Dr. Z, part 1

The other week we happened to watch the first half of the famous film of Dr. Zhivago, the one at reference 1. Having probably seen the whole film at some point in the past and read the book in the even more distant past, when still little more than a child. Hard from my presently senior perspective to see what on earth I could have made of it as a junior. One Day in the Life, reference 10, was read for the first time at about the same time.

We then moved on to the television mini series at reference 2, which we thought rather good. I particularly liked the fragility conveyed by the two stars, Matheson and Knightley, which seemed to work better for me than the big-star bravura of Sharif and Christie. But we will get around to watching the latter again, having now got both lots of DVD's.

Surrey Libraries are taking their time at getting me a copy of the book proper, but they have come up with reference 4 in the meantime. A fictionalised account of Pasternak's life, very much a model for the doctor of the novel. A fictionalised account, rather after the fashion of the book noticed at reference 5, where one is never quite sure where fact stops and fiction begins. One just hopes that the biographer has fairly caught the tone, despite being inventive with the facts. With the difference that Anna Pasternak can claim quite close family connection with the famous Pasternak, with her great grandfather being his father.

A great grandfather whom I now know to be, inter alia, a famous illustrator and contemporary of Tolstoy. With one of these illustrations, Prince Andrey being introduced to Natasha, being included above. Not sure how it comes to be in colour, which I thought was only used in rather expensive books at that time, not mass market editions.

A book in three chunks. Pasternak himself then Pasternak and Olga (aka Lara) then Dr. Zhivago and death at the age of 70. Altogether much older than the Zhivago of the films and twenty years older than Olga - which is not the case in either of the films.

I was reminded that Pasternak was a very popular poet in Russia, particularly in the years after the revolution. Almost pop-star status by today's standards. He also came from a family of high culture and was firmly embedded in the Russian cultural elite of his day. A large chunk of which family however, including his parents, emigrated to western Europe while they still could. He chose to stay.

But like others before him, he was not content with popularity and success, with writing romantic poetry. He wanted to write a great book. A book which, in the event, got caught up in the cold war, still going strong in the 1960's, and got its glowing reviews in the west at least in part because of the unpleasant light it cast on the Soviet regime of the 1920's and 1930's. So famous and successful for the wrong reasons, at least from a literary point of view. But publishing the book was, nevertheless, an act of considerable bravery from another.

He was also pretty hopeless at marriage, getting hopelessly tangled up with Olga (whom he met when he was nearly 50) while remaining married to his second wife - whom he had stolen from a close friend. And he must have had terrific charm on a good day, as the close friend remained one, albeit after a short break. Olga went on to do getting on for ten years in grim labour camps, in large part because of her relationship with him. He was fairly safe, in part because Stalin liked his translations of Georgian poetry. Georgian as in his homeland, rather than the early 20th century poets of this country. Translations, some of them very well known, being his main source of income, certainly in the middle part of his life.

The Soviet regime of Stalin's era sounds pretty grim on this telling, certainly in so far as supervision of the intelligentsia and the massive - not to say monstrous - use of prison camps went. Involving, inter alia, a massive amount of casual and pointless cruelty. And lots of thoughtcrime, of the sort famously written about by George Orwell. I wonder now what sort of people wound up being guards in these places. Were they conscripted? I think the Dovlatov of reference 9 did his national service in one. Were most of them volunteers? Plus a snippet from the camps about how the peasant women from the Ukraine despised the weak, intellectual women from Moscow, not fit for a proper day's work. From where I associate to a report I once read from the German concentration camps, to the effect that the country people stood far more chance of surviving the harsh conditions than the town people, being far more used to it. Another snippet was the distinctive bronze tan acquired by town people who had to spend years out of doors, in all weathers.

Despite all that there was to interest me, a book which became tiresome after getting through about 150 of its 250 pages. More skimmed than read after that. For me, it might usefully have been a good deal shorter, with perhaps less reliance on what must be more or less invented detail and dialogue.

Toss-up now whether I will next have another go at the real book or the 1966 film. All depends how long the library takes I suppose. Unless I weaken and go into Waterstones in Epsom, where I expect I would find one, on the shelf. We used to have a copy but I can't now remember whether it was hardback or paperback or who bought it. A copy which made it to Epsom, but was culled at some point after that. And didn't make it to the Kindle, along with all the Tolstoy and Chekov to be be found there.

PS 1: no previous mentions of Zhivago in the blog, while Pasternak scores just two, both on account of his translations of Shakespeare. See references 6 and 7.

PS 2: another go at the shell hole of reference 7 on Friday evening. The thought then was rather good, with the cidery aspect of things not quite so much in evidence. But odd in that it started off a clear yellow, but very quickly, within half an hour or so, turned cloudy, getting more cloudy with time. Reminded that Bain is a chap who spurns the system of appellation d'origine contrôlée, and names his wines, rather as one might name a child.

Reference 1: Dr. Zhivago - B. L. Pasternak - 1957.

Reference 2: Dr. Zhivago  - Sharif, Christie and Lean - 1966.

Reference 3: Dr. Zhivago - Matheson, Knightley and Campiotti - 2002.

Reference 4: Lara: the untold love story that inspired Doctor Zhivago - Anna Pasternak - 2016.

Reference 5: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/09/mrs-lewis.html.

Reference 6: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2012/01/leery.html.

Reference 7: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/2014/01/pasternak.html.

Reference 8: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/07/shell-hole.html.

Reference 9: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/09/the-suitcase.html.

Reference 10: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - 1962. A writer who went on to become something of a professional dissident. The Penguin edition of which book was retired many culls ago.

Dr Z, part 4

This being by way of a final report on Dr. Zhivago of reference 1, having finished my reading of both the library version (translated by Pevear & Volkokhonsky, 2010) and my Everyman version (translated by Harari & Hayward, 1958). The first being a rather ordinary paperback, the latter a nicely produced hardback, properly topped and tailed.

The fourth post on this subject, following references 2, 3 and 4. Plus various minor mentions, the finding of which is left to the reader.

A big, serious novel which I shall probably read again before too long. Very much in the tradition of Pasternak’s illustrious forebears from the century before. A lot bigger and more serious than either of the films, which, as it the way with films, leave an awful lot out, have to leave an awful lot out, be the adaptation ever so clever. With Pasternak sharing a philosophical, pedagogical streak with Tolstoy, a streak I found tiresome as a young person, not so tiresome now. Interesting even.

I was reminded of another, rather different book from the same time, or at least set in much the same time, Sholokhov’s ‘And Quiet Flows the Don’, a book which I once knew well, much better than I ever knew this book. A more politically correct book, in the sense that it is about workers – or at least Cossacks – rather than about a doctor from the cultured and comfortably off middle classes. In fact, we do not get to see many workers: this is a book about a bourgeois fallen on hard times. Also a book which takes a long, lingering look at old Moscow. Rather as Simenon writes about the Paris of his youth. While the love interest does not take as much space as the Sharif/Christie film would suggest.

I have always had trouble with the three part Russian names – which I think I may now be bottoming out – and found it helpful to build up my own cast list, using one lifted from the Internet as a starting point. And I might say that the one lifted was reasonably carelessly put together. Not altogether fit for its intended use as a study aid. Gradually the cast sank in and one came to see the improbable way that all these lives were interwoven over getting on for thirty years. But some people didn’t interweave, they popped up just once or twice. And one wasn’t sure. Was I supposed to already know about one Andrei Vasilovitch? Here the Kindle Cloud Reader came into its own, providing a searchable version of the text for a modest £1.99. A small catch being that the different translations sometimes rendered the Russian names into English slightly differently and the search function was not cunning enough to deal with this on its own. But it did not take more than a bit of fiddling about to run the person in question down. All of which helped to consolidate things in the older brain.

I did not attempt the poetry at the back, not being much of a poetry reader. This despite the book being written by a famous poet about a chap who wrote a lot of poetry. Some space given to the details of the craft: the habit, the techniques, the table, the paper, the pens and ink. I don’t think there were any typewriters. Perhaps Pasternak did not think that they were the sort of thing that would survive the turmoils of revolutionary Russia. I associate to a book about a ballet dancer of the same time which said something about the last thing that a ballet dancer lets go was his dancing shoes. See reference 10.

Various odd glitches which would probably have been sorted out between the author and the publisher, had the book been edited and printed more conventionally.

A few more stray comments follow, roughly in order of appearance.

Bordighera gets a mention, a place where Zhivago holidayed as a child, when his family still had money. A place I noticed as someone I used to know lives nearby.

And having an interest in how exactly it comes about that we are conscious while a computer, for example, is not, I also noticed Zhivago’s musings on same in the margins of the Christmas party at the Sventitsky’s. Just one more bit of evidence of the Russian taste for philosophical musings in their novels.

The Sharif/Christie film being fairly fresh in my mind at the time, I noticed plenty of places where the film had strayed from the true path. But far too many to attempt to enumerate here – and anyway, I didn’t feel too much injustice had been done to the book in either of the cinema compressions – given that compression is the name of the game if you are going to make a film of a big book.

Plenty of typhus. Clearly a feared killer of this time and place. See reference 6.

At some point we get a prosector, from the context a person who does autopsies. Also a drunk. According to Wikipedia a sort of superior mortuary technician. And these people still exist with an advertisement for one at University of Aberdeen to be found at reference 8. Nevertheless, perhaps one of the glitches mentioned above. And perhaps the translator could have come up with a less obscure word.

Shortly after Zhivago meets Lara again in Yuriatin, she tells him how she knows lots of people, you need to know lots of people to get along. You can’t divide the world into Reds and Whites who only mix on the battle ground. People have to get along. I think Simenon takes rather the same line in reference 7, a story which revolves around a German occupation. People have to collaborate, at least a bit, to get along. While Zhivago makes a different point, that one has to live. One has to live in the present, not on theory, not on promises for the future.

Both cocaine and mental disorder crop up in the margins of the civil war. The latter being what might now be called post traumatic stress disorder – although disorder is rather a mild word for what happened here.

A rather odd, low key closing chapter to Zhivago’s life in the shabby Moscow of the 1920’s. He drops out, into odd jobs, rather than practise as a doctor. He marries for a second time. And is killed off by his weak heart just as his guardian angel half-brother has fixed him up with a proper medical job.

A savage tale about the laundry girl, who turns out to be the daughter of Lara and Yury. Very close to the end of the book.

One which note I close, only pausing to observe that there is plenty of casual brutality and plenty of slaughter. Far worse than the sort of thing in Germany, at about the same time, talked about by Toller and noticed at reference 9. And given the way it has all turned out a hundred years later, far from clear that it was worth it.

PS 1: the house on the right in the snap above, taken from Google’s Street View, might be the house near Perm that Pasternak lived in for a while, in the area in which a good chunk of the middle of the book is set. Possibly now a museum. 47 Ulitsa Svobody, Vsevolodo-Vil'va, Perm Krai. 59.2237728,57.4305104.

PS 2: along the way, I almost had an accident with Abebooks. Looking for something permanent in place of the library copy and seeing an old, CIA sponsored translation of the book into Russian, part of their effort for the then not so cold war and helped along by the Vatican, I thought it might be worth the £15 asked and very nearly bought it. One click away, I realised that it was £15,000 not £15.00. I supposed I am not used to coming across books at that price. Having now read the small print, I think I could have extricated myself, but I have also brought the limit on my credit down to a level that I could better afford, should need be. The dangers of one-click shopping with people who already know about one’s credit card! If only I had not retired the copy that we used to own – not that I can remember what it looked like now. Was it the Penguin edition, was it some hardback edition handed down by my parents?

PS 3: two attempts so far to get HSBC to lower my credit limit, using the feature for same included in their online banking service. Both failed, without my getting any notice of why. Yet to work up the energy to talk to one of the people at one of their call centres to try and sort things out.

PS 4: and it took three attempts to sort out the mess caused by pasting this text straight from Word, rather than going via Notepad which strips out lots of formatting stuff, not wanted here.

References

Reference 1: Dr. Zhivago – B. L. Pasternak – 1957.

Reference 2: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/10/dr-z-part-1.html. 

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/11/dr-z-part-2-winter.html. 

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/11/dr-z-part-3-clerks.html. 

Reference 5: And Quiet Flows the Don – M. A. Sholokhov – 1934.

Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhus.

Reference 7: La Neige était Sale - Simenon - 1948.

Reference 8: http://www.anatsoc.org.uk/Portals/0/Vacancies/AberdeenFurtherParticulars%5b1%5d.pdf. 

Reference 9: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/12/ernst.html. 

Reference 10: Borzoi – Igor Schwezoff – 1934. 

Dr. Z, part 2 - Winter

Following the post at reference 1, the Sharif-Christie film has now been completed, complete with overtures, entr'acte and intermission. All very old fashioned.

Furthermore, the library copy of the book itself has now turned up, a new translation from Vintage, and after a slow start, I am now chugging through, having reached around page 150. As so often, one is quite startled about how much is left out of the films. More on them in due course, but the first impression is that the first film is something of a fairy tale, drawn from the book, while the second film has tried to stick to the text a bit more.

Today my interest is in the winter, one of the things given the fairy tale treatment in films, not to say the 'Narnia' treatment, but thinking here particularly of 'War and Peace' and 'Anna Karenina'.

In the present book we are in a corner of what had been Zhivago's in-laws' house in Moscow, in the winter of 1917. Winter is coming and fuel is running short. The ordinary machinery of city life is breaking down. 

It seems that in those days all the houses and apartments were heated by wood fired stoves. Giving rise to all kinds of ventilation problems: getting enough air into the fire and getting the smoke out without filling one's rooms with the stuff. Problems which I remember in a more benign form from our own days with a coal burning stove. It took a bit of practise and it seems that in Moscow knowing a good stove man was an important part of a housewife's duties. You also needed a supply of putty - if necessary knocking the stuff up yourself with linseed oil and chalk - with which to seal up all the windows against the cold draughts. And that caused condensation and damp. And then there were all the fumes - probably much worse if you had the money and could get hold of some coke.

Heating the huge flats which figure among the rich families which populate Tolstoy's novels must have been a constant battle - needing, apart from anything else, a steady supply of fuel to be hauled in from the wood shed or up from the cellar. While in the ordinary families which one does not see so much of, it must often have been a losing battle, a battle in which many people succumbed to one or other cold related ailment.

It all sounds a bit grim. No wonder so many of them took to vodka.

PS 1: I remember something of this sort of thing from the Simenon book at reference 3, set in the winter, in a large town in war time, occupied Belgium. They had stoves too and a lot of people did not have anything like enough coal. A time when people lined their thread-bare coats with old newspapers.

PS 2: I also remember all the condensation in our north London bedsit in the winter of our first year of marriage. Condensation which was made worse by our very efficient paraffin fire (from Aladdin) pumping out the water along with the heat. Condensation which rotted the wallpaper behind the wardrobe. These being the days of free-standing, brown wood wardrobes, with the brown wood in question here having possibly been high gloss, walnut veneer. A heritage item now, should it have survived.

Reference 1: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/10/dr-z-part-1.html.

Reference 2: Dr. Zhivago - B. L. Pasternak - 1957.

Reference 3: La Neige était Sale - Simenon - 1948.

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/05/dirty-snow-part-1.html. Part 2 rather overdue now.

Another proper book

Having noticed a proper book, an ex-library book, the other day, yesterday, having taken a considerable luncheon, I thought to have a go at the 'Tale of a Tub', which has been sitting unread in our front room bookcase for some years. Although it has made cull candidate on several occasions.

Another full-on ex-library book, this one from Surrey Libraries, complete with all the library paraphernalia, complete once again with the ticket. And a County Library book plate in the front. Defaced to the extent of the librarian having taken a slice off the inside of the dust jacket to make way for the ticket. A book which was bought in 1958 and spent quite a lot of its active life in somewhere called the Redhill Information Library, this being deduced from the second slip underneath the one that can be seen in the snap above. The last occasion on which it was actually taken out appears to have been 1984, more than 35 years ago.

Printed on substantial paper, we get lvvvii pages of introduction in XII sections, followed by 210 pages of the book itself, then two more short books, then 6 appendices - and lastly a modest index of a modest 14 pages.

The book itself appears to be an elaborate take-off of various important disputes, mostly theological, of the day, a day when, I suppose, disputes between the various sects and factions of Christians still ran hot, even in London, by then becoming commercial. We will see how far I get in, with this morning's plan being to read the introduction properly, the one prepared by the people at Oxford that is, rather than the rather longer ones provided by Swift himself.

One item of interest so far, on page 43, a few pages into the preface, in which Swift dilates on the possibility of the reader recreating that which the author had in mind when he wrote something. Of the need, perhaps, to work oneself into something like his circumstances and frame of mind at the time. Starting off with the observation that 'nothing is so very tender as a Modern Piece of Wit, and which is apt to suffer so much in the Carriage'. And along the way he had much sport with his use of italics and capital letters. A matter which is very much in my mind at the moment with regard to the translation of Dr. Zhivago that I am reading. For example, on the proper way to deal with the name of a probably obscure variety of Russian apple. A problem that I believe Simenon would have avoided by not using such a word; he kept things simple for the convenience of both reader and translator. The last episode of the Zhivago story being at reference 4 and the next due to follow shortly.

I am left wondering who on earth would read a book like this now. Students of late 17th century English Literature at Cambridge? Retired civil servants living on the fringes of London? Disputatious low church parsons with time on their hands?

PS: this publisher uses a mixture of upper and lower case letters for its Latin numbers, despite the remarks on that subject at reference 3.

Reference 1: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/11/a-proper-book.html.

Reference 2: A Tale of a Tub - Jonathan Swift - 1704. With my second edition from Oxford being from 1958, a substantially revised and reset version of the first edition of 1920. 

Reference 3: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/11/on-numerals.html.

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/11/dr-z-part-3-clerks.html.

Dr Z, part 3 - Clerks

This morning, on or around page 250 at the start of Part Nine, Zhivago's well placed brother Evgraf turns up, seemingly out of the blue, something of a guardian angel.

I started to wonder, how in those days when there were no computers and only fairly basic communication by wireless and telegraph, how the centre was able to keep an eye on the periphery. How was it able to know what this or that dissident was up to?

Nowadays, we can just feed the dissident's bank card details (or whatever) into the central computer and you can read him (or her) off every time he uses it, almost in real time. But what happened then? 

Part of the answer must have been the requirement for all adults to carry papers - work permits, internal passports, identity cards and the like - which could be marked up in various ways and which could be inspected by policemen and their like on demand. And taken back to the station for further investigation if there were bad marks or if their suspicions were aroused in other ways.

Another part must have been logging systems, like the one which features in the first version of the Jackal film, whereby the passport number of every visitor to every French hotel gets collected up and sent back to the centre on a daily basis. With an English version being a black book holding the passport numbers of bad people which immigration or passport officials were supposed to check against every arrival and every exit. A black book which they were supposed to update at the start of every shift and woe betide them if they missed someone.

Another part must have been central registries, central filing systems. Systems which grew into their 1960's maturity in the days before copying paper was cheap or digitising paper was available at all. The huge ledgers containing records of births, deaths and marriages. The huge ledgers containing the location of everyone's national health records. The huge filing systems maintained by all respectable government departments and many larger companies, the likes of BP and ICI.

All of which must have required a huge army of clerks to keep up to date and in working order. Maintenance of the records needed to run a surveillance state was hugely expensive. No doubt necessary in small doses, but a huge waste of resources on the scale practised by the likes of Stalin's Soviet Union. And that's not counting all the rest of the damage, the damage to people and the damage to production. Or to the defence of the motherland for that matter.

A corollary being, that the surveillance state was not just a few bad people at the top of the heap doing bad things. There must have been thousands and thousands of people somewhere else in the heap, perhaps just doing their job - but also responsible; their hands were not clean.

Rather as in war-time France, where collaboration must have been pervasive. Or as in war-time Germany, where participation must have been pervasive. Guilt was collective.

Reference 1: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/11/dr-z-part-2-winter.html.

Rien

At some point last week we thought to take a look at the housing estate on what used to be the site of West Park Hospital. Most of the other hospitals in the cluster sport Wellingtonias - some of them lots of them - so why not West Park? As it turned out, no Wellingtonias, but we did turn up the fake already noticed at reference 8.

The rather serious looking security arrangements at the gate into the grounds of Hollywood Lodge (once Horton Lodge, a fairly grand house for a lodge, last mentioned at reference 8). Grounds which we think is used by travelling people for their horses. If only they had as much respect for our property as they would like us to have for theirs!

But a bit further round, it turned out that their security arrangements were as haphazard and messy as their living arrangements. Holywood Lodge maybe somewhere behind the screen of trees left.

A bit further round still. Perhaps into the next field now. From there, round into Richmond Crescent, which took us past some rather grand new houses - plus a relic of the old hospital, seemingly now a facility operated by CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services), seemingly part of the Surrey & Borders Partnership, an NHS Trust. Quite a large cluster of buildings on the edge of the site, no idea what they would have been when the place was part of a mental hospital.

I had forgotten this curious bit of green space, with its path and steps leading up towards what was presumably a gate out onto Christ Church Road, perhaps to provide access for guided walks on the common across the road. Presumably once a properly tended garden.

An oblique view down the same path, with a view of what for all the world might be the old mental hospital. Not sure that I would want to live in such a place, be the grounds ever so mature.

A fine pine tree, just to the left of the path as you look up it. No idea what it is either. Maybe Scots pines grow like this when grown as a specimen tree.

A rather flash looking new car outside one of the new houses. Maybe a BMW i8 plug in hybrid - which Autocar suggests might cost something more than £100,000. Lot of money to spend on fast changing technology - and a lot more than I would spend on any car. Would Musk the Mouth be a better bet? Someone near us clearly thinks so, as noticed at reference 9.

But the bottom line is that we saw quite a lot of mature conifers, some of them not very well. And while we have not covered the whole of the estate, I would be surprised if we find any Wellingtonias. Maybe the superintendent of this hospital decided that he was going to be different and choose his own trees. Or maybe he just didn't get on with the other superintendents and wanted to cock a snook at their taste in tree planting.

From where I associated to the famous 'Rien' of Louis XVI on the day that the Bastille was stormed, noticed at references 1, 2, 3 and 4. And glancing at reference 4 this evening I was reminded was a savage business storming the Bastille was, even if the number of the Kings' men who got themselves killed was very modest. More symbolic than anything else. The sort of revolutionary savagery that Dr. Zhivago, recently noticed, knew all about.

But I also learned that my reading had been mistaken. It was not that the king did not get anything while out hunting that day, rather it was that he didn't go hunting. So not nothing caught, rather nothing to report.

From there, having a few minutes to spare, I jumped to reference 5, where I came across a bit where aristocratic refugees in Vienna were explaining how naff it was that Napoleon had an 'N' engraved on all the then late Louis's hunting guns, given that he didn't know the difference between 'la chasse aux lapins' and 'la chasse à courre'. What a plonker.

While as far as I can make out, the first is hunting on foot for rabbits, the idea being to shoot them, perhaps with a gun dog to help. While the second is hunting with a pack of dogs for things like wild boars (the things Astérix is keen on) and foxes (the things I am not keen on). With sports of this sort clearly alive and kicking in France, as can be seen from reference 6 and 7.

PS: I have also learned that when making file names out of post titles, the Blogger people drop accents. See reference 2.

Reference 1: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2012/09/rien.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/2015/06/communique.html.

Reference 3: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/11/last-post-for-tippett.html.

Reference 4: Louis XVI - Jean-Christian Petitfils - 2005. Beginning of chapter 21. Page 690.

Reference 5: Les adieux de la reine - Chantal Thomas - 2002. Page 10.

Reference 6: https://www.chasse-lapins-garenne.fr/.

Reference 7: https://fr.wikihow.com/chasser-le-lapin. An entertaining tutorial taking you from buying the gun to popping the rabbit in the pot. They seem to shoot rabbit with rifles, possibly pump action for speed, low calibre so as not to make too much mess, while the chap I once knew who went rabbit hunting used a shotgun.

Reference 8: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/01/fake-115.html.

Reference 9: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/03/tesla-comes-to-town.html.

Ernst

My eye lighted upon Ernst Toller’s memoir of reference 1 the other day and having idly turned a few pages, I thought I would read it again. A book first noticed near ten years ago at reference 2. And, oddly enough, once the property of someone or something in Pixham, near Dorking, which we visited last year and noticed at reference 3. The pencil inscription in the front suggesting that the someone or something was ELR and that the book was in habit of being loaned out. Google offers Epsom and Leatherhead Railway, Employment Land Review and the Enlightened Lamp Recycling company, but none of these seem to quite fit the bill. Bing offers nothing at all.

A decently but not lavishly produced book from Bodley Head, properly bound in a dozen or so signatures and printed on the sort of paper that has horizontal stripes from the mould it was made in. Published during the closing years of Bodley Head as an independent publisher, then going then through various hands and winding up somewhere inside Random House. Complete with advertisements for English editions of some of Toller’s plays. Complete with a motif on the spine featuring the head of the Bodley for whom the Bodleian Library from the Morse and Lewis television dramas was named: a motif which I must have come across before but had completely forgotten about.

As suggested by the title, this is the story of someone who started out as an ordinary sort of German, swept into the war along with so many of the young men of his generation. But then radicalised by that war, ending up in the Bavarian Soviet Republic at the war’s end. One spell in prison before the Republic, a longer spell in prison after. With the present book being published in Germany to coincide with the burning of some of his other books by the Nazis, in the early 1930’s.

An ordinary sort of German from the Prussian middle classes from the borderlands between Germany and Poland. An ordinary sort of German who also happened to be a Jew and a writer, this last appearing at an early age, with Toller learning early that adding plenty of spice & colour to more or less trivial items of local news was good for sales. He didn’t get caught out very often. He also wrote poetry and plays and on the evidence of this easy-read book was something of a ladies’ man.

I learn that the short lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, in which Toller took a leading role, was an amateurish mess. Not least because the progressive forces seemed to be more interested in fighting with each other than with the forces of reaction. A lesson they failed to learn when they subsequently allowed the rise of Hitler. It was also a lesson on how a revolution can unleash a great deal of casual, brutal violence - while not achieving its objectives. I am reminded of similar material in Dr. Zhivago, noticed at reference 5 and awaiting final notice.

As well as being reminded of Pasternak, I was also reminded of Simenon, of his book about a young thug at reference 4, a lot of which is set in a prison. To the extent that I wondered whether Simenon read the present book before he wrote his, shortly after the second war, also awaiting final notice. With Simenon, for example, using the same device of the prisoner fantasising about an inaccessible girl, seen at a window.

A few bits and pieces follow.

Toller, like many Jews of his generation was a German patriot, perhaps to the point of being more Catholic than the Pope, as the saying goes. So as a child, he was happy enough to join in German abuse of local Poles. I am reminded of English abuse of the Irish, still going strong in the Customs’ sheds of Liverpool, I have been reliably informed, in the 1960’s. Not to mention the front windows of the keepers of boarding houses. While he, in turn, was abused for being Jewish.

Some evidence of tension between the Catholic Germans of the south and the upstart Prussian, Protestant Germans of the north.

Plenty of parallels with ‘The Good Soldier Švejk’, written in the same part of the world, about ten years previously. Some evidence of the tension between temporary officers and real officers, with the former apt to be officiously unpleasant. Some evidence of older, rear echelon men retaining the patriotic enthusiasms of the young, front line men, long after these last knew better.

The prisons might have been rough places, but not so rough that he was not allowed lefty books in his first prison and play writing in his second. Plays which were performed while he was still inside. There was also proper medical attention, with visits both to the hospital and to the dentist being recorded. Both off-site. There were also some very Švejk-like doctors, more intent on rooting out malingerers and lefties than on medical matters.

I mentioned the bureaucrats rolling on, events in the outside world notwithstanding, at reference 2. In which connection, on page 175, we are told of the officers of the old Imperial army supplying maps to the general staff of the new Revolutionary army. At about the time that Toller learns that revolutionary zeal is not enough: a Revolutionary army needs order and discipline just as the Imperial army did before it. A lesson which the Russians were learning at about the same time, and which they had to learn again at the start of the second war.

And, lastly, I have been reminded that Dachau, later infamous, was a small town near Munich. But big enough to have been home to a first war munitions factory and big enough for the Schloss Dachau of reference 7, postcarded above. Oddly, the Street View vans do not seem to have visited, although they have certainly been to Munich.

References

Reference 1: I was a German – Ernst Toller – 1934.

Reference 2: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2011/11/half-day-in-good-ole-epsom.html. 

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/10/heritage-day-two.html. 

Reference 4: La Neige était Sale - Simenon - 1948.

Reference 5 : https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/11/dr-z-part-3-clerks.html. 

Reference 6: The Good Soldier Švejk -  Jaroslav Hašek – 1923.

Reference 7: https://www.schlossdachau.com/. 

End of the first cycle

Completed what is perhaps my third reading of Maigret story called 'Maigret', otherwise reference 4. The last story of the first Maigret cycle. The first of three. Cycles which are mixed in with clumps of other stories involving characters with continuing lives, spanning more than one story. Very Trollopian and still a popular, easy read formula.

A story which is set just after Maigret's retirement, so another story where he sees things from the outside, rather than from the inside. While the previous story, 'L'Écluse No.1', is a story in which Maigret's antagonist knows that Maigret is going to retire in a few days, a fact which has been reported in the Paris newspapers - as well as to us, the readers. An antagonist from the working classes who has dragged himself to somewhere near the top of the canal cargo trade and who shares, I believe, a good deal with Simenon himself. Who, for example, rather takes advantage of his female servants. And who has something of a chip on his shoulder about people from the middle classes, born to comfort and money.

According to reference 1, I seem to have last read 'Maigret' in March of this year, so I must have been dipping, rather than working my way through. And search suggests at reference 2 that the time before that was around September 2016. Much more consistent with working my way through.

Maigret himself is not obviously very like Simenon. A public servant, not very well paid. He is happily married, in a quiet way, sorry not to have had children. Socialises with his colleagues and when on a case, but not much in his private life. On the other hand, he smokes his pipe a great deal and he spends a lot of time people watching, with Simenon being known to have done the first and it seems very likely that he did the second.

One thing that is missing from the Maigret stories is the trade and paraphernalia of writing. Of which I have noticed quite a bit in Dr. Zhivago of reference 3. Where there is quite a lot of talk about gloating over supplies of suitable paper, pens and ink. The writing table - but no typewriter that I have noticed. Giving the impression of a writer who does a lot of writing, with a spot of ritual giving support to the creative passion. I have read elsewhere that Simenon had his rituals. As I do too, in my own small way. As I use a computer, not rituals about pens and paper, more rituals about how I lay things out. The way I name the corresponding files on the computer and organise them into folders. My custom and practise regarding headings, footnotes, annexes and references. My very own house style, as it were. A style which, as an amateur, I allow to evolve and grow over the months. And I do have my version of a writing desk, at which I do nearly all my writing. I stand at it now.

PS: Conan Doyle was another successful writer who tried for early retirement for his creation, Sherlock Holmes. Maybe I will look up how long that lasted. Don't know about Agathe Christie: not heard of such a thing.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/03/not-maigret.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/09/more-maigret.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/11/dr-z-part-3-clerks.html.

Reference 4: Maigret - Simenon - 1933. Volume V of the collected works in the Rencontre edition. The rather good looking blue edition, in which the spines are apt to split away from the boards. A problem easily and inconspicuously fixed with Sellotape. Best to use the real thing rather than some imitation, just to be on the safe side.

Trekky meets whale

Last night, there being nothing to watch on Freeview, we made a start on Captain Jean-Luc Picard taking on Moby Dick, a film which I had forgotten started life on television, had probably watched once or twice before, while BH denied all knowledge, even when well into it. The point here being that I quite often find that I am watching a repeat quite a few minutes after it starts, it taking that long to jog the memory into life. BH claimed that she had been put off the film by the book, which she had found very heavy going.

That being as it may be, on this occasion we thought the film rather good, certainly as far as we got, despite some slipshod staging. There were several occasions, for example, when we had a team of seamen pulling very heartily on a rope, with the rope going nowhere. Surely it is not that difficult to have the extras pull a rope in the ordinary way?

Today I was moved to check when I last read the book, thinking that it had been reasonably recently. However, the blog archive only revealed references 1 through 4, none of them about Moby Dick.

Next stop a cursory visit to the bookshelves, which turned up nothing. We thought that we had owned both 'Typee' and 'Moby Dick' at some point, both in an Everyman edition, but maybe they had been culled in favour of the Kindle, along with plenty of better books. Inspection of the Kindle revealed 'Moby Dick' on page 3 of the index, 'Billy Budd' on page 6 and 'Typee' on page 8 (of 15). Which, given that this index lists books most recently looked at first, suggests that Moby Dick was indeed read fairly recently, certainly more recently that Billy Budd who was noticed in 2013. It looks as if that is the nearest to running down the date that I am going to get.

On the other hand, while turning the pages on the Kindle version of 'Moby Dick', the bookmark was fairly near the beginning, at the place where he has to share a room with the harpooner. I was surprised at how different the book was from the film, even over those three or four pages, with the film having been considerably simplified and coloured up for the benefit of the tired viewer. I might well read some more.

In the meantime, checking up on Patrick Stewart, I find that he comes from a fairly ordinary background, no Bullingdon Club or 'Footlights' for him, but somehow made his way in classical acting, starting with the RSC and going on to a long run with them. After which, somewhat against his bent for the stage, he became famous in 'Star Trek', no doubt where I first became aware of him as a person, rather than as a face.

Next thing to check up is the matter of typhus, a bug-borne complaint, often fatal and the cause of much sickness - and millions of deaths on the eastern front during the first world war and its Russian sequelae. Wikipedia talks of one ship being struck down, but one might have thought that  crowded 19th century ships generally would have been vulnerable. But I don't recall coming across typhus in that connection. Finding out about typhus being a by-product of my reading Dr. Zhivago, where there is a good deal of it.

Reference 1a: pumpkinstrokemarrow. The rather unhelpful Microsoft default rendering of the web address given at 1b. At least I now think that it is Microsoft rather than Google.

Reference 1b: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=typee.

Reference 2: psmv2: Billy Budd

Reference 3: psmv3: Emoji Dick. Concerning, inter alia, someone who saw fit to translate 'Moby Dick' into emojis. I wonder how many people flogged their way through it?

Reference 4: psmv4: Wight three. Perhaps this or some other Melville paid a visit to the island at some point.