June 28, 2013 by Claire 'Word by Word'

Magda

In the course of Meike Ziervogel’s novella, we meet three generations of women in one family, an embittered grandmother, her daughter Magda and the lovesick teenager Helga. They have little in common except the desire to improve their lives and those of their children, something in which all three of them will spectacularly fail.

Magda succeeded in elevating her station in life, though some may have perceived that she achieved notoriety only through marriage. However, from an early age she appeared to decide she deserved better than the position society had set her; taking her destiny into her own hands it manifested physically in the clothes she wore, the adornments with which she accessorised and in her comportment. She kept quiet about her material accumulation, but her gestures spoke volumes and even as she volunteered selflessly to help those less well off, others looked at her with scorn and derision.

Despite her mother’s efforts to do her best by her headstrong daughter, that didn’t mean she should give herself airs and graces she was not born to, at least that was her mother’s opinion.

Was it a consequence of being sent to a convent for schooling at a young age (at the suggestion of a new stepfather) that developed her resourcefulness and sense of superiority? By the time her mother decided to end her education and send her to work in a factory to smother that conceited attitude, the stepfather who had come to adore the charming girl, would have none of it.

We learn of the mother’s perception of Magda after the fall of Hitler, whilst she is being interviewed by a commissar and she is revelling in having an important audience in which to denounce her child – though more through envy, jealousy and a sense of outrage at being unappreciated, forgotten even – not quite the admission of guilt he is looking for, though he hopes it may contribute to establishing Magda’s fanaticism.

It reflects the irony of a mother wanting the best for her baby girl and then having to live in the shadow of who her offspring has become, someone unreachable, who has by necessity let go and left the bitter mother full of resentment behind.

Magda Goebbels

Upon receiving this book from the author Meike Ziervogel, (also founder of the publishing company Peirene Press), I read a few mentions of intentions to read Magda that indicated a certain wariness, expecting it to be disturbing, as do a few of the more provocative blurb comments, suggesting the portrayal of mother’s as abusers and the association of one mother being a Nazi sympathiser and married to a prominent figure in that regime (Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister).

I didn’t find the book like that at all and found the suggestion that…

…abuse breeds abuse through generation after generation. – Frederick Taylor, author of Exorcising Hitler

…misleading, even false.

I found much to admire in Ziervogel’s depiction of the character Magda, her ability to use disadvantage to her advantage, her separation from her mother allowed her to amass inner resources, to learn another language, to create a persona that made her different. She understood implicitly her mother’s advice that she should better her social status; her falling – or failing – was the direction in which she channelled the fire within her, that desperate need for some kind of meaningful fulfillment, that was at its height at the wrong time in history, her calling came not for Him (God) but for him (the Führer).

She believed in him and his vision with a fanaticism, similar to religious fanaticism and in the same way that a small minority of devout religious followers go to extremes for their beliefs, so too does Magda.

Helga’s is a brief, heart-breaking coming-of-age story, the story within the story and it seems appropriate that she, the innocent, is depicted through a different narrative structure, the intimacy of her private diary.

As I reread the last three chapters a second time, I noted all the chapter headings which read like flash fiction, framing the story in less than thirty words.

3 generations by Allia

The Preparation

The Girl Behind Convent Walls

The Mother and the Commissar

The Calling

Helga’s Diaries

The Pill Box

The Vision of Magda Goebbels

The Final Task

As a novella, Magda doesn’t waste words, yet it manages to depict the depth of the three generations of its female characters. While it succeeds here, the end remains shocking and disturbing, unjustified, it is impossible to accept.

The book is fiction, inspired by real historical figures and events. I have written these thoughts without having read about the actual life of Johanna Maria Magdalena “Magda” Goebbels (11 November 1901-1 May 1945), wishing to pay closer attention to the author’s story and her character creation than the historical account, which could easily overshadow one’s impression of a work of fiction.

June 22, 2013 by Claire 'Word by Word'

The Exiles Return by Elisabeth De Waal

The First Woman Doctorate

Elisabeth De Waal was a poet, writer and the first women to gain a doctorate from the University of Vienna in 1923. Born in 1899 in Vienna, she was the eldest child of Viktor von Ephrussi and Baronness Emmy Schey von Kormola, her father and uncle sent from Odessa 30 years before, one to Paris the other to Vienna to create the family banking empire.

The Hare With the Amber Eyes Connection

We may not have known of her, were it not for her grandson Edmund De Waal, the ceramist, who inherited 264 Japanese netsuke, and decided to share the story of the passage of these miniature artisan objects in his excellent The Hare With Amber Eyes, which I read earlier this year and adored – a 5 star read for me.

He traced his family history through the voyages and resting places of those well-travelled netsuke, one of the more significant journey’s being his grandmother’s return visit to Vienna after the second world war, her return from exile, where she was able to reclaim the netsuke (and sadly little else) thanks to an amazing story of courage by the family’s maid.

An Old Manuscript Rescued

His father handed over the yellowing typescript along with school reports, essays, letters and a few diary entries, the things that had mattered to Elisabeth De Waal, that remarkably survived into the 21^st century.

It was from this return journey that her inspiration came to write this novel, The Exiles Return where we enter the lives of three exiles, a Jewish laboratory professor, a Greek property developer and Resi, the daughter of a Viennese princess, who though born in America, seems ill-fitted to fulfill family ambitions, so spends a summer with her Aunt and cousins in Austria, a return to her roots.

Fifteen years after escape into exile Professor Adler returns to Vienna, Austria leaving behind a prestigious job and a reluctant, successful wife and daughter who have adapted to their New York life beyond the point of wanting to return, her financial independence empowering her with the will to resist him.

With a mix of hope and trepidation, Professor Adler fears what he might find yet desires to somehow recreate a still familiar past, to be back where he felt he belonged and re-establish a life. He looks up old friends and seeks reinstatement at the laboratory where he once worked, encountering that which looks familiar, though unavoidably changed by the past.

“They could exchange nothing but exclamations, well-worn phrases, just to express, however haltingly, feelings too deep for words.”

The Exiles Return

Theophil Kanakis, descendant of a wealthy Greek family has returned to Vienna with the confidence and arrogance that plentiful money bring. He no longer desires financial success, he seeks pleasure and indulgence and the subtle manipulations inherent in ensuring he attains what he yearns for.

Once he is re-established in the manner he wishes, he begins to issue invitations to a widening circle of friends and through his friendship with the gallant pauper, Prince Bimbo Grein, a younger set begins to frequent his salons which he encourages, the setting in which all the characters in the novel are in some way connected.

In the scene where Kanakis seeks an audience with an Estate Agent and comments and his gaze alights on two dark, heavily framed pictures hanging on the wall, we obtain a glimpse into what it may have been like for Elisabeth De Waal to encounter appropriated chattels.

“They are in no way outstanding or really valuable – a minor nineteenth century artist. I just thought they furnished the room, gave it a certain cachet, within the limits of what I could afford. They did in fact belong to an acquaintance of your family, Baron E_. You might possibly have seen them at his house. Baron E_ unfortunately died abroad, in England, I believe. His heirs, after they had recovered what could be traced of his property, had it all sold at auction; having no use for this old-fashioned stuff in their modern homes, I suppose. I acquired the pictures quite openly, publicly and legally, you understand.”

Palais Ephrussi, Vienna Elisabeth's Childhood Home

Palais Ephrussi, Vienna
Elisabeth De Waal’s Childhood Home

None of the characters seem to be based directly on the experience of Elisabeth De Waal, who was shocked and saddened by what she found when she returned to Vienna, but there is little doubt that the story she has written was influenced by that return journey as she captured the experiences of her three protagonists.

I really enjoyed the book and wanted to know even more in particular of the experience of Professor Adler, perhaps the closest to how Elisabeth De Waal may have felt. It is a novel that is appreciated all the more for understanding the life of the author herself, and I enjoyed it having read Edmund De Waal’s history of the family and imagining what Elisabeth may herself have experienced. For the period in which it was written, I find it compelling and modern literature.

Not like The Hare With Amber Eyes, but an important part of that story and an excellent companion novel; what a privilege that we now have the opportunity to read her work and that she is finally receiving the recognition she so deserves as a writer.

Letters to Rainer Maria Rilke

So now, what about that correspondence with Rainer Maria Rilke? Might there be a book in that? A sequel, Letters to a Young Female Poet perhaps?

“If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Note: This book was kindly provided by the publisher, Persephone Books.

June 19, 2013 by Claire 'Word by Word'

The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit

After spending a few months with me in London some years ago, a very good friend was about to return to New Zealand and was making some major changes in her life, both personal and in her career. She wasn’t entirely sure what job she wanted to do, but knew it would be in the great outdoors. She loved to travel and she loved nature. I organised a subscription to Wanderlust Travel magazine for her, an inspiration of amazing photography, fabulous ideas for out-of-the-way places to visit and best of all, a link to exciting jobs for those who love to travel across cultures, to be outdoors and meet people.

Life on the Milford Track

She completed a diploma, training in the skills required to become an outdoor guide and now works for the Department of Conversation as a guide on the Milford Track, this last season she was based in a lodge, only accessible by helicopter or a few days walk in. She is now living her dream job and it is indeed just like those jobs offered in the pages of that inspiring magazine.

Fast forward a few years and I come across a book called Wanderlust : A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit. I was interested in it, though stronger was the feeling that I should send it into that remote wilderness to my friend, it seemed to describe where she had arrived at. So I did. I then forgot about the book until I saw the name Rebecca Solnit come up recently on NetGalley, she had a new book coming out The Faraway Nearby. Here is the book I will read I thought and requested it.

Some weeks later while in London one Saturday, I discovered The London Literature Festival was on and at 3.30pm, I could attend a talk by Rebecca Solnit speaking about her book The Faraway Nearby. Serendipity? I bought a ticket, a hardback copy of her book and went to listen to the author, curious, though I had never read a word of her writing.

The book is good, but Rebecca Solnit’s ability to captivate an audience is spectacular. I’m almost sorry to admit it, but the live version was even better than the passive written version, which I really enjoyed, the reading experience enhanced significantly by the additional anecdotes and philosophical meanderings of Solnit in person, as she spoke without pause, the voice of a poet.

The talk was hosted by the literary critic Alex Clark, who suggested that the media coined her book not a memoir, but an anti-memoir. Part anti-memoir and part matremoir, it starts with her recounting the gift of 100 pounds of apricots from her mother, one of the few gifts she ever received from her mother and not disconnected from the fact that her mother is undergoing something of a personality change since her Alzheimer’s diagnosis. She lays them out on her bedroom floor, wanting to appreciate their abundance, but instead embraces a soon to be dissected anxiety.

“The fruit on my floor made me start to read fairy tales again. They are full of overwhelming piles and heaps that need to be contended with, the roomful of straw the poor girl in Rumpelstiltskin needs to spin into gold overnight, the thousand pearls scattered in the forest moss the youngest son needs to gather in order to win the princess, the mountain of sand to be moved by teaspoon. The heaps are only a subset of the category of impossible tasks that included quests, such as gathering a feather from the tail of the firebird who loves at the end of the world, riddles, and facing overwhelming adversaries.”

Nature essays, how stories create the narrative of our lives, philosophical meanderings, her chapters weave in and out of many subjects, flitting here and there, as she recounts pieces of a year that passed whilst her mother was regressing. She contemplates and then makes an escape to Iceland, mentions friendships and her passion for visual art, the occasional Buddhist legend, Frankenstein, Mary Shelley and her mother Mary Wollstonecraft, pain and leprosy likening her narrative to a Russian matryoshka doll, even going so far as to repeat chapter names in reverse, once she arrives at the hard core (the doll that has no doll).

“My story is a variation on one I’ve heard from many women over the years, of the mother who gave herself away to everyone or someone and then tried to get herself back from a daughter.”

There are many anecdotes, insights and great lines throughout the narrative, however Solnit stops short of going too deep into her subject, she observes the apricots and watches how they change, just as she does her mother, but stops short of looking too deep into the past, of really describing their relationship and how they were with each other, it is implied, not described.

I understand this reluctance, for that percentage of women out there who had the kind of relationship with their mother that Solnit did, there will be many nods of the head in recognition of what she says without having to go into detail. For the rest, it may seem superficial or even harsh, but they are the words of a mature 58-year-old women, who admits:

“If I had written about her earlier, the story would have had the aura of the courtroom, for I had been raised on the logic of argument and fact and being right, rather than the leap beyond that might be love.”

At the end of the talk, a few people asked questions and at the last minute, but too late I put up my hand, my question deemed to remain silent. Or so I thought. As everyone left the Purcell Room, a woman called Helena sitting next to me who was also visiting from the country for the day, asked me what I had been going to ask. And so I told her – and had a delightful conversation, just as interesting as it might have been, had I asked the author.

The question I wanted to ask was:

Did she believe that a challenging relationship could be a gift, that it could bring her something that she may not otherwise have developed in herself, had it been otherwise?

I suspect the answer is yes, that these relationships do give people something that can be used proactively, if self-awareness is developed to prevent regressing into the negative aspects or effects of those childhood and adulthood experiences. She may not have been able to fix her mother, but it may not be a coincidence that Rebecca Solnit is outspoken and active in terms of her support of nature, the environment, politics and art.

“I didn’t have much sympathy either; it was not that I refused to give it, but that there was none in my equipment yet, perhaps because I had experienced so little of it.”

Note: This book was an Advance Reader Copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley.

June 12, 2013 by Claire 'Word by Word'

She Left Me the Gun

Neither the title nor this book cover would normally attract me towards picking up this book, however it was through neither of those avenues that I came to hear about the book. It was a random tweet that included the following:

Any sentence that contains the words “Maya Angelou and Emma Brockes, who both…” works for me.

I was reading Maya Angelou’s Mom & Me & Mom at the time and so wondered who Emma Brockes was, intrigued by the reader’s comment implying she’d enjoy curling up with both books. I saw that Brockes had published a memoir about her mother and then read an excellent article in The Guardian, where it turns out Emma Brockes works (in the New York office).

Emma Brockes was born in England, her mother leaving her own country of birth South Africa in her early twenties. After some years living in London, she met her husband and they moved to an English village. She was a mature mother, having her only child later in life and lived a quite routine-lead life with her small family and had a job doing accounts for a jeweller in a neighbouring town.

Brockes recalls her mother mentioning that she’d one day tell her about her life in South Africa before coming to England, however the daughter didn’t press her mother and that moment of revelation never arrived. Apart from a couple of offhand comments hinting at some dark past and a court case, any opportunity to quietly share her past with her daughter in her later years was cut short by her illness and premature death, a time when the days seemed better spent just appreciating each other’s company.

It seemed absurd at this stage to ruin what time we had left with painful and long-avoided subjects.

Whether it was the journalist instinct or some kind of closure in making an effort to understand her mother more fully, Brockes decides to find out what it was that drove her mother to abandon her family and her country and never look back.

Jo’burg High Court

Knowing there was a court case against her grandfather and using her journalistic knowledge and access to resources, she searches archives, only to discover an earlier judgement, one that preceded his marriage to her grandmother, a murder conviction.

She requests the file to be sent to her and then discovers the second court case, in which mother is named in bringing a charge against her own father. The file is too large, so she makes plans to visit South Africa to do her research and to meet the numerous family members, her mother’s half sisters and brothers, the seven aunts and uncles who live there.

When she was in her mid-twenties, she said, she’d had her father arrested. There had been a highly publicized court case, during which he had defended himself, cross-examining his own children in the witness-box and destroying them one by one. Her stepmother had covered for him. He had been found not guilty.

Emma Brockes

This is a book that once started is hard to put down, the way Emma Brockes writes, it is as if you are on the same journey, with the same feeling of curiosity tempered by an instinct not to get too involved.

In fact, for me there was a turning point somewhere in her travels, just when she starts to become part of a local crowd of journalists, when she begins to become part of the weave of family fabric, when it felt like it was time to get out. That while she was there and had a clear purpose and was fulfilling some kind of tribute to her mother, all was well, but that getting any further involved might in some way rub something into her that her mother had spent a lifetime trying to protect her from.

She was right to leave when she did.

And the gun? Well you know whenever a gun is mentioned, a shot must be fired and so it was, yet while the title stretches the truth somewhat, all must be forgiven, since it was suggested to the author by the late Nora Ephron, another fitting tribute.

Note: This book was an ARC (Advance Reader Copy) provided by the publisher via NetGalley.

June 8, 2013 by Claire 'Word by Word'

London Literature Festival #londonlitfest

Late last week I was working in London and had a free Saturday to enjoy the delights of the city.

The Providores + Tapa Room

I was meeting a friend for brunch in Marylebone High Street, ironically it is London’s French quarter, many of the shops and cafés and boulangeries are very familiar; however we weren’t heading for a French café, we couldn’t help but be tempted by one of New Zealand’s greatest exports, chef Peter Gordon and his restaurant The Providores with its excellent downstairs Tapa Room, the all-day restaurant, café and wine bar.

London’s South Bank Centre

Before heading out, a quick google search “literary events London” informed me that the London Literature Festival was on, I couldn’t believe it!

So after a terrific brunch, off I went to the South Bank Centre and the Royal Festival Hall, always a hive of activity at the weekend, and hive an apt metaphor, as the festival was using the image of a bee and honeycomb in its publicity.

Don’t you just love those sun loungers outside Foyles bookshop. Bliss!

To my delight and surprise, the American essayist and writer of non-fiction Rebecca Solnit, was speaking in the late afternoon, so I avoided the pull of Foyles to buy a ticket and then decided to check out The Spectacular Translation Machine, a collaborative attempt to translate an entire book from French into English.

The book On Les Aura! was the private diary of a French solider written in 1914 , which the renowned illustrator Barroux discovered and published in France, adding his line drawings to bring the story to life. It has never been translated into English, so each illustration along with the short paragraph of text was hung on a line around a room in the Royal Festival Hall and members of the public invited to choose an image and attempt the translation.

I chose an illustration of the solider lying in bed and a steaming cup of coffee beside him. The paragraph underneath the illustration read:

Je m’éveille après une bonne nuit de sommeil et je trouve un bol de café fument. Quel changement ! J’écris a ma chère femme pour la rassurer et lui envoyer mon adresse. Vers 10 heures, le Major passe la visite.

Along with children, a couple of students, a woman who could speak 15 languages and anyone else wanting to give it a go, we sat at the table and worked on our translations in a wonderful community approach. Such fun!

From there, a quick scout of the bookshop Foyles where I picked up a copy of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and a copy of The Artist’s Way.

Then on to the Queen Elizabeth Hall for an inspiring talk by Rebecca Solnit, author of The Faraway Nearby, hosted by the literary critic Alex Clark. Solnit’s book was already on my list and downloaded to the kindle to read, but jumped to the top of the pile after an engaging talk about apricots, Alzheimer’s, Iceland and the significance of stories in our lives. A very poised and engaging speaker with scores of anecdotes and quotes that she repeats without hesitation.

It must be the season for book readings, because I am back in Aix and today we have had Jonathan Coe participating in an excellent and well hosted and translated discussion. More on that soon!

June 6, 2013 by Claire 'Word by Word'

Women’s Prize for Fiction Winner Announced

Excellent timing, the women’s prize for fiction is announced during the London Literature Festival at the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank, which I had the opportunity to visit on Saturday (more on that excitement later!).

A strong list, and some equally strong and divided opinions about the books that made the list and a bit of a surprise result, it has to be said.

So to remind you, the six shortlisted authors and their books were:

In the opinion of the judges the book chosen mostly ably fulfilled the criteria of the award, being originality, accessibility and excellence.

And the winner was:

May We Be Forgiven by AM Homes

A first book award for her 10^th book, a career spanning 25 years and a dream fulfilled at last. The author paid tribute to her father who sadly passed away a month ago, knowing that his daughter had made the short list and also to her grandmother who lent her the money for her first typewriter and made sure she paid it back.

“… this book really struck all the judges, partly because of just the pure quality of its writing, it has this incredible energy, at times its very vicious and very bleak, but it also has this warmth that comes through at the ending… it is one of those books that speaks to people in different ways and really is something that begins conversations and begins thoughts…” Natasha Walter, Judge

The new sponsor has also been announced and there was plenty of the beige drink being served from all accounts, so from next year expect to hear about the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction

Well done AM Homes, up against strong contenders, including the almost invincible Hilary Mantel.

Let’s hope that it’s a good omen for her publisher Granta, after the rapid departure of most of their management team, the publisher/magazine currently having to rebuild itself from scratch.

Looks like I have yet another book to add to the list!

June 6, 2013 by Claire 'Word by Word'

Portrait of a Turkish Family by Irfan Orga

The last of my collection of Turkish literature either brought back from Istanbul or lying on the shelf unread, Portrait of a Turkish Family was hailed as a masterpiece and I have to agree, a timeless classic, capturing a changing way of life as a consequence of war and fire, two of Turkey’s most fearsome destroyers of many families life of peace and tranquility that preceded them.

Irfan Orga was born in 1908 in Istanbul, his mother only 15 years old, his father 20 and a younger brother Mehmet born two years later. His sharing of the family story really starts at age 5 when he remembers certain events with an amazing clarity, although many memories and conversations are clarified in greater depth later on to him by his mother. His curiosity and gift for eavesdropping apparent early on and perhaps those memories are so clear because life was soon to change dramatically.

By 1913, war was imminent and it was clear that Irfan’s father and only uncle were going to be called up. He sold the family business which hadn’t been doing too well, against his mother’s wishes, before being sent to war, in the hope that there might be something to come back to, a fresh start.

Imperial Army workshop making uniforms

Once the men left for war, the family, raised and assisted by servants, continued largely in ignorance of what was to come, until food became scarce and their roles began to change. As time went on, war forced everyone to adapt without realising that life would never again be as it had been before.

As change burrowed permanently into their lives, each would suffer in their own way, the coping mechanism of one often causing suffering in another. Mother, mother-in-law, and the two boys were forced to move houses, downsizing significantly and rebelling against this change Irfan’s mother ripped the kafes from the windows of the house, insisting on letting the light in.

Kafes are the closely latticed harem shutters always used in Ottoman times to prevent passing males from catching glimpses of the women who moved within the house, not so much in evidence today, due to the neglect that makes them a significant fire risk. As back then, even today many families struggle to afford the upkeep required to take care of these houses, thus they crack, peel, rot and deteriorate into an unlivable state, when not consumed by fire first. We were fortunate to see this excellent restored house near Topkapi Palace and its equally neglected counterpart on Heybeliada Island below.

Without giving anything away, because it is so much better to experience the book, Orga captures the events and dramatic turning points of his family life with insight and brutal honesty. It is heart breaking at times, in particular the relationship between the mother and her sons, of which there is more focus than with his younger sister, born later and not always sharing the same experiences as the two boys.

The Orga Family

Orga left Istanbul in his 30’s after a period in the Air Force to come to England and eventually married his Norman-Irish wife, amid controversy, not least of which it being deemed an illegal act in Turkey at the time, thus apart from one return visit, he was forced to remain living in exile in England.

His son Ateş Orga contributes a heartfelt afterword, sharing something of his father’s life outside the scope of his book, which focuses on those first 30 years of his life in Turkey.

A brilliant read, full of insight into life in a liberal Muslim family at the beginning of the 20^th century and their challenges in coping with the effects of war and devastation.

It seems timely to be reading this as contemporary events overshadow historical reflections, provoked by the seizure of one of the last remaining urban parks in central Istanbul, it is being reclaimed to build a shopping mall and the citizens begin to revolt against what they perceive as authoritarian rule.

Ironically, on our last day in the city 2 weeks ago, we tried to find Taksim Square and Gezi Park, but all we found was a corrugated iron fence and a sea of humanity traversing the great shopping street between Taksim and Tunnel. It had been said that you haven’t seen Istanbul if you have not visited this area, but I was at a loss as to what I was supposed to find, all trace of restive beauty hidden and on the verge of replacement.

I am reminded of Pamuk’s Istanbul Memories of a City and the many pages of hüzün, that sense of melancholy that has hung over the city since Ottoman times and can’t help but wonder if the time for silent brooding is erupting into a new age of outspoken demonstration.

And all down the Bosphor, down, down to the Black Sea, ran the tall trees and the old wood houses that suit the skyline so well. If I turned my head to the left there on the hilltop, I could see Dolmabahçe Saray white and artificial as a wedding cake in its peaceful setting. Miniature mosques front the water’s edge and there at the end of all the shining palaces lay Istanbul – my Istanbul that will forever hold something of my heart. Grey it would look from this hill and the smoke from the boats would lie over it like a soft veil and tall and tapering are the minarets that enchant the skyline, and from my hill I would see, being the Mosques, the Marmara like a faint line of thread. Irfan Orga

May 28, 2013 by Claire 'Word by Word'

The Dervish by Frances Kazan

So what is a dervish you might ask? And why does Frances Kazan use it as her book title?

“Are the Sufis and the dervishes the same?” I asked.

“The two are like the threads on a loom. She replied. “Different colours, varying textures interwoven together to make a single carpet of immeasurable beauty.”

Perhaps it symbolises the unknown aspect, that thing just beyond our rational ideas, the reason we do certain things that can’t be explained. Not quite insanity, but on the way towards it and yet it is also that part of our nature that makes us feel most alive, that promises to make life interesting. When we choose not to indulge it, our lives, in consequence are more predictable, more balanced and much less exciting.

The protagonist of Frances Kazan’s novel Mary is an artist who lives in New York and is looking back on that period in her life just after she became a young widow, her husband was killed in France in WWI in the Battle of the Somme. Restless in New York, she responds to her sister’s invitation to join them in Istanbul where Connie’s husband works for the American consulate. In the last days of her time in Istanbul, the dervish becomes her sole subject to draw and paint, something about these mystical humanists resonating within her psyche and manifesting in her drawings.

Halide Edib

The story is set in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire post World War I, the country is occupied by the British which has spawned the establishment of the Turkish Nationalist movement. While the Americans are Allies of the British, they aren’t directly involved and therefore must exercise cautious diplomacy with whom they make friends. They have tentative relations with Turkish nationalists, but political tensions in the city are high and the two sisters have been warned to stay close to the consulate.

Unlike her sister who listens to that advice, Mary refuses to stay behind the protective walls of the embassy; a new city that embraces so many languages and cultures beckons her. These daring excursions result in her becoming witness to the murder by a British officer of the young son of Turkish Nationalist and to her being wanted for questioning by the British Army.

This encounter is a turning point in her visit, after which she befriends the Turkish novelist and feminist political leader Halide Edib Adivar who supported Mustafa Kemal (later Ataturk) in the resistance against the occupation of their country by a foreign power and she will also meet and more than befriend the father of the young man who was killed.

“I was born in the harem, in the same room as my mother and her mother before her. Once upon a time we felt safe within those old walls; I fear we dwelt in illusion.”

Sultan’s Apartment

Inside the Harem

Harem Courtyard

Mary’s is with Halide and her husband Dr. Adnan, who has been appointed as Minister of Health in recent elections, when they hear there is to be a coup d’etat, which put them all in danger and forced them to flee. It also resulted in a warrant for Mary’s arrest and set her off on an overland adventure with her friends.

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk

France Kazan has written this story around a subject that is clearly one of her passions in life, the history of the Ottoman Empire and many of the characters are real historical figures themselves. Not just a scholar of Turkish studies and an admirer of Halide Edib, but her late husband the film-maker Elia Kazan, was born in Istanbul. In his book and film by the same title, America America, he tells how, and why, his family left Turkey and moved to America.

It is an entertaining read, not too burdened with political and historical recounting. I found it a little difficult to believe the somewhat complicated relationship between Mary and Mustafa Pasha, and her decision to stay when her sister and husband decided to leave. Perhaps grief makes us less sensitive to risk and more inclined to reckless adventure.

And those whirling dervishes? I will leave the last words to Rumi:

Rumi, the founder of the Mevlevi Order in the 13th century said the dancing dervishes represent the solar system and the planets that revolve around the sun. At the same time that they are immersed in their own microcosmos, they create new worlds and make contact with eternity.

The fact that humans can join the choreography of the cosmos by dancing to its rhythm is an awareness that humanity has had since ancient times. One can say that all dance, in a certain way, is yielding the body to the earth’s movement. Slowly, as the body sways and the blood rhythm changes, consciousness also changes. With the revolution paralleling that of the cosmos, the mind assumes a freedom from the earthly bondage. It would be as though the mind begins to concentrate on the depth of existence on its own, while the body has been given away to the earth.

Note: This book was an Advance Reader Copy (ARC) provided kindly by the publisher via NetGalley.

May 26, 2013 by Claire 'Word by Word'

Patasana: Murder at an Archaeological Dig by Ahmet Ümit tr. Amy Spangler

Visiting another country is an opportunity to be introduced to new authors, to read outside one’s preferred genre and to gain new historical perspectives.

So while I am already a fan of the more well-known in the English language writers, Orhan Pamuk and Elif Shafak, Ahmet Ümit was completely unknown to me and while mystery isn’t my preferred genre, a book that introduces us to new places and offers insights into other cultures and their way of life is certainly appealing.

Books from the Basement

I asked in the bookshop in Istanbul for A Memento of Istanbul, another book written by Ahmet Ümit, but it wasn’t available. The only book they had in English by him, had to be retrieved from the basement. I’m not sure if that is significant or not, although having got to the end of the book and knowing the controversy surrounding the treatment of the Armenian population within Turkey, allowing his characters to thrash out their opposing views, may have courted controversy.

In 2012 France tried to make denial of the Armenian Genocide a criminal offence, souring relations between the two countries, however the draft law was struck down.

Review

Patasana was the son and grandson of a palace scribe, who wrote his story and that of his father and grandfather onto tablets that were then sealed and are now being uncovered 2700 years later.

Each alternate chapter is a translation of one of the tablets, so while we follow the contemporary story of the archaeological dig of an antique Hittite settlement in southeast Anatolia and it’s team members, we also learn what Patasana lived through, the confessions of a young scribe, his life, love and regrets.

The Hittites

“He was the chief scribe of the palace, a very important government position among the Hittites. These men were extremely well-educated. They knew several languages. Their duty was to compose texts as dictated by the king, not to write down their own feelings, thoughts and memories. But that didn’t keep the scribe Patasana from writing down his own story. That’s why the tablets are so important….We believe what we have here is the earliest documentation of humankind’s non-official history….We think he’s telling the story of the ancient city’s final days. And together with the history of the city, his own personal history as well.”

Unsure whether it is related to the dig or not, a local elder is discovered dead, having fallen, or been pushed from the minaret of the mosque, a man in monks clothes seen fleeing the scene. Esra, the leader of the team is paranoid about upsetting locals and having her first dig cancelled before they have uncovered all the tablets and participated in an important press conference being held to satisfy their funders. Her insistence on knowing everything and getting close to the police captain makes her just as suspicious as virtually every character who at one time or other she imagines as a suspect.

Whilst it could have done with some editing down, it is an enjoyable and I believe popular book.

It is interesting that the author was born in Gaziantep, southern Antolia and while on a family picnic near the Euphrates River saw an excavation site, an old Hittite city, prompting him to immerse himself in researching the area, its people and customs and then write this book.

Ahmet Ümit, Author

Ahmet Ümit himself sounds like an interesting character straight from a novel and it is clear that his own life has inspired many of the stories and characters he has written. As a young man he was a revolutionary political activist and a member of the Turkish Communist Party and he illegally attended the Academy for Social Science for a while in Moscow.

In an interview with Maria Eliades in Time Out Istanbul in 2011 he said:

“In this land, there’s a problem with history. The Turks came here 1,000 years ago but the land has a history that is 200,000 years old. Generally, the government believes that history began 1,000 years ago. They do not count the history of people who were not Muslim. In my novels, I’m trying to show how these people influenced the history and where their position was. I’m trying to emphasize how the Hittites, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Armenians, Greeks and all the different groups affected it. Turkey needs this: an independent view of people, regardless of their race or religion. That’s the basis of my books. The detective part of the story is a catalyst for explaining the untold part of the stories.”

May 21, 2013 by Claire 'Word by Word'

Istanbul Memories of a City by Orhan Pamuk

Although I carried the book to Istanbul and back, there was no inclination to read it while I was there, I started it on the return plane journey, the appropriate occasion to do so, for Pamuk’s Istanbul is laced with more melancholy than the city I visited and I realise with hindsight, the importance of constructing my own unfettered impressions, free of this philosophical consequence of the decline of a grand empire and the inclination of its progeny to feel somewhat bereft at missing out on an era when their prominence was that much greater than it is today.

However, I remain as intrigued about the author now as I did before I started the book, it is a unique form of memoir, more of a nostalgia trip through selective memories of his childhood and his city, sharing anecdotes from both that formed him into the writer he is today.

The imagination features large in Pamuk’s life from a very young age, when he was five-years-old he was sent to stay with an Aunt on his own and she used to point at a picture of a child and say it was him. He came to know him as the other Orhan and while he knew it was not him, this shadow of himself never left him behind. Neither did he ever leave the city of Istanbul in the fifty years up to writing this book.

“But the ghost of the other Orhan in another house somewhere in Istanbul never left me. Throughout my childhood and well into adolescence, he haunted my thoughts.”

Though he never left the city, he read many works by writers and poets who published impressions of Istanbul, Gustave Flaubert, the poet Gérard de Nerval, Théophile Gautier, Pierre Loti, Edmondo de Amici and laments that in the same period they were writing about the city, little was written or painted by its own artists and writers, therefore, whilst the work of others is familiar, it remains an outsiders perspective and does not quite capture the essence of how the Istanbullus see themselves.

Pamuk often visualises the city in black and white and throughout the book on nearly every page are photographs depicting the city in monochrome. He spends an entire chapter describing Hüzün, the Turkish word for melancholy explaining how if differs from sadness and finishes by almost convincing the reader that it is something close to a virtue, absorbed with pride and shared by a community.

“the hüzün of Istanbul is not just the mood evoked by its music and its poetry, it is a way of looking at life that implicates us all, not only a spiritual state, but a state of mind that is ultimately as life affirming as it is negating.”

“… hüzün brings us comfort, softening the view like the condensation on a window when a tea kettle has been spouting steam on a winter’s day.”

Entrance to the Grand Bazaar

I did not come to Istanbul expecting to see sultans, dervishes or crystal chandeliers, though there are traces of them all if you seek them out. I came to see a city that comfortably exists while straddling two sides of a significant divide.

The Bosphorus with the Castles of Europe and Asia by Thomas Allum

The Bosphorus, that deep channel of powerful surging water and current that separates two continents is deceiving. The reasonably short distance from one side to the other, only 2 to 3 kilometres, the fact that it embraces one city reminds us that there is less than we might think between the people who inhabit each continent.

A deep and powerful separation of continents, yet humanity passes across it with ease. Great divides can indeed be overcome. The streets of shops and the Grand Bazaar attest to that passage of traders and pilgrims who have entered and passed through the city over hundreds of years.

It takes until the very last chapter before we meet the more mature Orhan who will become a writer, because unlike many born to write, his first love was painting and he shares much through his observation and study of artists who painted his city, something he practiced prolifically in his youth. The demise of this early calling occurred not long after his teenage muse was packed off by her family to Switzerland, his mother’s relentless cautions against pursuing the life of an artist transforming his rebellion against completing his architectural studies into announcing:

“I don’t want to be an artist.” I said. “I am going to be a writer.”

“I was, as I had begun to discover even then, the sort who could always wear the same clothes and eat the same things and go for a hundred years without getting bored so long as I could entertain wild dreams in the privacy of my imagination.”

A treat for admirers of Orhan Pamuk’s work and those who have had the good fortune to visit his wonderful city, which is not nearly as melancholic to the visitor as it is to a philosophical resident.

Next up, murder at an archaeological dig! Time to leave Istanbul and travel inland with Ahmet Umit.