4 November
On its back page, the voluminous weekly DIE ZEIT, which I still think is the best newspaper in Europe, always carries a large photograph of an animal looking at the camera with a distinctive expression, and the caption above Du siehst aus, wie ich mich fühle (You look how I feel). I might say the same of this creature:
No-one left a Comment on my previous diary post suggesting what the mystery object there might be…and because I berated people for emailing me in such circumstances rather than leaving a Comment, no-one emailed me either! I now reveal that the object was a soapstone ink and brush holder brought back by my great-grandfather from China. But, as you can tell from the wear across the front and the blue mark extreme right, it was used for holding and striking matches.
The above has been variously described as ‘a crocodile’, ‘a toy horse trough’, and ‘something Aztec for a Mexico project’. It was made by Sam2 at the age of seven. It is invaluable for holding and drying out those slivers of soap you’re left with from a bar.
12 November
Returning from buying my morning paper, I pass the professor at his five-bar gate. He initiates a conversation: ‘Patrick, I disagree with your position on Ukraine.’ (How he knew my ‘position’, I don’t know.) ‘I have come to the conclusion that what is needed is a peace conference.’ Subduing a tidal splutter, I reply: ‘I entirely agree with you, Philip. How are you going to get Putin to the conference table?’ The professor believes that Zelensky’s position, e.g. that all Russian forces have to be withdrawn and he will never negotiate as long as Putin is in power, is ‘not helpful’ and the war requires United Nations arbitration. In order not to raise the temperature too quickly, I suggest that Hitler would not have agreed to ‘international arbitration’ over the Sudetenland. What I wanted to do was quote Winston Churchill’s ‘You cannot reason with a tiger when your head is in its mouth’, but the prof. is probably not a Churchill fan. I actually said that I thought Russia had a case about Crimea and this should be evaluated by an independent body, but neither side would ever accept that; otherwise why would Putin have annexed it in 2014? Then I put the wind up the prof. by explaining my theory that the Russians want to evacuate Kherson of their troops and ‘subjects’, entice the Ukrainians in, and detonate a tactical nuclear weapon over them. Needless to say, I hope I am wrong. But anything mad is possible.
13 November
If you want to know what the war is like for a flesh and blood Ukrainian, a poet of international standing who knows his native country and his people, read this book:
Click the cover to find this book on Amazon.
Soon after 24 February, Alexander Korotko started writing ‘in complete prostration’ two or three poems a night. There are 88 in all, numbered and mostly without titles. They are printed in their original Russian, with Ukrainian and English translations.
At first, they are short, conventional and declarative (‘we pay/the West/for help/with blood,/but the West/makes no haste/to deliver’ (13)). Then Korotko finds his form in quite long poems of only two or three words a line, rhymed at various intervals. The effect is zerfetzt, finely torn up, and jagged down the right hand side like the bricks of a wall that a missile has passed through. There are anapaestic overtones of Mandel’shtam (e.g. 48), which is utterly to the good, and the verse is never without musical concentration.
But the body of the book presents a world that has flown apart — literally. Like a figure in a Chagall painting, a dead soldier finds himself ‘flying/in a wooden envelope/with friends./I am the moon,/born early/in the sky’ (34). Angels fly, souls fly, dreams, a steamer, houses, stars; the commonest tropes are blood, death, sun, sky, moon, night, life, dawns; the commonest word is ‘pain’ (in at least fifteen poems, and it becomes the central obsession of the latter half of the book); the commonest phrase, ‘eyes charred with tears’.
This is a sequence that conveys unbearably powerfully the trauma of a nation; but it enacts also the terrible trauma of a poet. Korotko reminds one of no-one so much as Georg Trakl. Certainly he often slips into incoherence (which the English translator faithfully conveys), but what else would one expect? The truth of the Ukrainian war demands straining the rationality of language and imagination beyond breaking point. For all its unevennesses, Korotko’s War Poems is a masterpiece that will be read and pondered to futurity.
20 November
We have been on the Inner Hebridean island of Islay (pronounced Eye-la) for the best part of a week. It was a wonderful visit from every point of view. The island is a complete world of its own, with an astonishing range of natural habitats (and weathers). Stars of the show were the very old Iona-style crosses, the malt whiskies, the great friendliness of the inhabitants, and this Learesque corvid, which I had never seen before:
A Chough on Islay, photographed by Will Miles
Returning from far,
we find the chrysanthemums
got sick of waiting.
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‘This comprehensive, meticulously researched and highly readable biography, which the author describes as a “story” rather than an academic biography…’ Michael Pursglove, East-West Review
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‘Presents the Edwardian age, and Calderon in particular, as new and forward-looking.’ Emeritus Professor Michael Alexander, in Trinity College, Oxford, Report 2017-18
A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.
A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.
A heart-warming Ukrainian story. Last night the Christmas lights on the tree which stands at the crossroads in our village – Wootton, nr Abingdon – were turned on. This is an annual ritual on Advent Sunday and is followed by mulled wine and mince pies in the Community Centre. This year, as part of the festivities, the village drama society put on a short Christmas play – an adaptation of Tolstoy’s version of the Russian folktale, Papa Panov. Unbeknown to the cast, there were several Ukrainian refugees in the audience, who were being introduced to the English obsession with amateur theatricals. It is good to report that their views on Russians did not extend to Tolstoy and that one of the Ukrainian children won the Papa Panov quiz we held afterwards. She was the only one who could both pronounce and spell Tolstoy in English (the name of the author had been announced at the beginning).
Those slivers of soap in the Blue Horse… I imagine George in the Edwardian spirit of waste-not-want-not might perhaps have soaked those fragments saved by Kittie, incised them and pressed them down in his shaving bowl – as we all, who brush our faces each morning, should do today, in solidarity with Ukraine.
What terrific Comments! They will give great enjoyment to readers! Thank you very much. Old Lion (Lev) would be tearful to read about the performance of his parable (Calderon, by the way, considered Tolstoy’s short folktales the perfection of his writing). And I had never thought about it before, but I think John Pym is right: not only his grandfather and George were waste-not-want-not-ers, it was an Edwardian Thing.