which I thoroughly enjoyed.

P 208:
Izabella loved the world of drawing-rooms to distraction; she could only quit it for the grave, but as each year and month passed by, she despised people more and more: she found it inconceivable that a woman as beautiful, virtuous and well-bred as herself could be deserted by that world, simply because she had no money.

P 250:
Izabela and Wokulski had just appeared at the end of the path.

Tomasz eyed them attentively and only now did he notice that these two people looked well together, both in height and movement. He, a head taller and powerfully built, stepped like an ex-military man; she, somewhat slighter, but more graceful, moved as if gliding. Even Wokulski's white top-hat and light overcoat matched Izabela's ash-coloured wrap.

"Where did he get that white top-hat?" Tomasz wondered resentfully. Then a strange notion occurred to him: that Wokulski was a parvenu who ought to pay him at least fifty percent on the capital lent him, in return for the right to wear a white top-hat. But in the end he only shrugged.

P 281:
"Don't mention higher aims to me," Wokulski cried, banging the table, "I know what I have done for those higher aims, but what have they done for me? Is there no end to the demands of the oppressed who allow no rights to me? I want for the first time to do something for myself . . . My head's full to overflowing with cliches that no on ever puts into action . . . Personal happiness — that's my obligation now . . . otherwise I'd shoot myself, if I didn't see something for myself ahead, other than monstrous burdens. Thousands of people are idle, but one man has his 'duty' towards them . . . Did you ever hear anything more abominable?"

P 345:
Politics are still much the same: continual uncertainty.

P 358:
"You are a philosopher," Wokulski muttered.

"Indeed, I am a Doctor of Philosophy of two universities," Jumart replied.

"Yet you play the role of . . . ?"

"A servant, you were going to say?" Jumart interposed, smiling. "I work, sir, in order to live and assure myself an income when I grow old. I care nothing for titles: I have had so many already . . . The world is like an amateur theatre, where it is not done to insist on leading parts but reject minor roles. In any case, all roles are good, providing they are well played and not taken too seriously."

P 537:
"Helena . . . my child . . . But you aren't . . .?"

"His mistress? No, I'm not, because he hasn't asked me. What do I care for Mrs Denowa or Mrs Radzińska, or my husband who has deserted me? I don't know what has come over me . . . I only feel that this man has taken away my soul."

"Be sensible, at least . . . Besides . . ."

"I am, as far as I can be. But I care nothing for a world that condemns two people to torture, simply because they love one another. Hatred is allowed," she added, with a bitter smile, "stealing, killing — everything is allowed, except love. Ah, mama, if I am not right, they why did not Christ say to people "Be sensible" instead of "Love one another"?

P 539:
"But making money isn't your concern!"

"Why isn't it? Not everyone can be a poet or a hero, but everyone needs money," said Szuman. "Money is the larder of the noblest force in nature — human labour. It's the 'open sesame' at which all doors fly open, it's the table-cloth on which one can always find a dinner, it's the Aladdin's lamp, by rubbing which everything one wants is to be had. Magic gardens, splendid palaces, beautiful princesses, faithful servants, friends ready to make sacrifices — all these are to be had with money."

Rzecki bit his lip: "You were not always of this opinion," he said.

"Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis," the doctor replied, calmly. "I've wasted ten years studying hair, I spent a thousand roubles publishing a brochure a hundred pages long and . . . not even a dog remembers it, or me. I will try to devote the next ten years to financial operations, and am convinced in advance that people will love and admire me. Providing I open a drawing-room, and keep a carriage."

P 600:
With deep emotion he revived in his memory the Life of St Genevieve, the Rose of Tannenburg, Rinaldini, Robinson Crusoe and, finally, The Thouasand and One Nights. Once again it seemed to him that neither time nor reality existed any longer, and that his wounded soul had escaped from the earth to wander in magic lands where only noble hearts beat, where vice did not dress up in the mask of deceit, where eternal justice ruled, curing pain and rewarding injustices.

And here one strange point impressed him. Whereas he had drawn the illusions which had terminated in the dissolution of his own soul from Polish literature, he found solace and peace only in foreign literatures. "Are we really a nation of dreamers?" he wondered in alarm, "and will the angel who touched the pool at Bethesda, surrounded by sick people, never descend upon us?"

************

I think I can let these fine bits of wisdom and wit speak for themselves. As with many long and engrossing novels, I found I was noting fewer passages as I progressed through the book, not because they were absent — on the contrary, I'd've liked to mark up every other page — but because I was just too wrapped up in the story and dying to know what happened next to bother to stop for a pencil or a sticky note.

There are a couple really interesting debates toward the end of the book, one on the place of Jews in Polish society, the other on the place of women.

Part of me insists on comparing this book to War and Peace — the length, the Napoleonic fervour. There's some Middlemarch in it too. The quest for meaning and substance.

In War and Peace, the aristocracy was shown to be in decay, and if it were to survive, it must find resolve in its Russianness — forsake the French language, reclaim the hunt, know its people, its foods and its dances.

I am surprised to find that The Doll, the Great Polish Novel, fails to offer up an analogous Polish identity. But perhaps this makes it more realistic in representing a country that had been wiped off the map. The aristocracy is dying, but rather than cling to any sense of nationhood, Wokulski emerges as a prominent member of a new class in a world based on commerce. He is ready to erase national boundaries; global trade seems to demand it.

All this, plus the talk of science — the possibility of flight using gravity-defying metal materials, hydrogen compounds as weapons — makes this novel feel very forward-thinking.

We never do get to know Izabela very well. But then, neither does Wokulski. We increasingly sympathize with Wokulski, even as he's shown to be weak. I get the sense he was born a little too early to be a successful businessman, a little too late to be an innovative scientist; he chases the wrong dreams at the wrong times.

There's a good deal of humour, intrigue, and romance mixed in with the history lessons. A Polish classic, The Doll deserves a wider audience and should appeal to fans of nineteenth-century literature with a sociopolitical sensibility.

Literary sentence

A judge in Utah is sentencing people to read books, like Hugo's Les Misérables, not as a punishment, but as a tool.

For example,

Fernando Infante, who will be 20 this May, is an inmate at the Cache County Jail. He was already incarcerated last year on burglary and theft charges when he was charged with stabbing another inmate, causing serious injury.

Willmore said the state did not want to see Infante go to prison because of his young age. But he had few options, due to the violent nature of his crime.

So, Infante is now in maximum security at the Cache County Jail, where he sits in a jail cell 23 hours a day. However, because Willmore did not want him to do nothing but watch time go by, he ordered Infante to read as many books as he could during his incarceration.

Every 10 days or so, Willmore gets a letter from Infante, who tells him about the books he has been reading.

"I am able to see how he has grown and changed, how he applies himself to a character and sees the changes he can make in his life," Willmore said.

Helena is starting on a similar program herself this week. The student teacher has asked that each of the students write her a letter about the book they are reading.

I guess we're all of us, criminal or not, sentenced for life. Maybe it's why I do this. Read, and blog about it, I mean. Maybe I'm supposed to learn something.

Cruising

Eight days in the Carribean, hotel nights and plane flights on either end. Three ports of call, including one major 11-hour excursion. A party of eight, including in-laws, a sister I see all too rarely, and my 9-year-old child. Oh, and! my other half, with whom the rare commodity of romancing is something of a luxury these days.

So how many books do I bring?

It's taken years for people to get me on a cruise. I never thought it was the vacation style for me, and then I read David Foster Wallace's "Shipping Out: On the (nearly lethal) comforts of a luxury cruise," which only solidified my horror at the prospect. A horror of being trapped, on a boat, with 5000 people of the type who go on cruises. But here I am.

They say it's heaven — a deck chair and a book. I believe it. I just don't see it as easily attainable. But I'll try. I have options as follows:

• Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell — It's a flipback!, so it's ultraportable! How could I not bring this? Only, I'm not sure I'm actually in the mood to read it.
• These Days Are Ours, Michell Haimoff — A review copy, a post 9-11 thing. I'm not sure I want to read about the post 9-11 thing, but both the book and the author sound pretty smart.
• The Man Who Wasn't Maigret, Patrick Marnham — Library book. I probably shouldn't bring a libary book on a cruise.
• The White Horse Inn, Georges Simenon — Another library book. I'll have to renew the loan so I can read it when I get back.
• Tropic Moon, Georges Simenon — I have a little Simenon project going on right now, only I'm not at liberty to divulge details just yet.
• Act of Passion, Georges Simenon — I really do need this, for research purposes. I should bring some Simenon.
• Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follett — Comes highly recommended by Oprah and my mother-in-law, which recommendations I regard as dubious. But it's also the best book ever according to the coffee girl whith whom I chat about books. And then a coworker pressed her copy on me. Also, we recently introduced Carcassone to my mother-in-law, and she says it reminds her of this book, for which reason I'm now deadly curious.
• The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov. Only I might read this before I leave.

Those are the ones I haven't pushed into dusty corners.

Then there are the e-books I've been loading up on:

• Case Histories, Kate Atkinson (I love the TV series.)
• Impromptu in Moribundia, Patrick Hamilton
• Spurious, Lars Iyer
• Phantoms of Breslau, Marek Krajewski
• The Book of Disquiet, Fernando Pessoa (readalong, anyone?)
• The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell
• The Diamond Age, Neal Stephenson

This time next week I'll be leaving on vacation. Maybe I'll get to read a little. Or maybe I'll just spend all my waking hours at the champagne bar.

A hideous commerce

"It looks to me as if Wokulski is . . . in love, as it were."

The doctor stopped dead on the pavement and, leaning on his stick, began laughing in a way that attracted the attention of the (fortunately) few passers-by: "Ha ha! Have you only just made that monumental discovery? Ha ha! This old fellow pleases me . . ."

It was a ridiculous joke. However, I bit my lip and retorted. "It was easy to make that discovery, even for someone . . . less skilled than I am (I think I caught him there!). But I prefer being cautious even in supposing things, Mr Szuman . . . In any case, I never dreamed that such an ordinary thing as love could bring about such havoc in man."

"You are mistaken, old man," the doctor replied with a gesture. "Love is an ordinary thing in nature and even to God, if you like. But your stupid civilisation, based on Roman views long since dead and buried, on the interests of the papacy, troubadours, asceticism, the caste system and such-like rubbish has turned a natural feeling into — guess what? — a disease of the nervous system! Your supposedly chivalrous and romantic love is nothing more than a hideous commerce based on dishonesty, which is very properly punished by the lifelong imprisonment known as marriage . . . Woe to those who bring their hearts to such a market-place! How much talent, even life it devours . . . I know this very well," he went on, breathless with rage, "for although I'm a Jew and will remain one till the day I die, I was nevertheless brought up among your people and was even engaged to marry a Christian girl . . . Well, and they forced us to make so many compromises in our plans, they watched over us so tenderly in the name of religion, morality, tradition and goodness knows what else — that she died and I tried to poison myself . . . A man as clever as I am, and as bald."

He stopped again on the sidewalk. "Believe me, Ignacy," he concluded in a hoarse voice, "you will not find anything as vile as human beings, not even among the animals. In Nature, the male belongs to the female who pleases him and whom he pleases. So there are no idiots among the animals. But among us! I am a Jew, so am not allowed to love a Christian woman . . . He is in trade, so he has no right to a well-born lady . . . And you, who have no money, have no right at all to any woman whatsoever. Your civilisation is rotten! I'd gladly perish, provided its ruins came down on top of me . . . "

— from The Doll, by Bolesław Prus.

Ah, love. Well, you think it's about love, but then it's about politics. But for Ignacy, everything is about politics, even when it isn't.

I'm about halfway through and find myself fully invested in these characters and their lots, despite the overuse of ellipses (as a punctuation mark, I mean — see excerpt above — not a narrative device). It fills me with horror that Wokulski might be led to ruin by love, or something like it.

Izabela to this point is not quite the cold-hearted bitch I was led to anticipate; she is oblivious to some concerns and at times thoughtless, but this is because she is a product of the class system, not because she is inherently evil.

There's a flashback in which there's much drinking and Wokulski agrees to jump off a bridge, which is reminiscent of an early scene in War and Peace, where the young pups dare each other to drink out on the window ledge. It's funny and life-affirming and mildly horrifying (the scene, I mean, but maybe also the story in general), but seen through Ignacy's eyes, it's all political.

My love is away this week, so I'm off to bed with my book.

The feelings of frozen hearts and the dreams of unfeeling heads

Some quotable bits from the first 205 pages of The Doll, by Bolesław Prus, with a few thoughts.

P 10:
At eight in the evening they closed: the clerks went off, and only Rzecki remained behind. He made out the day's accounts, checked the cash, planned his activities for the morrow and wondered whether everything had been done that should have been done that day. For he paid for any neglected duties with insomnia and dismal dreams of the shop in ruins, of the final decline and fall of the Bonaparte dynasty and with the thought that all the hopes he ever had in his life were only nonsense.

"Nothing will ever happen! We're doomed, and there's no hope," he groaned, tossing on his hard mattress.

— I find this is pretty funny, though perhaps in other times it was normal to feel such strong concern for the state of one's nation, or one's political heroes.

P 36:
Then they sat down to supper, at which mouths ate, stomachs digested and little shoes under the table talked about the feelings of frozen hearts and the dreams of unfeeling heads. Then they would separate, to regain their strength for the dream of life in real sleep.

— I love this. The mouths, stomachs, shoes are disembodied! There are a few passages (and a dream sequence among them) that border on surreal.

P 43:
At this point the conversation ceased; it had been in Polish, copiously ornamented with French, which made it resemble a face disfigured by a rash.

— How very insulting. I'm guessing French would be used among the aristocracy, as a sign or education, worldliness, fashion. But whose point of view is this in the conversation between Izabela and her countess aunt? Is it Izabela's view? Does she view the aristocracy of which she is a part with disdain? Or is this the stamp of our omniscient narrator?

P 49:
"And is there no war on today? It is the weapons that have changed, that's all. Instead of an axe of scythe or scimitar, they fight with roubles. [...]"

— A pretty progressive thought for 1878, no?

P 65:
What a stupid life!... We're all of us chasing a dream in our hearts and it is not until the dream escapes us that we realise it was an illusion.

P 72:
"Experts say first love is the worst," Wokulski murmured.

"Not so. After the first, a hundred others are waiting, but after the hundredth, there's nothing."

— Wokulski's got it bad. His every move — financial, social, charitable — is to attract her attention.

P 99:
"[...] They insist you want to kill the industry. Is the competition you are creating really so dangerous?"

"It is true," Wokulski replied, "that I have three or even four million roubles credit with the Moscow manufacturers, but I do not yet know whether their products will suit our market."

"A huge sum of money, to be sure," the Prince murmured. "Do you not see a genuine threat to our factories in it?"

"Not in the least. I see only an insignificant decrease in their own immense profits, which are no concern of mine. My duty is to concern myself with my own profits and give my customers good value; for our goods will be cheaper."

— There are a lot of similar discussions throughout. Wokulski clearly sees that the factory owners are exploiting their workers and their customers.

P 120:
Gradually the smoke died away. As far as the eye could see we saw what looked like scraps of white or navy-blue paper scattered in disorder on the trampled grass in various places. Several carts were moving around the field, and some people were placing these scraps in them. The rest remained. "So this is what they were born for," Katz sighed, leaning on his rifle, overcome by melancholy.

— This battle interlude — the Hungarian uprising of 1849, which many Poles joined — reminds me a little of War and Peace. It is particularly sobering for Rzecki, the old clerk in Wokulski's shop, his illusions of the glory of war, of purpose, being stripped away.

P 125:
During the entire journey I felt as though the quilt over my knees was more densely populated than Belgium.

P 138:
This young man proved to me, by quoting very clever people, that all capitalists are criminals, that the earth ought to belong to those who cultivate it, that factories, coalmines and machines ought to be the property of everyone, that there is no God or Soul which priests invented to trick people into paying tithes. He added that when they start the revolution (he and the three "prikashchiki"), then we shall all work only eight hours a day, and enjoy ourselves for the rest of the time, even though everyone will have a pension when old, and a free funeral. Finally he said that paradise will not come to this world until everything is held in common: the earth, building, machines and even wives.

— "Work only eight hours a day"! Damn Socialists.

P 158
"[...] They are all somewhat scatterbrained, as you will have noticed, but they're men of good will . . . They want to do something, they're intelligent and educated — but they lack energy. A sickness of the will, my dear sir, their whole class is affected by it . . . They have everything — money, titles, respect, even success with women, so they want nothing. But without that urge, Mr Wokulski, they cannot help becoming tools in the hands of new and ambitious men . . . We, my dear sir, we still want many things," he added in a still lower voice, "they are lucky to have found us . . . "

P 192:
"Well, and what have you to say to all this, doctor?"

"Only what I have already said," Szuman replied, "we're approaching the fifth act. Either this is the end of a gallant man, or the start of a whole series of follies..."

"And the worst sort, for they will be political," Mr Rzecki interposed.

— Wokulski has demanded satisfaction, so there is a duel! Barely a third through the novel, we can be fairly certain this is not his end, but rather as Szuman suggests merely the beginning of his end. I almost missed the insult and the challenge, they were so underplayed. Wokulski's head is so full of love that other, significant events happen in a blink.

I have not quoted here from the 5-page encounter with Izabela's cousin, Julian Ochocki, scientist, and his obsession with flying machines, which surely would prove to be a turning point for the world. But there was more to the conversation than that. Something about it was bitter to Wokulski, reminding him of pursuits he'd given up. I expect we'll meet Ochocki again.

Coincidentally I've been dipping into David Graeber's Debt: The First 5,000 Years this week, and it's complementing my reading of The Doll in terms of the role of usurers and the development of a class of tradesmen. It casts a light on Wokulski's sense of financial and moral obligation, and how closely they are tied.

Dance, dance, otherwise we are lost

Official site.
A bit of background.

It's joyful and thought-provoking, beautiful, and even funny at times. It's a "documentary," but without much dialogue — it's all about the dance, in the studio, on stage, and out onto the streets. The floating trams of Wuppertal are a marvelous backdrop. It's in 3D, directed by Wim Wenders, and nominated for an Academy Award in the category of best documentary feature.

Aging and memory are major themes in the works that are excerpted. The dance is deeply psychological (and with a touch of absurdity), the more so for humans being cast alongside basic elements — cascading water, flinging dirt, blowing leaves.

I dragged the family to see it this weekend, and we all loved it. J-F was astounded to discover that modern dance could be so meaningful (having seen Lalala Human Steps with me years ago and being unimpressed by the repetitiveness, and in contrast to, say, Cirque du Soleil, which ultimately is about feats of strength) — he is currently considering giving up his career in the civil service to join a dance troupe. The 9-year-old says it was very cool, so don't hesitate to take your kids — expose them to something a little out of the ordinary while saving yourself the expense of arts centre tickets. See it.

Lalka

Finally I'm reading The Doll, by Bolesław Prus. It stands as the Great Polish Novel (according to people who know better about these things than I do), but it wasn't until I actually cracked it open that it intimidated me.

It's 1878, and it's all Napoleon III, Bismarck, Gambetta, on top of which, it's set during the Partitions, and while I understand the fact of the partitions, it's hard to appreciate the logistical reality of them—how it affected people's heads, their language, culture, politics, their day to day. And when we're dealing with a main character who participated in the 1863 Uprising and was sent to Irkutsk as a result, and then went off to make his fortune in the Russo-Turkish war, I get the feeling the political background might be a little bit important.

[My grandparents were born some years after the events of this novel take place, but still in unPoland. Their day to day, their schooling, was German, yet they remained Polish, if nationless. I cannot fathom what that childhood might've been like.]

So even more so than with War and Peace, or The Red and the Black, I feel I am out of my depth.

But! I've looked a few things up, reread a few passages, passed the 50-page mark (of 683), and wishing I could stop the world so I could sink into it for a few uninterrupted days.

Izabela, our allegedly cold-hearted bitch of a heroine, is reading Zola's latest novel, A Page of Love.



Jacek Kaczmarski's song of the novel in the above clip is illustrated by scenes from Wojciech Has's 1968 film adapatation.

Księga zdarzeń zawsze otwarta w połowie

Wisława Szymborska, 1923–2012, whose poem "Love at First Sight" was put to song and used to great effect in Trois Couleurs: Rouge.

Problems of universal importance

Proud Beggars, by Albert Cossery, is a very funny book, and proved to be a delicious palate cleanser after having read a couple detail-intensive historical novels that went on a bit too long.

Written in 1955, Proud Beggars is surprisingly fresh, and in light of the Arab Spring, its revolutionary spirit can be viewed as relevant — not exactly prescient, but insightful into a simmering antiestablishment, life-affirming attitude.

It's set in Cairo, and in the second chapter there's a murder in a brothel. We know who did it — this is no police procedural or cat-and-mouse tale.

The story is about three friends, barely concerning itself with how they are implicated in the murder.

The novel starts with Gohar, who lives ascetically in a single room in a slum. He wakes to find it flooded and determines that the best course of action is to do nothing and wait for a miracle. But he's freaking out, so finally he makes a run for it, and only once he's well away from the building does he realize he's left his drugs behind, but he's too freaked out to go back. He spends the rest of the day affected by paranoia and hallucinations and sudden clarity and withdrawal, trying to track down his dealer. He dreams of finding passage to Syria where he can spend his days frolicking through fields of hashish. He gave up his professorial gig at the university some time ago; his literary talent now earns him some coin at the brothel, for to "write the love letters of illiterate whores seemed to him work worthy of human interest."

Yeghen is (he seems to think) a very ugly man, which quality is deemed to be central to his character, that of romantic and poet — a popular poet, a populist poet, giving the people voice in the people's own language. He makes his living by dealing drugs and, no doubt, engaging in other nefarious activities.

El Kordi is a revolutionary in his head, but by day he plays the role of government clerk:

It was eleven in the morning. Seated behind his desk in the Ministry of Public Works, El Kordi was growing bored watching the flies buzz about. The large room, lit by high windows and containing several desks behind which other clerks were labouring, was as odious to him as a prison. It actually was a sordid kind of prison, where one was in eternal contact with common-law prisoners. El Kordi would have accepted being in prison, but in a private cell, as a political prisoner. His rancor against such overcrowding derived from noble, aristocratic instincts of which he was not at all aware. He was embittered by the lack of privacy that became intolerable in the long run. How could he reflect at ease on problems of universal importance in front of these dusty, congealed figures devoted to unending slavery? To protest against this injustice, El Kordi abstained from practically all work, intending thereby to show his disapproval and his spiritual independence. But since no one noticed his protest, he grew bored.

[...]

From his chair, he distractedly contemplated his sorry colleagues and thought he saw the chains of slavery everywhere. These constraints imposed on his freedom several hours each day made him extremely sensitive to the sorrows of the oppressed masses of the universe. He stirred in his chair and sighed loudly. Some of the slaves, seriously occupied with their work, raised their heads and gave him a look full of incomprehension. El Kordi answered these sad looks with a kind of aggressive pout. He despised all of them. The revolutions would not be carried out by this wretched breed. They'd been there several years — how many, no one could say — rooted to their chairs, covered with dust, with their mummified faces. A veritable museum of horrors. At the thought that one day he might be like them, El Kordi shivered and felt like leaving at one. But then he told himself that it wasn't yet a decent hour to go, and so he stayed on quietly being bored.

Besides the motley trio, the investigating police inspector is himself quite a character, a man of peculiar habits and aspirations. He rounds out the novel's absurdities and brings it to a perfect close.

Along the way, adding to the rich tapestry of impoverished Cairo life: Yeghen's mother ("She was skilled in the art of distilling sadness; she spun misery like a spider its web."); the consumptive whore El Kordi intends to save; and Gohar's limbless beggar-neighbour and his jealous wife.

Despite the material poverty of the surroundings, there's a freedom of spirit and life-is-beautiful vibe throughout the book, and it's more than implied that such joie is absent among the oppressors, and only through relinquishing bourgeois extravagances can one know what is truly important. Of course, so many ideas are turned upside down in this book; ironically, the dead whore's life isn't given much value at all — she's of no consequence, just a casualty of the revolutionary ideas of a few self-important, if beggarly, men. So it seems Cossery is mocking the life-is-beautiful attitude as much as he's embracing it. Either way, it's something to smile about.

The novel has been adapted to a graphic format (French original, Mendiants et orgueilleux), extracted in Words without Borders.

The taste of the Russian peasant

The thespian side of Elizabeth's soul! Hunger for the awe lighting up visitors' faces when they reached her presence, having passed through the enfilade of staterooms connected through carved and gilded portals. Hunger for the gasps of astonishment at the soft browns and yellows in the Amber Room. Shades of ebony touching on the color of dark honey, through which she, the queen bee, floated in her luscious dresses, her high heels sliding on the polished mosaics of the floors. "How vulgar, Varenka," Catherine had murmured. "She has the taste of the Russian peasant she will always be."

The Winter Palace, by Eva Stachniak, is a historical novel centering on the rise to power of Catherine the Great of Russia, from the time she arrived at the court of Empress Elizabeth, at the age of 15. Catherine is a mythic character, but the truth is I know very little about her.

Her story is told through the eyes of one of the maids at court, Varvara, the orphaned daughter of a bookbinder, whose main duties revolve around the transmission of information, or, more bluntly, spying.



I wanted to love this book, but didn't. A little over halfway through I toyed with the idea of abandoning it. After all, I know the story ends in a coup and Catherine's ascension to the throne. I think the only thing that pulled me along was the introduction of the character of Count Poniatowski and the connection to Polish history, though I think my curiosity would be better served by a biography or history text.

The tagline — "behind every great ruler lies a betrayal" — is a little misleading; there is no single betrayal on which events hinge.

It was not believable to me that Catherine would suddenly have so much support, at court, among the Guard, after having lived so much on the sidelines, out of the court's and public's eye. Her life was fuller, of course, than we are allowed to see (and the novel is weaker for us not seeing it).

That's one of Varvara's epiphanies, but she comes off as rather pathetic for not having realized earlier that her status was not unique, for not having questioned some sources of information or the nature of other relationships. For someone in the know, she knows very little. Similarly, I don't buy Varvara's grief for her husband, and the characterization of her relationship with her daughter feels forced. It's too bad that we experience all the novel's events through someone whose characterization is relatively weak.

There's a disconnect between her perception, Catherine's story, and what I think the reader is intended to come away with.

About the palace cats.

Excerpt.

X

Has anyone read X'ed Out, by Charles Burns? Can you explain it to me?

I wish I'd known that this story was incomplete and was only the first part of a serial. On its own it's a bit slight, and I don't see what the big deal is over it. The story elements are part David Lynch, part William S. Burroughs — trippy and unexplained. Visually it pays homage to Tintin, but beyond that I don't see how referencing Tintin adds to the story. Maybe Burns intends a stronger parallel to be drawn in the next 100 pages, but I don't see it yet.

I'd be interested to see how the whole story plays out — what's with the hive, and the lizard creatures? — but the first volume by itself was pretty disappointing.

Reviews
The Guardian
LA Times

Wonderful

Graphic novels, comic books, whatever you want to call them, have never really been my thing. I've always been open to them in theory, but was never particularly drawn to them as a genre.

I use the word "genre" deliberately because it highlights a major misconception about what comic books are, one I was guilty of in the past, and one that is slowly being overcome in the literary establishment. Graphic novels are not a genre unto themselves; the term describes a format, like book, movie, painting, article, that delivers some kind of narrative (hence the "novel" part). I have over the years read in the form of graphic novels: adventure stories, fantasies, journalistic reportage, science fiction, historical memoirs, love stories.

My other half has always been a big fan of Daniel Clowes. This Christmas I gave him a handful of Clowes's latest, and since nobody gave me any books for Christmas this year (what the fuck?!), I've taken to reading over his shoulder.

Saturday morning I managed to squirrel away on my own with Mister Wonderful. Dark comedy romance? It's an evening in the life of a divorced middle-aged man out on a blind date. It's funny, perceptive, sweet. The night's events are visually depicted, but the meat of the story is Marshall's internal running commentary. In this way we also get glimpses into his past, learning how he came to be the man he is today.

But one night about three months ago, I was "befriended" by a strange woman. We wound up spending a crazy, sleepless weekend together. It was sort of like "Breakfast at Tiffany's," except in this version, Holly Golightly is an unstable, crank-snorting sociopath. It wound up costing me $800, my grandmother's earrings and a laptop, but such is the price of transformative human events, I suppose.

Clowes is a keen observer of behaviour. We miss a lot of Natalie's chitchat because Mister Wonderful is too busy thinking about having to pee but this not being a good time to go pee. Her emotional confessions are interrupted by the waitress. He grumbles about the rich party-goers and insults them in his head. It's all very human.

I'm learning that reading graphic novels requires a certain kind of literacy; one review notes some of the artist's techniques:

He makes judicious and creative use of comic book devices: three dimensional words to symbolize emotional distress; a little floating man to represent Marshall's superego; text in word balloons running off the side of a panel or obscured by inner-thought boxes; vignettes drawn in cartoony style to depict imagined consequences; flashbacks tinted a rusty orange.

Mister Wonderful originally ran in the New York Times Funny Pages.

From real to configurational space

Back in December when I was wondering what to read next, I held up two books and asked Helena, the one about robots or the one about something else (I don't remember what)? No contest. Robots, hands down.

The Cyberiad is a collection of short stories by Stanisław Lem. The stories are awesome and clever and hilarious.

They are illustrated by Daniel Mróz — the drawing I've posted here depicts the electronic bard, the story about which I quoted from previously. (There is an online gallery of Mróz's work, and and the recent Google doodle commemorating one of Lem's publications also pays him tribute in employing his style.) The illustrations are as funny and weird and complex as Lem's stories.

The stories read like fairy tales, though they are set in the far future. They deal with warring kingdoms, exotic cultures, human foibles, and questions of morality. They have a 1001 Nights feel to them, but with robots. Essentially, The Cyberiad relates the adventures of Trurl and Klapaucius, two constructors, as they execute various commissions across the universe while working on their own personal robotics projects. But they — the stories, not so much the constructors, but sometimes — are deeply reflective and philosophical.

Trurl and Klapaucius are friends, colleagues, competitors. The stories are about them more than their creations — the robots serve to amplify their too-human flaws: greed and ambition often lead them to go about their work with blinders on. The fact that they enjoy some relative successes means that there are others scheming to undermine them; when they're not trying to sabotage each other, they will join forces against a common threat.

Many people point to The Cyberiad as the perfect entryway to Lem's work. These stories are certainly accessible, but I'm not sure how representative they are of Lem. They are nothing like the handful of novels that I've read, but I imagine some other of his books might share The Cyberiad's light-heartedness and joie de vivre.

I don't know if Douglas Adams ever cited Lem as influence, but a comparison between these authors is clear.

Behold, from "The Third Sally or The Dragons of Probability" (I've inserted breaks for readability, but note that Lem writes this as one paragraph):

Trurl and Klapaucius were former pupils of the great Cerebron of Umptor, who for forty-seven years in the School of Higher Neantical Nillity expounded the General Theory of Dragons. Everyone knows that dragons don't exist. But while this simplistic formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the scientific mind. The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact wholly unconcerned with what does exist. Indeed, the banality of existence has been so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to discuss it any further here.

The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They were all, one might say, nonexistent, but each nonexisted in an entirely different way. And then there were the imaginary dragons, and the a-, anti- and minus-dragons (colloquially termed nots, noughts and oughtn'ts by the experts), the minuses being the most interesting on account of the well-known dracological paradox: when two minuses hypercontiguate (an operation in the algebra of dragons corresponding roughly to simple multiplication), the product is 0.6 dragon, a real nonplusser. Bitter controversy raged among the experts on the question of whether, as half of them claimed, this fractional beast began from the head down or, as the other half maintained, from the tail up.

Trurl and Klapaucius made a great contribution by showing the error of both positions. They were the first to apply probability theory to this area and, in so doing, created the field of statistical draconics, which says that dragons are thermodynamically impossible only in the probabilistic sense, as are elves, fairies, gnomes, witches, pixies and the like. Using the general equation of improbability, the two constructors obtained the coefficients of pixation, elfinity, kobolding, etc. They found that for the spontaneous manifestation of an average dragon, one would have to wait a good sixteen quintoquadrillion heptillion years. In other words, the whole problem would have remained a mathematical curiosity had it not been for that famous tinkering passion of Trurl, who decided to examine the nonphenomenon empirically.

First, as he was dealing with the highly improbable, he invented a probability amplifier and ran tests in his basement — then later at the Dracogenic Proving Grounds established and funded by the Academy. To this day those who (sadly enough) have no knowledge of the General Theory of Improbability ask why Trurl probabilized a dragon and not an elf or goblin. The answer is simply that dragons are more probable than elves or goblins to begin with. True, Trurl might have gone further with his amplifying experiments, had not the first been so discouraging — discouraging in that the materialized dragon tried to make a meal of him. Fortunately, Klapaucius was nearby and lowered the probability, and the monster vanished.

A number of scholars subsequently repeated the experiment on a phantasmatron, but, as they lacked the necessary know-how and sang-froid, a considerable quantity of dragon spawn, raising an ungodly perturbation, broke loose. Only then did it become clear that those odious beasts enjoyed an existence quite different from that of ordinary cupboards, tables and chairs; for dragons are distinguished by their probability rather than by their actuality, though granted, that probability is overwhelming once they've actually come into being.

Suppose, for example, one organizes a hunt for such a dragon, surrounds it, closes in, beating the brush. The circle of sportsmen, their weapons cocked and ready, finds only a burnt patch of earth and an unmistakable smell: the dragon, seeing itself cornered, has slipped from real to configurational space. An extremely obtuse and brutal creature, it does this instinctively, of course.

Now, ignorant and backward persons will occasionally demand that you show them this configurational space of yours, apparently unaware that electrons, whose existence no one in his right mind would question, also move exclusively in configurational space, their coming and goings fully dependent on curves of probability. Though it is easier not to believe in electrons than in dragons: electrons, at least taken singly, won't try to make a meal of you.

[Helena asked if she'd made a good choice, selecting this book for me to read. I told her, excellent. Over the weeks I was reading these stories I would retell parts of them to her, and we'd share our puzzlement or laugh at their ridiculousness.

In an unrelated conversation, she told me she's changed her mind about what she wants to be when she grows up. Maybe she wants to be a constructor (and I thought this was a weird choice of word for her to use), to build things she designs herself, ecological things, that are good for the planet, to make our lives better, like pineapple phones or electric cars.]

What you know, you know

"Why did you strike his so soundly?"

"He needs that scholarly pride clouted out of him."

"Like the man you spoke of who angered you?"

There's a short silence. His shoulders rise and fall. "There are those who think that all of life's lessons can be reaped from reading. I despise them."

"Despise them?"

"What a man does with his brain is his concern, not mine. Just do not let him think he's a better man for it. [...]"

Although many professional reviewers are quibbling over the liberties David Snodin has taken with Shakespeare's Othello, I rather enjoyed his Iago, and I'm guessing my general ignorance of Shakespeare went a long way in this regard. I didn't notice what plot points were changed, nor did I have a strong sense of Iago's character before jumping in.

Of course, I knew the basics of Shakespeare's story, and read up on it a little after Snodin's novel had hooked me.

Snodin has written about his fascination with the character of Iago, and the more I know, the more entranced I become myself — enough so that I'll be checking out Othello on film soon.

Snodin's story picks up where Shakespeare's left off. Iago is imprisoned for murder in a remote corner of Cyprus, and by page 11 we learn he's escaped. Back in Venice, we learn of the domestic tragedy of Othello and experience its aftermath through Gentile Stornello, cousin of Shakespeare's ill-fated Desdemona. Gentile's a nerd and a weakling — a poet! — and he gets mixed up with — that is, beaten up by — one of the Malipiero bad boys. And he falls for his servant girl.

One of the Malipiero uncles is Chief Inquisitor of the Serene Republic of Venice. He has Gentile brought in, because he can. And he throws Gentile — who reminds him of his own deceased son — in with Iago — for whom there is still an official hunt going on. That is, he's got Iago, but he's not telling anyone yet, cuz that's not enough for him; he wants to know what makes Iago tick. So he lets him go. Malipiero uses Gentile to gleen what he can about Iago.

So the plot has some Shakespearean-like complexities at its core.

It's a cat-and-mouse story — the cat know exactly where the mouse is, and the mouse knows the cat is on its tail, but the cat waits for exactly the right moment to pounce, and the mouse plays to survive, and you're never really sure what the cat gets out of it. Is there really such a thrill in the hunt or is it simply playing, to the death — does it enjoy the game or is it merely acting according to its nature?

There are a lot of reasons I enjoyed Iago.

One. I'm loving historical Venice, its sounds and colours. This is directly related to my ongoing relationship with the Assassin's Creed video games, and reading this book was a reasonable substitute for the games, allowing me to immerse myself in that world through a different channel.

Two. It seems I may have my own personal Iago these days, whispering groundless suppositions in my Othello's ear. But by what motivation? Jealousy, cruelty, kindness, justice, amusement?

Three. I read this novel while watching people grieve. It served as a much-needed escape from funereal circumstances and as a reminder of some basic truths.

The loyalty and protection of those closest to you, I think, is what makes for true succor — a shield against the fears of the night and the perils of the world outside.

Mostly it made me wonder about our true natures. Do we always act as our selves, or can we be driven to deeds that are out of character? How? Which is our true self — the one in cool-headed repose or the one inflamed by passion? Do we betray our true selves under torture? People around me are saying things in their grief — I can't tell if it has muddied their contact with the world or if it has stripped bare something that is in their essence.

(With these questions I'm reminded of Louise Penny's A Trick of the Light, a completely different novel from this one, and a remarkably strong one in how it's holding up in my memory, but with a similar motivation — to dig at the roots of human nature.)

Reviews
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
The New Republic
Washington Post
Winnipeg Free Press

I tend to agree with the reviewer of the Winnipeg Free Press piece:

It is a journey that ends, as it seems all post-Freudian accounts of evil must, with sexual trauma suffered in childhood.

This is perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the novel, betraying as it does the most unsettling aspect of Shakespeare's play. Whereas Shakespeare's Othello reveals to us monstrosity disguised as mundanity, Snodin's Iago only manages to make the monstrous mundane.

From what I gather, if you know your Shakespeare, this book may disappoint you, but if you're like me, Iago may inspire you to approach its source.

Finding Shakespeare

Hamlet finally meets his maker in The Blast of War, Volume 2 of Kill Shakespeare (collecting issues 7–12).

The first volume, A Sea of Troubles, set the stage, bringing to life the premise that Shakespeare's creations have taken on a life of their own and are grappling with some metaphysical complexities. Are they bound by Shakespeare's quill (and what exactly is the nature of that bond), or is their will entirely free (and if so, where does that leave Shakespeare)? The plot is a question of resolving the balance of power — the bloodlustiness of Lady Macbeth and her demonic minions and the treachery of Richard III on the one hand, with Juliet, Othello, and Hamlet leading a kind of uprising against a meaningless existence on the other, essentially in defense of Shakespeare's honour.

This second volume see these factions do battle in an ultimate confrontation. But it's not all war. I was swept up in the love story: Romeo is alive after all. Will Juliet go back to him, or will she move forward with Hamlet?

Shakespeare turns out to be an alcoholic recluse wallowing in his own existential crisis. Hamlet has searched him out.

"Amazing. These people believe you their creator and yet thou art merely a drunkard. They deserve better. For this ale-soaked form deserves not my pity, nor even my scorn."

"Careful, Prince. I was not asked to be their — or your — maker. But know this: I most assuredly can unmake thee."

While the first volume stands for the novelty of its premise, I enjoyed the sequel even more for the strength of its story.

The video clip that follows features an interview with Kill Shakespeare's creators. It provides some insight on what went into its making, but it also gives you a taste of the story and the wonderful artwork.



There's some talk of adapting this work for film. Personally, I'd love to see this turned into a TV series: the Kill Shakespeare universe is wide open for countless potential adventures.

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Blogcritics
Clandestine Critic
Geeks of Doom
Grovel
PopMatters

************

I read this back in early December, but for various reasons haven't had the opportunity to post about it (or spend much time on the Internet at all) till now. It's a happy coincidence that since then, I've read David Snodin's Iago, another extrapolation of the life of a Shakespearean character beyond Bill's script (I'll write more about this novel later). It certainly complemented my reading of the comic, giving me a fuller appreciation of Iago — a character I know very little about (I've never read or seen Othello) — and how he fits among the villains in Shakespeare's world, and helped keep this comic book alive in my mind.

This to say: you don't need to know any Shakespeare at all to enjoy Kill Shakespeare, but (as with anything, I guess) the more you know, the richer it is.

Why should I long for things of this world?

My father's voice came back to me first: "The power of reason . . . breaking down fear and superstition . . . Kunstkamera is a temple of knowledge." And then I remembered our maids calling Peter's museum a cursed place, one that would bring bad luck on our heads. Were they right when they sneered at my father's words?

I pushed away these thoughts. I would not cry, I vowed.

The first thing Professor Stehlin pointed out to the Grand Duke in Kunstkamera was a glass dome covering a hill made of skulls and bones. Two baby skeletons propped on iron poles looked as if they were preparing to climb it. Beside them another skeleton, bow in hand, seemed about to start playing his violin. A wreathe made of dried arteries, kidneys, and hearts hung above them, with a a calligraphed inscription that said: Why should I long for things of this world?

"Anatomical art," Professor Stehlin called it. "So why should we think of death when we are still in our prime?" he asked his pupil.

The Grand Duke rubbed his hands and grinned. He remembered word for word what I had read to him days before.

To make us aware of the brevity of life. To remind us that we will have to account for our deeds well beyond the moment of death.

Professor Stehlin nodded with a smile.

— from The Winter Palace, by Eva Stachniak.

It feels right to be reading this when it's cold. These last weeks have been dark. There has been death, and also violence. It's been a sad time, and morbid too.

The description of this museum disturbed me. The book is historical fiction. At this point I had to investigate: how much is historical, how much is fiction?

Kunstkamera is real, situated across the Neva from the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg. It is Peter the Great's personal collection of anthropological artefacts. Something of a freak show.

Much of the extensive and gruesome collection of anatomic specimens is viewable online.

Capitaine Haddock: Iconoclast

I am surrounded by Tintin lovers.

As much as we are sceptical of the translation of Tintin to the big screen, we are eager to see it. But for various reasons, it will have to wait a little while.

Myself, I have only a passing acquaintance with the intrepid young reporter. So by "we" I really mean my daughter, her father, his mother, her brother, and so on.

Being surrounded by Tintin as I am, there's nothing to do but grab an album off the stack: Le Crabe aux pinces d'or, in which we are first introduced to Capitaine Haddock.

I read this in French, and while I didn't get all the words, I got most of them. In fact, the most entertaining aspect of the story was the stream of insults Capitaine Haddock would let forth.

Canailles!... Empl­âtres!... Va-nu-pieds!... Troglodytes!... Tchouk-tchouk-nougat!...

Sauvages!... Aztèques!... Grenouilles!... Marchands de tapis!... Iconoclastes!...

Chenapan!... Ectoplasmes!... Marins d'eau douce!... Bachie-Bouzouks!... Zoulous!... Doryphores!...

Froussards!... Macaques!... Parasites! Moules à gaufres!

and

Filibustier!... Végétarien!... Pacte-à-quatre!...

Pirate!... Corsaire!

Arlequin! Hydrocarbure! Zoulou! Canaque! Gyroscope!

Empl­âtre!... Doryphore!... Noix de coco!... Zouave!... Cannibale!...

Anthropopithèque!... Iconoclaste!...

Paltoquet! Anacoluthe!... Invertèbre!... Jus de réglisse!

Do these insults really need translation?

I'm informed that this character trait of the good captain's pervades the rest of the adventures. There is much to look forward to.

Such is the way of scientific fanaticism

Trurl decides to build a machine that could write poetry...

The program found in the head of an average poet, after all, was written by the poet's civilization, and that civilization was in turn programmed by the civilization that preceded it, and so on to the very Dawn of Time, when those bits of information that concerned the poet-to-be were still swirling about in the primordial chaos of the cosmic deep. Hence in order to program a poetry machine, one would first have to repeat the enter Universe from the beginning — or at least a good piece of it.

[...]

Towards the end of the twentieth century the machine began to tremble, first sideways, then lengthwise — for no apparent reason. This alarmed Trurl; he brought out cement and grappling irons just in case. But fortunately these weren't needed; instead of jumping its mooring, the machine settled down and soon had left the twentieth century far behind. Civilizations came and went thereafter in fifty-thousand-year intervals: these were the fully intelligent beings from whom Trurl himself stemmed. Spool upon spool of computerized history was filled and ejected into storage bins; soon there were so many spools, that even if you stood at the top of the machine with high-powered binoculars, you wouldn't see the end of them. And all to construct some versifier! But then, such is the way of scientific fanaticism. At last the programs were ready; all that remained was to pick out the most applicable — else the electropoet's education would take several million years at the very least.

During the next two weeks Trurl fed general instructions into his future electropoet, then set up all the necessary logic circuits, emotive elements, semantic centers. He was about to invite Klapaucius to attend a trial run, but thought better of it and started the machine himself. It immediately proceeded to deliver a lecture on the grinding of crystallographical surfaces as an introduction to the study of submolecular magnetic anomalies. Trurl bypassed half the logic circuits and made the emotive more electromotive; the machine sobbed, went into hysterics, then finally said, blubbering terribly, what a cruel, cruel world this was. Trurl intensified the semantic fields and attached a strength of character component; the machine informed him that from now on he would carry out its every wish and to begin with add six floors to the nine it already had, so it could better meditate upon the meaning of existence. Trurl installed a philosophical throttle instead; the machine fell silent and sulked. Only after endless pleading and cajoling was he able to get it to recite something: "I had a little froggy." That appeared to exhaust its repertoire. Trurl adjusted, modulated, expostulated, disconnected, ran checks, reconnected, reset, did everything he could think of, and the machine presented him with a poem that made him thank heaven Klapaucius wasn't there to laugh — imagine, simulating the whole Universe from scratch, not to mention Civilization in every particular, and to end up with such dreadful doggerel! Trurl put in six cliché filters, but they snapped like matches; he had to make them out of pure corundum steel. This seemed to work, so he jacked the semanticity up all the way, plugged in an alternating rhyme generator — which nearly ruined everything, since the machine resolved to become a missionary among destitute tribes on far-flung planets. But at the very last minute, just as he was ready to give up and take a hammer to it, Trurl was struck by an inspiration; tossing out all the logic circuits, he replaced them with self-regulating egocentripetal narcissistors. The machine simpered a little, whimpered a little, laughed bitterly, complained of an awful pain on its third floor, said that in general it was fed up, through, life was beautiful but men were such beasts and how sorry they'd all be when it was dead and gone. Then it asked for pen and paper.

— from "The First Sally (A) or Trurl's Electronic Bard," in The Cyberiad, by Stanisław Lem.

Ma chandelle de Noël

Ma petite chandelle
Est très belle
Elle est décorée
D'étoiles en papier

Elle va me quitter bientôt
Car je vais la donner en cadeau
Noël c'est triste et amusant
Surtout le jour de l'an

Elle va me manquer
Pendant toute l'année
Car Noël est bientôt fini
C'est ainsi

— by Helena, grade 3.

Written for maman et papa at Christmas.

The furious animation of children

The differences among the children were startling, and yet, in the end, their faces mingled. Above all, the tapes revealed the furious animation of children, the fact that when conscious they rarely stop moving. A simple walk down the block included waving, hopping, skipping, twirling, and multiple pauses to examine a piece of litter, pet a dog, or jump up and walk along a cement barrier or low fence. In a schoolyard or playground, they jostled, punched, elbowed, kicked, poked, patted, hugged, pinched, tugged, yelled, laughed, chanted, and sang, and while I watched them, I said to myself that growing up really means slowing down.

— from What I Loved, by Siri Hustvedt.