A History of Wales (John Davies)

*****

Reduced *and* patriotically rained-upon

I thought that this book was excellent, and enjoyed spending 765 pages in the company of somebody in such complete command of his material.  As well as relieving my complete ignorance of Welsh history, reading the book gave me some interest in and understanding of English medieval history, seeing it through the prism of how it affected Wales.  I was especially interested in the idea of the English national consciousness as being founded on recovering lands from the Danes, and hence inherently imperialist.

It was interesting to see how the idea of Wales as a nation came in and out of focus at different periods, and it would have been interesting to get Davies’s idea of what Wales as a nation actually was.  He quite rightly says that there is no genetic difference between the Welsh and the English and treats Herderian ideas of nationhood with some reserve at one point, but also seems quite attached to them.

Remembering A Winter in the Hills I might get worried about the lack of agency ascribed to Welsh people here–they rarely get to initiate action as opposed to having things happen to them or reacting to events.  But it could be a fault of history and geography, not John Davies.

The question that really interested me was how it came about that Welsh survived as a widely-spoken language when Irish did not, given that Wales was far more interpenetrated with Anglophone Britain.  The answer given here is that the development of the coal and steel industries meant that people could see hope for a future where Welsh might be relevant while in Ireland they could just see starvation.

Any of our readers interested in Russian literature will wish to know that it was probably on a rail bearing the letters GL (Guest Lewis, the trade mark of Dowlais) that poor Anna Karenina met her end.

Побежденные (Pobezhdennye, The Defeated)

*****

This is an excellent book.  It is also unfortunately something like Holy Scripture for extreme nationalist-mystical tendencies in present-day Russia.

At the level of a novel, this one answers the same question as Irene Nemirovsky’s Suite Francaise:  What happens once you’ve been defeated?  How do you go on?  What do you do?

So the book follows the fate of an interlinked group of former nobles and gentry in post-Revolutionary Leningrad as they survive by selling heirlooms and find they have members of the lower classes billeted on them and they are excluded from labour and higher education.  Even if one is making oneself useful–indeed indispensable–at work, one is only ‘safe’ until the next denunciation. So we see the characters at various stages:  trying to continue life as normal; forming strained communities when exiled to the countryside; in prison and in camps; at the point of death.

There’s a great deal of very high-grade novelistic description of the relationships and arguments in a communal apartment, and the way in which hostile reality seeps into the heroes’ attempts to maintain their values and relationships as they were, at least in their own apartments, at least in their own rooms…Author Irina Golovkina was the grand-daughter of the composer Rimsky-Korsakov, and members of her real family make episodic appearances in the book.  She also like Vassily Grossman goes to the edge in saying what it is like to be be executed and I think she does it rather better, since it comes more from the inside than being imposed from the outside as something that has to be included.

You can raise objections.  The characters sometimes have something of the schematic about them, as though they are representing natural or hidden forces rather than themselves.   But Golovkina does deal with the experience of bearing and rearing children in difficult–near-impossible–circumstances, which is a level of realism that even women writers tend to shy away from.

The mystical-nationalist and anti-Semitic views expressed by the positive characters, together with the extreme length of the book (570 pages in my large-format edition) and the sheer Russianness of the subject-matter probably mean that the book is not a suitable case for translation into English–I don’t believe that there are any translations in existence.  Which is a pity.

Nox (Anne Carson)

*****

When I read the reviews of this work, I thought that the combination of raw pain and classical learning would appeal to me, and I was quite right.  But it’s a bit hard to say what it is!

Physically, we have an accordion-style scrapbook in a box. In general, the left-hand page carries a dictionary entry relating to the words from Catullus 101,  an elegy on the poet’s dead brother, while the right-hand side illustrates the troubled death and life of Carson’s brother Michael.

The title Nox is of course Latin for ‘night’, a word that doesn’t actually occur in the Catullus.  Instead, the dictionary entries on the left-hand side are steadily invaded by the word nox in its various forms and by references to night, for instance:

munere—debita nocti munera gifts owed to night

cinerem—Troia virum et noctium acerba cinis Troy, bitter ash of men and nights

interea—contra ius interea solum nocte against the law yet only at night

quae—quod homo est non est hoc nox a man is not a night!

manantia—omne supervacuum pleno de pectore manat the whole pointless night seeps out of his heart

atque—similiter atque ipse eram noctuabunda just like him I was a negotiator with night

vale—parum valent Graeci verbo the Greeks have no precise word for this (but we call it ‘night’)

Some at least of these are variations on phrases from Latin authors, for instance Troia virum et virtutum omnium acerba cinis (‘Troy, bitter ash of men and every noble deed’) from Catullus 68b.

The right-hand pages include some scraps of conversation with Michael (and with his widow):

I study his sentences the ones I remember as if I'd been asked to translate them

and also some lines from other works of Carson’s, for instance As in some cave may lie a lightless pool.

And there is elucidation if you work at it:

Take the word “entry” as used of the arrangement of the contents of a lexicon.

What if you made a collection of lexical entries…

…I came to think of translating as a room,….,where one gropes for the light switch.

In one sense it is a room I can never leave, perhaps dreadful for that.  At the same time, a place composed entirely of entries.

You could ask whether this–at least the right hand side of this–is something that ought to be exposed to the public gaze.  Certainly the Canadian mother with the hard blue gaze on her deathbed is far too near my own experience for comfort.  Of course, Catullus 101 doesn’t tell us anything at all about his brother, but I think that’s just playing by the rules of Roman elegy.

The Defence of the Realm (Christopher Andrew)

*****

As the cover helpfully says, this is an authorised history of MI5 (more lately, the Security Service) from its beginnings shortly before the First World War to more-or-less the present day.

And I was certainly kept very interested–I spent more-or-less a whole day in my dressing gown since I couldn’t tear myself away from the book to get dressed.  There are 1044 pages in my Penguin paperback, of which 861 are the main text and the remainder are appendices, notes, and an index.  Actually the index isn’t that useful–it really only allows you to look up proper names and isn’t very helpful for general themes.

Why is it so interesting?  I think it’s because everything’s so clear at the beginning where it’s clear who the bad guys (Germans) are, what they want to do, how we want to stop them and what happened.  ‘What happened’ is clear because as well as the action being relatively simple, the author isn’t constrained by having to wriggle round what he’s not allowed to say.  So you follow him confidently into the murkier areas of Soviet espionage, counter-subversion and counter-terrorism.

Can you believe what he says (or is he hopelessly constrained by his position as authorised historian)?  Well, writing about Bloody Sunday (on p 620) the author says:

Major General Robert Ford, Commander of Land Forces, insisted that ‘There is absolutely no doubt that the`Parachute Regiment opened up only after they were fired on.’  Nationalists were convinced that, on the contrary, the British soldiers were guilty of premeditated murder.

That’s entirely even-handed, and we now have the conclusion from the Saville Enquiry that the military view given above is not in accordance with the facts.

Andrew does seem keen to discredit the various renegade (or repentant) Security Service operatives like Cathy Massiter and Michael Shayler (and indeed Peter Wright) who have surfaced over the years.  That leads to one asking if they were so awful, how did they get taken on in the first place.  In fact Andrew seems to be broadly sympathetic to Security Service attempts to join the modern world in recruitment, training, and indeed having a legal basis, while sharing its antipathy to performance indicators.  One could ask would he (or indeed they) like to live next to a nuclear power station that eschewed quantitative indicators since an explosion would only happen once.

It’s interesting to see things from a different angle:  for instance, the Official Secrets Act as a necessary and overdue piece of legislation, rather than an instance of war hysteria.  And similarly to see what we have lost:  the Post Office refusing to allow opening of suspects’ letters, since it would destroy public trust in the mail, and the meticulous respect for private property.  We were free once, and now we’re just frightened…It’s interesting to contrast the detailed description of procedures for intercepting mail and obtaining Home Office Warrants for telechecks (phonetapping) with the complete silence about more contemporary methods of communication.

Certainly a completely absorbing day’s reading.  It’s actually a very easy read–I can’t remember any instances of acronyms of personages being introduced without prior explanation, and there weren’t any of the authorial tics that can become so irritating when repeated over 1000 pages or so.

Picture of Christopher Andrew from 'Novoe vremya'

Among the reactions in the Russian press, Vedomosti are surprised that Klaus Fuchs expected to be left alone even after being found out, that MI5 had to mount a PR campaign to expel the 105 Soviet ‘diplomats’ in 1971, and the amount of freedom that Andrew was given indeciding what secret materials to refer to, while Novoe vremya are most interested in the details of defectors from the Soviet side.

На полях “A Shropshire Lad” (Тimur Kibirov)

*****

A E Housman

Well, this book (На полях <<A Shropshire Lad>>, Тимур Кибиров, Поэтическая библиотека, М. 2007) is rather fine!  It contains the 63 poems from Housman’s ‘A Shropshire Lad’ each accompanied by a…response…from Kibirov.  Usually this comprises a poem in Russian where the theme of Housman’s original is applied to Kibirov’s own life and world-view, but sometimes we have an adaptation or response in English, a literal translation or a collection of summaries from different points of view.  In general, Kibirov’s responses keep to about the same length and the same level of regularity in metre and rhyme as the originals, which is of course less surprising in Rusian than it would be in English.

In No. 22, in response to Housman’s The street sounds to the soldiers’ tread, Kibirov reflects on his strange meeting with Housman:

Ну почему не Честертон,
Не Донн, не Вальтер Скотт?!
С какого перепугу он
К себе меня влечет?

На кой мне этот пессимизм,
И плоский стоицизм,
И извращенный эротизм,
И жалкий атеизм?

Зачем же про себя и вслух
Я эти песни пел?..
О, где бы ты ни был, бедный дух,
Professor, I wish you well.

Timur Kibirov

So, in response to Housman’s pessimism, banal stoicism, perverted eroticism and wretched atheism, Kibirov proposes humour, heterosexual love, Christianity and a kind of hard-won optimism.  He also rather passes by the detailed nature descriptions in Housman in favour of the background provided by his own life and tends to substitute British patriotism by references to the glories of Russian literature.

So, in number 40 Into my heart an air that kills, we have as a response

Издалека пахнуло тем,
Что гибелью грозит:
Где ж эти вешние холмы,
Где ж та листва шумит?

Ах, это край, где вечно май,
Где вечно мы, дружок,
Сидим на склоне, расстелив
В длину мой пиджачок.

So in place of Housman’s detailed description of the landscape and bitterness at what has been lost, we have a pleasant reminiscence from Kibirov of sitting outside and enjoying romance in the open air.  Or similarly, in response to the elemental resignation of No. 32,  From far, from eve and morning

Kibirov feels that, with love, something remains and something can yet be achieved:

Конечно, не так, как прежде,
Но все же вынослив я,
Сношу-выношу нагрузки
И тяготы бытия.

Но как же, Господи, тяжко!
Как злато и как свинец…
А все-таки смерть перевесит
Тяжелую жизнь под конец.

Вот так же невыносима
Любовь. Но тебя, дружок,
(Пусть не на руках – на закорках)
Еще б я понес чуток…

Conveniently enough, you can find the complete texts here.

Literal translations of Kibirov’s versions

No. 22

Well, why not Chesterton,
Not Donne, not Walter Scott?
In what fright does he
Attract me to himself?

Why do I need this pessimism,
And banal stoicism,
And perverted eroticism,
And wretched atheism?

Why is it, to myself and aloud,
I have sung these songs?
Oh, wherever you are, poor spirit,
Professor, I wish you well.

No. 22

From far off it smells of that
Which threatens ruin:
Where then are these eternal hills
Where then does that foliage rustle?

Ah, that land, where it is always May,
Where we  are always, my friend,
Sitting on the slope, having spread out
My jacket lengthwise.

No. 32

Of course, not the same as previously,
But all the same I’m sturdy,
I carry and I bear the loads
And the burdens of existence.

But Lord how difficult it is!
Like gold and like lead…
And all the same death outweighs
A hard life at the end.

There’s love, in the same way
Unbearable.  But you, my friend
If not in my arms, on my back,
I would carry a little further…

A room and a half (LFF, Cine Lumiere 23 October)

*****

Or Полторы Комнаты, Или Сентиментальное Путешествие На Родину

Three guys appeared at the front with a smaller number of working microphones.  One of then said that he was an important person connected with the LFF and the film had a UK distributor so we could in fact see it again. The director, a rubicund old guy with white Asterix moustaches, said how happy he was to see all of us.

Then we had the film.  Joseph Brodsky rang his parents’ empty flat from New York, then dreamed of making a flying visit to Leningrad by way of Helsinki, so avoiding the visa regime.  Then he was on a ship with mildly supernatural happenings, and I thought it was all going to be bloody irritating.  Then there followed scenes from Brodsky’s early life, switching between sepia, black-and-white and colour.  As his mother, Alisa Freindlikh did not grow any younger in the earlier scenes but she did age in the later ones.  And after ten minutes or so she stopped giving her invariable performance as Alisa Freindlikh and started taking it seriously, which greatly improved my mood.

It all became rather wonderful.  Young Brodsky daydreamed at school, marched with his father in an army of two and tripped across a frozen Neva.  As his family prepared to relocate far away following the start of the Doctors’ Plot, their piano rose into the air and joined streams of musical instruments flocking together over Petersburg.

There were many passages of animation inserted into the live action.  As Brodsky’s parents spent their time watching ice-skating on a small old TV, cartoon crows skated together and then watched it on their TV, wrapped in a red scarf Mum had knitted for Dad.

And there was lots of music–from Bach to Schnittke and beyond.  Poems were read on the soundtrack, and in the cartoon world Pushkin and a cat shared poetic duties, occasionally adapting each other’s lines.  Brodsky rang his parents from a party in NY and each side thought the other was in a bad way.

The flashbacked formation of Brodsky’s character reached a height of yearning as the teenager took girls to parties–to bed–talked nonsense from the roofs of high buildings–argued with his friends in the Summer Garden.

So then (in his dreams!) Brodsky arrived in SPb and progressed unsteadily through chaotic and alienating scenes of modern Russia, entered his parents’ empty room-and-a-half in a communal apartment, saw nostalgia-soaked absent articles and sat down to dine with his deceased parents, even asking how they had died.  When they asked him how he had passed away, since he could not otherwise be talking with them, he was nonplussed.

And here (near enough the end in all conscience) it began to lose me again.  The billowing net curtains of estranging eternity and inconsequential conversation among the presumably departed did rather resemble an autopilot Tarkovsky, and then the parents appeared in Japanese costumes and dissolved in front of a blank wall…oh well, never mind!

The credits included a disclaimer to say that all characters and events were purely imaginary, which seemed to be there to let somebody off some hook.  As I recall it, in Brodsky’s essay that gives the film its title he describes how shitty his childhood was and you realise against his will that he yearns for it, without losing any of his bitterness towards the Soviet Union, but in the film we more had nostalgia seasoned with picturesque inconveniences in the dreamtime.

At the end we all clapped and many had tears to wipe away.  Khrzhanovsky thanked people for their kind words and explained that the film’s approach was one of polystylism, which he had discussed with Alfred Schnittke.  As for detailed questions about him and the composer, he would be discussing them in the Schnittke Festival in November.  The important guy repeated that the film had a UK distributor so we could see it again.  (And indeed it will be on in November at Pushkin House.)

We clapped some more and left the hall and went downstairs and out into the sunlight.