“Perhaps I didn’t live just in my self, perhaps I lived the lives of others.”

--Pablo Neruda

Hemingway, Marquez, Pablo Neruda...The writers who were close to Fidel Castro and overtly admired the Cuban leader.  Neruda’s Song of Protest contains a poem `To Fidel Castro’, which users  widely shared on social media after the death of the Cuban leader on Saturday. 

'To Fidel Castro' is from a poet who wrote about his works thus:  “My poetry rejected nothing it could carry along in its course; it accepted passion, unraveled mystery, and worked its way into the hearts of the people.” (P-170 Memoirs). 

 I understand that in the late 1950’s his work began to move away from the highly political stance it had taken during the 1930s.  Neruda died in 1973. But whether he would have written `To Fidel Castro’ or regretted writing it if he had lived several more years, has no relevance, because Neruda, who became a member of the Chile’s Communist party on July 15, 1945, admired the pattern of the typical South American dictator, who "at least were leaders who braved battles and bullets," in contrast to Gonzalez Videla (President of Chile from 1946 to 1952), who does not the fit the pattern and was the "product of smoke-filled back-room politics, an irresponsible and frivolous clown, a weakling who put on a tough front.” (Memoirs).

So even as one might  admire Neruda the poet it’s difficult to put up with a man who refused to publicly condemn the Soviet repression of dissident writers like Boris Pasternak and Joseph Brodsky and did not speak out against Juan Peron (President of Argentina from 1946 to 1955 and 1973 to 74) because, according to Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, he was "afraid to risk his reputation."

"During the late 1960s, Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges was asked for his opinion of Pablo Neruda. Borges stated, "I think of him as a very fine poet, a very fine poet. I don't admire him as a man, I think of him as a very mean man." He said that Neruda had not spoken out against Perón because he was afraid to risk his reputation, noting "I was an Argentine poet, he was a Chilean poet, he's on the side of the Communists, I'm against them. So I felt he was behaving very wisely in avoiding a meeting that would have been quite uncomfortable for both of us." (Wikipedia).

Patrick Modiano’s Pedigree. (Translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti, Maclehose Press) is a memoir in 100-odd pages.

The writer was born in 1945 to a Jewish man and Flemish woman who meet in Paris under the Occupation. Modiano describes his mother, an actress, as a “pretty girl with an arid heart.” (“I can’t recall a single act of genuine warmth or protectiveness from her”) His father, a shady businessman, who never took his baccalaureate exam, was, as a teenager and young adult “left to his own devices.”

“He was searching for El Dorado, in vain.”

As for himself, Modiano writes: “I’m a dog who pretends to have a pedigree.”

Putting in few words the death of his brother, Modiano writes that apart from his brother Rudy’s death, he do not believe that anything he relates in the memoir (an autobiographical portrait of both post-war Paris and a tumultuous childhood) truly matters to him. 

“I am writing this pages the way one compile a report or a resume, as documentation and to have done with a life that was not my own…”

Brief and to the point, grim but intense, Pedigree is typical Modiano. Not for readers who look in books entertainment value.

M.Balamuralikrishna has rendered some remarkable songs in Tamil movies. For instance, "Chinna Kannan Azhaikkiran" in Kavikuyil (1977) for which music was scored by Ilayaraja. In M.S.Viswanathan's music, he sang "Mounathil Vilayadum" in K.Balachander's Nool Veli (1979). Before all, in 1965, came "Oru Naal Podhuma" (Thiruvilayadal) in K.V.Mahadevan's music. I read on a website that when K.Balachander was making Apoorva Raagangal in 1975, M.S.Viswanathan approached the classical Carnatic musician for a rare raga and the latter gave him, "Mahati' which was Balamuralikrishna's own creation. M.S.Viswanathan worked on the raga and came up with the evergreen hit "Athisaya Ragam" sung by K.J.Jesudass.

In Malayalam, notably, he has sung several songs in Lenin Rajendran directed Swathi Thirunal.

“But time…how time first grounds us and then confounds us. We thought we were being mature when were only being safe. We imagined we were being responsible but were only being cowardly. What we called realism turned out to be a way of avoiding things rather than facing them. Time…give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical.”

 --Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending.

As the narrator, Tony Webster, in his sixties, recounts his past, there is love, break-ups, and reconciliations. Then a letter from a lawyer arrives informing that mother of his ex-lover has bequeathed him five hundred pounds and a couple of documents. We read on till the narrator makes a discovery towards the end of the novella.

There is a fineness to Julian Barnes’ writing which makes it endearing. Despite a disquieting plot, he pulls it off with elan. On this novella, the Independent manages to nail with the words: 'Mesmerising...the concluding scenes grips like a thriller -a whodunnit of memory and morality.' 

This work, (as well as Levels of Life) as The Guardian notes about his The Noise of Time, (a fictional biography of Dmitri Shostakovich) "gives us the breadth of a whole life within the pages of a slim book."

The Best of Bach

The more I listen to Bach the more it strikes me the extent to which the German composer has `inspired' 'Isaignani' Ilayaraja.  (No offense intended. I in fact like Ilayaraja's music). I think he succeeded in fusing delicately all his western classical inspirations in his music, particularly in songs which characterize Tamil provincial life.

‘My beloved people,’ the President said in a midnight broadcast,’ give me your freedoms, henceforth let them be hidden inside me, because it is to rob you of these that the insidious enemy has penetrated us.’ The people were grateful to be stripped thus, yet the sceptics’ whisper caught the unwary citizen now and again, settling with wasp’s feet on his ear for a brief while, before winging away to the next defenceless host. But the people easily overcame these feeble disturbances. No,they told themselves, not the President, the Supreme Commander of the Congregation of Persuaders; never would he imprison and torture his own subjects! The Palace brought out colourful stamps of the President squatting among heaps of carrot and lettuce, munching the vegetables, and defecating – a picture of deep and enduring peace which reinforced the people’s faith in their pacific Presidency…

--O.V.Vijayan, The Saga of Dharmapuri.

The Saga of Dharmapuri is a distinctly odd creation in O.V.Vijayan’s oeuvre. If all of Vijayan’s works brim with compassion, it’s anger that defines Saga. It was Vijayan’s answer to Indira Gandhi’s emergency.  But the timeless and sweeping quality of the work would compel us to discover in it a stinging critique of all despotic governments. No need to remind the pertinency of this novel in these times. One feels more respect to this writer seeing several contemporary writers pander to the government in power.

Dmitri Shostakovich - Into the Cold Dawn (Documentary, 2008)

"Everything that I am I owe my parents"

Let down by the Monsoon (one more farmer suicide has been reported, this time in Erode) and Narendra Modi government's policies, the hopes of the rural populace is already broken and senile resembling cracks in the drought-hit fields while in cities and small towns grievances of the people keep growing like long queues in front of ATMs, one week after the notification on demonetization was issued. The prime minister (who before the polls promised to put Rs 15 lakh within 100 days of his government coming to power in every Indian's pocket) has now sought 50 days time for the results of demonetization to show...

A police officer affirms that this is a good move and the result will start showing by January. One of the targets, according to him, is the illegal hawala dealers (Kuzhalpanam in Malayalam). Many such views and theories abound, many absurd, some good (no questions widely asked about Ambanis and Adanis) but no relief in sight for the masses.

"What Doust Thou Think? Thou Canst Do Any Goddamn Thing Thou Wantest? Who the Fuck Doust Though Imagine Thou Ist: Hugh Hefner? The Dalai Lama? Donald Trump?

-Salman Rushdie, Fury

Midway through Eduardo Berti's Agua, but thought it apt and timely to switch over to Salman Rushdie's Fury. This is said to be Rushdie's first American novel. Published in 2001, Fury is the story of Malik Solanka, historian of ideas and dollmaker extraordinaire, who abandons his family without a word of explanation and flees to New York where he encounters fury all around him. "Cab drivers spout invective. A serial killer is murdering women with a lump of concrete..."

So Donald Trump wins the U.S.presidential election. The last thing liberals across the world, why, perhaps even many in the anti-Hillary Clinton camp wanted. But then the trajectory taken by democracies in the last few years has been alarming. Narendra Modi, Rodrigo Duterte...

Having said that the headline of Sean O' Grady's column in The Independent is dead on in reminding us that  "Donald Trump's victory is democracy at work -whether we like it or not." 

Whether we like it or not we have to live with Donald Trumps and Narendra Modis. There is no point in blaming the people for the failings of political parties--the congress party in India and the democratic party in the U.S- that have denied the voters a credible choice...

In the meantime, while the supporters of Trump celebrate his victory in the U.S and elsewhere, another farce, demonetization is played out in India, in a bid, as the BJP government claims, to get rid of black money. 

In fact, corruption happens to be the trump card for both the leaders.

Thomas Frank in his column in The Guardian points out that after all, there was a reason that tens of millions of good people voted for him (Trump) yesterday. He has pledged to "drain the swamp" of DC corruption.

"But let's not deceive ourselves. We aren't going to win anything. What happened 

on Tuesday is a disaster, both for liberalism and for the world," he goes on without sparing Hillary Clinton either.

Not only that we aren't going to win anything it looks like more troubles lie ahead.

Unfortunately, I don't share the unusual optimism of Slavoj Zizek (Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst)  who foresees in a Trump victory emergence of a "totally new political situation with chances for a more radical left -or, to quote Mao: 'Everything under heaven is in utter chaos; the situation is excellent.' " 

Mao? Again frightening!

From, Ismail Kadare's Paris Review Interview.

I could not understand how Sartre could defend the Soviet Union. During the Cultural Revolution in China he was told that thousands of writers, artists, and intellectuals were persecuted, tortured, killed. And he became a Maoist!  

I have great respect for Camus—he was exemplary...

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1105/the-art-of-fiction-no-153-ismail-kadare

“And generally speaking, the experience of individuality in modern culture is bound up with that of death: from Holderlin’s Empedocles to Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, and on to Freudian man, an obstinate relation to death prescribes to the universal its singular face, and lends to each individual the power of being heard forever; the individual owes to death a meaning that does not cease with him.”

--Michel Foucault in his Conclusion to The Birth of the Clinic, An Archaeology of Medical Perception.

He waited a little longer before replying and then announced: “I suffer from melancholia.” “Well, I never,” I said, unable to suppress a smile,”people who suffer from that are usually people who feel they’re over-privileged. But it’s such a very ancient illness, it can’t be that serious, nothing classical ever is, wouldn’t you agree?”

--Javier Marias, Everything Bad Comes Back (When Was I Mortal)

The article (link below) in the Aeon magazine sparks curiosity in Havi Carel's book Illness: The Cry of the Flesh. Havi Carel is the professor of philosophy at the University of Bristol.

“Sickness is not just the experience of pain and malaise, but also of acute vulnerability in a hostile world that refuses to accommodate itself to your struggles.”

https://aeon.co/essays/can-there-be-anything-good-in-the-experience-of-illness?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=a3f22605ec-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2016_11_08&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-a3f22605ec-69414093

The Sublime

It takes much experience of literature to respond to it properly. so says a Greek critic whose treatise On the Sublime shows radically different approach from either Plato's or Aristotle's.

"Judgment of literature is the final fruit of ripe experience," according to Longinus who is concerned to distinguish those elements of style and structure which contribute to the effect of sublimity.
The ultimate function of literature, and its ultimate justification, according to Longinus (whose identity is uncertain), is to be sublime and have on its readers the effect of ecstasy or transport that sublimity has.
The Greek word which it has become traditional to translate as sublime in English means literally height or elevation.
Coming to psychoanalytic criticism, sublimation (Freud, whose works depends on the notion of the unconscious) is whereby the repressed material is 'promoted' into something grander or is disguised as something 'noble.' "For instance, sexual urges may be given sublimated expression in the form of intense religious experiences or longings." Repression, which is the `forgetting' or ignoring of unresolved conflicts ,unadmitted desires, or traumatic past events and sublimation are linked with the unconscious.

(Ref: Critical Approaches to Literature by David Daiches & Peter Barry's Beginning Theory, An introduction to literary and cultural theory).

Javier Marias

It's quite some time since I've read Latin American literature. The book I'm reading presently is  When I Was Mortal, by the Spanish author Javier Marias. But the experience one has reading Javier Marias is similar to reading Chilean novelist Roberto Bolano, or so to say. Their writing, particularly Bolano's is mindblowing. I read in the Melville House website that of his Spanish contemporaries, Bolano was impressed by the literature of Enrique Vila-Matas and Javier Marias.

When I was Mortal is a collection of twelve stories. Most stories are comical and startling. Of them, eleven were commissioned. Now, Marias does not believe sentimental purists who say that "in order to sit down in front of the typewriter, you have to experience grandiose feelings such as a creative "need" or "impulse", which are always "spontaneous" or terribly intense". He argues, in the Author's Foreword, that majority of the sublime works of art produced over the centuries -especially in painting and music -were the result of commissions or of even more prosaic or servile stimuli.

It's worth pondering, writes Sam Sacks in his review of Thus Bad Begins in The Wall Street Journal., why Javier Marias has never received the acclaim in the U.S.that he enjoys in Europe. 

"Why isn't he as renowned as genre-benders like Salman Rushdie or Haruki Murakami?" 

Giorgio Bassani

Giorgio Bassani's Within the Walls.

`Within the Walls,' which is the Book 1 of the Romanzo di Ferrara (a collection of Georgio Bassani's works), has five stories, Lida Mantovani, The Stroll before Dinner, A Memorial Tablet in Via Mazzini, The Final Years of Clelia Trotti and A Night of '43 of which I found `Clelia Trotti' most alluring. The story happens in the aftermath of the war in the autumn of 1946. The remains of Clelia Trotti who has died in the prison during the German occupation is transferred from the Codigoro graveyard to the Communal Cemetery of Ferrara. As her oldest comrade in the Socialist struggle, Mauro Bottecchiari begins his commemorative speech when the very moment a Vespa with its silencer removed revs up explosively interrupting his speech. He sees a young girl riding along the portico arches of the cemetery. He reacts twisting his lips in a grimace of sadness: "Oh, it must be a very young girl, from a good family."

At the cemetery, Bruno Lattes recalls his relationship with Clelia. He takes a stroll down the memory lane. He wishes one day perhaps she will realize who he was. He had spent time with her from 1939 on before he escaped to the United States of America to save himself, unlike his parents who were taken away by the Germans.

With Bruno's mind trip the narrative swings from the present to the past and back.

Then, he spots a young couple about fifty meters ahead of them.The boy was sitting on his bike, and every now and then, to keep his balance, he encircled his companion's shoulders with his right arm. He watches them with an insatiable interest.' Who are they? What are their names?' he keeps muttering under his breath. 

"They seemed to him more than beautiful -marvelous, incomparable. There they were: the champions, the prototypes of their race! he said to himself with hatred and a desperate love, half-closing his eyes. Their blood was better than his, their souls were finer than his. If he wasn't mistaken, the girl's hair was tied at the back with a red ribbon. The little light that remained seemed to concentrate itself on the ribbon. Oh, to be them, to be one of them, despite everything!" he thinks...

It is a classic of a story which leaves one ruminating.

Lida Mantovani is the story of a 25-year-old woman abandoned by her lover, David, who was the son of well-to-do parents. She delivers a child. The circumstances force her to marry a 50-year-old bookbinder...

After many years she asks herself: "But David, who was he? What was he looking for, what did he really want?"

Bassani's style is solemn and subdued, unshowy, meditative and dreamlike...

Giorgio Bassani was born in 1916. He was involved in various anti--Fascist activities for which he was imprisoned in 1943. Ferrara, a city in northern Italy where he was born, is the location of his stories. 

Ismail Kadare's `The Concert'

One autumn afternoon in Tirana, Albania, a delivery man brings in a tub branches of a lemon tree at the house of diplomatic envoy Gjergj DIbre. His wife Silva asks the man to put the tree on the balcony. Gjergj, who is not home for their daughter Brikena's birthday, is traveling on the night plane from Paris to Peking with a letter in a briefcase. Silva is exhausted as she is expecting guests for the birthday celebration.
"A lemon tree is all I needed," she thinks.

In the final chapter of Ismail Kadare's `The Concert' (1988) Silva looks at the little plant tenderly as she thinks about the world which was full of political meetings, plots, commotions, and tragedies, while in its little corner of the balcony, careless of everything else, the lemon tree devoted itself to its own raison d'etre -bringing forth fruit. Compared with the tumult going on in the world as a whole, it seemed so frail, so lonely you couldn't help pitying it. She smiles thoughtfully."Perhaps the lemon tree, if it had been able to think, would have pitied the rest of the world."

"The political meetings, plots, commotions and tragedies" which play out under a totalitarian rule is what `The Concert' is all about. Through the meditations, musings and reveries of the characters, we transit through a time in Albania's history when its ties with China was deteriorating. It was the period of chairman Mao's death and arrest of his wife Jiang Qing along with some of her cronies...The story of Victor Hila (as mentioned in the previous blog) who gets into a mess after he steps on the foot of a Chinese diplomat is but a strand in the plot. The book is made of several such macabre strands. For instance, after Mao's death, Albanian students are sent back home for allegedly behaving improperly towards Chinese girls, not to mention whole sectors of activity coming to a grinding halt, like the steel complex as the Chinese men working there return home.

'The Concert' is a surreal and comical work which delves into the mystery that is China. I felt the flow petering out in the middle before picking up.

Kadare’s The General of the Dead Army was hailed as a masterpiece. But I chose The Concert ahead of the General  pulled by its satire and its similarity, which I felt, to Madeleine Thien's Do Not Say…It was said that he has been compared to Kafka and Orwell. Such comparison seems to me to be ill-advised which would amount to being unfair to both sides. Furthermore, Kafka belongs to a completely different class (and incomparable), while Orwell’s writing, I agree with some critics, is mixed up with pamphleteering, though today his relevance cannot be overlooked...


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Albania Today: From one extreme to the other?

Albanian Church to celebrate martyrs' legacy on Nov 5.
https://cruxnow.com/global-church/2016/11/02/albanian-church-celebrate-martyrs-legacy-nov-5/

Albania: How St. Ignatius unites Christians and Muslims

http://www.lastampa.it/2016/11/02/vaticaninsider/eng/world-news/albania-how-st-ignatius-unites-christians-and-muslims-IAu9P5RSvhdcc2IVKM774N/pagina.html