Some thoughts on Silas Marner.

If you read the post on Lethe and the river of forgetfulness, you would have noticed the thread of intertextuality drawn between Silas Marner and Dante's Divine Comedy. In the Divine Comedy, toward the end of leaving the Inferno Dante needs to immerse himself in forgetfulness to be cleansed of the sins of memory before he can progress his pilgrimage ultimately toward Paradise.
In Silas Marner memory is repeatedly put under question. Silas, himself, was mentioned to be engaging the 'Lethean influence of exile'. The village of Raveloe, when searching for the thief, suffers from problems of memory. And again, Godfrey Cass who has married outside the knowledge of his father - is living with the consequences of this marriage when we read again the invocation of forgetfulness..
"While Godfrey Cass was taking draughts of forgetfulness from the sweet presence of Nancy, willingly losing all sense of that hidden bond which at other moments galled and fretted him so as to mingle irritation with the very sunshine, Godfrey's wife was walking with slow uncertain steps through the snow-covered Raveloe lanes, carrying her child in her arms." p102

Eliot's elegant construction of memory and character allows her to do two things simultaneously. Firstly, it allows her to investigate sin and memory within the Christian culture of her own time. How easily and spuriously faulty memory of events can drastically impact upon the lives of people within censorious cultures. Secondly, it allows her to enter within the 'inner' struggle of characters with difficult pasts and the intrusion of painful memories on our ability to build our futures in the present.

I suspect, I am currently at the neap mark of the arc of Silas. It is New Year's Eve, it is mid winter, snowing and after dark. The personified past (Godfrey's wife) is literally stalking the streets and falls into a torpor.

"But the complete torpor came at last: the fingers lost their tension, the arms unbent; then the little head fell away from the bosom, and the blue eyes opened wide on the cold straight. At first there was a little peevish cry of 'mammy', and an effort to regain the pillowing arm and bosom; but mammy's ear was deaf, and the pillow seemed to be slipping away backward. Suddenly, as the child rolled downward on its mother's knees, all wet with snow, its eyes were caught by a bright glancing light on the white ground, and, with the ready transition of infancy, it was immediately absorbed in watching the bright living thing running towards it, yet never arriving. That bright living thing must be caught; and in a instant the child had slipped on all fours, and held out one little hand to catch the gleam. But the gleam would not be caught in that way, and now the head was held up to see where the cunning gleam came from. It came from a very bright place; and the little one, rising on its legs, toddled through the snow, the old grimy shawl in which it was wrapped trailing behind it, and the queer little bonnet dangling at its back - toddled on to the open door of Silas Marner's cottage, and right up to the warm hearth, where there was a bright fire of logs and sticks, which had thoroughly warmed the old sack (Silas's greatcoat) spread out on the bricks to dry."


I think the arrival of the 'innocent' babe figuratively into Silas's lap marks the change of the tides.

March in Sydney

March in Sydney is paradise on Earth. We no longer have to suffer the oppressive embrace of Summer yet still have the comfort of its afterglow. The slight south-easterly gains confidence with only the occasional outbreak of bad temper. Which leaves Sydney's residents with a sublime equilibrium where, at most, a light jumper is needed as cover and one can comfortably spend the afternoons in labour or leisure in comfort.
By now, most of the festivals and celebrations of the last few months have died down and the usual beat of the city resumes a less frantic pace. The air-conditioners are allowed a small tea-break after months of strenous toiling to keep its masters in good order. Quilt night covers are a pleasant option instead of a wintery necessity. Bare feet neither are scorched nor bitten when asked for their opinion of the day. Faces are neither stretched nor shrunken with their gaze upon the high blue -white sky.
Only the imported foliage begin their annual disrobing as the native Eucalypt tut-tut their soon to be nakedness. The cicadas have quitened their chorus, allowing the birds again to be heard during the day. The magpies are leaving northward for warmer climes their hatchlings now firmly black and white in plummage. The local Kookaburras and seagulls still eye off a stray chip not yet inclined for pilgrimage.
The hot greeting of the morning coffee seems neither to be the need of the addict nor the necessity of resuscitation but a pleasant, voluntary handshake. The newspaper is neither idle with the cries of 'howzat' nor yet frenzied with the tempest of rugby league's sins but only the mumbled echoes of Sydney's staples of corruption and scandal bother its readers eyes.
Though the call of Monday's commute will always be its sword of Damocles. It has a ready, welcome weekend sheath during March in Sydney.

As I mentioned earlier: there are connections between the Divine Comedy and Silas Marner, one possible route may have been through the work of William Blake. As I showed, waaay back of an illustration of one of Dante's Canto's, Blake did alot of illustrations as well as poetry. Blake also did song lyrics for traditional English dances...in Silas Marner on NYE there is a party being held at the Cass "manor" (?) and we have again the Sir Roger Coverley (which I sighted from A Christmas Carol) but we also have the dance " A flaxen headed boy" p100.

You might think that I am merely revealing my hitherto undisclosed interest in niche early English music, I can assure you that these are merely the result of cursory travels down obvious intertextual threads of the books I am reading.

The Plough Boy

A flaxen-headed cowboy, as simple as may be,
And next a merry plough-boy, I whistled o’er the lea;
But now a saucy footman I strut in worsted lace,
And soon I’ll be a butler, and whey my jolly face.

When steward I’m promoted I’ll snip the trademen’s bill,
My master’s coffers empty, my pockets for to fill.
When lolling in my chariot, so great a man I’ll be,
So great a man, so great a man, so great a man I‘ll be,
You’ll forget the little ploughboy that whistled o’er the lea.

I’ll buy votes at elections, but, when I’ve made the pelf,
I’ll stand poll for the parliament, and then vote in myself;
Whatever’s good for me, sir, I never will oppose;
When all my ayes are sold off, why then I’ll sell my noes.
I’ll joke, harangue, and paragraph, with speeches charm the ear;
And when I’m tired on my legs, then I’ll sit down a peer;
In court or city honours, so great a man I’ll be,
so great a man...

William Blake




Beatrice Addressing Dante from the Car 1824-7 by William Blake (Tate)

Tate Commentary:
Dante stands by the head of the Gryphon, and the three women in the foreground are Faith, (in white) Hope, (in green) and Charity (in red). The heads of the four Evangelists appear from amidst their peacock feather wings on either side of Beatrice. For Dante, Beatrice symbolised the Christian Church, but Blake has given her a gold crown and made her represent the evil-goddess Vala in his own mythology. Vala is goddess of nature, and in showing Dante submitting to her Blake is commenting on Dante's inability to transcend the material world and reach the true world of the spirit.

I have finished Silas Marner. It was a very pleasurable book and I will allow myself a sleep before I embark upon my summary thoughts on this text.

One very specific thing that I learnt today from this book was that migratory agricultural workers, i.e. not the medieval peasant servitude, year was broken into four contractual periods. Each of four feast day Christmas (Dec 25), Ladyday (Mar 25), Midsummer day and....

Michaelmas, the feast of Saint Michael the Archangel (also the Feast of Saints Michael, Gabriel, Uriel and Raphael, the Feast of the Archangels, or the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels) is a day in the Western Christian calendar which occurs on 29 September. Because it falls near the equinox, it is associated in the northern hemisphere with the beginning of autumn and the shortening of days. In medieval England, Michaelmas marked the ending and beginning of the husbandman's year, George C. Homans observes: "at that time harvest was over, and the bailiff or reeve of the manor would be making out the accounts for the year."

Quarter Days
In British and Irish tradition, the quarter days were the four dates in each year on which servants were hired, and rents were due. They fell on four religious festivals roughly three months apart and close to the two solstices and two equinoxes.

The significance of quarter days is now limited, although leasehold payments and rents for land and premises in England are often still due on the old English quarter days.

The quarter days have been observed at least since the Middle Ages, and they ensured that debts and unresolved lawsuits were not allowed to linger on. Accounts had to be settled, a reckoning had to be made and publicly recorded on the quarter days.


Archangel Michael
Michael is mentioned three times in the Book of Daniel, once as a "great prince who stands up for the children of your people". The idea that Michael was the advocate of the Jews became so prevalent that in spite of the rabbinical prohibition against appealing to angels as intermediaries between God and his people, Michael came to occupy a certain place in the Jewish liturgy.

In the New Testament Michael leads God's armies against Satan's forces in the Book of Revelation, where during the war in heaven he defeats Satan. In the Epistle of Jude Michael is specifically referred to as "the archangel Michael". Christian sanctuaries to Michael appeared in the 4th century, when he was first seen as a healing angel, and then over time as a protector and the leader of the army of God against the forces of evil. By the 6th century, devotions to Archangel Michael were widespread both in the Eastern and Western Churches. Over time, teachings on Michael began to vary among Christian denominations



St. Michael is an oil painting by Italian artist Raphael. Also called the Little St. Michael to distinguish it from a larger, later treatment of the same theme, St. Michael Vanquishing Satan, it is housed in the Louvre in Paris.[1] The work depicts the Archangel Michael in combat with the demons of Hell, while the damned suffer behind him. Along with St. George, it represents the first of Raphael's works on martial subjects.

The punishments depicted reflect Dante's treatment of hypocrites and thieves.

I will leave Raphael for another day.


Silas Marner reference to michaelmas - p152 Chap 17.

Dante on Michael : Canto VII 1-39....the context is the fourth ring of Hell of Hoarders and Spendthrifts, you also hear Dante's take on Luck according to Penguin translator Sayers.

Comin thro' the Rye

[First Setting]

Comin thro' the rye, poor body,

Comin thro' the rye,

She draigl't a' her petticoatie

Comin thro' the rye.


[CHORUS.]

Oh Jenny 's a' weet poor body

Jenny 's seldom dry,

She draigl't a' her petticoatie

Comin thro' the rye.


Gin a body meet a body

Comin thro' the rye,

Gin a body kiss a body —

Need a body cry.

Oh Jenny 's a' weet, &c.


Gin a body meet a body

Comin thro' the glen;

Gin a body kiss a body —

Need the warld ken!

Oh Jenny 's a' weet, &c.


[Second Setting]

Gin a body meet a body, comin thro' the rye,

Gin a body kiss a body, need a body cry;

Ilka body has a body, ne'er a ane hae I;

But a' the lads they loe me, and what the waur am I.


Gin a body meet a body, comin frae the well,

Gin a body kiss a body, need a body tell;

Ilka body has a body, ne'er a ane hae I,

But a the lads they loe me, and what the waur am I.


Gin a body meet a body, comin frae the town,

Gin a body kiss a body, need a body gloom;

Ilka Jenny has her Jockey, ne'er a ane hae I,

But a' the lads they loe me, and what the waur am I.

By Robert Burns




Robert Burns (25 January 1759 – 21 July 1796) (also known as Robbie Burns,[1] Rabbie Burns, Scotland's favourite son, the Ploughman Poet, Robden of Solway Firth, the Bard of Ayrshire and in Scotland as The Bard)[2][3] was a Scottish poet and lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland and is celebrated worldwide. He is the best known of the poets who have written in the Scots language, although much of his writing is also in English and a light Scots dialect, accessible to an audience beyond Scotland. He also wrote in standard English, and in these writings his political or civil commentary is often at its bluntest.

Robert Burns by Alexander Nasmyth



Dame Nellie Melba GBE (19 May 1861 – 23 February 1931), born Helen "Nellie" Porter Mitchell, was an Australian operatic soprano. She became one of the most famous singers of the late Victorian Era and the early 20th century. She was the first Australian to achieve international recognition as a classical musician.


* One of her notable achievements was to champion Puccini's La Boheme and her concerts at Covent Garden with Enricho Caruso have rarely been eclipsed.


If you could not tell the point of this post.

The next cab of the rank is Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger.

If you're reading Silas Marner, this piece on middlemarch from yesterday's paper might be of interest:

http://gu.com/p/3n4cn

It is a well written response to Middlemarch. It is one of a few epic white whales that I have avoided hitherto. I think sometime later this year I might tackle it because I have certainly enjoyed her very contemporary sensibility and I am infatuated with her writing style.

Thank you for the link, Kokiri.

Yes, Silas Marner is a fine book. I've only read it twice, and it's been many years since I last read it, but I think it may be the finest book I've ever read.

Silas Marner By George Eliot

We all carry pre-conceived ideas with us when we approach a new text. The expectations of genre can sometimes allow us to settle into a familiar posture towards a narrative and be a platform from which we can seek to delve deeper or merely be carried away home in a nostalgic journey on well-trodden trails. Perhaps it is when along this familiar trail that we get disrupted by an author with something hidden in plain sight or a revisiting with 'fresh' eyes of something that we thought we understood - that the pleasure of narrative fiction are most sharply felt.
The very contemporary treatment of familial 'emotional' connections was shocking to me given that I expected and was also lulled into believing that the didactic themes of Eliot would be far more conservative and Victorian than what actually was presented in Silas Marner. The triumph of 'feeling' over convention or tradition in the development of the father/daughter relationship between Silas and Eppie - strikes a contemporary audience as both 'fitting' and just.
Further to my suprise, the complex dialogue the author engages with the philosophical tradition and its conception of memory is an extremely deft and serious construction of high standing. Unlike modern conceptions of memory which are unduly weighted with the Freudian legacy - Eliot's description of memory and its consequences seems to me to carry an authenticity of its encounter in our lives and not be just a conceptual construct.

Unforgettable

Pushing back

The culture which we live in moulds us, educates us, colonises us and has great expectations about what we should and should not think of ourselves and the world around us. It is an inescapable prison, we can of course flee to another culture and change the size and shape of our prison cell but ultimately we are encapsulated in our existent as a socially constructed being.
Some of this, might in fact be biologically determined, some of it - is likely deeply ingrained socialisation and the rest is continually reinforced through subtle and not so subtle communication with us in the signification that proliferates our 'reality'. We classify, categorise, judge and decide our own mythologies of ourselves and the way the world works with varying degrees of complicity and 'consiousness' of choice and are co-opted and indoctrinated with varying degrees of depth by our culture.

I, quite feebly, try and push back. My resistance is probably ineffectual and may not even be self-subjectively discernable in impact even in the deepest moments of insightful self-reflection. However, I choose to resist being categorised in my beliefs - even though they are in likelihood still able to be sorted as such. I try and allow a sense of malleability about my own conception of self - trying not to let my past nor present be the manner in which I judge myself. Is this an abrogation of morality and resonsibility? Probably. Is it just another self-delusion of mine? Probably.

Sometimes the scream of the madman strikes a more authentic note to me than the erudite observation of the supreme positivist idea of a scientist.
Hamlet

549 Now I am alone.
550 O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
551 Is it not monstrous that this player here,
552 But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
553 Could force his soul so to his own conceit
554 That from her working all his visage wann'd,
555 Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect,
556 A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
557 With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing!

(Hamlet Act 2 Scene 2)

Removing this conceit to maintain a larger conceit of myself.

Some of you might wonder as to my motivation for wanting to blog about reading a hundred books as well as why I post the artefacts about European high culture. It is to remove a conceit and maintain a larger conceit.

Conceit'1(-set), n. Personal vanity; fanciful notion, far-fetched comparison or other euphuism; in my own ~ (judgement); out of ~, no longer pleased with. [f. CONCEIVE on deceit]

(p242) The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English 4th ed.

The personal vanity that I want to remove is that I believed that I was well-read but now I do not. Yes, I would sometimes stretch the truth in conversation as to whether I had read a book or not. This is fine to concede in an internet blog but certainly not in polite company.
The conceit that I want to maintain is that I am an insightful person. I am not willing to sacrifice that fancy but if I kept getting struck by how many literary works I have not read then that will be a harder self-myth to maintain to a scrupulous audience such as myself.

So I am trying to cover a few bases simultaneously by using this blog to educate myself about high culture music, literature and art. So if I come across like a school teacher - well it is only because you are sitting in on a class I am having with myself. Well, sort of - let’s not touch upon the unspoken conceit there - not yet anyway.

This is not to say that I was completely ignorant of high-culture - I had probably read more than most of the English canon. But let’s be honest, that is not a high bar these days. But when you realise that there were 20 odd years, with only sporadic spurts of literary engagement, wasted in the washout of 20th century tedium -- you, like I am, might want to make up for lost time in a hurry one of these days and start reading/viewing/listening these works. There I go sounding like a teacher again.

In any case, I am currently finding hard it to empathise with the self-delusions of 16 year old Holden Caulfield. Maybe I need to remind myself of the things I used to like as a 16 year old.


Exhibit A



Exhibit B




Exhibit C






Exhibit D


Nahh....20 odd years + the Australian/American divide + the decades divide -probably means Mr Salinger better get his act together or he will lose me.
Gee that sounds conceited

George Eliot was not a conventional woman.

Regarding your difficulty making connection with Catcher in the Rye, you are probably right that the divisions of your own age, the different era in which that novel was written, and the Australian / American divide are all creating problems for you. But I think that, when we encounter those divisions in reading books that have received that much attention, we ought to read them all the more carefully -- as artifacts of their cultural moment. What do they tell us about our own time and place that makes it hard for us to respond to or comprehend what's been at stake for other readers?

Doris Lessing once said that she read to get postcards from foreign lands.

The Catcher in The Rye by JD Salinger

It is undeniable that The Catcher in the Rye does provide a powerful representation of teenage angst and alienation. Using a conversational, first person narrator, Salinger allows the reader to walk side by side through a tumultous 48 hours with Holden. This enables teenager readers to see a representation of their unspoken fears that might not otherwise be spoken; and older readers access to that hyper-emotional state of earnestness which many felt during their youth.
The central concern of the book is less concerned with giving voice to this hitherto silent cohort in Literature as it is with providing a testimony on the malaise in modern family life. There is an absence of any powerful parent/child relationships as Holden bounces from one social situation to another. Holden has two available and concerned mentors who are seeking to guide him, yet Holden cannot emotionally connect to the advice given. This can in part be explained by his youth, by his caustic cynicism, but I think it is the deep and enduring absence of family life that provides the depressing, instability in Holden's life and his unwillingness to accept help or support.
It is also reasonable to interpret that Holden may in fact be suffering from a mental illness other than depression. The author continues to undermine the power of his narrator's perspective with the repeated self-reflection by Holden that he is an excellent liar. An interesting thought is whether the reader is actually positioned as an alternative personality of Holden's - but I will leave that thought undeveloped.
Tellingly the repeated yearning by Holden, amongst all his chaotic cynicism, is to create his own family. He continues to seek connection with possible 'mates' - a prostitute, Sally, Jane - and his earnest desire is to create an escapist family scenario. This is compensation for his absent family which he cannot reconcile, he can only be a shadow whilst his mother comforts and admonishes his younger sister.

Ultimately, I concluded that the most important observation Salinger is seeking to make is that Americans have lost their 'family'. Whilst I do not want to conflate this with contemporary conservative lamentations for the loss of "family values", it is nonetheless true to state that Salinger's work is a meditation on family and our conception of it. Whatever it is that Salinger thinks is lost in familial life; it cannot survive the social aspirations of the individual for career advancement, cannot be out-sourced to elite private schools and can leave teenagers lost against the tempest of modernity.

There were enough quippish comments in the novel to not have one here.

Review of my reviews

I should not designate my reviews as reviews as they do not follow the genre conventions of review. It is true that I am re- viewing, but my texts are more loosely cogealed observations on the work.

So apologies for false advertising - perhaps I just wanted to prove to a fictional audience that I was actually reading these things by posting these thoughts given I actually have no significant interest whether or not you accept my interpretation or recommendation. Which reads harsher than my attitude toward my audience is but is essentially true as to the intent of the pieces.

On a slightly related note, I am having difficulty breaking out from my habits of thought and writing. Let me give you some background to the causal factors of this roadblock. I think that I understand alot of what I read on the first reading of a wide variety of texts on a range of topics. I have been trained - not in an extensive way - in a variety of disciplines including Philosophy, History, Economic History, English Literature and to a lesser degree Education, Educational sociology, Educational psychology and archaeology.
The result of which is that I have learnt to write essays in all sorts of disciplines but not a whole lot else. Yes, I have done some creative writing courses and I was exposed at a high school level to assortment of other genre styles but that is very long ago and most of those are for professional settings such as official correspondence, presentations and other non fiction modes (?).

Added to this, is the habits by which I actually generate texts. My approach is to think about a topic for a considerable period (say when you receive your essay question at the start of term - and critical read the academic literature with a view to the prism of that question, ponder it for weeks on end) then just start writing the whole thing in a 2-4 hour period of say 2000-3000 words. This is not being boastful, but I can just pump the things out - not to the level that I would get an HD but I would certainly get a pass/credit on any old thing that I could generate in that period. Once I was older and returned to formal training in Eng. Lit and Education - the thing that would change is that I would start writing versions of the texts weeks in advance of the due date and could re-write the whole thing 4-5 times easily refining the exact argument or adopting a completely different one but each time gaining a better handle of the great construct in which I wanted to house it.

It also leads one to make large compund sentences with subtle qualifying clauses. This does not always make for easy reading and given I do not have the imperative of a mark - I have and continue to be abit too slip-shod in some of constructed observations.


Anyway, this is just a note to myself trying to understand some of my shortcomings as a written communicator.

Onwards to the land of dystopic visions.

* I am somewhat thankful I have lost access to free online university academic literature otherwise I would probably be stuck down a rabbit hole on one of january's books - arguing with myself over some minutiae of interpretation. In another respect, I mourn that loss. Such is life.

** You would be correct to infer from the above - a desire to write something else. But I have no idea what that is. At the same time, I have no idea if I am blogging in a true sense...or just have a succession of isolated texts with only the thinnish of inter-relationships given I am not actually reflecting upon the process or experience of actually accomplishing the 100 texts.

(I tend to ramble. Which is one thing I like about myself - who wants the constraints of structure all the time anyway?)

A Cat's Cradle


Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

Jonah or Jonas (Hebrew: יוֹנָה, Modern Yona Tiberian Yônā ; dove; Arabic: يونس‎ Yūnus, Yūnis or يونان Yūnān ; Greek/Latin: Ionas) is the name given in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh/Old Testament) to a prophet of the northern kingdom of Israel in about the 8th century BC, the eponymous central character in the Book of Jonah, famous for being swallowed by a fish or a whale, depending on translation. The Biblical story of Jonah is also repeated, with a few notable differences, in the Qur'an.

Jonah, the son of truth, (The name of his father "Amitai" in Hebrew means truth)


"Jonah" Michaelangelo 1511 - Sistine Chapel

From this end wall, as one looks to the centre of the opposite end of the ceiling (directly above the centre of the Last Judgement), a large muscular figure catches one’s eye. This is Jonah, he is shown with his head thrown back, his legs hanging forward. His position is in direct contrast to the physical form of the vault on which he is painted: while Jonah leans back the ceiling curves towards us. Michelangelo’s manipulation of the perspective belies his study of and work in statuary; he paints like a sculptor. By Jonah’s side a fish nibbles at his thigh, an allusion to the big fish, or whale, which swallowed him. Jonah’s presence on the ceiling is as one of the prophets, and his prophecy is that of the Resurrection of Christ; the days and nights Jonah spent in the belly of the fish foretell the days and nights Christ would spend in his tomb, while Jonah being spat out is the prophecy of the Resurrection.

That Jonah catches one’s eye when entering the chapel is a both a practical and allegorical artistic device. His head is thrown back so that we naturally follow his line of sight. We look to see what he is looking at, which sets our eyes moving towards us along the central panels of the ceiling with their stories of the Creation and of the life of Noah. When we reach the end of the ceiling, the prophets along the sides lead our eyes back round to Jonah, and the promise of the Resurrection. If the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is an expression of the promise of the coming of Christ, Jonah is its Alpha and Omega; a wonderful reminder that artists spend a great deal of time getting us looking in the right direction.

http://understandingrome.wordpress.c...hapel-ceiling/


Jonah is the name of Vonnegut's narrator in Cat's Cradle.

I will leave Michaelangelo for another time.

I just thought the juxtaposition of these two images was provocative.

New Testament
But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas:
For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here.

—Gospel of Matthew, chapter 12 verses 39-41


The Qu'ran

But We cast him forth on the naked shore in a state of sickness,
And We caused to grow, over him, a spreading plant of the gourd kind.
And We sent him (on a mission) to a hundred thousand (men) or more.
And they believed; so We permitted them to enjoy (their life) for a while.

—Qur'an, chapter 37 (As-Saaffat), verse 145-148'


It has occurred to me that it might be incumbent on me to actually read The Bible in full, at some point in my life. Although, not in 2014 I suspect.

"Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything"

It is somewhere around two decades ago that I first read Douglas Adam's famous Trilogy.
Whilst I do not want to imply that this is a representation of Adam's own view of the world, I am taken by how satisfied I am with his absurdist answer of 42. According to Adam's the choice of 42 was arrived at in this fashion:

The answer to this is very simple. It was a joke. It had to be a number, an ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations, base thirteen, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat at my desk, stared into the garden and thought '42 will do'. I typed it out. End of story.

I was watching a documentary which was describing quantum physics and the history of the development of the theory. It was an informative production, presented with the crucial ingredient of documentaries a passionate advocate who can explain complex constructs with simple analogies, with a few nuggests that I was not aware of. The part of the documentary I would like to draw your attention to is: the claim that science and cosmological mathematics maybe able to reduce the whole of everything and nothing to a grand unified theory or equation. Now it might be wholly irrational and presumptious of me to claim that that is prima facie absurd; nonetheless I will.

There was one prediction that is based upon the most current observation of the "red-shift" phenomena - which posits that the Universe is expanding or more precisely the 'space in-between matter' is stretching (if I recall accurately). This stretching is also accelerating so that at some point, far into the universal future, each and every galaxy will be so far apart that 'no-one' in any given galaxy would be able to see another galaxy given the relative speed of light relative to this stretching effect.

Which led me to think, if I was a sentient being around at this future point - and I looked out into the night sky and saw only the milky way - that through that perspective I might (according to the construct of the scientific method) correctly conclude that that was all that there is. And, at the same time, be precisely wrong.

That should not be seen as an intellectual bridge to facilitate a spiritual 'trojan horse'. It is not begging for a God to fill the gaps. Merely to assert the possibility that our humble position as an advanced primate on one speck of dust of a trillion specks of dust in the Milky Way which is but one cluster of dust amongst a trillion clusters of dust (galaxies) in a barely graspable infinitude of time and space - might not be able to totalise everything to our perspective and reduce everything to a mathematical formula. But, of course, that is only my humble opinion.

And even if we could, it might just have about as much relevance as.....

Cat's Cradleby Kurt Vonnegut

Many of the attractive elements of Vonnegut's style and language of Slaughterhouse 5 are present in Cat's Cradle too. Short Chapters that propel a fast moving plot along also shed many of the devices that allow readers to form their own sense of the world being constructed. Simultaneously, the author also undermines the power of the narrator's perspective, by introducing absurdist parodies, strange imaginative dalliances and what are now familiar, post-modern tropes - he also disrupts and disturbs readers semantic anticipation structurally and figuratively.
It was written in the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis and we could easily draw interpretative connections between the San Lorenzo farce and US/Latin American relations. But I think it also wants to reflect upon imaginative power and how it is used in Art, Politics and everyday life. The novel is rich with imagined, fictional and 'factual' intertextual references and this layering of symbolic referents when combined with a absurdist parodic sensibility mark Vonnegut's style within, at the time, a nascent post-modern tradition.

If you liked the Hall of Mirrors in the SlaughterHouse, you should buy a ticket for this ride too and see where it takes you.

From Cat's Cradle:
Minton, US Ambassador on San Lorenzo's memorial day, takes a very non-traditional interpretation of national memory. He goes on to quote Edgar Lee Master's free form poem:

Knowlt Hoheimer

I WAS the first fruits of the battle of Missionary Ridge.
When I felt the bullet enter my heart
I wished I had staid at home and gone to jail
For stealing the hogs of Curl Trenary,
Instead of running away and joining the army.
Rather a thousand times the county jail
Than to lie under this marble figure with wings,
And this granite pedestal Bearing the words, "Pro Patria."
What do they mean, anyway?

Edgar Lee Masters 1915/16

Edgar Lee Masters (August 23, 1868 – March 5, 1950) was an American poet, biographer, and dramatist. He is the author of Spoon River Anthology, The New Star Chamber and Other Essays, Songs and Satires, The Great Valley, The Serpent in the Wilderness An Obscure Tale, The Spleen, Mark Twain: A Portrait, Lincoln: The Man, and Illinois Poems. In all, Masters published twelve plays, twenty-one books of poetry, six novels and six biographies, including those of Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Vachel Lindsay, and Walt Whitman.




Missionary Ridge
The Battle of Missionary Ridge was fought November 25, 1863, as part of the Chattanooga Campaign of the American Civil War. Following the Union victory in the Battle of Lookout Mountain on November 24, Union forces under Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant assaulted Missionary Ridge and defeated the Confederate Army of Tennessee, commanded by Gen. Braxton Bragg.



This painting by Thure de Thulstrup depicts the Battle of Missionary Ridge during the Chattanooga Campaign, circa 1880. (Image: Library of Congress)

Pro Patria

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori is a line from the Roman lyrical poet Horace's Odes (III.2.13). The line can be roughly translated into English as: "It is sweet and fitting to die for your country."

Which is inscribed on the most sacred of US places:


Detail of the inscription over the rear entrance to Memorial Amphitheater at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.

- We also saw the reference earlier in the Wilfred Owen Classic poem, it is referred to in All Quiet on the Western Front and Gone With the Wind.

The Battle of Stalingrad (23 August 1942 – 2 February 1943)[7][8][9][10] was a major battle of World War II in which Nazi Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad (now Volgograd) in the southwestern Soviet Union. Marked by constant close quarters combat and disregard for military and civilian casualties, it is among the bloodiest battles in the history of warfare. The heavy losses inflicted on the Wehrmacht make it arguably the most strategically decisive battle of the whole war.[11] It was a turning point in the European theatre of World War II–the German forces never regained the initiative in the East and withdrew a vast military force from the West to reinforce their losses.


I have hit the ground running in March with Silas Marner, A Clockwork Orange and Cat's Cradle having been read. For a change of pace I have decided to read a book from the non-fiction genre of History writing.

Stalingrad by Antony Beevor.
Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction amongst others.

Antony James Beevor, FRSL (born 14 December 1946) is a British historian, educated at Winchester College and Sandhurst. He studied under the famous military historian John Keegan. Beevor is a former officer with the 11th Hussars who served in England and Germany for five years before resigning his commission. He has published several popular histories on the Second World War and the 20th century in general.

He is a visiting professor at the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck, University of London.

http://www.antonybeevor.com/

One of the most famous Russian poems about WWII, written possibly before the full horror of what was to come...

Wait For Me

to Valentina Serova


Wait for me, and I'll come back!
Wait with all you've got!
Wait, when dreary yellow rains
Tell you, you should not.
Wait when snow is falling fast,
Wait when summer's hot,
Wait when yesterdays are past,
Others are forgot.
Wait, when from that far-off place,
Letters don't arrive.
Wait, when those with whom you wait
Doubt if I'm alive.

Wait for me, and I'll come back!
Wait in patience yet
When they tell you off by heart
That you should forget.
Even when my dearest ones
Say that I am lost,
Even when my friends give up,
Sit and count the cost,
Drink a glass of bitter wine
To the fallen friend -
Wait! And do not drink with them!
Wait until the end!

Wait for me and I'll come back,
Dodging every fate!
"What a bit of luck!" they'll say,
Those that would not wait.
They will never understand
How amidst the strife,
By your waiting for me, dear,
You had saved my life.
Only you and I will know
How you got me through.
Simply - you knew how to wait -
No one else but you.

1941
Konstantin Simonov

Konstantin Mikhailovich Simonov (Russian: Константи́н Миха́йлович Си́монов) (28 November 1915[1] – 28 August 1979) was a Russian/Soviet author, known as a war poet. He was born Kirill, and later changed his name to Konstantin.


Vladlen Gavrilchik, PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR KONSTANTIN SIMONOV

Beevor outlines briefly some of the reasons for the devastating collapse of the Soviet front under Operation Barbarossa during the early stages of the Nazi invasion of East Europe in 1941. Soviet leadership, particularly Stalin, was stunned by the betrayal by Hitler of the Molotov-von Ribbentropp NON Aggression Pact of 1938. It was more than 24 hours after hostilities before Stalin even acknowledged the fact that War had started.
It is not until July 3 1941, that Stalin, the all-encompassing figure of Soviet Russia addresses the Russian people.
Even if you do not speak Russian - you might like to listen to piece for the tone and rhythm of this piece it might suprise you for a call to arms.

Joseph V. Stalin’s Radio Broadcast, July 3, 1941


If you seeking the actual text of this historic address:
http://historicalresources.org/josep...t-july-3-1941/


I will seek to avoid where possible graphic images of the front, but I might explore some of the texts of Soviet propaganda during this period. The Nazi propaganda will be left untouched as there are plenty of documentaries where you can find analysis of Nazi thought and image.

Not one Step Backwards: Order 227

Order No. 227 issued on July 28, 1942 was a grand order issued by Joseph Stalin who was acting as the People's Commissar of Defense. It is famous for its line "Not a step back!" (Russian: Ни шагу назад! / Ni shagu nazad!), which became a slogan of Soviet resistance.

Preamble:

“Enemy throws to battle new forces and doesn’t encounter its heavy losses, crawls to into Soviet lands, capturing new regions, havocs and destroys our cities and villages, rapes and kills Soviet population… German occupant forces by all means want to take Kuban and Northern Caucasus rich in bread and oil… Units of South front led by scaremongers left Rostov and Novocherkassk without serious resistance and without orders from Moscow, they covered their colours with shame.

"Population of our country loves and respects the Red Army, but now people are disappointed that the Red Army leaves our people to be enslaved by German oppressors and runs further to the east. Some not so smart people comfort themselves by conversations that we can run further to the east, because we have a lot of land, many people and we’ll always have plenty of bread. They use this to justify their infamous actions on the fronts.

"… but further retreat to the east means to sentence to death our people and our Motherland, every bit of our land given to the enemy will enforce him and will weaken our defense, our Motherland.”




Order No. 227 established that each Front must create 1 to 3 penal battalions (штрафбат, штрафной батальон, shtrafbat, shtrafnoy battalion) of up to 800 middle class commanders and high class commanders accused of disciplinary problems, which were sent to the most dangerous sections of the front lines.[1] Each Front had to create penal companies for privates and NCOs. By the end of 1942 there were 24,993 people serving in the penal battalions, which increased to 177,694 people in 1943. The number decreased over the next two years to 143,457 and 81,766 people in 1944 and 1945, respectively, for a total of 427,910 soldiers who were assigned to penal battalions during the course of the war.

The requirement for Armies to maintain companies of barrier troops was withdrawn after just three months, on October 29, 1942. Intended to galvanize the morale of the hard-pressed Soviet Army and emphasize patriotism, it had a generally detrimental effect and was not consistently implemented by commanders who viewed diverting troops to create barrier units as a waste of manpower, so by October 1942 the idea of regular blocking units was quietly dropped.[3] By 20 November 1944 the blocking units were officially disbanded.

Popular History Genre

I think the distinguishing feature of "popular" history as a sub-genre of history writing, is that it seeks to reduce the authority of its claims vis a vie the academy in exchange for a freer narrative style for a 'wider' audience. As such, this work does not engage with the historical debate on any of the events being covered, does not critically assess its sources nor seek to charactarise or describe the methodology of the perspective being employed. It does have extensive sourcing although not using the traditional notation systems, one would see in academic works in this discipline.


Note: I will contrast Order 227 and Stalin's appraoch to the Nazi invasion with some historical parallels later tonight.

Beezor cites that 5.7 million Soviet soldiers were captured and held as prisoner or War by German Wehrmacht during WW II. 3 million were to die under their custodianship, which of itself, should be evidence of the wider "War criminality" and culpability of Wehrmacht during WW II beyond that usual proscribed to that solely of the conduct of the SS, closely allied Nazi organisations and the Nazi leadership.
But, I am not interested here to prosecute that case, but merely to cite the 5.7 million captured Soviet troops - particularly the large amount captured during the early 'battles' of Operation Barbarossa - as evidence to show the impact of Stalin's stubbornness exemplified in Order 227 against alternate historical precedents.

The most obvious point of comparison is the Imperial Russian states response to Napoleon's Grand Armee more than 130 years earlier. It is true that the Tsarist army Battle Napoleon at Borodino, to effectively a draw. But under the leadership of General Kutuzov, the regime decided to vacate the capital of Moscow.


Mikhail Illarionovich Golenishchev-Kutuzov (Russian: князь Михаи́л Илларио́нович Голени́щев-Куту́зов; 16 September [O.S. 5 September] 1745 – 28 April [O.S. 16 April] 1813) was a Field Marshal of the Russian Empire. He served as one of the finest military officers and diplomats of Russia under the reign of three Romanov Tsars: Catherine II, Paul I and Alexander I. His military career was closely associated with the rising period of Russia from the end of the 18th century to the beginning of the 19th century. Kutuzov contributed much to the military history of Russia and is considered to have been one of the best Russian generals under the reign of Catherine II.[1] He took part in the suppression of the Bar Confederation's uprising, in three of the Russo-Turkish Wars and in the Napoleonic War, including two major battles at Austerlitz and the battle of Borodino.


The 'abandonment' of Moscow and the straetgic avoidance of Battle with Napoleon were two key decisions which helped the regime survive the historic onslaught. This tactic is known as a "fabian strategy" which was first employed by a famous Roman general and the Roman state against arguably the greatest miliary general Hannibal.

The Fabian strategy is a military strategy where pitched battles and frontal assaults are avoided in favor of wearing down an opponent through a war of attrition and indirection. While avoiding decisive battles, the side employing this strategy harasses its enemy through skirmishes to cause attrition, disrupt supply and affect morale. Employment of this strategy implies that the side adopting this strategy believes time is on its side, but it may also be adopted when no feasible alternative strategy can be devised.

Named after:
Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus Cunctator (ca. 280 BC – 203 BC) was a Roman politician and general, who was born in Rome around 280 BC and died in Rome in 203 BC. He was a Roman Consul five times (233 BC, 228 BC, 215 BC, 214 BC and 209 BC) and was twice appointed Dictator, in 221 and again in 217 BC. He reached the office of Roman Censor in 230 BC. His agnomen Cunctator (cognate to the English noun cunctation) means "delayer" in Latin, and refers to his tactics in deploying the troops during the Second Punic War. He is widely regarded as the father of guerrilla warfare due to his, at the time, novel strategy of targeting enemy supply lines in light of being largely outnumbered.[1] His cognomen Verrucosus means "warty", a reference to a wart above his upper lip.


Vienna, Schönbrunn gardens, statue Fabius Cunctator.

Beevor appears to be building the argument that: the political leadership of Hitler leads to an over-optimistic, fickle leadership which ignores strategic considerations and military advice, on one side; and the political leadership of Stalin, who stubbornly refuses to concede ground or men based on ideological or emotional reasons as opposed to strategic considerations, on the other. The cost of which is the unnecessary slaughter on both sides that "might" not have otherwise occurred.

Couple of brief things:

Lawrence had a somewhat complex sexuality. I don't think there is much doubt that he was gay in that he preferred men to women, but he was, I believe, predominantly a masochist, who paid to be thrashed. He had an experience in Daraa, which you will remember from the book, that is supposed to have been connected with this.

Burgess invented the jargon in Clockwork Orange. Although some is I suppose "Cockney" (or London at least), most of it is drawn from Russian. For instance, "horrorshow" is "khurasho" (good); "droog" is druk (friend, written with a final g in Russian, but in Russian final consonants are devoiced, as in German); "krovvy" is "krov'" (blood).

There's a full list here: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Append...ockwork_Orange if you're interested, but I always thought one of the great things about it was that he wove the slang in without your needing to know a word of Russian to understand it.

If you have time when you're done with your list, I strongly recommend another, rather different Burgess. Earthly Powers is imo one of the great works of English literature. I won't attempt to substantiate that: I simply urge you to read it. I think you will very much enjoy it.

Actually, when I say London at least, very little of the Nadsat argot is actually slang you would have heard even in Burgess's day. He made most of the English-based words up.

Even Nadsat, the name for the argot, is from the Russian btw. It's Russian "-nadtsat'", which means -teen. I don't think you actually call teenagers "nadtsaty" in Russian though. "Nadtsatniki"? I might have to ask UncleDynamite about that.

Edit: I used google translate and it seems teenager translates as "padrostok"

Welcome back MB!

Very interesting - I am not sure how that would shift a critical interpretation of A Clockwork Orange. Perhaps, one might suggest that they are positioned as 'involuntary outsiders' if the principal character is from a minority background.

If you were to visit Stalingrad or Volgagrad, as it is now known - you could not help but see Mamayev Kurgan.

Mamayev Kurgan (Russian: Мамаев Курган) is a dominant height overlooking the city of Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad) in Southern Russia. The name in Russian means "tumulus of Mamai".

The original Mamayev Kurgan was a Tartar burial mound 102 metres high. The current formation is dominated by a memorial complex commemorating the Battle of Stalingrad (August 1942 to February 1943). The battle was a decisive Soviet victory over Axis forces on the Eastern front of World War II and arguably the bloodiest battle in human history.[2] At the time of its installation in 1967 the statue named The Motherland Calls formed the largest free-standing sculpture in the world.[



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Motherland_Calls

Tumulus:
tumulus (plural tumuli) is a mound of earth and stones raised over a grave or graves. Tumuli are also known as barrows, burial mounds, Hügelgräber or kurgans, and can be found throughout much of the world. A cairn (a mound of stones built for various purposes), might also be originally a tumulus. A long barrow is a long tumulus, usually for numbers of burials.

Mamai:
Mamai (Tatar: Мамай, Mamay, 1335 - 1380), of Borjigin descent, was a powerful military commander of the Blue Horde in the 1370s. The Horde controlled the lands in what is now the southern Ukrainian steppes and the Crimean peninsula.

Blue Horde
According to Rashid-al-Din Hamadani (1247–1318), Genghis Khan's eldest son, Jochi, had 14 sons. When he died, they inherited their father's dominions as fiefs under the rule of their brothers, Batu Khan, as supreme khan and Orda Khan, who, although the elder of the two, agreed that Batu enjoyed primacy as the Khan of the Golden Horde. Orda, along with some of his younger brothers, ruled the eastern wing of the Golden Horde (Jochid Ulus) while Batu and others ruled the western part of it. These Hordes are known as the "White", "Blue" and "Gray" (Shaybanid) Hordes in Slavic and Persian historiography. The two main division are also known as Batu's Ulus (district) and Orda's Ulus.