Bach Cantatas (50): Trinity XIX (BWV 48, 5 & 56)

The nineteenth Sunday after Trinity. The readings for this Sunday combine Paul's exhortation to the Romans to live a better, more truthful life with the story of Jesus' healing of the paralyzed man.

There are three cantatas for this Sunday.

Readings:
Ephesians 4:22–28, "Put on the new man, which after God is created"
Matthew 9:1–8, Healing the paralytic at Capernaum

Cantata Studies:
Bach Cantatas Website | Simon Crouch | Emmanuel Music | Julian Mincham | Wikipedia | Eduard van Hengel (in Dutch) | Bach Companion (Oxford U.P.) | Bach: The Learned Musician (Wolff) | Music in the Castle of Heaven (Gardiner)

 

[The Palsied Man Let Down through the Roof by James Tissot]

Cantatas:

• Ich elender Mensch, wer wird mich erlösen, BWV 48, 3 October 1723
   
  Chorus: Ich elender Mensch, wer wird mich erlösen
  Recitative (alto): O Schmerz, o Elend, so mich trifft
  Chorale: Solls ja so sein
  Aria (alto): Ach, lege das Sodom der sündlichen Glieder
  Recitative (tenor): Hier aber tut des Heilands Hand
  Aria (tenor): Vergibt mir Jesus meine Sünden
  Chorale: Herr Jesu Christ, einiger Trost
  
  ("Wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me")
  Text & translation
  
  Scored for alto and tenor soloists, a four-part choir, trumpet, two oboes, two violins, viola, and basso continuo.
  
  As the title suggests, this cantata delves into dark but profound themes. The opening movement is based on Romans 7:24, emphasizing the desperate need of sinners for salvation. The unknown poet emphasizes the need of the soul for salvation over the body, which is echoed in the chorale of the third movement, derived from the hymn "Ach Gott und Herr" (1604). This reflection is reinforced by verses from Psalm 88:11 and 2 Corinthians 12:9, before ending on a note of hope with the final chorale, "Herr Jesu Christ, einiger Trost," sourced from "Herr Jesu Christ, ich schrei zu dir" (1620).
  
  The grand opening chorus sets a tone of deep despair, drawing from St. Paul's lament in Romans: "Wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" The desolation of the text, sung in a slow tempo with sparse accompaniment, contrasts with a subtly woven chorale theme ("Lord Jesus Christ, you highest good") played in strict canon by trumpet and oboes. The movement opens with a ritornello in the strings, expressing a subdued sadness rather than fiery anguish. The absence of sensational rhetoric underscores that while the work delves into personal turmoil, it's not about acute sin, but rather the inherent fallen nature of humanity under the law. This is depicted through the archaic motet style and the skillful arrangement of a double canon between vocal lines and obbligato instruments.
  
  An alto recitative follows, lamenting "the poison of sin that rages in my breast and veins," which may seem almost comical to modern sensibilities. This is followed by a short chorale with intriguing chromaticism. The following alto aria, accompanied by a poignant oboe melody, expresses a plea to "destroy the sinful body, but spare the soul".
  
  In the recitative and aria for tenor, the soul recognizes its salvation in Christ, marking a crucial shift toward hope in the cantata. Accompanied by strings and oboe with a characteristic rhythmic lilt, the music maintains a mournful tone reminiscent of the cantata's opening, devoid of any real joy.
  
  The cantata ends with a simple harmonization of the chorale "Lord Jesus Christ, only comfort, I will turn to you".
  
  Video: J.S. Bach Foundation (St. Gallen) - Workshop (in German) - Contemplation (in German)
  
  
  

• Wo soll ich fliehen hin, BWV 5, 15 October 1724
  
  Chorus: Wo soll ich fliehen hin
  Recitative (bass): Der Sünden Wust hat mich nicht nur befleckt
  Aria (tenor): Ergieße dich reichlich, du göttliche Quelle
  Recitative (alto): Mein treuer Heiland tröstet mich
  Aria (bass): Verstumme, Höllenheer
  Recitative (soprano): Ich bin ja nur das kleinste Teil der Welt
  Chorale: Führ auch mein Herz und Sinn
  
  ("Where shall I flee")
  Text & translation
  
  Scored for four vocal soloists (soprano, alto, tenor, and bass), a four-part choir, tromba da tirarsi (slide trumpet), two oboes, two violins, viola and basso continuo.
  
  Chorale cantata based on the hymn in eleven stanzas "Wo soll ich fliehen hin" by Johann Heermann (1630). The hymn tune is "Auf meinen lieben Gott". The theme of Heermann's chorale and this cantata is the awareness of being a sinner in need of healing, like the paralytic in the story of Matthew. As in many of the cantatas, the theme is a journey from darkness to light, from the burden of sin to salvation.
  
  The opening chorus begins in an agitated and aggressive mood, with deliberately erratic harmonies, echoing the Gospel of Matthew, where Jesus almost reluctantly heals a lame man to prove his qualification for the forgiveness of sins.
  
  A secco recitative is followed by a rather joyful tenor aria, accompanied by an obbligato viola. The tenor recitative announces that sins will be washed away by the holy blood of Christ, and the tenor aria sings of the actual washing away of these sinful stains: "Pour out abundantly, O divine fountain, ah, wash me with bloody streams!" The viola (only one of two times this instrument is used as an obbligato instrument in Bach, used here because it has more "red corpuscles" in its register than the violin) illustrates the washing movement, the gushing of the divine blood - a kind of divine washing machine churning away in a rather visually expressive way. It is a brilliant and very rich aria.
  
  In the central position of the cantata follows an alto recitative, the turning point to hope, with the oboe playing the choral theme over the alto lines. The recitative ends with the statement that Jesus' blood is also a shield from "the devil, death, and sin," and this is further developed in the following aria for bass with obbligato slide trumpet (and full orchestra): "Be silent, host of hell... I need only show you this blood, and suddenly you must be silent!" The virtuoso trumpet blazes fiercely in this ferocious anthem, scattering the forces of evil.
  
  Next, the soprano (sung by a boy in Bach's time) offers a message of innocence and hope in the final recitative, after which the straightforward chorale setting brings the cantata to its close.
  
  Video: J.S. Bach Foundation (St. Gallen) - Workshop (in German) - Contemplation (in German)

• Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen, BWV 56, 27 October 1726
  Aria: Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen
  Recitative: Mein Wandel auf der Welt / ist einer Schiffahrt gleich
  Aria: Endlich wird mein Joch / wieder von mir weichen müssen
  Recitative: Ich stehe fertig und bereit
  Chorale: Komm, o Tod, du Schlafes Bruder
  
  ("I will the cross-staff gladly carry")
  Text & translation
  
  Scored for a bass soloist, a four-part choir (SATB) in the closing chorale, two oboes, taille, two violins, viola, cello, and basso continuo.
  
  Bach composed this cantata for solo bass in his fourth year as Thomaskantor, marking it as part of his third cantata cycle. It is one of the Thomaskantor's better-known cantatas, in part because it is a repertoire piece for baritones and basses, and in part because of its figurative text and wonderfully evocative setting.
  
  The text, written by Christoph Birkmann, a mathematics and theology student in Leipzig who worked closely with Bach, follows the journey of a Christian, expressed in the first person, who willingly carries the cross in following Jesus. Life is portrayed as a journey toward a heavenly port, a subtle reference to the Gospel reading of Jesus traveling by boat. Ultimately, the individual longs for death as the final union with Jesus, a sentiment reinforced by the final chorale stanza "Komm, o Tod, du Schlafes Bruder."
  
  The opening aria casts the singer as Christ's disciple, bearing the weight of the cross and torment until forgiveness is attained. The musical imagery reflects this, with the vocal line reflecting the struggle of carrying a heavy burden, marked by long notes and sighing motifs. The aria, constantly drawn out, seems imbued with infinite weariness and exudes an oppressive atmosphere.
  
  In the first recitative, the journey of life is likened to a journey toward the kingdom of heaven, during which faithful believers endure hardship but remain steadfast. This parallels the Gospel reading from Matthew in which Jesus crosses a lake, and the undulating cello accompaniment vividly evokes the choppy waters.
  
  Continuing the theme of relief, the second aria, a lively and joyous duet for bass, solo oboe and continuo, exudes joy tempered with a longing for death, a characteristic combination in Bach's compositions. The solo part is full of elaborate coloraturas.
  
  The second recitativo accompagnato with strings transitions into an arioso in the middle, reintroducing the last lines of the first aria with a new text: "My Savior himself will wipe away my tears." In the end, the believer longs for death as the final goal, to be united with Jesus. This longing is reinforced by the closing chorale: the stanza "Komm, o Tod, du Schlafes Bruder" from Johann Franck's 1653 hymn "Du, o schönes Weltgebäude" which uses the imagery of a sea voyage and repeats the metaphor of a ship arriving in port.
  
  Video: Netherlands Bach Society - Interview with conductor Bonizzoni /
  J.S. Bach Foundation (St. Gallen) - Workshop (in German) - Contemplation (in German)

Bach Cantata Index

The Rider on the White Horse (1888) by Theodor Storm

The northern parts of the Netherlands and Germany - all the way to Denmark - are boarded by a shallow sea with tidal mud flats and wetlands, as well as a series of small islands. The land here is continually contested by the sea and must be protected behind tall dikes - the landscape was in fact formed by storm tides in the 10th to 14th centuries. At low tide, nowadays mud flat hiking is a popular pastime. For its biological diversity (you can find seals here), the Wadden Sea has been ascribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List.

[The North-Friesian coast in Germany]

It is in this area, along the German coast, that Theodor Storm's novella The Rider on the White Horse (Der Schimmelreiter), written in 1888, is situated. It is, not surprisingly, the story of a dikemaster and his dike, which is battered by a huge storm as well. But the tale starts as a ghost story: a traveler along this North Sea coast is caught in rough weather, and through the wind and rain glimpses a ghostly rider on a white horse, rising and plunging somewhere offshore. He takes shelter at an inn in the area and when he happens to mention the apparition, the local schoolmaster volunteers to tell the history behind it - an alien tale, about a different world.

The story tells of an intelligent and determined young man, Hauke Haien, living in a remote community at the coast, close to these coastal marshlands continually threatened by storms and floods. He has a talent for numbers and a fascination with the ways of water and not surprisingly, becomes an apprentice to the local dikemaster. He soon makes himself indispensable and also falls in love with the daughter, Elke. When the old dikemaster dies, despite his youth, Hauke becomes his successor, and marries Elke.

[Dike in the German Wadden Sea]

Hauke is full of ambition. His study of geometry has taught him that the present dikes with their steep sides towards the sea are not very good - it would be better to have dykes with more gradual profiles. This will also make the village safer.

Dikes are not only built for protection against the sea, they also serve to extend the land for grazing and cultivation. To open up new fields, Hauke orders the construction of a new dike, built on his new principles. But that goes against the wishes of the villagers - it will be much hard work and cost a lot of money before the new fields start bringing in profit. The villagers are also content with the dikes as they are and don't see why a - more laborious and expensive - new technique is necessary. They obey grumbling, as a dikemaster is not easily disobeyed, and the new dike is built, but Hauke stands all alone in the village, distrusted by the community. The fact that he forbids superstitious practices, such as burying something alive in the new dike (a dog), makes the separation only greater, which finally leads to sabotage. He is doing his job to technical perfection, but he forgets the human element. Symbolic for his isolation is the figure he makes when he sits on his white horse, towering high above the other villagers.

[Franz Karl Basler-Kopp (1879–1937): Der Schimmelreiter]

Of course, this is not the end of the story. A huge storm hits the village, and the old dyke is threatened... but read for yourself how this strange and powerful story ends. The climax is full of suspense... let me only say that finally, in death, Hauke becomes a ghost, galloping on his otherworldly horse along his dyke, as the narrator at the beginning of the story saw him.

This is a story of determination and devotion, of pettiness and superstition, of pride and loneliness, of the beauty and indifference of the natural world. Theodor Storm fills his tale with mud slicks, icy marshes, fog banks, raging waves, vulnerable dikes and howling winds, but in the end this is an inner landscape as well, where the savagery that forms the basis of human society is revealed. In this unenlightened universe, a great man pays with his life for his pride and creativity - a very pessimistic conclusion, were it not that his achievement - the new dike - survives his death.

The German original "Der Schimmelreiter" is in the public domain and available at Wikisource and at Zeno.org.

Two 19th c. English translations in the public domain are The Rider on the White Horse by Margarete Muensterberg (Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction) and The Rider of the White Horse by Murial Almon (The German Classics).

A new English translation by James Wright is available from New York Review Books under the title The Rider on the White Horse.

Images from Wikimedia Commons.

"Nadja" by André Breton (Book Review)

Nadja is the most famous literary work of André Breton (1896-1966), the founder of surrealism. Breton published his surrealist manifesto, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism" in 1924, just four years before writing Nadja, which would become one of the iconic works of the surrealist movement.

Nadja is a near-novel that incorporates autobiography, a case study, and surrealist theory. It is decidedly a non-psychological novel, as Breton himself indicates at the beginning (“Happily the days of psychological literature, with all its fictitious plots, are numbered”). Interestingly, Breton has also included black-and-white photographs of Paris streets, buildings and of several drawings, in the same way as W.G. Sebald would do sixty years later.

The book starts with a blend of Surrealist theory, gossip, and Breton's back story. When Nadja appears, the novel shifts to dated diary entries, which take up most of the book, until the ending which is a straightforward epilogue. Besides Nadja, the city of Paris is also an important protagonist, as Breton as a flaneur roams its streets and takes pictures of houses and shop fronts. The book ends with an important and famous statement about beauty: "Beauty will be CONVULSIVE or will not be at all."

[André Breton in 1924 - Photo Wikipedia]

Nadja is a young woman Breton happens to meet on one of his walks through the streets of Paris. He immediately strikes up a conversation with her, and is struck by the fact that she seems the personification of the surrealist ideal. She is a totally free spirit who calls herself a "soul in limbo." She is called Nadja “because in Russian it is the beginning of the word hope." For a Surrealist like Breton, coincidences like the present accidental meeting were very important, as they were events transcending the limits of traditional logic. They spontaneously created new and unexpected connections.

Breton and Nadja meet daily over ten days in the book for bizarre conversations, about Surrealism and art, but also the surrealistic aspects of daily life. Nadja is a desperately poor but lovely woman, with gorgeous eyes outlined in black. She clearly holds power over Breton (who is already married), but although there are indications of a short romance, this is not a love story in the normal sense - Breton is in the first place in love with her bizarreness, her surrealistic attitude towards life. He stops meeting her when he has learned so much about her background that she becomes demystified. You can feel in Breton's prose when the obsession starts waning. But Nadja does not give up so easily and for a time keeps sending him letters with interesting surrealistic drawings (some of which have been reproduced in the novel).

The character of Nadja is based on an actual young woman Breton met in 1926, Léona Camile Ghislaine D. (1902-1941) - their meetings lasted a bit longer than in the book, but in early 1927 Léona was committed to a sanatorium for the mentally ill, where she also would die fifteen years later. So this is in fact a very sad story: Nadja paid with her sanity for her subversion of the rigid norms of society. She could not exist any longer in the normal world. It is rather unfeeling of Breton that he never visits her after her hospitalization (he only rants about the problems of psychiatry which causes more problems than solving them). But he does what Nadja has once asked him: write a book about her.

Andre? Andre? You will write a novel about me. I'm sure you will. Don't say you won't. Be careful: everything fades, everything vanishes. Something must remain of us...

P.S. Nadja was the second novel to appear with embedded photographs. The first one was Bruges-la-Morte by Georges Rodenbach (1892). Besides Sebald, another contemporary author who uses this technique is the Soviet author Leonid Tsypkin (Summer in Baden-Baden, 1981).

Nadja is available from Penguin Books in a translation by Richard Howard. 

"The Gate" by Natsume Soseki (Book review)

The Gate (Mon), published in 1910, is one of Natsume Soseki's most delightful novels, thanks to the warm-hearted portrait of the happy love for each other of a married couple. There are countless novels in world literature about adultery and broken marriages, but how many are there of couples who are simply happy together?

No that the life of this couple, Sosuke and Oyone, is easy. They live in a sort of gentile poverty, Sosuke earns just enough as a low-ranking civil servant to make both ends meet. They rent a rather dark and cheerless house in Tokyo, and have no contact with family, no friends or acquaintances. Their solitary existence is wholly uneventful. You could almost say that they live as recluses in the big city, their gate always closed.

[Gate of Engakuji Temple in Kamakura - as Soseki had connections with Engakuji, this is probably the temple that plays a role in The Gate - see below]

This seclusion has been caused by a dark spot in their lives. When he was a promising student at Kyoto University, Sosuke had a good friend, Yasui. One year after the summer holidays, this Yasui suddenly set up house with a quiet young woman - the author does not make clear whether she was his wife or his girlfriend - and Sosuke also got to know her gradually. This young woman was Oyone. She and Sosuke fell in love and she broke with Yasui to marry Sosuke. This caused a scandal in the university town - these were strict times in which students were supposed to be models of society - and Sosuke was forced to leave university, ending his prospects for a flourishing career. He was also ostracized by his family and, to get away from scandalous rumors, moved with Oyone to Western Japan. Yasui voluntarily left the university to establish himself as a sort of adventurer-business man in Mongolia. Only after several hard years could Sosuke get his present government job and return to Tokyo, the city where he and Oyone were born.

The joint betrayal of Yasui has left both Sosuke and Oyone with a feeling of guilt. They have remained childless, although they would have liked children. Oyone has had three miscarriages, and they ascribe this fate to the "wrongdoing" which was involved in bringing them together. But their shared feeling of guilt also forms a strong bond and they are happy with each other. Their love is the one abiding element in their lives.

Natsume Soseki gives detailed descriptions of their daily life, the halting conversations they have together, and the Tokyo scenery of the late Meiji-period. The atmosphere of their almost featureless days is unfailingly conveyed, but never gets boring thanks to the superior writing. Of course, readers who are looking for dramatic plots are at the wrong address, Japanese literature is not about plot but about atmosphere. That being said, drama is smoldering quietly below the surface of this novel, all connected to the betrayal that has connected Sosuke and Oyone. For example, after the event Sosuke has become sluggish and a procrastinator - he has even allowed his uncle to strip him of part of his inheritance without speaking up. His younger brother, Koroku, who is still at university, used to be financially supported by that uncle, but the money now stops and Koroku comes to live with Sosuke and Oyone, disturbing their quiet routine. Again, it takes time until a solution is found. On a positive note, the solitary Sosuke has come to know their wealthy landlord, Sakai, an extroverted and generous person, who lives on the hill behind their house and has a large family. Sosuke is often invited for a talk by this landlord and that leads to a small drama: Sakai invites him to a dinner where also a man called Yasui, recently returned from Mongolia, will be present...

Sosuke is completely shaken by this news and to avoid the dinner runs off to a Zen monastery in Kamakura, hoping by meditation to find some way out of his anguish. But already in the early 20th century, Zen was so far from the daily lives of ordinary Japanese, that Sosuke had no idea what was waiting for him in the temple. After struggling for ten days in vain with a koan, on a meager diet, he again leaves in despair. He has been unable to open the symbolical three gates of enlightenment (Sangedatsumon), those of emptiness, formlessness and inaction.

But although enlightenment is not waiting for him, nor the worldly success of his neighbor Sakai, he is happy to be quietly home again. Miraculously, most problems, small as they were, have evaporated as non-occurrences: Yasui has returned to Mongolia without causing trouble, a solution has been found for Koroku (who becomes a shosei, a student lodger in the house of the landlord) and although a restructuring is undertaken in the ministry, Sosuke's job is spared and he even gets a small rise.

In the final pages of the novel Sosuke is back with Oyone and settles down again in a quiet vein behind their own gate. Spring is in the air, Sosuke who has just been to the hairdresser, tells Oyone that other customers were talking about hearing the first bush warbler of the year.

Gazing through the glass shoji at the sparkling light, Oyone's face brightened. "What a sight for sore eyes. Spring at last!"
Sosuke had stepped out on the veranda and was trimming his fingernails, which had grown quite long.
"True, but then it will be winter again before you know it," he said, head lowered, as he snipped away with the scissors.

This is a novel without illusions, but filled with a gentle compassion.

Read The Gate in the excellent new translation by William F. Sibley, published by New York Review Books (and replacing the older translation by Francis Mathy in Tuttle Books). Of the Japanese original many editions exist, and it is also available as a free etext at Aozora.  

Hyakumanben, Kyoto

"Hyakumanben" is the crossing between Imadegawa and Higashi-oji streets, near Kyoto University, and there couldn't be a stranger name: "one million times."

In fact, the name belongs to the temple standing in the northeastern corner of the crossing: Chionji, and that means the "one million times" has a religious intent. In 1331 a plague struck Kyoto and all supernatural means to stop it were ineffective, until the priest Kuen of Chionji chanted the "Namu Amida Butsu" incantation one million times... Emperor Godaigo afterwards gave that name to the temple and now it is the designation of the whole neighborhood.

[The spacious grounds of Hyakumanben Chionji]

"Namu Amida Butsu" means "I take my Refuge in the Buddha Amida" and chanting this brief prayer, with faith, was essential to ensure rebirth in the paradise of the Buddha Amida. This was the religious revolution caused by Honen, who considered modern people to be too decadent to be able to reach enlightenment by meditation or other forms of hard practice. In Jodo or Pure Land Buddhism, believers have to chant this so-called "Nembutsu" as many times as possible, the more the better - thus the one million times to stem the plague. Honen's disciple Shinran further simplified the practice, by posing that one recitation in one's lifetime, if done with faith, was sufficient - that is now common in Jodo Shin Buddhism, the New Pure Land sect.

The temple came only to this spot long after the "hyakumanben" event - it was moved here in 1661 from its original location north of the imperial palace - it seems to have been a jinguji, a temple of the Kamo Shrines. The link with Pure Land Buddhism was made because Honen once stayed there when in the capital for missionary work.

[The giant prayer beads]

Chionji is a relaxed temple that makes its spacious grounds often available for secondhand book markets or handicraft markets (on the 15th of every month). There are no great statues or gardens here, but it is a nice place for a casual visit. The main hall is interesting for the huge prayer beads (juzu) hanging along the walls, all around the large building. They are used for the memorial services for Honen.

[Shinshindo]

Being close to Kyoto's major university, Hyakumanben is a nice area with small student cafes and bookshops. My favorite place is Shinshindo ("Notre Pain Quotidien"), a bakery and student cafe where you sit on simple benches at long and heavy wooden tables, scarred by years of use. It is a favorite student haunt, a nice place to write or study. Lots of space to spread out books and newspapers, although now you see most professors and students staring at the screen of their smartphone or tablet. There is also a small shady garden at the back where visitors can take their coffee. The menu is simple and you have to order your coffee with or without milk - they put it in for you (no customizing here), but the atmosphere is nicely nostalgic.

The cafe was founded in 1930 by Tsuzuki Hitoshi, the first Japanese to study for two years authentic French baking in Paris. Do not confuse this academic cafe with the chain of Shinshindo coffee shops you find all over central Kyoto - these are nothing special, although they apparently share the same founder.

[The entrance of Kyoto University close to Hyakumanben]

"The Newton Letter" by John Banville (Best Novellas)

The Newton Letter (1982) is an exquisite novella by John Banville, written in an enigmatic and often cryptic style, about a historian who discovers he is wrong in the interpretation of his relations with others and the world around him, which in its turn brings on a crisis of faith in his work as a historian.

The nameless narrator of The Newton Letter is a historian somewhere in his fifties who has spent seven years writing a book about Isaac Newton. Seeking a quiet place to finish his work, he rents a small cottage at an estate in southern Ireland known as Fern House. Gradually, he neglects his studies as he becomes involved with the family on whose property he is living: the tall, middle-aged Charlotte Lawless, who has a noble but rather abstracted air, and occupies herself with gardening; her husband Edward, a clumsy and inarticulate man who is often drunk; and Otillie, Charlotte's niece, a big, blonde and somewhat graceless woman in her mid-twenties. There is also Michael, the son of Edward and Charlotte, who as later appears has been adopted and whose real mother may be (or not) Otillie.

A rather hot and heavy physical relationship develops with Otillie, but the narrator doesn't feel in love with her and gradually realizes that he is in fact obsessed with the withdrawn and mysterious Charlotte. But he can't get any closer to Charlotte - when he speaks of his love, she is so distracted that she does not hear what he says.

The point is of course that the narrator has got everything wrong about this family. With remarkable skill Banville shows how his imagined history of them is undermined by successive, incremental discoveries of the rather common reality of their lives. This also undermines the authority of the historian's voice with which he has started the tale - he obviously has deduced too much from faint clues. Eventually it brings on a shock that will make him abandon his Newton project and suddenly leave Fern House.

The Newton Letter references another famous novel which is similarly organized around a structural metaphor drawn from the sciences: Elective Affinities by Johann Wolfgang Goethe. Charlotte, Ottilie and Edward share their names with the three main characters of Goethe's novel, and Banville's narrator plays the role of the fourth character, the Major, - the one who stirs things up.

Newton is of course the scientist who discovered the laws of gravity and laid the foundation for classical mechanics  (as a small joke the family of Fern House carries the surname of "Lawless"), but who also in later life turned to the study of biblical chronology and alchemy. The narrator of The Newton Letter believes that the turning point, the breakdown, where Newton gave up science, can be found in an anomalous letter Newton wrote in 1693 to John Locke (the letter is mentioned in the novel, but not cited - in fact, Newton only plays a role as a distant background). Banville stresses that turn-around by the invention of a second Newton letter, in which the scientist abandons the absolutes of time, space and motion, leaving his universe open and ambiguous - just as open and ambiguous as John Banville's novella. At the same time, the reason why the narrator-historian abandons his Newton book, may be that from personal experience he now realizes the danger of making large inferences from small clues such as the original letter by Newton to Locke.

The Newton Letter is a concise but intricate and allusive work that demands the reader's careful and thoughtful attention. It has been written in lyrical, but also very precise prose.

Interestingly, the novella itself has been written in the form of a letter to a person called Clio - and not accidentally, Clio is the muse of history.

The Newton Letter by John Banville has been published by Picador.

Also see my review of Goethe's novel.

Best Novellas

The Black Spider (1842) by Jeremias Gotthelf

While the English in the 19th century were churning out unwieldy, three volume novels because the market in the shape of the omnipresent lending libraries demanded it, the Germans (and others writing in the German language) were free to pursue shorter forms, such as the novella. And indeed, the novella flourished in Germany and many of the best works of the 19th century are exquisite stories of novella length.

One of the best novellas was written by a Swiss pastor writing under the pseudonym Jeremias Gotthelf (his real name was Albert Bitzius): The Black Spider (Die schwarze Spinne), dating from 1842. The Black Spider is a horror story imbued with Christian mythology.

[Franz Karl Basler-Kopp: Die schwarze Spinne]

The story starts with a frame tale: a christening is being celebrated in a smart farmhouse in a Swiss village. It is a beautiful day and the guests are enjoying the food and drink. Then one guest notes that a blackened, old post has been built into a new window frame of the farm house. He asks the reason for this anomaly and a wise grandfather who has always lived in the house, proceeds to tell the tale behind this phenomenon. It is a chilling story and the audience listens in appalled silence.

Centuries ago, a cruelly overbearing manor lord asked an impossible service of the villagers, to plant the lane in front of his castle with scores of trees that had to brought from a far-away mountain, and that all in a very short time. When the villagers were discussing their oppressive burden, a mysterious stranger with a red beard and green hunting hat came by and offered his help. The villagers were wary of the uncanny man, but when he repeated his offer to Christine, a strong and willful woman, she accepted on their behalf. There was of course a pay-off, a terrible one: the villagers would have to give the first new-born baby to the hunter, before it was baptized. To seal the deal, the mysterious man - who was none other than Satan - gave Christine a kiss on her cheek. 

And he kept his word: using his demonic powers he transported the trees in no-time from the mountain side to the castle - and then asked for his reward. But Christine and the farmers cheated on him: as soon as a child was born, the priest immediately baptized it so that it was saved from the clutches of the devil. But at the same time Christine felt a burning pain on her cheek: where the hunter had kissed her, a black spot appeared that grew larger and larger, and finally changed into a black spider. When next again a child was saved by immediately baptizing it, the black spot broke open and countless small black spiders escaped into the village, where they killed the cattle and also attacked humans. 

Things got worse. Christine tried to stop the spider plague by taking the next baby to the mysterious hunter, but was stopped in her tracks by the priest who again baptized it just in time with holy water. Christine who had been touched by the same water, shrank away and turned into a huge black spider, killing the priest and setting upon the villagers. 

I won't divulge how this disaster is finally averted - how the spider is caught and pushed into a hole in the black old pillar, which is then safely locked behind a piece of wood. But human beings are innately stupid - a few centuries later a curious person lets out the spider and the same disaster is repeated. Will the villagers this time be more wise and leave evil alone?

[Woman Reading Gotthelf, by Albert Anker (1884)]

The Black Spider is an unforgettably creepy tale that is as appealing today as when it was written in the mid-19th century. It is a parable of good and evil, in which evil is painted in glaring colors - both evil in the heart of human beings and evil rampant in society. It is also a vision of cosmic horror in the style of Lovecraft, or, as Thomas Mann interpreted it, as a sort of foretelling of the horrors of Nazism. 

The German original is out of copyright and can be found at Wikisource.

An English translation by Susan Bernofsky can be found in New York Review Books. 

"The Island of Dr. Moreau" by H.G. Wells (Best Novellas)

Early in his career H.G. Wells wrote the six "scientific romances" for which he today is known in the first place - his later, realistic novels are all but forgotten, as are his short stories (in both cases, this is at least in part unjustified). But in fact, many of these early SF novellas carry strong political or sociological messages, like his later work that was often inspired by socialism. They are not the pure entertainment or escapism that Hollywood makes of them in its many empty movie versions. In The Time Machine, for example, Wells is not so much interested in the time machine in itself (or how it works), but he wanted to show his readers how the industrial relations of his day - with haves and have-nots - could in the future very well develop in two different races of man, the "lower" one literally living below the earth. It was his originality to bring a time traveler on stage to show that future.

It was not the scientific argument that is important to Wells, he was not interested in connecting the lines of technological development towards the feature, but he used his romances in the first place for political and sociological commentary, or to try out a philosophical hypothesis: what would happen, if... This in contrast to Jules Verne, who did make future scientific developments the focus of his books (although Verne's "science" is often quite faulty). Happily, Wells also could tell a good story and he was never preachy.

The best and most genuinely horrific of these early novellas is in my view The Island of Dr Moreau (1896), because here the message is more generalized: a warning against scientific hubris and a parable on Darwinian theory.

The problem that Dr. Moreau tempted to solve was: "Can we by surgery (vivisection) so accelerate the evolutionary process as to make man out of a beast in a few days or weeks?"

The narrator, Edward Prendick, is shipwrecked and rescued by a passing boat that carries a very unusual cargo - a menagerie of savage animals. Their keeper Montgomery nurses him back to health, but Prendick is worried by Montgomery's weird servant, who seems to have animalistic qualities. Prendick is taken to the ship's destination, an uncharted Pacific island, where he is introduced to Montgomery's master, the sinister Dr. Moreau - a questionable scientist earlier chased out of England for torturing animals in notorious experiments in vivisection. As Prendick now gradually learns, Dr. Moreau has perfected surgical techniques by which he can accelerate evolution. Under Dr Moreau's Darwinian scalpel, animals are painfully raised to quasi-humanity. With the assistance of Montgomery, who is an outlawed medical student, Dr Moreau has succeeded in producing some creditable parodies of humanity by his operations on pigs, bulls, dogs and even panthers. These hyena-swine and mutant ape-men walk on their hind legs, have mastered rudimentary language, and can even be taught to do simple work as servants. But when Prendick sits in the room to which he has been confined, he hears the most terrible cries of tortured animals from the doctor's lab. Not able to sit still, he ventures outside the compound, although that has been strictly forbidden as too dangerous.

In the jungle, Prendick stumbles upon a colony of the beastly creations of the sadistic doctor: the cut up and remolded creatures (Dr. Moreau fits parts of different animals together) somehow have the appearance and intelligence of humans, but are unstable in the sense that they have to be maintained at that level by the exercise of discipline and the constant recital of "the Law" (a sort of Ten Commandments forbidding animal-type behavior). When they are completely left to themselves they gradually revert to the habits and manners of the individual beasts out of which they have been carved. They may never drink blood, as that would make them revert immediately to animal status. If one of them happens to show animal behavior, the poor beast will be carried off to Dr. Moreau's lab, something which they fear very much because of the sadistic infliction of pain that takes place there. The doctor on purpose performs his painful operations without the use of anesthesia - a way of keeping his creatures in check by making them afraid of pain. In other words, this hybrid race is being kept in check by fear... and as happens in dictatorial situations, they worship Doctor Moreau like a god - their cruel God.

Of course, one day things go wildly wrong - Dr. Moreau is killed by a puma he is operating on in particularly cruel way, the prohibitory laws are disobeyed, the difficult equilibrium breaks down, and in open rebellion the hybrids revert to their original nature.

This is a haunting tale, where also the doctor's strange creations are not simply monsters, but in the first place victims and where even the mad doctor is not so much a through-and-through bad guy as a misguided scientist whose technology runs ahead of morality. That is something that still happens today, making Well's story with its moral that technology itself can be problematic, still valid for us. And above all the story poses the important question what it means to be human - and shows us how inhuman it is to use violence on animals. To close with a quote from another author, Milan Kundera:

"...animals have accompanied human life since time immemorial. Facing his neighbor, man is never free to be himself; the power of the one limits the freedom of the other. Facing an animal, man is who he is. His cruelty is free. The relation between man and animal constitutes an eternal background to human life, a mirror (a dreadful mirror) that will never leave it."   [From Encounter, Essays, by Milan Kundera, p. 177, published by Faber and Faber] 

P.S. By the way, two years after the publication of The Island of Dr. Moreau the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection was founded.

Read The Island of Dr. Moreau on the internet, or download it in epub or kindle format. There is an edited and annotated edition available in Penguin Books.

"The Gate of Angels" by Penelope Fitzgerald (1990)

Penelope Fitzgerald (1916-2000) has been called a writers writer - she wrote extremely fine novels which however have not been embraced by a wider group of readers (real quality is after all only valued by connoisseurs). Penelope Fitzgerald only started writing novels when she was past sixty and over two decades managed to create an exquisite oeuvre of nine novels and two short story collections. Her most famous work is perhaps The Blue Flower about a love affair of the 18th-century German poet and philosopher Novalis (see my post about this novel).

[Penelope Fitzgerald - Photo Wikipedia]

The Blue Flower has some uncanny elements, which are lacking in The Gate of Angels, a novel set at Cambridge University in 1912, when the modern age and modern science are knocking on the venerable doors of its lecture halls. The world was about to change from a world governed by god into a universe governed by the laws of physics.

Fred Fairly, a junior fellow at the (fictional) College of St. Angelicus, is happy about that - he believes that science will soon explain everything. Reason will conquer the mysteries of the world and the demands of the soul will be seen for what they in fact are: a distraction. Fred is a pure scholar, a country vicar's son who has lost his faith, and his whole life is filled with science. He has no girlfriend and, anyway, the College he happens to belong to does not allow its fellows to marry (it was founded long ago by monks). Women are also not allowed inside the college.

Then Daisy Saunders, a working girl, comes into his life. They are accidental fellow cyclists on a dark country road and get involved in a freakish accident with a horse-drawn farm cart. Both unconscious victims are taken in by a family living close to the place of the accident, and so the virginal Fred finds himself in one and the same bed with Daisy - he has never been so close to a woman before, and also never has met one so outspoken and at the same time, so mysterious (she wears a wedding ring, which is the reason why they are put in the same bed, but as she explains later, the ring was a fake which served to ward off aggressive males during her commutes in London, where she worked as a nurse). The nurse-business also means she knows what a man looks like, and has no false shame. Although they are from very different walks of life (England was still a strict class society in 1912) and an accident was necessary to bring them together, Fred is smitten with her. Unfortunately, the next morning she is gone, and Fred starts a frantic search for her - at which a satisfying plot unfolds, with some nice mysteries to be solved, and a finale that has been taken from the traditions of the comedy (the end seems open, but in fact is not - Fitzgerald rightly skips spelling out the obvious).

There is a strong postmodern feel to this novel,  a delicious playing with conventions. The most interesting of these is the presence of one Dr. Matthews, an antiquarian and Cambridge scholar who is clearly modeled on M.R. James, who also happened to be a famous writer of ghost stories.

[M.R. James - Photo Wikipedia]

M.R. James was a conservative Christian who was even against women entering Cambridge University. In the present novel, in the guise of Dr. Mathews he represents those who believe in the soul and the unseen and he even entertains us with an original ghost story - a ghost lurking close to the place of the cycle accident. The presence of this conservative scholar gives Fitzgerald the opportunity to address the position of women and the struggle in which they were engaged early in the 20th century to be allowed to go to university and have the same rights as men.

Fred Fairly in fact works under a professor who is skeptic about the atom and any other "unobservables," bringing the dichotomy between what can be seen with the eyes and what not, also inside the walls of academia. Working with "unobservables" will lead to randomness and ultimately chaos, the conservative science professor believes. On the other hand, Fred who has no belief, at a debating club has to argue the opposite of what he believes, and makes an excellent case for the separate existence of the mind. But he also is interested in atoms, and in fact, his random collision with Daisy is like a collision of subatomic particles in a physicist's laboratory.

And then the "Gate of Angels." This is the name of the gate of Fairly's St. Angelicus College, and at the end of the novel Daisy enters it by mistake and therefore is able to save the life of the Master of the College, who has fallen down in the courtyard because of a sudden heart attack. So she becomes a saving angel - and the random delay saves her happiness.

The Gate of Angels is published by Fourth Estate, London.

To the Heart of Daimonji (Daimonjiyama, Kyoto)

Daimonji is the mountain in eastern Kyoto boasting the huge character for "Dai", "Big" that plays the central role during the "Gozan Okuribi" festival on August 16 when it goes up in a huge blaze at eight o'clock sharp. During that festival five huge bonfires are lit in the evening on Kyoto's eastern and northern hills. In mid-August the spirits of the deceased return to the earth for a brief visit. They are welcomed with offerings on the Buddhist home altars, but on the 16th they must depart again and the fires are meant to guide them back to the other world. The 446 m. high mountain looms up behind the Silver Pavilion, but you don't have to be satisfied with looking at it from groundlevel. It is relatively easy to climb and, standing in the heart of the "Dai," you will have a magnificent view of the old capital.

[View of Kyoto from Daimonjiyama. The green patch in front is Mt Yoshida with Shinnyodo, the one behind that Gosho, the old palace; the narrow one on the right is the Shimogamo Shrine]

I had been there before, many years ago, so long that I could not remember the path up the mountain anymore, nor the stone steps near the top. And in my memory the "Dai" was a grassy field, while in present-day reality it appeared to be rather overgrown and the face of the hill much steeper than I thought.

At the point where I stood was an altar dedicated to Kobo Daishi (774-835), the founder of Shingon Buddhism and perhaps the most famous Buddhist cleric Japan has known. He is credited with all kinds of inventions and too numerous temple foundings to be true and to my surprise also with establishing the custom of the Daimonji fires. Apparently he had a vision of the Amida statue of Jodoji (the temple that stood here before Ginkakuji was built) flying up into the air with a flash of light, so he started lighting the annual send-off fires in commemoration. This is clearly nothing more than a pious legend, but Daimonji still starts every year at 19:00 by lighting lanterns and chanting sutras at the Kobodaishi Hall. The light from the lanterns is then used to light the fires on the mountain.

[The center of Daimonji with the altar of Kobo Daishi]

There are in fact two more explanations of the origins of the Daimonji bonfires. The second explanation also smacks of the legendary, if only because an important historical figure is involved, Ashikaga Yoshimasa (1436-1490), the founder of Ginkakuji. Yoshimasa reputedly started the custom to commerate the death of his son, who was killed in battle in 1489. He had one of his retainers engrave the character Dai on the hillface behind Ginkakuji and set it ablaze in August 16 to send off the soul of his son. It is true that you have a great view of Mt Daimonji from the area north of the old Kyoto Imperial Palace (Gosho), where the Ashikaga shoguns had their "Palace of Flowers", but Yoshimasa was at that time already living in his Higashiyama mansion, now Ginkakuji, directly below the hill from where he could not see the Dai shape. Moreover, this would be only a one time event and does not explain how the bon fire came to be celebrated annually by the whole city, not only here, but also by fires in various other shapes on Kyoto's hills.

Thus we turn to the third explanation, that the Daimonji Okuribi festival was in fact started by the townspeople of Kyoto. Even here an Imperial Prince, Konoe, makes his appearance as calligrapher of the character Dai. Japan is a hierarchical society where apparently everything has to be linked to someone of importance in order to be important enough to consider. But we do not need princes or priests to understand Daimonji. This third explanation is the right one: Daimonji and the other bonfires on Kyoto's hills originated among commoners, among ordinary townfolk. A supporting fact is, that there is no official account of its origin, despite that the court chronicled all other seasonal activities.

Of course, the Gozan Okuribi is part of the Bon festivities which cover a week in mid-August and which were first recorded for the 16th century. This is the time the souls of the ancestors are welcomed back to the earth, to be regaled with food and incense. In the end, they are sent off again with small bonfires in the streets and by hanging out countless lanterns. So O-bon has always been a Festival of Light, of Ten-thousand Lamps (Manto-e). The step to lighting large bonfires on the hills, where all could see them, instead of small ones in the city itself, seems a natural one - it was also made possible by the rise of neighborhood associations who would built those fires together. This blowing up of the Festival of Light may also have been motivated by fear of angry spirits due to the many wars in the Muromachi period, such as the devastating Onin War in the late 15th. c.

[The fires are built on these stones]

The first mention of Daimonji comes from a diary dating from 1603. In the mid of the 17th c., when Japan was at peace and tourism became a popular pastime, the large bonfires on the hills of Kyoto became famous - but by then the origin had already been forgotten. This is also the period the theory about Ashikaga Yoshimasa first appeared.

Another mystery is the character Dai, "large." Why this character? Is it a human with outstretched hands? Or the halo of the Buddha Amida? The answer can be found in Rokuharamitsuji, a beautiful old temple in central Kyoto, where during O-bon many small lights in the Dai-shape are lighted. According to this temple, the Dai represents the four elements Earth, Fire, Water and Wind, plus a fifth one, Air, and so stands for all of Nature, for respect for the ancestors and fear for of the natural forces around us.

The character Dai that has been encrusted on the hill face is huge. The horizontal stroke measures 80 meters across, the longer vertical stroke is a full 160 meters. This is the first fire to be lit during the festival, exactly at 20:00. In the past the fires would be built in pits, now the wood is carefully piled up on stone foundations. It takes 600 piles of firewood, 100 piles of pine tree leaves and 100 piles of straw to light Daimonji. Mixed in are gomagi, pieces of wood on which people write a wish - you can buy a gomagi in the morning and afternoon of the festival in front of Jodoji Temple, next to Ginkakuji.

[Daimonji bonfire]

Daimonji has found its way into the hearts of the people of Kyoto, as is shown by several beliefs that have come up concerning it. For one thing, you should try to catch the reflection of the bonfire in your sake cup and then make a wish - that wish will certainly come true. Another belief is that the remnants of the fires, small pieces of charred wood, become powerful amulets. Many people therefore climb up Daimonji to find them on the day after the festival.

Dusk is falling, I have to hurry to get down the mountain... I start walking after one last look at the city, peaceful in the rays of the setting sun...

Mt Daimonji can be freely climbed, except on the day of the festival. The path starts at the back of Ginkakuji. In front of Ginkakuji, facing the hill, turn left; take the first right; and the first right again; you are now at the back of Ginkakuji. Where the valley ends, a path to the right leads up the mountain. The steps can be quite steep; the last section is a stone staircase. Wear good shoes and don't go when the path is too wet and slippery.

Best places for viewing the Daimonji bonfire are from the northern part of Kyoto, for example along the Shimogamo River, near the Shimogamo Shrine, etc.

The other bonfires are: the charachter Myo on Mt Mantoro and the character Ho on Mt Daikokuten - together these form the words "Wonderful Law," pointing to the Buddhism of the Nichiren sect; a ship sailing with souls towards the Pure Land of the Buddha on Mt Funayama; a smaller character for Dai on Mt Okita; and the shape of a torii-gate on Mt Mandara, symbolizing the Atago Shrine in northwest Kyoto.

"The Golovlyov Family" by Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin (1880)

There exists one great 19th century Russian novel almost nobody knows. I am not talking of Oblomov, which by now is reasonable famous, but about The Golovlyov Family (Gospoda Golovlyovy), a novel written by the satirist Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin. Note that the writer, who was also a civil administrator and magazine editor, was called Mikhail Saltykov (1826-1889), but used the pen name "Shchedrin." Those two names are therefore often coupled with a hyphen, but the author can also be called just by his pen name as "Shchedrin."

[Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, portrait from Wikipedia]

The Golovlyov Family is one of the darkest Russian novels ever written. It tells the story of a land-owning family, in three generations, that destroys itself before the reader's eyes. Why? Because they waste their lives in pettiness, stinginess, faked religiousness and, finally, vodka. The lives of all characters in this novel are meaningless and pointless. They all die miserably, almost one per chapter.

The place where they live is just as desolate as their lives: an endless and dreary plain, full of mud, far from civilization. It either rains or snows. The house of the Golovlyovs is like the land: gloomy and depressing. There is also nothing to do here, life is one stretch of unrelieved boredom, the characters are just vegetating. One by one the family members fail in their endeavors in the outside world, and are sucked back to the remote estate, only to perish in misery.

Everything in the novel is related to the family's decay, an unrelieved catalog of mistrust, misdeeds and wretchedness. No opportunity for meanness is missed. The core of the novel consists of a series of conversational duels between the main characters, where they try to manipulate each other. Shchedrin has paid much attention to these dialogues: the speech of each character has its own genuine flavor.

There was frequent discussion about nihilism in the works of, for example, Turgenev and Dostoevsky, but one could say that The Golovlyov Family shows nihilism in operation. Or rather, what we find here is not even nihilism (as a philosophy), it just total emptiness, the absence of any values. It is the absolute void. And it is from this emptiness that evil is born, rather than from any "positive" maliciousness.

Besides the matriarch, Arina Petrovna Golovlyov (who is a tough sort of tyrant, controlling the estate with an iron hand, while treating here own children and others in a mean and stingy way - and who becomes a sort of King Lear after she releases power), Shchedrin's most original creation is Porphyry, one of her sons - nicknamed "Little Judas (Iudushka)," he is surely the greatest hypocrite in world literature. Porphyry is an unfeeling wretch who babbles on all the time in self-righteous and pseudo-pious talk, about family, work or duty, He can't keep his mouth shut for a moment. He continually calls on God to sanction all his misdeeds and lies spontaneously, without principles. He just prattles on in verbal incontinence and this useless prattle has smothered his feelings. His words have no meaning, because Porphyry has no morals, something which is made clear when we see his indifference to the suicide of his son and the suffering of others. In contrast to hypocrites in the French sense, like Tartuffe, who pretend to lead a proper life while playing the seducer when nobody watches, this is a Russian type of hypocrite, as Shchedrin tells us: one who thrives in the absence of fundamental principles.

When all this may seem off-putting, The Golovlyov Family is, on the contrary, a great read. It is a grim comedy, written in an intense style. Shchedrin is indeed a very accomplished author, whose lively novel is a strong protest against the greed, hypocrisy, falsehood, treachery and stupidity he saw around him.

The Golovlyov Family has been published by New York Review Books, in a translation by Natalie Duddington.

Kyoto Imperial Palace (Gosho)

From 794, when Kyoto was founded as Heian-kyo, to 1869, the Emperor of Japan lived in Kyoto, encircled by not only his household and courtiers, but also a whole government apparatus. What is now an almost empty green zone, used to be the busy economic, political and ritual focus of the city. It is amazing that so little is left of it, the wooden structures without heavy foundations just have faded away, together with the people who lived and worked here. Another surprise are the frailty of the defenses - just a simple wall - demonstrating how little contested the imperial position was during Japan's long history. There has been only one attack, in 1864, on the Hamagurimon outside the palace proper, and that was not aimed at the emperor as the assailants only wanted to offer him a petition.

[The Shishinden, seen through the vermilion corridor]

Despite those peaceful circumstances, the present palace is not the original one. Fires and earthquakes took their repeated toll and the original 9th c. palace, which stood two kilometers to the west (a stone monument points incongruously at its location in what is now the busy Senbondori shopping street) was definitely abandoned in the mid-14th century. As that original palace was for a long time already in bad shape, provisional palaces (satodairi) had sprung up all over the city, as living and ceremonial quarters for the homeless court, and the present Imperial Palace was one of those, called Tsuchimikado-Higashinotoin-dono. Originally a residence of the Fujiwara family, close relatives of the imperial family, it became the one and only palace at the ascension to the throne of Emperor Kogon in 1331.

That does not mean we are now looking at the original 14th c. structures, far from it. Fires continued consuming wooden structures, the palace underwent numerous reconstructions. The last great fire raged in 1854 and almost all present buildings date from 1855.

[Shin-Kuruma-yose, a porch built in 1914 for the Emperor's car]

There are a great number of structures inside the long earthen wall that encloses the palace proper. In the first place there are six gates in the wall, it depended on your status where you could enter. The imposing main gate, Kenreimon, in the south wall was only for the Emperor himself. Kenshunmon on the lower east side was originally for imperial messengers, the Gishumon on the east side was for ministers, court nobles and close family members of the emperor, the Seishomon also on the east side for children of the royal family but it also served as a sort of service entrance. The final two gates, on the upper east and north sides gave entry to the residence of the empress.

Inside the precincts, the building order is one of increasing privacy from south to north. In other words, we first have the hall of state for official receptions, then the living quarters of the emperor himself, and at the back the residences of his empresses and concubines.

[In line in front of the Shishinden]

The main official structure and most imposing building of the palace is called Shishinden. Here annual rituals were held and it was also used for enthronement ceremonies - lastly so for the Showa Emperor. Behind the thrones are panels with illustrations of Chinese sages. It stands turned toward the south, the direction in which emperors and rulers always faced in China. The hall has a thatched roof made of very thick layers of cypress bark. The Dantei, the South garden in front of the Shishinden was also used for ceremonies and is a solemn expanse of white gravel with a cherry tree to the right and an orange tree to the left of the hall.

The Shodaibu-no-ma is a series of three waiting rooms, in which visitors were divided according to rank - the lowest had to be content with the Room of Cherry Trees, while those of top rank were allowed to feed their self-esteem in the Room of Tigers.

The Seiryoden faces east instead of south and although this used to be the emperor's residence in Heian times (still visible because of the sliding doors that could partition the room into private spaces), later it came to be used for ceremonies. In the center of this hall a throne has been placed as well. The Kogosho was a ceremonial hall for the use of the crown prince - it dates from only 1958 as the old one burned down due to a piece of fireworks that landed here by mistake from outside the palace.

[Shishinden]

Ogakumonjo is a study room, also used for poetry parties, and the Otsune-goten, finally, was the emperor's residence, containing fifteen rooms and thus quite spacious. Like the Seiryoden, this building faces east, towards the rising sun, the land of Amaterasu, in mythology the imperial ancestor.

Farther north of this are the quarters of the empress and her court ladies, but these are never shown to the public.

[The classical garden]

In front of the Kogosho and Otsune-goten stretches a large, classical landscape garden (Oike-niwa), with a pond and stone bridges and shady pine trees. Apparently, the Meiji Emperor missed this garden most of all after the move to what had been the shogun's castle in Tokyo.

Although situated right in the middle of the busy city, the palace is extremely quiet and peaceful and visitors take home a whiff of the solemnity that still imparts it.

Access: Kyoto Gosho is administered by the Imperial Household Agency and open to the public in the form of guided tours. Written permission has to be obtained in advance - see here for the procedure. In addition, Gosho is open to the general public for five days in spring and in autumn - at that time no permits are required. Get there by the Kyoto subway, Imadegawa or Marutamachi St.

"The Skin" by Curzio Malaparte (review)

When you like Celine, you may also like the Italian author Curzio Malaparte, who wrote the same type of delirious and amoral prose about war, destruction and degradation. And just as in the case of Celine, you need a strong stomach and a very thick skin to survive this verbal onslaught. The Skin contains many passages of savage invective and toxic stereotypes and is a sustained assault on every kind of piety and political correctness. When it was published in 1944, The Skin was immediately placed on the index of prohibited books maintained by the Vatican. Recently, New York Review Books have published the first complete and unadulterated English edition.

The Skin (La Pelle) is a near-novel, a mixture of autobiography, reportage and fantastical elements. The narrator has the same name as the author (but is of course not the same, although it remains unclear how much both differ in their opinions) and is an Italian liaison officer working in 1943 with the Americans at the time of the liberation of Naples - the first major city in Italy and in Europe to be liberated by the Allied forces. His friend and colleague is Jack, an American colonel who likes to speak French as often as he can. The novel is a surrealistic tale about the degradation of values in Naples, where everything is for sale after the city has been liberated by the Allied forces (a universal human trait).

The title refers to Malaparte's comment that once people have lost all spiritual values, they are only out to save their own skin. 

“Our skin, this confounded skin... you've no idea what a man will do, what deeds of heroism and infamy he can accomplish, to save his skin . . . They think they are fighting and suffering to save their souls, but in reality they are fighting and suffering to save their skins, and their skins alone.”

The fact that Malaparte works with the Americans provides ample room for intercultural comparisons, unfailingly given with a lot of smirking irony. The Americans are innocent, simple-minded, blandly Christian, optimistic and generous, but also shallow and uncultivated, while the Italians despite their hunger and squalor feel culturally superior. Malaparte praises the Americans so much that his overdone praise and false admiration change into pure irony. He in fact sees them as a plague — a moral plague that sweeps Naples like the terrible illness of the body in the Middle Ages.

Much of the bad state of affairs in Naples is caused by the unholy combination of a victorious army in a city where everyone is poor and literally starving. It is like a seething ruin filled with jackals. So countless women fall into prostitution, not only from the city but from everywhere in Italy - there is a long line of women traipsing to Naples to earn a few dollars. The ideal situation is to have your daughter entice a soldier to your home, where he will shower everyone with canned foods, chocolate and other delicacies. There exists a fierce competition for soldiers. Catching an American soldier means food and dollars. The population stages a frantic show of welcoming the liberating army, “singing, clapping, jumping for joy amid the ruins of their houses, unfurling foreign flags which until the day before had been emblems of their foes.”

In one particularly surreal chapter, rare fish are served on silver platters to assembled officers and their important guests at a banquet. It appears those fish have been removed from the Naples aquarium, as it is impossible to fish in the bay because of the presence of mines. One of the fish encircled with a wreath of coral is a "siren fish" and looks suspiciously like the body of a young child - horror straight out of Dali. The diners suddenly feel ill and have the dish removed.

Another unreal scene occurs when Malaparte recounts an earlier experience he had during the war (he could travel rather freely through Axis-controlled territory as a journalist for a major Italian newspaper). In the summer of 1941 he traveled on horseback in the Ukraine, through a countryside infested by gangsters and marauders. Towards evening he rides through a deep forest and hears eerie voices calling out to him from above. Looking up, he sees that men are hanging crucified on all the trees along his path. They snarl at the pity he shows, some even beg to be shot. They are Jews, and this is one of the many undocumented pogroms that took place all over Eastern Europe. The next day, Malaparte has to return along the same route. He listens for voices, but the forest is strangely quiet. Looking up, he sees that crows are sitting on the shoulders of the crucified men...

Malaparte owned a famous house in Capri, situated on a promontory overlooking the Mediterranean, which he designed himself between the years 1938 and 1942. It has been called the most beautiful house in the world and was used by Godard as a location for his film Le Mepris (Contempt) - with an iconic scene of Brigitte Bardot sunbathing on the large, flat roof with its pyramidal stone steps. The house also features in The Skin, where the anecdote is told of a visit to the house by the German Field Marshal Rommel. The legendary "Desert Fox" asked if the author had designed the house himself. Malaparte pointed at the seascape, seen through the large windows, and answered: "I only did the scenery." When Rommel left, he kept glancing back suspiciously, apparently feeling that his leg had been pulled.

As if war alone is not enough, the book also contains a devastating eruption of the Vesuvius (which really took place in 1944) and some gruesome war scenes when the Allied army chases the Germans out of Rome and the northern Italian cities. When they reach Florence, an Italian man overjoyed to see the liberators, rushes towards the convoy and is crushed beneath the caterpillar wheels of a Sherman tank. What is left over, is so flat that it seems as if both clothes and skin have been neatly ironed. Malaparte remembers another similar occasion, where bystanders took part of the skin of the flattened man and waved it in the sky like a flag - another reference to the title of the novel.

And as everywhere in Europe, accounts are settled as soon as the occupied cities have been liberated. A group of partisans has cornered a number of teenage boys, followers of Mussolini, and gloatingly kill them off, the blood splashing down the steps of the church where the massacre takes place. Malaparte also sees Mussolini hanging by his feet from a hook, “bloated, white, enormous.”

The book is full of such cruel anecdotes, told with a combination of irony, disgust and grim playfulness.

Malaparte ("Bad Side," an ironic reflection on the name "Bonaparte") was born Kurt Erich Suckert (1898-1957) from an Italian mother and German father. He fought in WWI and in the 1920s became a sympathizer of Mussolini, whom he joined in the march on Rome. Along with many in the European avant-garde, Malaparte embraced fascism because of its celebration of violence. After having experienced WWI, he saw death and destruction as something beautiful, a dangerous sentiment which paved the way for the outrages and terrible crimes of the Fascists and the Nazis.

But Malaparte was also a strong individualist who could not feel at home in any mass movement (and, it should be said, he probably was also a slippery opportunist) and from around 1933 he seems to have offended Mussolini with his independence of opinion and suffered several years of banishment. Later he was allowed to continue his journalistic work (for example, traveling to the Eastern front with the German army), but continued to be viewed with suspicion. And when the Allied Forces arrived in Naples, Malaparte effected a major shift in loyalty and joined the victors as a liaison officer - just like his alter ego, the Malaparte in The Skin.

Besides The Skin, Malaparte also wrote the novel Kaputt about his wartime experiences in the years immediately before 1943 - a book that is just as strong. Both were long neglected because of Malaparte's obnoxious association with Fascism. But in these two novels, perhaps thanks to his peculiar and ambiguous position, Malaparte manages to give an authentic picture of the cruel chaos of wartime Europe from an unusual viewpoint.

The Skin was translated by David Moore and has been published by New York Review Books. The same publisher also brought out a translation of Kaputt.