June 15, 2011
It seems to be dawning on the intelligentsia what a remarkable man we've lost in Patrick Leigh Fermor (see previous post). Here's Hitchens on the subject. And Jan Morris said," One must not gush, but like Venice, Château d'Yquem or a Rolls-Royce of the 1930s, he really was beyond competition; and since so far as I know everybody liked him, everyone enjoyed his mastery." As I said somewhere else, if I had a second go at life, I'd try to live a life as much like Patrick Leigh Fermor's as possible, for few lives have been better lived and in better balance: worth the effort, in short, and amply rewarded.
Posted by Roger Boylan.
June 10, 2011
Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor, a dashing figure from a more heroic age, died yesterday at the improbable age of 96. The Daily Telegraph, as usual, had the best obituary, highlighting his accomplishments as a war commando and scholar while granting a certain skepticism as to the overall veracity of his superb travel memoirs A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water, in which he recounted, many years later, his long walk from Rotterdam to Istanbul in 1934. "Though he at first kept to his aim of travelling 'like a tramp or pilgrim,' sleeping in police cells and beer halls, by the time he reached Central Europe his charm led to his being passed from schloss to schloss by a network of margraves and voivodes. The architecture, ritual and genealogy of each halt were later recalled with a loving eye."
I love that "network of margraves and voivodes." It reminds me of Gregor von Rezzori, another recently vanished survivor of a pre-modern Eastern Europe. They're a pair, von Rezzori and Leigh Fermor, but the latter was more Hellenic, in the mold of Ulysses: clever, learned, wild, and above all a lover of life. If I had another go-around, I'd want it to be like Leigh Fermor's.
Posted by Roger Boylan.
June 8, 2011
“’Sometimes,’ she said, ‘they threaten you with something – something you can’t stand up to, can’t even think about. And then you say, “Don’t do it to me, do it to somebody else, do it to So-and-so.” And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and didn’t really mean it. But that isn’t true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think there’s no other way of saving yourself, and you’re quite ready to save yourself that way. You want it to happen to the other person. You don’t give a damn what they suffer. All you care about is yourself.’”
From Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell (Eric Blair), which is 62 years ago today. Still the greatest of all dystopian novels.
Posted by Roger Boylan.
June 6, 2011
Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force! You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world. Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle hardened. He will fight savagely. But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory! I have full confidence in your courage and devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory! Good luck! And let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.
Posted by Roger Boylan.
June 2, 2011
Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul has stirred up the hornets' nest again, this time with some choice and crusty Old World comments about women, women writers in particular. They are inferior to him, he says, because of their "sentimentality" and "narrow view of the world," and cites Jane Austen. Nonsense, of course; one has only to think only of Marguerite Yourcenar, George Eliot, Edna O'Brien, Edith Wharton, Beryl Bainbridge, Anna Akhmatova, et j'en passe. But this is standard Naipaulese. He enjoys the public attention, while pretending not to. At some level he still can't believe his incredible good fortune: there he is, a poor boy from Trinidad, cocking a snook at the mandarins of the literary establishment! This isn't his only foray into the limelight recently. Only a few days ago he was photographed shaking hands with his one-time protege and nemesis, Paul Theroux, another non-event that landed both of them on page one. Well, so what? Sir VN's nearly 80, and doesn't give a flying frig. And, like that other VN, he thoroughly enjoys riling the bien-pensant literati with outrageous and/or politically incorrect comments. He has a way to go to equal his predecessor's panache, however. "That, for instance," opined Nabokov in Strong Opinions, "Mann's asinine Death in Venice or Pasternak's melodramatic and vilely written Zhivago or Faulkner's corncobby chronicles can be considered 'masterpieces,' or at least what journalists call 'great books,' is to me an absurd delusion, as when a hypnotized person makes love to a chair." Heresy, in most lit-crit circles. Well, that's the job of the writer, in part, to be a heretic. Both VNs have played that role admirably.
Posted by Roger Boylan.
May 23, 2011
It happens every May and June: I return in my mind to a place I know well and a past I never knew. Specifically, to France in the spring and summer of 1940, and (on June 6th) in the spring of 1944. Around this time 71 years ago the crucial mistakes had been made; the best divisions of the French Army under the able but ill-used Generals Huntizger and Georges were stuck in Belgium, and insufficient defenses manned the Ardennes gap through which von Rundstedt and Guderian would direct their Panzers. Case Red, as the Wehrmacht called it, was being implemented; only three weeks remained of French sovereignty. I'll be returning to that most dreadful and most heroic moment over the coming weeks.
Posted by Roger Boylan.
May 18, 2011
"My time will come," said Gustav Mahler, who died at the too-young age of 50, a century ago today. At the time he was seen as a brash, eccentric conductor who wrote immense and turgid symphonies during his spare time. An apprentice Bruckner, no doubt soon forgotten, sniffed the snobs. Fortunately, he was right about his posthumous future. If anything, the pendulum has swung to the other extreme, as it tends to do, reflected, for instance, in the title of an articlewritten by Tim Smith, music critic of the Baltimore Sun: "How Gustav Mahler Saved My Life."
But I'm almost there, too. I first heard Mahler's music on a hoarse and scratchy LP, a Vienna Phil recording of The Song of the Earth, with Elizabeth Schwarzkopf singing. I was overwhelmed. Later, I heard the Fourth Symphony. I was doubly overwhelmed, and have never tired of Mahler's music since. Indeed, every time I hear it I'm thankful the world contains such wonders. RIP, Gustav.
Posted by Roger Boylan.
May 16, 2011
I don't know, it must be so tempting, when you're the favorite of the gods, to throw it all away. This certainly would appear to be the case with Dominique Strauss-Kahn, jet-setting director of the International Monetary Fund and, until a certain incident in New York the other day, shoo-in for the Socialist nomination and probable dead cert for the presidency of France. ("Yes, he Kahn" was the Obamian campaign slogan du jour.) But not any more. DSK, as he is dashingly known, could hardly have done a better job of self-demolition if he'd strapped on the full jihadi kit and pulled the handle. Apparently the distinguished gentleman was emerging au naturel from the shower when a hapless chambermaid made an appearance; result: attempt to recreate Leda and the Swan, or, more crudely, a legover, there and then. Naked pursuit is also alleged to have taken place down the hallway, in the style of the late Senator Kennedy. Fortunately, the former president-presumptive failed in his rape attempt, but by scarpering instanter to Kennedy Airport and boarding the first flight to Paris, only to be removed in handcuffs by the NYPD, he does nothing to support his claims of innocence. So that's it: a brilliant career painstakingly constructed over decades, destroyed in one idiotic moment. Sic transit gloria and all that. Looks like Sarkozy might stand a chance again, after all. Or--screams, shock, horror-- Marine Le Pen.)
Posted by Roger Boylan.
May 12, 2011
I've had two Celtic-nationalist manifestations in my life. The first, in Northern Ireland, led me into membership of a certain Catholic republican/nationalist group not in good odor with the local Protestant population, and resulted a year later in a hasty exodus to Scotland. Ever the chameleon, once there I transferred my allegiance seamlessly to the sister Celtic culture and, no doubt under the influence of the water of life and/or strong ale, I joined the Scottish National Party, then a small and somewhat ludicrous fringe group composed of wild-haired Highland bards and various other sentimental nutters (such as wandering Irish-Americans). Well, that was then. Last week, in elections for the Scottish regional parliament, the very same SNP swept into power under their energetic leader Alex Salmond, and they now stand as good a chance as they ever have of winning a referendum on independence, which will inevitably be held soon. An independent Scotland? In theory, why not? Norway manages, and it's similar in size, resources and topography. But we shouldn't disregard the attraction of Britishness; the Scots, after all, were the engineers and explorers who built the British Empire. Anyway, what would the new ex-UK be called? The Formerly United Kingdom? Lesser Britain? And would there be a Scottish Embassy in London and an English (or Anglo-Welsh) one in Edinburgh? It all sounds too absurd for words, but then not long ago so would the notion of a Slovenian Embassy in Belgrade, or a Slovak one in Prague. Plus ça change....
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Posted by Roger Boylan.
May 9, 2011
This is the confluence of the rivers Limmat and Sihl, in Zurich. During his wartime sojourns in Switzerland, James Joyce often took his ease in this pleasant spot. He was doing so one cold day in January 1941 when suddenly he doubled over in agony and went home in a taxi, to be ministered to by his wife Nora. Bed rest did him no good, however, so an ambulance, parp-parping through Zurich's silent nocturnal streets, rushed him to hospital. He was operated on for a perforated ulcer, improved, lapsed into a coma, woke up long enough to call for his wife and children, and lost consciousness again, this time for good. The Irish, still smothered by the Church, wouldn't take him, so he was buried in what we may well call--despite the hint of cliche--"his beloved" Zurich. Several decades later, in 1994, the oddball German-speaking Jewish Bulgarian Elias Canetti, notable in his writing for a total lack of humor--and for having won the Nobel Prize (never given to Joyce), on the strength of one novel--was buried nearby. I love Switzerland, but Joyce should be returned to Ireland, as Napoleon's remains were transferred from St. Helena to France in 1840. Canetti belongs there as much as anywhere. They can be heard, say the locals, quarreling on cold winter nights.
Posted by Roger Boylan.
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