Again, as I'm pondering how to live Lent this year, I realize that today starts the novena of Ash Wednesday, and so it seems the right time to pray the Novena for Order again. I'm not giving up Facebook this year as I have the past two years because I get many of my prayer intentions from friends there, and also, in years past I've found that wasting time on FB is only a symptom of a larger problem.
So what it is to be this year? One big penance or several small ones through the day, to remind me that I am dust and to dust I shall return? Or a combination of both? I know that something I need to do, and this will definitely factor into my Lent, is to establish a definite prayer time. I'm 36 years old, I've been Catholic all my life, I follow the precepts of the church, I don't eat meat on Fridays, I read the Bible with my children -- and I don't have a regular daily prayer time. I say little ejaculations throughout the day and I do try to meditate and pray at night in bed, especially when I can't fall asleep -- but I don't set aside time during the day for regular prayer.
Something I have done in the past months is to take on a small permanent penance. It's not too big or exciting -- no sugar in my tea except on Sunday. I only name it so no one thinks it's more onerous or challenging than it is. But what seems to matter more than the size of it is the regularity. I drink tea several times a day, and although I don't reach for the sugar anymore, or even want it that much now, I still remember that I'm not taking it, and that helps me turn my thoughts even for a moment. Pavlov's non-sugar for the spiritual life, perhaps.
I wish there were a good way to make the prayer look shorter, but the formatting really seems to help. It looks like it will take forever to say, but it doesn't.
For Ordering a Life Wisely St. Thomas Aquinas
O merciful God, grant that I may
desire ardently,
search prudently,
recognize truly,
and bring to perfect completion
whatever is pleasing to You
for the praise and glory of Your name.
Put my life in good order, O my God
Grant that I may know
what You require me to do.
Bestow upon me
the power to accomplish your will,
as is necessary and fitting
for the salvation of my soul.
Grant to me, O Lord my God,
that I may not falter in times
of prosperity or adversity,
so that I may not be exalted in the former,
nor dejected in the latter.
May I not rejoice in anything
unless it leads me to You;
may I not be saddened by anything
unless it turns me from You.
May I desire to please no one,
nor fear to displease anyone,
but You.
May all transitory things, O Lord,
be worthless to me
and may all things eternal
be ever cherished by me.
May any joy without You
be burdensome for me
and may I not desire anything else
besides You.
May all work, O Lord
delight me when done for Your sake.
and may all repose not centered in You
be ever wearisome for me.
Grant unto me, my God,
that I may direct my heart to You
and that in my failures
I may ever feel remorse for my sins
and never lose the resolve to change.
O Lord my God, make me
submissive without protest,
poor without discouragement,
chaste without regret,
patient without complaint,
humble without posturing,
cheerful without frivolity,
mature without gloom,
and quick-witted without flippancy.
O Lord my God, let me
fear You without losing hope,
be truthful without guile,
do good works without presumption,
rebuke my neighbor without haughtiness,
and -- without hypocrisy --
strengthen him by word and example.
Give to me, O Lord God,
a watchful heart,
which no capricious thought
can lure away from You.
Give to me,
a noble heart,
which no unworthy desire can debase.
Give to me
a resolute heart,
which no evil intention can divert.
Give to me
a stalwart heart,
which no tribulation can overcome.
Give to me
a temperate heart,
which no violent passion can enslave.
Give to me, O Lord my God,
understanding of You,
diligence in seeking You,
wisdom in finding You,
discourse ever pleasing to You,
perseverance in waiting for You,
and confidence in finally embracing You.
Grant
that with Your hardships
I may be burdened in reparation here,
that Your benefits
I may use in gratitude upon the way,
that in Your joys
I may delight by glorifying You
in the Kingdom of Heaven.
1 "A mighty wind swept over the waters": the Holy Spirit precedes everything, every movement of creation, every human endeavor. The smallest opening in a hardened heart is enough for him to blast through. God preserve us from having a heart too hard to open to the Spirit!
6 Had a discussion with the kids about how the dome separating the waters is an example of not reading scripture literally. What is the significance of the two waters? The water below the dome is the earthly, physical, literal water, for drinking, for cleansing, for fun. The water above the dome is the spiritual form of water: cleansing in Baptism, flowing from Jesus's side.
11 Why is it that the vegetation is created before the sun and the moon? God creates light on the first day, the sky the second, the seas and dry land the third -- all high level elements of creation -- and then immediately descends to the level of a farmer, sowing the land and raising orchards. Then on the fourth day he's back to the high level again, creating and ordering sun, moon, and stars. This seems to indicate a certain kind of spiritual progress: we take on grand programs, we make big resolutions, we have a big sweeping idea of the spiritual life -- but the practical side of the spiritual life has to be attended to as well. Smaller, practical actions are part of great sublime movements of the soul, and underpin them. And even seemingly small actions bear within themselves the seeds of even smaller, more concretely practical changes: the trees bear their fruits, which bear within themselves the seeds for more trees and more fruit.
16 "And he made the the stars": this suddenly strikes me as the most beautiful line in the Bible.
Boys. Of a certain age, namely, 11 or 12 or 13. This seems to be the time of life in which, if you talk to a young man individually, you can discover sparks of humanity, but put a bunch of them in a group, and it's instant stupidity. I took the boy patrol this afternoon at religion class, sitting behind the group in the back row during the group session, and I spend most of that time imploring Jesus's mercy on fallen humanity and wishing we had a dedicated intercessor to be praying the rosary during our class for the softening of hearts and the opening of minds. These guys are almost impervious to reason, civility, and graciousness -- not because they're subhuman, though sometimes you wonder, but because they're boys, of a basically common type. When they band together, it's like they collectively lower each other's IQ. I was remembering, in The Name of the Rose, the Venerable Jorge's fulminations against laughter, because laughter can stem from mockery, and mockery is a way of making oneself impervious to outside influences, including truth.
I know this isn't true of every boy. My brothers weren't like this, and neither was Darwin, and there are a few guys in the class who don't follow the paradigm. I remember noticing this when I taught First Communion class, and coming home to tell Darwin, "I'll tell you why your teachers always liked you, even when you thought class was stupid -- because you didn't act stupid." A boy who can pay attention, be respectful, give the appearance of engagement: he steals a teacher's heart.
But the goal is to find a place in one's heart for every boy, regardless of age-induced idiocy, and so I was meditating today, as I sat behind the fellows: how do we reach these guys? They're basically Tom Sawyer in Sunday School, though perhaps without Tom's animal cunning. The comparison was particularly apropos as we were reading 1 Samuel 17 today, David and Goliath, and I wondered if any of the military glory of the account was striking the guys. Whether they know it or not, they're longing for an authority figure, a hero to worship, some imposing figure to put the fear of God into them and take them out of themselves. Are we providing that in the classroom? Not really; our educational pendulum has swung to the far side of that model, for good and for ill, allowing more leeway for more sensitive learners and for girls, but less for your standard-issue guy. Were we getting through to them with our music videos and our mixed-gender classes? I don't know. I'm realizing more and more these days that everything is the grace of God, that we plant the seed and God makes it grow in his time. Only the Holy Spirit changes hearts. All we can do is present truth, and try to facilitate an openness to the movement of the Spirit. How to facilitate that is a matter of prudential judgment. I hope and pray that we're doing our best for these little punks.
Of course, there's a certain level of savvy in dealing with the guys, too. I had to move over and sit right behind the main group of seven or eight instigators, who were talking amongst themselves, nudging and snickering. The fellow at the end looked aggrieved.
"Why'd you move over?" he demanded. "What'd we do?"
Did I answer, "Gentlemen, let's comport ourselves"? No, of course not. I said, "You're whispering like a bunch of little girls." Instant silence. The Holy Spirit always honors some tactics.
This was a very fun installment to write, though I feel bad for what poor Natalie had to go through.
The next installment will be up on Monday.
Near Kiev, Russian Ukraine. August 5th, 1914. The next day came, warm and sunny. The windows of the summer house were open, and through them came the smell of dew and warming earth and grass. It was the sort of day for which, long afterwards, the summer of 1914 was remembered. Far away, along the Meuse River in Belgium, German troops rushed forward in dense waves against the forts surrounding the city of Liege and were met with rifle and machine gun fire from the Belgian troops defending their small country. Such sights and sounds were unimaginable still at the Luterek’s dacha. Here were the sounds of larks singing and insects humming among the trees rather than shrapnel buzzing through the air.
Lena burst into her eldest brother’s room while it was still early, demanding that he come down to breakfast and see them all, and so rather than sleeping until late morning as might have been his wont after two days on trains and a late night discussing the military and diplomatic situation with his father and brother in the library, while dipping into the doctor’s stash of fine cigars, Konrad came down to breakfast with the family, looking handsome though slightly diminished in a civilian hunting suit of English tweed.
“Oh, you’re not going to go hunting and leave all of us, are you?” Lena asked, as soon as she saw her brother’s outfit.
“I don’t know,” Konrad replied, pouring himself a cup of tea and sitting down at the table next to her. “What sort of activities would you have me stay for? Is it to be a tea party with your dolls?”
Lena stuck her tongue out at him. “Father says we can take the pony cart. I want to pack a big picnic hamper and go for a ramble through the countryside.”
“A ramble is it?” Konrad looked around the table at the other young people.
Borys was reading the newspaper. Sara was spreading jam on her toast while trying to look indifferent to the day’s activities and thus more mature than her boisterous younger sister. Natalie was watching these reactions when she felt Konrad’s gaze upon her. She briefly met his eyes, then felt flustered and looked away. Immediately she was angry with herself for doing so.
The night before, having retreated to the solitude of her room, she had demanded of herself why why had immediately felt abashed at his compliment and his kiss on her hand. She was a lady. Gentlemen kissed ladies’ hands and paid them compliments. Why had she immediately felt in the wrong to receive these attentions from Lieutenant Konrad in front of his family? Certainly, there had been the constant warnings of the nuns: “Be on your guard against men who seek to compromise your virtue. You see in your own lives what lies before a woman who falls thus, and her child.”
Yet she must not flatter herself that he had any such grave intentions. He was a handsome young man from a good family, an officer, surely he paid such attentions to many women and meant little enough by it. Perhaps, indeed, that, rather than the warnings of her youth, was what embarrassed her: that he paid her attention merely as an amusement and not because of anything that she was, other than a woman who caught his eye for a moment. But whatever the reason, she would not allow these feelings to make her act in a way that called attention to her discomfort.
Lena had been describing her plans for the day to everyone. “And when we get back, I know Cook is making a special dinner since it’s your first one here. And then--”
“You’re very quiet, Mademoiselle Nowakówna,” Konrad interrupted. “Are you coming on this proposed ramble through the countryside?”
Natalie followed her resolution and smiled back at him calmly. “Oh, I suppose. Where the girls, I go.”
“Then I am sure we shall all have a good time,” he replied.
The preparations took some time, but at last the young people all set off. Borys drove the pony cart, with the big, wicker picnic basket loaded with china, table cloths, blankets, and food and drink, and the girls walked alongside. Konrad rode one of the rented hunters, sometimes riding calmly alongside, sometimes cantering off in some direction or other, to jump a fence and then circle back, or simply to enjoy the satisfaction of speed on a good animal.
They chose a grassy field near a stream for this picnic place. Berry bushes grew along the stream, and while Natalie worked at laying out the blankets and then the china and food on them, Sara and Lena took of their shoes and stockings and waded up and down the stream picking tins full of berries, sampling many as they went along. Their talk and occasional splashes formed a sort of half-heard background mingling with the noises of the stream itself -- not distinct enough to be understood yet enough to break the solitude and make it clear that people were nearby.
“Would you like a fire to heat the kettle over?” Konrad asked.
There were no trees nearby and they had not thought to bring firewood. “I think we’ll have to do without,” Natalie said. “There’s no wood.”
“No wood yet, little governess,” Konrad said. “These two knights errant will go questing for you.”
“Really, it’s no trouble. We don’t need to have hot tea.”
“Oh, but I insist. We must do something to make ourselves useful to you, and you seem to have everything here so well in hand.” He smiled and gave her an exaggerated bow. “We shall return with our firewood or on it.” He swung into the saddle with the grace of long practice. “Come on, Borys. I shall lead my squadron on reconnoitre and find out enemy where he lies. You bring the baggage train.” He indicated the pony cart. “Once I have defeated our foe you can bring back the spoils of war.”
A routine visit to TODAY takes on the excruciating air of a court-ordered couples therapy session. The experience of filming is recounted Vogue in with a gravity typically reserved for describing a violent, horrific trauma...
Because 50 Shades of Grey is a sex movie, Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan have routinely been asked about sex. Because Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan seem to dislike at least this specific sort of sex (fake sex, with a person they hate, in a movie they made for a job they regret), they routinely display discomfort (ranging from wide-eyed confusion to intense aversion) when talking about sex, in general.
Jamie Dornan, Glamour, January 30, 2015:"Some of the Red Room stuff was uncomfortable. There were times when Dakota was not wearing much, and I had to do stuff to her that I'd never choose to do to a woman."
Jamie Dornan, Glamour, January 30, 2015:
"The first day [of filming] was kind of an out-of-body experience. I got there and they said, "Action!" I'm like, "What the f—k is happening? I'm a dad. What?"
Dakota Johnson, Glamour, January 30, 2015:
"I grew up in Colorado, and there are manly men there, so manliness is attractive to me. I think it's unsexy when a man chews with his mouth open or when a man is rude or wears fedoras. I hate fedoras. Oh God, I can find more things I hate about men than I like. I think it's just a phase!"
Jamie Dornan, GQ UK, January 6, 2015:Your dignity is intact as much as it's all tucked away in a little flesh-coloured bag... As a guy you put all your essentials in a little bag and you tie it up like a little bag of grapes and it's tucked away.
Jamie Dornan, Elle UK, January 2, 2015, on visiting a sex dungeon: "It was an interesting evening. Then go back to my wife and newborn baby afterwards … I had a long shower before touching either of them."
Basically, no one believes in this movie:
To sum up, in their own words: Jamie Dornan would like to point out that 50 Shades' success is certainly unlike Hitler's success, in many ways. Dakota Johnson would rather you not see this movie.
Jamie Dornan, Elle, January 12, 2015:
"Mass appreciation doesn't always equate to something good. Think of Hitler! But I think, in this case, it must. It simply must."
Dakota Johnson, Glamour, January 30:
"But I don't want my family to see [the movie], because it's inappropriate. Or my brothers' friends, who I grew up with. I think they'd be like, 'Blegh.' Also there's part of me that's like, I don't want anyone to see this movie. Just kidding."
Author E. L. James, for her part, is pretending everyone will like the movie.
E.L. James, Variety, January 20, 2015"I'm pretty sure the millions of fans who have the read the trilogy will think there is enough sex."
O.K.
Sounds like an episode of Disasterpiece Theater, minus the good clean fun.
Romance novels -- novels for which the raison d'etre is sexual fulfillment, whether they're the hard-core Fifty Shades stuff or "Christian" romance or historical-tragical-pastoral -- create an image of effortless sexual complementarity that can supplant the very real work it takes for a woman to meet her husband where he's at, each time. And they undercut that work because fantasies can become addictive. They work their way into a woman's mind and rob her of the ability to respond honestly to her husband, just as any physical skill not practiced becomes rusty over time. It takes so much less emotional and physical commitment to become mentally aroused by retreating to happy stories (especially if there has been a fight or some breach in the relationship that has damaged communication) that eventually a spouse can become no more than tool for achieving satisfaction, or a "bin for one's urges" (as a commenter recently put it). Fantasy breeds lust, not love.
A woman who develops a reliance on sexual fantasy is cultivating a taste for something other than reality. Fantasy, so infinitely malleable, creates puppets for the purpose of objectifying them, or conveniently allows for the emotional manipulation of real people in a way that stubborn real life seems to resist. It also dismisses the real ugliness of subversive sexual situations -- women who find themselves excited by the fictional S&M antics of Fifty Shades would feel horrified, humiliated, and dehumanized if their husbands were to subject them to the same emotional and sexual abuse. True brutality isn't glamorous or arousing -- it's sickening and damaging.
Sounds like Dakota Johnson might agree:
Dakota Johnson, Vogue, January 20, 2015:
I still can't look at it objectively or wrap my head around it. The parts of the movie that are difficult to watch were even more difficult—and emotionally taxing—to shoot."
...
Dakota Johnson, TIME, February 2, 2015:
"Filming a sex scene is not a sensual or pleasurable environment. It's really hot—not in a steamy, sexual way. It's just sweaty and it's not very comfortable. And on top of that, my hands and legs were tied, and I was blindfolded, and I was being hit with this bizarre tool. ... It was emotionally taxing. At first I was like, 'Oh my God, this is the worst thing ever,' and then I was like, 'All right, let's get on with it.'
Over the years I've been inspired by various bloggers who've hosted readalongs or have liveblogged their current volume, and these have introduced me, or recalled to me, much excellent literature. And so I'd thought, well, maybe something like this would help me to get through my current aspirational read. You know the aspirational read. It sits on top of your pile and gathers dust as you pull out book after book from beneath it, because you just don't have time to tackle the big guy.
I've been thinking about reading Tristam Shandy, by Laurence Sterne, for a while. First I just thought about it. Then I talked to my neighbor down the street, a lit professor, who loves it, and that made me think about it for a while longer. Then I went to the library, but the library didn't have it, which bought me some more thinking time. Then I searched for it on Amazon, but I couldn't find a hardcover copy, and I didn't like that. So I thought about it some more. Finally I just bought a nice new Modern Library edition and read some of the introduction. That did me for a while, but eventually I began to feel like an intellectual dilettante despite my advanced degree in procrastination, and so I took up and read.
But you don't just read Tristam Shandy straight through. There's nothing straight through about Tristam Shandy. It's vignettes and by-the-ways and digressions and sentences that would make William Faulkner sit up and take notice of a master.
THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF TRISTAM SHANDY, GENT.
CHAP. 1
I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly consider'd how much depended upon what they were then doing;—that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;—and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost;—Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,—I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that in which the reader is likely to see me.—Believe me, good folks, this is not so inconsiderable a thing as many of you may think it;—you have all, I dare say, heard of the animal spirits, as how they are transfused from father to son, &c. &c.—and a great deal to that purpose:—Well, you may take my word, that nine parts in ten of a man's sense or his nonsense, his successes and miscarriages in this world depend upon their motions and activity, and the different tracks and trains you put them into, so that when they are once set a-going, whether right or wrong, 'tis not a half-penny matter,—away they go cluttering like hey-go mad; and by treading the same steps over and over again, they presently make a road of it, as plain and as smooth as a garden-walk, which, when they are once used to, the Devil himself sometimes shall not be able to drive them off it.
Pray my Dear, quoth my mother, have you not forgot to wind up the clock?—Good G..! cried my father, making an exclamation, but taking care to moderate his voice at the same time,—Did ever woman, since the creation of the world, interrupt a man with such a silly question? Pray, what was your father saying?—Nothing.
And that's chapter one, and very charming it is too, and as pretty an example of usage of em dashes as even a devotee such as myself could hope to see. And this absent-minded conception leads him to ponder in subsequent chapters the poor wee Homunculus making his way to the security of the womb; his good uncle Toby, from whom he learned the story of his conception; how he can be sure of the exact date of this occurence; how he was born under ill auspices; how he begs the reader's patience for taking a long time to get back to how he was born, with reflections on the beginning of a friendship; how his midwife received her license, with much bawdy punning about hobby horses; a reflection on hobby horses that leads him to write a dedication to any Lord who will purchase it; an advertisement for this dedication; back to the story: how the parson who paid for the midwife's license rode around on an old nag...
And that's as far as I've gotten, ten brief chapters, twelve pages, and I'm dizzy, I tell you. Tristam Shandy is a book of associations. One thing leads to another, rabbit holes and side roads galore, until you hardly remember what started everything off until Sterne yanks you back and you take one more step forward and ten all over the place. The reading map looks like one of those diagrams of how to dance.
And that's the point of Tristam Shandy, as I take it. Life isn't a straight line, from conception to wherever we're going next, which I still haven't figured out textwise. Everything is connected, and everything runs into everything else, and no man is an island, and neither are any of his thoughts. So I can't really tell how to read the thing, because I feel like if I read it in bite-sized chunks I'll forget what he was talking about earlier, and if I read it straight through in spates I'll get a headache. This doesn't make for promising readalong material. In fact, I only mention it here to hold myself accountable, because I feel like this is going to take at least a year, on and off, of intermittent binges and fasts, and reading the same line for a few days, and getting through a whole volume some other time. One matches one's reading to the material, and Sterne seems to invite just such an approach.
At last we return to Natalie, for Chapter 8. The next installment will go up Thursday night.
Near Kiev, Russian Ukraine. July-August, 1914. No sooner had Natalie begun to settle into the routine of the Luterek household than she was uprooted again, though this time happily. At the beginning of July the entire family retired for a eight week holiday in a summer house north east of Kiev.
The dacha itself had been newly constructed in 1903 by a Prince Sangushko, who was one of the patrons of the hospital. The good prince was spending his summer at a much grander estate outside Odessa, and the loan of this little retreat which he had only had the time to visit a handful of times had seemed an appropriate reward for the famous surgeon that his new hospital had managed to lure away from Warsaw. What to the Prince was a humble getaway cottage, to Doctor Luterek’s eyes seemed to represent all that was to be gained by edging from the professional class into the gentry. Already he had his elder son serving as a cavalry officer alongside the sons of noblemen. If in a few years he could buy a country house such as this… Who knew, perhaps some day he might even be granted a title for his medical work. Surely, there was no limit to what could be achieved by a man of drive and ability in the new Russia.
To Natalie, the vacation seemed not the promise of some future chance to rise in status but as if she really had become a noblewoman. The house itself, a builder’s fantasy of a medieval cottage with a round tower, steep red tiled roof, faux timbering, and all the modern conveniences including a large indoor bathroom on the second floor where at the turn of a faucet steaming hot water poured into the bathtub which stood on clawed brass feet amid an expanse of white tiled floor. She had her own room, as large and as well furnished as those of the Luterek daughters, and two sitting rooms, the library, and the extensive gardens in which to take her ease.
Her charges’ lessons were in abeyance for the course of the vacation and so her duties were little more than seeing that they did not completely forget their French and German. As the two girls were happy to treat her as something closer to an older sister than a teacher, this goal was easily enough achieved by joining them in daylong rambles through the countryside with a picnic hamper on the pony cart, or staging tableaux based on their favorite reading.
To say that the Lutereks had become like family to her would have been going too far, and yet it was very near to true. On the train from Warsaw to Kiev, a journey which took all of a day and a night, she had spent staring out the window of the first class railway carriage and thinking about her future. She had imagined the full range of possibilities. Would the doctor and his wife prove to be the welcoming parents that she had never had, that her father had, despite his generosity, refused to be? Or would they treat her as a servant, make her sleep in a dingy attic while leaving her to the mercies of children who knew that any naughtiness they perpetrated would be blamed on her failure to control them?
I discovered somehow or other that there have been a number of French graphic novels in recent years dealing with World War One, and I was immediately curious to get a look at some, because I'm curious about how the Great War is views by those in the countries that fought in it a hundred years on. (Despite the heavy bloodletting of 1917-1918, the US almost doesn't count as there's virtually no cultural memory of the first world war here, our stories are all about the second.)
Interlibrary loan was my friend, and I got hold of copies of both, of which I've now finished It Was the War of the Trenches. I'm not usually a reader of graphic novels, and usually I find myself flipping pages fast. I found myself probably reading this one more slowly than if it had been the same vignettes told in text, because Tardi has definitely done a huge amount of research and so for someone interested in the period there's a huge amount of detail to look for in each panel.
Unfortunately, the writing is, by intention I think, very much one note, and the story suffers as a result. Tardi writes in his introduction, "There are no 'heroes,' there is no 'protagonist' in this awful collective 'adventure' that is war. Nothing but a gigantic anonymous scream of agony."
You can write an engaging story in which there is no "hero" in the sense of a good and admirable character, but it's very hard to write a story in which there are no protagonists, no characters about whom we care. And this is the problem here. Tardi provides one gigantic scream of agony, but the result is a portrayal so fragmented, so partial that we no longer see the participants as people, only as sufferers. They are suffering because stupid and unseen commanders send them into hopeless attacks, they are suffering because those around them are stupid, they are suffering because the anonymous Germans on the other side relentlessly kill characters in order to express the futility of it all.
Tardi says in his introduction that he is only writing about French characters because he knows France, he has not intention to seem nationalist. And yet, there is a sense in which the narrative he puts forward begins to seem nationalist because his characters only suffer, they seldom act in any way that would hurt the opposing side. So while we see many French characters killed by German snipers and machine gunners who are either unseen or seen only as helmeted silhouettes, we only once in the book seek a French soldier kill a German soldier (or even shoot at one) "on screen". By contrast, we see five French soldiers shot by firing squad, one French soldier shot by his comrades while he's wounded on the barbed wire (because they're tired of hearing his moans), two French gendarmes killed by a French soldier, and one French soldier kill himself.
We get a very good sense of how 1.4 million Frenchmen died in combat during the war, but it's utterly mystifying how more than a million Germans died on the Western Front. The reason is not some sort of anti-German feeling, nor any pro-French sentiment (the characters are equal opportunity misanthropes), but rather that Tardi is so busy seeing his characters as victims -- of the officers, of the mud, of the enemy, of 'this goddamned war' -- that he fails to account for the fact that France's soldiers in the Great War (like those on all sides) were actors as well as victims. They were not just killed, they killed in their turn.
The sources of suffering here are always other: the artillery pounding in from above, the stupid officers who execute men for imaginary crimes, the faceless enemy who shoot soldiers as they try to slink to the listening post that the heartless officers have assigned them to. But by othering all the causes of suffering, the story in a sense takes an easy turn. There is perhaps no clearer example of this in the book than the prevalence of executions. We see five soldiers shot by firing squad -- which is a high number given that out of the 1.4 million French soldiers who died violently in the great war only 600 were executed (including both men killed perhaps unjustly for cowardice and those punished for normal crimes such as murder or rape committed while in uniform.) Thus, this short book with its score of characters chronicles almost 1% of the number of total executions carried out during four and a half years in an army of 8,317,000 men.
The French executed more of their own men than any other nation in the Great War (the British were second with 300, while the Germans were comparatively sparing in and shot only 18), and it is not hard to see that many of these cases must have been unjust. Tardi, however, wants to make sure we don't miss the point, so in the first vignette we see a soldier from Corsica who doesn't speak any French being executed because he hadn't obeyed an order he didn't understand. I suppose something like that could have happened, though I kind of wonder how a soldier who didn't speak the language of his offices even got that far, but by picking such an extreme example the story in a sense takes an easy way out.
Third Republic France had its problems, but it was arguably the most democratic and the most egalitarian nation involved in the Great War. It was also fighting against invaders on its own soil, with parts of France occupied throughout the war. To my mind, the hard question here, the question which would produce real drama instead of easy pathos in a story, is: What is it that drove this democratic society to believe that its citizens army could only defend its own homeland under the threat of the firing squad? What is the desperation which leads people to execute their own for cowardice? Don't tell the easy story about how stupid and heartless officers execute a completely innocent man, tell the hard story about how officers who would normally be horrified by this kind of cold violence feel that they need to go through with a execution for cowardice because the very existence of their country is at the breaking point. The easy story makes you think "of course, any reasonable person is with the victims", the hard story makes you think, "perhaps I would have been with the ones who did this."
One of the reasons for the wide cast of characters and the gradual introduction of all of them in The Great War, a novel is that I want to avoid that trap of writing only about victims facing impersonal sources of suffering -- I want to show how real people came to do the things that happened on all sides of the war.
"There followed next a massive escalation of what until then had essentially been nothing more serious than a bout of competitive princess-rustling -- and the fault was all the Greeks'. Or so the Persians claim, at any rate -- for they point out out that long before they every thought of invading Europe, it was the Greeks who invaded Asia. Granted, the Persians acknowledge, stealing women is never acceptable behaviour; but really, they ask, what is the point, once a woman has been stolen, in kicking up a great fuss about it, and pursuing some ridiculous vendetta, when every sensible man knows that the best policy is to affect an utter lack of concern? It is clear enough, after all, that women are never abducted unless they are open to the idea of it in the first place. So it was, the Persians, claim, that people in Asia remained pretty much unperturbed by the theft of their women -- but the Greeks, simply to get back the wife of a single Spartan, assembled a huge task-force, invaded Asia, and annihilated the empire of Priam. Ever since then, the Persians have viewed the Greeks as a people inveterately hostile to them."
--Herodotus, Histories, trans. Tom Holland
I remember reading Herodotus in college, but I don't remember him being this amusing.
Now what you have to understand is that Brandon knows poetry and I don't. He understands the structure of the ballade form, and he made his initial rhyme choices based on keeping the integrity of the structure. I, on the other hand, not only knew nothing of the ballade form, but I scan for comprehension when I read and have a poor mental ear for poetry, especially in a foreign language, and so it was only gradually, after I'd translated most of the poem, that it dawned on me that 1) each stanza follows the ABABBCBC scheme; and then 2) the whole poem follows the ABABBCBC structure. There are only three different rhymes in the whole thing. Of course, at this point I'd already translated to the end, so I did a bit of late-night gnashing of teeth and reworked it on the fly, starting with the end, only to find out that I'd taken the wrong rhyme pattern and so lost my first four lines, with which I was particularly pleased. The Muse is a hard mistress.
Here are my two translations, with the French for comparison.
French
Original Translation
ABABBCBC
Je jette avec grâce mon feutre, Je fais lentement l'abandon Du grand manteau qui me calfeutre, Et je tire mon espadon; Élégant comme Céladon, Agile comme Scaramouche, Je vous préviens, cher Mirmydon, Qu'à la fin de l'envoi je touche !
I cast my hat without a care,
Deliberately uncape me here,
Unwrap this mantle which I wear,
And I draw my rapier!
Elegant as Celadon,
Agile as Scaramouche, eh?
I'm warning you, oh Myrmidon,
That at the envoi's end -- touché!
I cast, with manner cavalier
My hat, and with a motion grave
My mantle I'll abandon here
To free my rapier to rave!
I'm Celadon, love's noble slave,
I'm sharp as Scaramouche, eh?
You'll learn, you midget, to behave,
When at the envoi's end -- touché!
Vous auriez bien dû rester neutre;
Où vais-je vous larder, dindon ?. . .
Dans le flanc, sous votre maheutre ?. . .
Au cœur, sous votre bleu cordon ?. . .
—Les coquilles tintent, ding-don !
Ma pointe voltige: une mouche !
Décidément. . .c'est au bedon,
Qu'à la fin de l'envoi, je touche.
Neutrality was your best bet;
Now how to baste you, turkey mine?
In the flank? Under your sleeve?
In your heart, 'neath ribbon fine?
Our blades they ring as strokes we launch,
The points fly as I whoosh, eh?
I've got it now -- it's in your paunch
that at the envoi's end -- touché!
A neutral course you scorned to steer,
To carve you, turkey, I'll engrave
Your flank down there, or sleeve up here,
Or heart 'neath path blue ribbons pave!
The strokes ring loudly, strong and brave!
The points fly as I whoosh, eh?
I know -- my blow your gut will stave
When at the envoi's end, touché!
Il me manque une rime en eutre. . .
Vous rompez, plus blanc qu'amidon ?
C'est pour me fournir le mot pleutre !
—Tac ! je pare la pointe dont
Vous espériez me faire don;—
J'ouvre la ligne,—je la bouche. . .
Tiens bien ta broche, Laridon !
A la fin de l'envoi, je touche.
Some cliche here: blah croon, blah moon,
A flag all starchy-white you wave,
And there's my rhyme, you pale poltroon!
Aha! The point you thought I gave
I parry with a graceful save!
I'mopen now-- I'm closed, bouché,
Observe my knife, you larder knave,
For at the envoi's end, touché!
My verse is getting gapey here...
A flag all starchy-white you wave,
Now rhymes run like you, white-tailed deer!
Aha! The point you thought I gave
I parry with a graceful save!
I'm open now -- I'm closed, bouché!
Observe my knife, you larder knave,
For at the envoi's end, touché!
ENVOI
Prince, demande à Dieu pardon!
Je quarte du pied, j'escarmouche,
Je coupe, je feinte. . . Hé ! là, donc !
A la fin de l'envoi, je touche !
ENVOI
O Prince, prepare to meet thy God!
I skirmish, swish, I swoosh, eh?
Cut, feint -- take that! -- so end ballade!
For at the envoi's end -- touché!
ENVOI
O Prince, of God his pardon crave!
I skirmish, swish, I swoosh, eh?
Cut, feint -- and so! your last close shave!
For at the envoi's end, touché!
Stanza 1: Perhaps my favorite unholy rhyme in the whole thing is uncape me here/rapier, and it broke my heart to lose it in the ABABBCBC version, when I realized that, due to working backward from the rhymes in the third stanza, I'd unwittingly bumped the "rapier" rhyme from B to A, thus losing those lines. (Thanks to Brandon for suggesting a better phrasing of the fourth line in the ABAB version, improving my quick late night line of "To free my sword to freely rave" -- rave was the only "ave" rhyme left in the dictionary at that point, and I didn't know what to do with it.)
The ABAB version has a better explanation of Cyrano's allusions to Celadon and Scaramouche, two figures that don't have much resonance now (Walter Hooker's translation changes them to Lancelot and Spartacus, two figures that have much more pull on the English imagination), but I didn't mind keeping them in. Cyrano likes his learned references, and anyway, "Scaramouche" helped propel me to a rhyme for "touché", which I felt was key, since touché still carries connotations in English of sparring and scoring points. "Scaramouche, eh?" is a scurrilous rhyme, but I hope that Cyrano would think it was amusing.
Stanza 2: I wanted to stay close to Cyrano's neutre, and I wanted to keep the ridiculous word turkey, designed to prick his foppish opponent's pride. Larder is a cooking technique which uses a larding needle to insert fat under a bird's skin for juicier results; Brandon found a graceful way to keep the allusion, but I went with basting as a recognizable thing, and in the ABAB version I needed to use "carving" to fit with the "engrave" rhyme. Coquilles are handguards: the guards are ringing as strokes land on them, but I couldn't quite make that work for me, and so ringing blades was the closest I could come to the sound of the bells, ding-don. What I really wanted to rhyme was paunch (bedon refers to skin stretched over a drum), so I had to work the fifth line back from "launch". And of course, the awful rhyme for "touché" had to be fit in, though "whoosh" isn't too far from voltige, quiver.
Stanza 3: this stanza had a few ciphers to unlock before it made sense to me. I could not find eutre in any dictionary, and the definitions of pleutre didn't shed much light until I consulted Google Translate and discovered that it was an obscure form of "coward". That suddenly made sense of Cyrano finding a rhyme after being inspired by the phrase "more white than starch." I took eutre as a nonsense word, which several other translations seemed to bear out, so "croon" and "moon" was my little nod to the Gershwin ditty Blah Blah Blah, which takes out all the words but the cliched rhymes. "Poltroon" seemed like a nice obsolete word for coward. It wasn't until I was working on the envoi and realized the overall scheme of the poem that I realized that every single A line ended in eutre. Since I'd realized that each stanza followed an ABAB scheme, anyway, I used wave/save/gave/knave and managed, I think, to keep a fairly accurate translation. Laridon is a name of a kitchen scullion and also means something akin to "lesser son of a greater father", so "larder knave" seemed to fit the bill and be a bit of a throwback to the larder I didn't translate in stanza 2.
The ABAB version is a bit of a stretch in the first four lines. "Gapey here" is accurate enough, though pretty inelegant. The inspiration of his opponent's white face jump starts Cyrano's creativity and gives him his rhyme, so the running white-tailed deer was an attempt to match the white of the line above and indicate both coward and fleetness.
Envoi: I particularly liked my original envoi -- the envoi is a shorter stanza at the end, usually addressed to the Prince -- but once I realized that it fit the BCBC scheme ("Hey, these lines end in -on, just like the stanza above. I wonder why that was repeat--whatthehell? The whole poem?"), I tried an alternate version which lead to the rest of the ABAB translation. I'm not enamored of the ABAB version, but it does fit the form.
The last installment of Chapter 7. I'll have the first installment of Chapter 8, featuring Natalie, posted by this coming Tuesday.
Having come to believe that her son joining the cavalry was her own idea, Lisette immersed herself in every detail. All forms of attention other than money were lavished upon his preparations. With this latter she remained close. Indeed, it was with difficulty that Jozef kept her from rejecting the cavalry pack and bags that he had ordered and substituting some cheaper version.
“But this leather is thinner and more supple, see? And none of that heavy double stitching. Don’t buy that clunky, ugly pack when this one is nicer and half as much besides.”
He took her by the arm and moved her away from the shop counter so that he could speak to her without being heard. “I intend to buy the regulation equipment, Mother, not a cheaper imitation.”
“I am only trying to keep your from being cheated. I’m sure these others are just as good, they just haven’t paid bribes to the officers of the commissariat.”
Jozef went back to the counter and told the shopman, “I’ll be taking the regulation models. Have them packaged up and sent to the flat. You have the address? Good. And the bill can go on our account.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Jozef led the way out of the shop into the street, followed by Lisette who bore an aggrieved expression.
“I’m very proud of you, Jozef. But you mustn’t think that I don’t know anything. When it comes to dealing with shopmen and their schemes, I have far more experience than you.”
After all their worries over how quickly they could join the ranks, Theodor and his other fraternity comrades had passed their medical exam and been given transportation orders for Friday morning. They had all been enrolled in the army books and issued their blue-grey woolen uniforms, which inspired such pride that they would be seen in nothing else.
Although he could not, by rights, wear his new cadet uniforms until he was officially enrolled in the service after reporting to post, Jozef donned his blue jacket and red trousers and joined the other six former students at a photographer’s studio. They were not the only young men thus inspired, and the photographer had availed himself of several rifles and swords with which young men who had been issued uniforms but not weapons could pose. They threw their chests out and struck a martial pose, the infantrymen holding rifles at attention and Jozef casually resting his hand on the pommel of his borrowed sabre. They held still for a moment, and then the photographer’s flash went off with a poof and a little cloud of smoke that smelt like gunpowder. They went off to the beer hall for several hours and then returned to the studio to pick up the result, a small print for each of them.
The post to which Jozef was to present himself on August 1st was less than a hundred and fifty miles away, south and east from Vienna, just across the border into Hungary. An express could get him there in less than five hours, an overnight train would make a leisurely trip of it. However, reports were that train schedules were chaotic, and Jozef welcomed the chance to escape his mother’s presence sooner rather than later, so he resolved to leave early on the morning of the 30th just like his friends.
Megan McArdle has a piece worth reading talking about the UVA rape case (in which a Rolling Stone story describing an alleged gang rape and the hands of fraternity brothers turned out to be a fabrication which the reporter had not bothered to check) as an example of what she describes as moral panic:
There are a lot of definitions of moral panic running around, but here's mine: It's when a community becomes hysterical about some problem -- often, but not always, a real one -- that becomes defined as an existential threat to public safety and moral order. In such a climate, questioning how big the threat actually is, or contesting any particular example, is not a matter of rational discussion, but of heresy.
While the moral panic is raging, ludicrous and improbable stories suddenly become convincing, and it's dangerous to question them, because why are you defending witches? Are YOU a witch?
...
When people are in the grip of a moral panic, going up against them to question the extent of a threat, even by doubting so much as a single case, can become dangerous. Questioning any expression of the panic is not seen as a logical debate over statistics or the details of a particular instance, but as somehow defending the threatening behavior.
It's a piece worth reading, and her point is amplified by the fact that after reading the post and thinking it a good one, I hesitated to post it because "well, one doesn't want to seem like one of those people who insists there is no problem". Once I recognized that hesitation, I knew I had to post it.
Someone on Facebook posed the question: "Why do all NFP teachers seem to have 5 kids?" It's a good question: if NFP works, why are these people always pregnant? One answer is that they want to have lots of children, which is a good thing but does raise the question of whether they practice the system they preach. But probably a more accurate answer is: do you know how many more kids we'd have without NFP?
So I did a little math on the subject I know best: myself. I have been married for 14 years minus 5 months, so 163 months. I had my first baby 15 months after I was married. My fertility returns, on average, 6 months postpartum (second child, 15 months younger than the first; and careful observation after the other four births bears that out). So, a fifteen month cycle between possible pregnancies. Had I not used NFP and gotten pregnant on a fifteen-month schedule, well, 15x11= 165. After being married for 162 months, I could be six months pregnant with my 11th child.
Let me restate that. I could have 11 children by my 14th anniversary without NFP. I will have six, almost half that number.
Now this isn't carved in stone. One won't necessarily get pregnant in a given cycle; I myself have gone several cycles without conceiving even when I was trying to. (Observation says that results in boys, BTW.) But you can't know that except in hindsight, and I do know that I can get pregnant even when I'm trying not to conceive; it's happened three times. (Observation: A girl, a miscarriage, and a girl.)
After the surprise of my second pregnancy, all my children have been spaced with NFP. The second closest spacing is 22 months -- still closer than I'd intended, but far saner and healthier than a 15-month spacing. As I get older and my pregnancies get tricksier, that spacing -- and the physical condition it allows me to recover -- become more vital. I was only 23 once.
So, I'm not an NFP instructor, but people may see my six kids and wonder, "Does NFP work?" And the answer is, "Do you see my 11 kids? No? Then I can assure you that it does."
Here’s my life. My husband and I get up each morning at 7 o’clock and he showers while I make coffee. By the time he’s dressed I’m already sitting at my desk writing. He kisses me goodbye then leaves for the job where he makes good money, draws excellent benefits and gets many perks, such as travel, catered lunches and full reimbursement for the gym where I attend yoga midday. His career has allowed me to work only sporadically, as a consultant, in a field I enjoy.
All that disclosure is crass, I know. I’m sorry. Because in this world where women will sit around discussing the various topiary shapes of their bikini waxes, the conversation about money (or privilege) is the one we never have. Why? I think it’s the Marie Antoinette syndrome: Those with privilege and luck don’t want the riffraff knowing the details. After all, if “those people” understood the differences in our lives, they might revolt. Or, God forbid, not see us as somehow more special, talented and/or deserving than them.
There’s a special version of this masquerade that we writers put on. Two examples:
I attended a packed reading (I’m talking 300+ people) about a year and a half ago. The author was very well-known, a magnificent nonfictionist who has, deservedly, won several big awards. He also happens to be the heir to a mammoth fortune. Mega-millions. In other words he’s a man who has never had to work one job, much less two. He has several children; I know, because they were at the reading with him, all lined up. I heard someone say they were all traveling with him, plus two nannies, on his worldwide tour.
None of this takes away from his brilliance. Yet, when an audience member — young, wide-eyed, clearly not clued in — rose to ask him how he’d managed to spend 10 years writing his current masterpiece — What had he done to sustain himself and his family during that time? — he told her in a serious tone that it had been tough but he’d written a number of magazine articles to get by. I heard a titter pass through the half of the audience that knew the truth. But the author, impassive, moved on and left this woman thinking he’d supported his Manhattan life for a decade with a handful of pieces in the Nation and Salon.
Example two. A reading in a different city, featuring a 30-ish woman whose debut novel had just appeared on the front page of the New York Times Book Review. I didn’t love the book (a coming-of-age story set among wealthy teenagers) but many people I respect thought it was great, so I defer. The author had herself attended one of the big, East Coast prep schools, while her parents were busy growing their careers on the New York literary scene. These were people — her parents — who traded Christmas cards with William Maxwell and had the Styrons over for dinner. She, the author, was their only beloved child.
After prep school, she’d earned two creative writing degrees (Iowa plus an Ivy). Her first book was being heralded by editors and reviewers all over the country, many of whom had watched her grow up. It was a phenomenon even before it hit bookshelves. She was an immediate star.
When (again) an audience member, clearly an undergrad, rose to ask this glamorous writer to what she attributed her success, the woman paused, then said that she had worked very, very hard and she’d had some good training, but she thought in looking back it was her decision never to have children that had allowed her to become a true artist. If you have kids, she explained to the group of desperate nubile writers, you have to choose between them and your writing. Keep it pure. Don’t let yourself be distracted by a baby’s cry.
I was dumbfounded. I wanted to leap to my feet and shout. “Hello? Alice Munro! Doris Lessing! Joan Didion!” Of course, there are thousands of other extraordinary writers who managed to produce art despite motherhood. But the essential point was that, the quality of her book notwithstanding, this author’s chief advantage had nothing to do with her reproductive decisions. It was about connections. Straight up. She’d had them since birth.
As we were discussing recently in regards to whether one is "rich", the subject of being well off in some sense can be a sensitive one, but there's something particularly disturbing about someone who has been able to devote more time or get more connections in the world of writing due to family wealth or personal connections attributing that success to some completely other thing when giving advice to aspiring young writers. If some other woman wanting to imitate Example #2's success resolves not to have children, will that give her parents with deep connections in the New York literary world? No. And it's far better to simply admit the connections than send people running off on some self destructive path to disappointment due to trying to imitate things which were not in fact instrumental to success.
Also, as someone who's now trying to take a fairly serious shot at novel writing, I couldn't agree more with the point about writing being a much more peaceful process if you're not trying to rely on it to pay the bills. Sure, I would love it if I could spend my daytime hours quietly researching and writing. I was just a tiny bit envious of the writing routine outlined in this piece on how to write a book in six weeks, which in some ways is not that different from what Bauer describes her husband's job as making possible for her. Me, my writing time is from 9:30 or 10:00PM till as late as I go, hopefully midnight, but sometimes one or two in the morning. That can be a little rough, given that I have to be back at my desk the next morning by 8:30AM and functional throughout the day. But honestly, I'm just happier living that way that dealing with the uncertainty of trying to write as a main job. (And while I don't have someone else to pay the bills for me, the support of a stable spouse who can shoulder a lot of the weight of household chores and kid stuff so that I can write at nights is key -- I could never write like this if I was a single parent.)
This is one of the reasons why I'm always inspired by seeing pieces about writers who kept themselves going by other means. Anthony Trollope had a successful career in the British post office, which occasionally comes into his novels in delightful descriptions of how letters essential to the plot either make their way to their destination on time or become misdirected. T. S. Elliot was a successful bank clerk.
T.S. Eliot worked in the foreign transactions department at Lloyd’s bank from 1917 until 1925 (from the age of 29 until he was 37). He punched in Monday through Friday (plus one Saturday a month) from 9:15 am to 5:30 pm. Like many Americans today, he only qualified for two weeks of vacation a year.
Historian Russell Kirk ,in his essential book on Eliot, Eliot and His Age (1971), writes that the publication and success of The Waste Land both changed, and didn’t change Eliot’s circumstances: “Like other poets before him, Eliot woke to find himself famous; but still he labored in the cellars of Lloyd’s bank.” And by referring to the cellar here, Kirk is not being metaphorical. The novelist Aldous Huxley visited Eliot at Lloyd’s and wrote: “(Eliot) was not on the ground floor nor even on the floor under that, but in a sub-sub-basement sitting at a desk which was in a row of desks with other bank clerks.”
And while Eliot’s banking days are no secret, what is less appreciated is that he was really good at his day job. Huxley observed that Eliot was indeed “the most bank-clerky of all bank clerks.” And an officer of Lloyd’s, upon hearing of Eliot’s success with his “hobby,” remarked that Eliot had a bright future at Lloyd’s if he wanted it. “If he goes on as he has been doing, I don’t see why — in time, of course, in time — he mightn’t even become Branch Manager.”
I find that oddly inspiring. Doing financial and pricing analysis is not exactly what most people would think of as a creative career, but it is definitely interesting and challenging in an office-y sort of way. I am happy to be the most bank clerky of all bank clerks if that provides the means to be a novelist in the background without worrying about the heating bill.
Darwin and I have unfamous faces. We've existed in relative anonymity, never able to answer party questions about which actor or actress you'd cast to play you in the movie, because no one in Hollywood looks like us at all. That was rather comfortable, really. We may be unremarkable, but at least we're uniquely unremarkable, except for looking rather like our families, none of whom are in Hollywood making movies about our lives.
Sure, there are differences, but at a glance it's not a bad likeness. I almost feel like I should get a Jermaine Clement poster for the inside of my closet door.
Still, it's a bit chilling to realize that, for all we're so close, we don't share our unfaceness anymore. And now I feel like I should be looking over my shoulder, wondering if my face is walking around out there on someone else (besides my daughters, I mean). Who has it? What is she doing with it? (I'm assuming it's a woman here.) And now when they make the Darwin biopic, will they have to cut me out of it because I don't have the look of anyone who's ever made her mark in public? Or am I to be cast as blonde and willowy and straight-haired because that's the prevailing paradigm? Quelle horreur!
Or maybe the director will just follow Darwin's doppelganger and go with Jermaine Clement's wife:
Yeah, not really seeing a resemblance here, because she has a movie face.
I'm going to give myself a week to get the next installment done. This will be 7-3 and has a fair amount of stuff going on in it. It'll go up on Thursday, January 29th. After that, we'll start Chapter 8 which returns to Natalie.
During the next few days Jozef busied himself with preparations. His fraternity comrades were openly jealous that he had a set of orders and was having uniforms fitted and buying equipment while they still waited for their medical exams. Konstantin had discussed the possibility of deserting from his infantry enlistment and signing up as a cavalry cadet under a false name, but of course there was no staff officer to assist in executing such a desperate plan.
Money problems loomed. Jozef’s usual allowance was enough for the pastimes of a university student, so long as he did not indulge in gambling or the more expensive sort of women, but it was very short indeed when it came to buying the full uniforms and equipment of a cavalry cadet. A reserve officer’s pay was enough to cover such things, but he would not be a reserve officer for at least several months. A cadet’s pay was nominal and even that would not begin until after he reported for duty and was officially enrolled.
He had expected that Mother would be reconciled to his decision once the first shock was past, but she consistently refused to acknowledge any discussion of his impending departure or his need to pay for his kit, either maintaining a blank stare while he spoke to her or replying with questions as to how university lectures were going.
In the end he dodged the problem by purchasing all his supplies on account and giving his mother’s name and address for the bill.
Given the discomforts of home, it was all the more attractive to spend any time not engaged in errands at either the coffee house or the beer hall. With the rest of Vienna, he consumed the newspapers, the rumors, and the discussion of both.
The government had declared Serbia’s partial acceptance of the ultimatum’s terms to be unacceptable, and the army had been mobilized, but no declaration of war or other concrete action had followed. Was the rogue state to the south to be punished for its part in the assassination of the Archduke, for its constant attempts to undermine the dual monarchy, or was this to become yet another in the long string of embarrassments which were summed up in that one shameful phrase: decline?
For a brief time -- in an empire of two kingdoms, twelve nationalities and fifty-two million souls -- it had seemed that there was an essential unity of anger and of willingness to fight the threat, a unity of sympathy and purpose so unusual in this none-too-hopeful empire that many found themselves ready to give it another chance, to discover a forgotten patriotism. Even those opposed to war found themselves intoxicated with the sense that all were to be forged into one glowing whole, their divisions and selfishness refined away by the fires of war. Strangers spoke to each other in the streets, and neighbors who had never more than shrugged at each other when passing in the lift now shook hands and spoke with excited looks. Have you heard anything? Will it be today? What will you do?
And yet before that purpose and unity could be turned into action, it seemed liable to be stillborn through the inaction so familiar and frustrating to all. All waited and read and debated, hoping for and fearing the news that war had at last made real the feelings of the last weeks.
On the evening of Tuesday, July 28th, the answer at last came. War had been declared. War with Serbia. Next day, the first shots of the war were fired. Austrian river monitors, squat ironclads, low in the water, with guns sticking out of round turrets, steamed down the Danube and the Saba, which separated Serbia and its capital from Austria-Hungary, and shelled Belgrade.
It was as the shells were falling in Belgrade, the war still too young to have made it into the morning papers, that Lisette came into the dining room well before her usual late hour, catching Jozef before he could make his silent escape to the coffee house for a morning of reading the news and discussing it with his friends.
“Jozef, good morning! I’m so glad to see you before you leave for the day.”
“Good morning, Mother,” Jozef replied, waiting to see what form his mother’s attack would take. Had she received the bill for his uniform tailoring or his equipage already? Would she refuse to pay? He had hoped that none of the bills would arrive until after he was safely away in training. Let her settle out whether to acknowledge his enlistment or endanger her credit.
A month or two ago I got a letter from the Social Security Administration telling me what I would get in retirement if I keep making what I make now till I retire -- which is one of those things I usually ignore since I tend to assume that I'll never get Social Security. However, the letter also shows your Social Security eligible earnings every year since you started paying into the system, and that really struck me. There it was, my financial history over the last 18 years or so since I got my first paycheck.
The interesting part was looking at the fourteen years since we got married. I was a Classics major in college, with no intention to go on in Academia and no real connections when it came to getting a job. The job I had when we got married I got through a temp agency: $14/hr on the basis of acing the temp agency test of Word and Excel skills, plus being able to type at 80 wpm. As a result, we lived pretty tight those first couple years out of college. Almost everyone I kept in touch with from college was making more than I was, but then almost all of them had had more practical majors. When we were expecting our first child, I desperately searched for another job so that MrsDarwin could stop working. She was part time at Barnes & Noble and part time stage managing, the former paid minimum wage and the latter paid less, but to pay the $1,000/mo rent on our Los Angeles apartment we needed that bit of extra income each month. I found a new job, quit my old one, and then got an offer to stay on at $40k a year, which seemed a pretty princely sum to me at the time, it was still a good deal less than a lot of my friends made. And that's kind of where we stuck for a while, as I tried to improve our lot by starting my own business, moving, temping for a year and a half, and finally getting a new salaried job that paid a little bit more.
The Social Security statement related all that in a neat string of numbers: increase, decrease, increase, flat. When I started this blog, ten years ago, we had two kids and made a little under the median income for households at the time. We had a newly bought house, a car payment, and two kids. My just about any definition we were right there in the middle of the middle class.
Then the numbers started to climb, with some downs in years when the big computer company I worked for didn't do well and so didn't give bonuses, and a couple of jumps when I switched jobs and then did so again. I passed the threshold which Jenny rightly identified as that after which people don't like to talk about how much they make. And now here were are, with six kids, and a house which is twice and big and twice as expensive (and six times as old) as the one we had when we started writing here.
The other day I read someone angrily disdainfully denouncing people who make about what I do as "the rich" -- his rational being that at that level one could pay $30k/yr for your kid's college bill and still have an income above the median left over. Looking back to when I was ten years younger, I remember talking about how when I made more money, I would keep living at the same level, so that I could save and put money away for emergencies.
It oddly sets one's back up to be dismissed as "the rich". I suppose some of this is the great American love affair with the "middle class". Only about 2% of Americans identify as "upper class", and only 10% as "lower class". All the rest of us describe ourselves as "middle" or "upper middle" or "working" class. And as a creature of the right, apparently I'm even more likely to see myself as middle class.
Some of this, I think, is that I identify at least as much with my past as with my present, and my family and my own early working years were right around the mean. Another we spend a lot of time with other people like us. The people I work with mostly make around the same that I do (which is to say: above the average) and the main affluence differences between us are that they mostly have spouses who work and make as much again, plus have half as many kids as I do. So I'm used to thinking of my circumstances as being comparatively modest, even compared to people a paygrade or two below me.
Still, it's interesting that in our cultural climate, being accused of wealth is somewhat insulting, and that even those far more well off than we are at great pains to insist upon their middle class status.
I've been trying to read Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra as my current audiobook, and it's been pretty hard going. The book itself is not hard to read in the sense of being dense, but it seems hard to get much out of in that it's written as a sort of pseudo-sacred scripture and as such it's full of the Nietzsche's fictionalized Persian wise man Zarathustra laying down wise sayings. It's called a philosophical novel, but although there are a few events, it's mostly just Zarathustra's clever sayings, and as such it's very disjointed and hard to remember, particularly when listening to it as an audiobook.
This morning, however, I hit a section which actually read a little bit like a story, and also seemed like an interesting summary of Nietzsche's ideas about God being dead, and also as a summary of Nietzsche's understanding of and dislike for the Christian idea of God. Zarathustra finds an old black man sitting by the side of the road, and this man proves to have been a servant of God's (this translation calls him the pope -- I don't know if that's in the original German and if it's mean to be the Roman Catholic pope) up until God's death.
"WHAT doth all the world know at present?" asked Zarathustra. "Perhaps that the old God no longer liveth, in whom all the world once believed?"
"Thou sayest it," answered the old man sorrowfully. "And I served that old God until his last hour. Now, however, am I out of service, without master, and yet not free; likewise am I no longer merry even for an hour, except it be in recollections. Therefore did I ascend into these mountains, that I might finally have a festival for myself once more, as becometh an old pope and church-father: for know it, that I am the last pope!—a festival of pious recollections and divine services. Now, however, is he himself dead, the most pious of men, the saint in the forest, who praised his God constantly with singing and mumbling. He himself found I no longer when I found his cot—but two wolves found I therein, which howled on account of his death,—for all animals loved him. Then did I haste away. Had I thus come in vain into these forests and mountains? Then did my heart determine that I should seek another, the most pious of all those who believe not in God—, my heart determined that I should seek Zarathustra!"
Thus spake the hoary man, and gazed with keen eyes at him who stood before him. Zarathustra however seized the hand of the old pope and regarded it a long while with admiration.
"Lo! thou venerable one," said he then, "what a fine and long hand! That is the hand of one who hath ever dispensed blessings. Now, however, doth it hold fast him whom thou seekest, me, Zarathustra. It is I, the ungodly Zarathustra, who saith: 'Who is ungodlier than I, that I may enjoy his teaching?'"
Thus spake Zarathustra, and penetrated with his glances the thoughts and arrear-thoughts of the old pope. At last the latter began:
"He who most loved and possessed him hath now also lost him most. Lo, I myself am surely the most godless of us at present? But who could rejoice at that!"
"Thou servedst him to the last?" asked Zarathustra thoughtfully, after a deep silence, "thou knowest HOW he died? Is it true what they say, that sympathy choked him? That he saw how MAN hung on the cross, and could not endure it? That his love to man became his hell, and at last his death?"
The old pope however did not answer, but looked aside timidly, with a painful and gloomy expression.
"Let him go," said Zarathustra, after prolonged meditation, still looking the old man straight in the eye. "Let him go, he is gone. And though it honoureth thee that thou speakest only in praise of this dead one, yet thou knowest as well as I WHO he was, and that he went curious ways."
"To speak before three eyes," said the old pope cheerfully (he was blind of one eye), "in divine matters I am more enlightened than Zarathustra himself—and may well be so. My love served him long years, my will followed all his will. A good servant, however, knoweth everything, and many a thing even which a master hideth from himself. He was a hidden God, full of secrecy. Verily, he did not come by his son otherwise than by secret ways. At the door of his faith standeth adultery. Whoever extolleth him as a God of love, doth not think highly enough of love itself. Did not that God want also to be judge? But the loving one loveth irrespective of reward and requital. When he was young, that God out of the Orient, then was he harsh and revengeful, and built himself a hell for the delight of his favourites. At last, however, he became old and soft and mellow and pitiful, more like a grandfather than a father, but most like a tottering old grandmother. There did he sit shrivelled in his chimney-corner, fretting on account of his weak legs, world-weary, will-weary, and one day he suffocated of his all-too-great pity."
"Thou old pope," said here Zarathustra interposing, "hast thou seen THAT with thine eyes? It could well have happened in that way: in that way, AND also otherwise. When Gods die they always die many kinds of death. Well! At all events, one way or other—he is gone! He was counter to the taste of mine ears and eyes; worse than that I should not like to say against him. I love everything that looketh bright and speaketh honestly. But he—thou knowest it, forsooth, thou old priest, there was something of thy type in him, the priest-type—he was equivocal. He was also indistinct. How he raged at us, this wrath-snorter, because we understood him badly! But why did he not speak more clearly? And if the fault lay in our ears, why did he give us ears that heard him badly? If there was dirt in our ears, well! who put it in them? Too much miscarried with him, this potter who had not learned thoroughly! That he took revenge on his pots and creations, however, because they turned out badly—that was a sin against GOOD TASTE. There is also good taste in piety: THIS at last said: 'Away with SUCH a God! Better to have no God, better to set up destiny on one's own account, better to be a fool, better to be God oneself!'"
With the Catholic News sites discussing the Vatican's move to reform the LCWR, I pulled this slim volume written back in 1986 off the shelf to re-read. It's a quick and amusing read: a satirical view of the breakdown and renewal of reli...
I'd never read any Henry James before, though I did see the Nicole Kidman movie adaptation of Portrait of a Lady some years ago because... well, because it was a costume drama with Nicole Kidman in it.
This was one of those novels I ...
If you, like me, have been reared on tales of the second World War as the just and virtuous struggle of the "greatest generation", Evelyn Waugh's arch novels (based loosely on his own war experiences) are an important and darkly enjoyabl...
This was the first time in some years that I've re-read this Austen novel, one of the quieter and shorter ones, but one which has ranked among my favorites. It was striking me, on this pass, that it rather shows the effects of having be...
and its sequel of sorts (it's about the same subject matter, though not the same characters) 
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