Of poems, poets – and the Age of Victoria
I like this Ode by Horace; it is translated by John Dryden:
Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call today his own:
He who, secure within, can say,
Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.
Be fair or foul or rain or shine
The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine.
Not Heaven itself upon the past has power,
But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.
(Odes, Book 3, Verse 29)
Here is the original Latin:
ille potens sui
laetusque deget, cui licet in diem
dixisse “vixi: cras vel atra
nube polum Pater occupatovel sole puro; non tamen irritum,
quodcumque retro est, efficiet neque
diffinget infectumque reddet,
quod fugiens semel hora vexit.
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As I make my (mesmerized) way through Hilary Mantel’s historical novel Wolf Hall, I have encountered, among the throng of characters peopling this fast-paced, harrowing narrative, Sir Thomas Wyatt. Wyatt wrote one of my favorite sonnets:
THE LOVER DESPAIRING TO ATTAIN UNTO
HIS LADY’S GRACE RELINQUISHETH THE PURSUIT.Whoso list to hunt ? I know where is an
hind !
But as for me, alas ! I may no more,
The vain travail hath wearied me so sore ;
I am of them that furthest come behind.
Yet may I by no means my wearied mind
Draw from the deer ; but as she fleeth afore
Fainting I follow ; I leave off therefore,
Since in a net I seek to hold the wind.
Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt
As well as I, may spend his time in vain !
And graven with diamonds in letters plain,
There is written her fair neck round about ;
‘ Noli me tangere ; for Cæsar’s I am,
And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.’
I love the concluding couplet. How powerfully it conveys the extreme danger of the poet’s quest! In Wolf Hall, the reader discovers the identity of the object of this anguished expression of subjugated longing.
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In the process of composing this post, I stumbled upon Luminarium. I could spend days – nay, weeks or months exploring this content!
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Up until I began reading Wolf Hall, I was deeply engrossed in the Victorians. This preoccupation came about as a result of listening to Patrick Allitt lecturing on the subject (The Teaching Company: Victorian Britain). In Part One of this series, Professor Allitt begins by discoursing on what he terms “the Victorian paradox.” From there, he moves on to the life and character of Queen Victoria. Next comes fascinating lectures on the industrial revolution and parliamentary reform. These are followed by several even more fascinating lectures on women in the Victorian era. Professor Allitt then moves on to the religious life – and strife – of the Victorians.
Finally, he comes to the subject of poverty and the working conditions in mines, mills, and factories and the diseases endemic to those who toiled there, including children. This section was a veritable catalog of horrors. Although I was listening alone in the car, I nevertheless could not refrain from exclaiming aloud, viz. “What – how atrocious! How could they!”
Photo from the archives of the Shaftsebury-Grooms Society
At that point, I though I had “supped full with horrors” – and then the Professor described the ghastly treatment of the chimney sweeps. (See “Ideas of Childhood in Victorian Children’s Fiction” from the incredibly rich site Victorian Web; and “Pity the Poor Chimney Sweeps” from Suite 101. )
So now I am silently begging, no more, no more…and we come to the potato famine in Ireland.
At one point in this appalling litany, Professor Allitt comments to the effect that Victorian Britain was obviously “not all Masterpiece Theatre.” This would be one of the major understatements I have ever heard in my entire life!
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Each of the Teaching Company’s Great Courses comes with a booklet containing, among other resources, an excellent bibliography compiled by the lecturer. As per Professor Allitt’s suggestion, I have so far obtained (though not yet read): 
. Henry Mayhew was a journalist whose descriptions of, and interviews with, the poor of London deeply impressed his contemporaries, among them Charles Dickens. In this poignant excerpt, he describes the life of a young girl who sells watercress on the city’s streets.
Heaven’s Command is the first in a trilogy about the British Empire. I wasn’t really interested in that aspect of nineteenth century Britain – I wanted to read about conditions within the country itself. But reading the first few pages I found Jan Morris’s writing so beautiful that I may have to rethink my reading plan. Morris has just come out with a new book, Contact!: A Book of Encounters, due out here in April of 2010. She is now 83 years old!
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As I was listening spellbound to Victorian Britain, the phrase “the dark Satanic mills” was constantly floating to my mind’s surface. It comes from this poem by William Blake, written in 1808 or thereabouts:
And did those feet in ancient time,
Walk upon Englands mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On Englands pleasant pastures seen!And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold:
Bring me my Chariot of fire!I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In Englands green & pleasant Land.
This poem was set to music by Sir Hubert Parry in 1916 and orchestrated by Sir Edward Elgar in 1922. (Wikipedia has an interesting account of how and why this sequence of events came about.)
I saw an exhibit of Blake’s art work at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York earlier this month.
William Blake: artist, poet, visionary
Here is the Hymn, “Jerusalem”:
Boundless Gratitude!
There is nothing like another superb meal at Tersiguel’s – I had “La Dinde Traditionelle d’Amerique (traditional turkey dinner), in honor of Thanksgiving - to remind me of just how lucky I am:
For my brother David and his wife Joan, out there in sunny San Diego (O please ship some of that sunshine East – we’re starved for it!);
For my brother Richard, and for Donna, the wonderful woman who now shares his life;
For “the jewels in my crown:” my son Ben and his lovely wife Erica, who are currently basking in the beauty of Utah’s red rock country 
;
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For Italy last May, and for England, always;
(The “Adventure” referred to, by the way, was mine! I went to Yorkshire in 2005 with The National Trust for Historic Preservation. This slide show was assembled from my photos by the ever-resourceful Ron; the music is Ralph Vaughan Williams’s luminous Lark Ascending.)
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For Miss Marple, singular sensation of the feline world! (and deeply beloved pet) 
;
For my dear friends from the library;
For my friends of many years’ standing, whose love and affection I’ve been able to hold on to for an astounding amount of time: Nancy – almost forty years! Charlotte and Helene – more than fifty!
For the books I love, both read and as yet unread – for this 
– a book that in itself is the quintessence of everything precious and priceless in the reading life.
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More than anything, for my husband Ron, who gave me a second chance at happiness, and for the love of music that brought us together…
(If you go to the bottom right hand corner of the video and click on “YouTube,” you’ll go directly to that site, where further information on the performers can be found. And while you’re at it, click here for my favorite recent musical “find” on YouTube.)
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Finally, here’s a piece on Chef Michel Tersiguel:
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I thank God for these and many other blessings.
One book – just one!
The directive issued to the Usual Suspects for our December meeting: “you can talk about one book, and one book only.” Gulp!
I have to say, I understand where our (fearless!) leaders are coming from on this. After all, there are people like me, who get going and can’t stop. My favorite mystery of 2009? Oh, dear, I’ve read so many great ones; let me see…
Provision has been made, I’m happy to say, for the overly prolix among us: We can put a list together and give it out at the meeting. This provision at once got me beavering away on my list. This is where I am so far on that little project:
The Water’s Edge by Karin Fossum 
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
The Fire Engine That Disappeared by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo
*Judge Dee at Work by Robert van Gulik
*Skeleton Hill by Peter Lovesey
*A Caribbean Mystery by Agatha Christie 
*Turning Point by Peter Turnbull
*Piper on the Mountain by Ellis Peters 
*The Marx Sisters and All My Enemies by Barry Maitland
The Suspect by L.R. Wright
The Private Patient by P.D. James
*Hit Parade and Hit and Run by Lawrence Block
Bleeding Heart Square by Andrew Taylor
About Face by Donna Leon
The Accomplice by Elizabeth Ironside 
Chat and The Catch by Archer Mayor
The Birthday Present by Barbara Vine
August Heat by Andrea Camilleri 
*The Skeleton in the Closet by M.C Beaton
Ash Wednesday by Ralph McInerny
Thunder Bay by William Kent Krueger
*The Demon of Dakar by Kjell Eriksson
Pix by Bill James
I’ll probably just stop here.
The titles and/or authors I’d really like to talk about are designated with an asterisk. I’ve linked (both above and below) to those I’ve already written about in this space.
My paperback of A Caribbean Mystery is bristling with post-it flags. I wanted to note in particular Christie’s astute observations of human nature, which are freely intermingled with some rather disconcerting comments on race. Disconcerting but not mean-spirited, I think. All the same, this is the kind of stumbling block one encounters at times when reading the classics of the Golden Age. With the fiction of Dorothy Sayers, one is more likely to encounter comments denigrating Jews. Yes I know – both writers are simply reflecting the attitudes prevalent in the time and place in which they lived. Still, some remarks, casually tossed off, can cut, even now.
For this, and other reasons, I think A Caribbean Mystery would make for a very interesting book discussion.
I’ve written briefly about The Marx Sisters, the first of Barry Maitland’s Brock and Kolla novels. A few weeks ago I read the third book in the series, All My Enemies. I really like this author and am very glad to have found yet another series of British police procedurals in which I can happily immerse myself. In All My Enemies, Maitland takes us into the world of Britain’s regional theatre companies. As you would guess, it’s a fascinating place to visit – although I don’t know if I’d want to stay there for a prolonged period, what with professional jealousies and personal crises taking a constant and relentless toll on company members.
At any rate, I learned interesting bits of theatre lore – the process of “corpsing,” for instance: “‘Corpsing is where you do something to try to try to throw somebody else out of their character, like make them laugh in the middle of a death scene.’”
I enjoy Maitland’s polished prose and frequently memorable turns of phrase. Here is Kathy Kolla tracing a murder victim’s route to and from work:
“The suppressed violence of commuting struck her, of squeezing into a metal tube in one part of the city, of being crushed against sweaty strangers for a while and then abruptly ejected into a charging mob in another part.
As you may have already concluded, these novels are very much in and of London, with the different neighborhoods (which after all began their existence as distinct villages) coming vividly to life.
As for the two titles by Lawrence Block, they make up part of a new series featuring Keller, a paid assassin. O horrible! you may shudder in revulsion. Don’t. They’re incredibly engrossing, and in the case of Hit Parade, very funny while being totally subversive. The tone is more somber in Hit and Run – so much so that I wasn’t sure I was going to like it. But I loved it. Keller gets himself into a predicament that caught me completely off guard. I can’t imagine how it can possibly be resolved. I’m dying to read the next book! And when I finished Hit and Run, I wanted desperately to talk to someone about it. So discussible? You bet! (BTW – Block’s reading of Hit Parade was highly enjoyable; Hit and Run, read by Richard Poe, equally so.)
Click here and scroll down to the bottom for two videos featuring Lawrence Block. In the first, he reads from Hit Parade; in the second, he explains how Keller came to be a series character.
Ellis Peters is justly held in high esteem for her incomparable Brother Cadfael series. I have recently been listening to her other series featuring Inspector Felse. The books are narrated wonderfully by Simon Prebble, and they have been a revelation to me: fascinating, engrossing, and of course, beautifully written. In The Piper on the Mountain, Peters gives full play to her longstanding affection for the land and people of Czechoslovakia, as the country was called at the time of her writing (1966). Setting and atmosphere are a big plus in this novel, as is the presence of the Inspector’s son Dominic, an Oxford student. Dominic is such a lovable young man – a winning combination of resourcefulness, courage, and vulnerability – especially where comely young women are concerned.
I love it when a book introduces me to something entirely exotic and new. This novel introduced to the fujara, a large wind instrument native to Slovakia. 
This is the instrument upon which the eponymous piper is playing.(Click here to hear it.) Not counting the Greek vases of beloved recent memory, the fujara is the niftiest new object to come into my life since the Towie Ball!
I’d like to mention The Demon of Dakar because I feel that Kjell Eriksson is not as well-known as his Scandinavian contemporaries – and he should be. Demon of Dakar moved me profoundly. 
I cannot conclude this post without mentioning the handout given out at our November meeting. Primarily composed by Pauline, the resident scholar of the Usual Suspects, in anticipation of our end-of-year meeting and evaluation, it consists of a spreadsheet showing who presented what title and when, an analysis off the mystery subgenres in which we’ve been reading, a grid designed by Barbara that addresses issues such as gender of the author, gender of the protagonist, time period and/or setting, etc.
Finally, questions are posed such as:
Are there common threads to be discerned in this past year’s reading selections?
What kinds of books do we want to read in the coming year?
Did a book that you personally didn’t like still make for an interesting discussion? Did the discussion cause you to change your opinion of the book?
Have we neglected any areas or genres this year? Are we sufficiently diverse with regard to setting, nationality of author, time period, any other relevant categories?
There’s more, but those convey the refreshing erudition and creativity of the enterprise. Professor Pauline and Professor Barbara: Well done, both of you!
Greek vases
In a post on my recent sojourn to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I mentioned being stunned by the Greek vases in the Greek and Roman Art galleries. Since this past May, when I journeyed to Naples, a city first colonized by the Greeks in the 700’s BC, I’ve become newly fascinated by the literature of the classical period. Now I was face to face with the art produced, in some cases, in the same period. I had not anticipated the effect these works would have on me.
My first thought – when I was able to think again – was of Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn”: specifically, the words, ‘O attic shape, fair attitude.’
Here is the entire poem:
Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thou express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring’d legend haunt about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter: therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal – yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” – that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
These astonishing works of art, which in earlier visits to the Met I have always sailed right past, cheerfully distracted and oblivious, now seem to me the most miraculous of objects, and for just the reasons that Keats cites in his poem: their timelessness, their freezing of a moment in time, their promise of eternal youth, of an eternity of bucolic joy in a setting devoid of any hint of ugliness.
I have just purchased this book: 
and have ordered this glorious tome from the Met: 
. I shall enjoy learning more about these Attic shapes…
The section of the Met’s collection database that deals with these works is entitled: “Athenian Vase Painting: Black- and Red-Figure Techniques.”
When I told my New York friend Helene about my new-found fascination with Greek vases, she, who has tutored me in love of the arts almost my entire life, smiled and said, “Keats knew something, huh?” Oh yes, he did – with his tenuous hold on life, Keats knew.
John Keats 1795 - 1821
A (mostly) joyous romp: Much Ado About Nothing at the Folger
We’re in the Trinidad neighborhood of Washington DC. Residents are making preparations for the Caribbean Carnival, a yearly festival. Against this backdrop, the fate of two couples – Hero and Claudio, and the ever-warring Beatrice and Benedick – plays out. There’s a whole host of secondary characters on hand to liven up the action.
In the program notes, director Timothy Douglas states that he wanted the female perspective in Much Ado About Nothing to be given its proper weight. In addition, he was looking for an effective way to tie the production to the Washington DC of the present era:
“While I give the men of this cast their due props, I believe even they would acknowledge that the talents of their women in this production inspire much of the ado, which honors Shakespeare, the dance of love, the Caribbean community, and the urban diversity that makes up metropolitan DC.
As is to be expected with Shakespeare, tragedy – or at least, the potential for tragedy – is woven into what is essentially a comic scenario. Outraged by word of Heros’ infidelity, Claudio repudiates her on their wedding day. Inevitably, Claudio is made to pay for his rash rejection of a good and blameless woman: information is given out to the effect that Hero has died, her heart broken by the cruelty of her erstwhile beloved. This intelligence happily proves false, but not before Claudio has been suitably chastened.
(Here is yet another frequently utilized trope of Shakespeare’s. I was reminded of The Winter’s Tale, in which the supposedly deceased Hermione, initially appearing as a life-size statue, is reanimated and steps back into the land of the living.)
This is the darkest moment in what is essentially a sunny play. The sparring of Beatrice and Benedick is never anything we’re expected to take too seriously; we know how it will end. (This is one of my favorite fictional set-ups: two people fight and fight and then they give in to the inevitable and get radiantly married. One of my favorite examples of this paradigm can be found in Crocodile on a Sandbank, the delightful first entry in Elizabeth Peters’s Amelia Peabody series.)
I was reminded of the need, in contemporary Shakespearian productions, for the actors to signify with inflection and gesture the obscure meaning of some of the play’s lines. Most of the time, though, at least where this play is concerned, this was not necessary. Here, for instance, is an exchange that elicited knowing laughter from the audience:
Don Pedro: I think this is your daughter.
Leonato: Her mother hath many times told me so.
I particularly enjoyed Doug Brown in the role of Leonato. The acting in general was up to the Folger’s usual high standards. I also want to single out Alex Perez as Dogberry. He had us in stitches! I’d forgotten what a treat it is to see a natural comedian give full scope to his gifts.
Rachel Leslie as Beatrice and Doug Brown as Leonato
Alex Perez
I remember studying Much Ado About Nothing decades ago at Goucher College. It was on the syllabus of a course in Shakespeare’s comedies, and our professor was the wonderful Brooke Pierce. I distinctly recall his pointing out to us the frequency with which characters spoke of “noting” the statements and actions of others. The play’s title, he observed, could almost have been “Much Ado About Noting.”
The production concludes with an exuberant wedding scene, at the end of which the performers danced down the center aisle and out into the lobby.
And that was it! I half expected to catch sight of them there as we were exiting the theater, but they were nowhere to be seen…
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Much Ado About Nothing is running until November 29. My suggestion: Hie thee to the Folger and see it!
‘All men are, at times, influenced by inexplicable sentiments’ – “Somnambulism: a fragment,” by Charles Brockden Brown
Here is the passage in its entirety:
“All men are, at times, influenced by inexplicable sentiments. Ideas haunt them in spite of all their efforts to discard them. Prepossessions are entertained, for which their reason is unable to discover any adequate cause. The strength of a belief when it is destitute of any rational foundation, seems, of itself, to furnish a new ground for credulity. We first admit a powerful persuasion, and then, from reflecting on the insufficiency of the ground on which it is built, instead of being prompted to dismiss it, we become more forcibly attached to it.
A man called Althorpe tries to warn a certain Mr. Davis and his daughter against embarking on a nighttime journey. He is sure they will come to some harm. The more frantically he entreats them the more determined they become to execute their proposed plan.
Althorpe is especially agonized over the possibility – in his eyes, the probability – of harm coming to Miss Davis. She is beautiful; she is loved by him – and she is betrothed to another. In his desperation, he offers to accompany them on their sojourn. His offer is politely but firmly declined. And so they set off, father and daughter, along with a carriage driver also acting as a guide.
Meanwhile Althorpe is at war with himself. He knows his fears are irrational, yet he is powerless to quiet them: “How ignominious to be thus the slave of a fortuitous and inexplicable impulse! To be the victim of terrors more chimerical than those which haunt the dreams of idiots and children!”
On reading those lines, I was immediately put in mind of this one: “TRUE! –nervous –very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?” It is the opening sentence of Poe’s “Tell Tale Heart.” The content is not exactly the same, but it’s close enough. Even more remarkable is the similarity of tone – the urgency, the near panic, the fear of encroaching insanity.
So, who is Charles Brockden Brown? Here’s the first paragraph of the Wikipedia entry:
“Charles Brockden Brown (January 17, 1771 – February 22, 1810), an American novelist, historian, and editor of the Early National period, is generally regarded by scholars as the most ambitious and accomplished US novelist before James Fenimore Cooper. He is the most frequently studied and republished practitioner of the “early American novel,” or the US novel between 1789 and roughly 1820. Although Brown was by no means the first American novelist, as some early criticism claimed, the breadth and complexity of his achievement as a writer in multiple genres (novels, short stories, essays and periodical writings of every sort, poetry, historiography, reviews) makes him a crucial figure in US literature and culture of the 1790s and 1800s, and a significant public intellectual in the wider Atlantic print culture and public sphere of the era of the French Revolution.
To which one can only append the question: Who knew?
And here’s another question: Why am I reading this story in the first place? The answer is that it is the first selection in a splendid new two-volume anthology called American Fantastic Tales, from Library of America:
I vaguely remember Charles Brockden Brown from my undergraduate English major days. But his is not a name that I have often encountered since then. “Somnambulism” makes extremely compelling reading, not least because of the remarkable way in which it prefigures the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. (Brown died one year prior to Poe’s birth.)
That there exists a Charles Brockden Brown Society gives me hope for civilization. (The site is hosted by the University of Central Florida.)
Charles Brockden Brown
Several interesting articles about the current state of books and reading
In “The Vestigial Tale, “ Joel Achenbach explores the way in which the new technologies pose a danger to our powers of concentration.
In “Good Books Don’t Have To Be Hard,” Lev Grossman talks about our love of – and need for – a good story:
“The novel is getting entertaining again. Writers like Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, Donna Tartt, Kelly Link, Audrey Niffenegger, Richard Price, Kate Atkinson, Neil Gaiman, and Susanna Clarke, to name just a few, are busily grafting the sophisticated, intensely aware literary language of Modernism onto the sturdy narrative roots of genre fiction: fantasy, science fiction, detective fiction, romance.
What can one say, except – Hurray!
Finally, here’s Hilary Mantel on historical fiction. It’s a subject about which she’s knowledgeable, having recently won the Man Booker Prize for Wolf Hall, her sprawling novel of the Tudor era. 
Her piece in The Guardian opens thus: “Hans Holbein appeared to me in a dream, instantly recognisable because of the unflattering hat, like a flat shower cap, that he wears in his self-portrait.”
I’ve just started Wolf Hall, and I am already pumped. Methinks this novel is going to be one wild, terrific ride!
Quotidian moment, frozen in time: Vermeer’s Milkmaid
It was the light. I was completely unprepared for it.
The painting seemed to be emitting light.
The colors, especially the blues, are rich and deep. The milkmaid concentrates on her task; she is probably making bread porridge. The prosaic task of pouring the milk is frozen in time forever. The bread looks good enough to eat!
But I kept coming back to the light, which seemed both ordinary and unearthly. The scene depicted in “The Milkmaid” is not ostensibly a religious one; nevertheless, the painting confers a kind of benediction on the viewer. I felt exalted in its presence (as did those on either side of me, judging by the rapt expression on their faces).
Currently mounted at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Vermeer’s Masterpiece the Milkmaid” is a small exhibit. (In “Dutch Touch,” his article in the New Yorker, Peter Schjeldahl pronounced it “an example for recession-era museum practice.”) Also on view are the Met’s other Vermeers – they own five in all – plus other works by Dutch Genre painters.
What a gift these artists gave us, showing us people going about the business of life at the height of The Netherlands’ Golden Age. Centuries before the advent of photography, they have captured these quotidian moments for us to see all these many years on.
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Art critic Peter Schjeldahl’s piece in the September 21 issue of The New Yorker- unfortunately the full text is not available online – is an odd mixture of masterful writing and puzzling assertions. First, he comments that Vermeer’s “View of Delft “doesn’t do a lot for me….It’s so bizarrely special – a fairyland city persuasively identical to an actual city….”
“View of Delft” – a painting I personally cherish – is not present at this exhibit, but “Young Woman with a Water Pitcher” is:
This is clearly a painting that Peter Schjeldahl adores. Here he is, waxing rhapsodic – not to mention quixotic – on the subject: “…a little patch of llapis-lazuli-tinted white, describing backlit linen in the head scarf of the Met’s “Young Woman with a Water Pitcher,” would have killed me a long time ago, if paint could.”
This rather disconcerting statement is followed by further (idiosyncratic and hyperbolic) expressions of rapture:
“The entering sunlight sustains all manner of ravishing adventures, throught the picture, but the incidental detail of the head scarf has affected me like a life-changing secret, whispered to me alone. I revel in it each time I see it–having misremembered it, of course, since the last time, helpless to retain the nuance of the color and the velleity of the painter’s touch. ‘Young Woman with a Water Pitcher’ is a Sermon on the Mount of aesthetiic value, in which the meek–or, at least, the humdrum, involving trifles of a prosperous but ordinary household, on an ordinary day–inherit the earth. Beholding it, I feel that my usual ways of looking are torpid to the point of dishonoring the world. At the same time, I know that my emotion is manipulated by deliberate artifice. An artist has contrived to lure me out of myself into aan illusion of reality more fulfilling than any lived reality can be.
Is it just me, or is there a bit too much of “I” in this piece? Art criticism or psychotherapy? And as for being “manipulated by deliberate artifice” – why, Dude, it’s a painting! It is by definition a work of art – and of artifice, one that is superbly executed. (We agree there.)
As to “The Milkmaid,” Schjeldahl is awed but at the same time ambivalent: “Like ‘Delft,’ ‘The Milkmaid’ exercises more dazzling virtuosity than I quite know what to do with.” What – it’s too good? too close to perfect? Or perhaps a case of too much showy genius in the service of a prosaic subject? I confess, I am well and truly stumped by this statement.
Ah, well – moving right along…
The Met now has a wonderfully rich site that functions as a sort of online art college. Click here to see what is on offer regarding “Vermeer’s Masterpiece: The Milkmaid.”
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When I arrived at the museum last Friday, my intention was to proceed directly to this exhibit. In order to do so, you must pass through the Greek and Roman galleries. This I proceeded to do. But before I reached the Vermeers, I was stoppped dead in my tracks by these:
“Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time…
Stay tuned for the further adventures of a passionate art lover, who is thunderstruck for the first time by the “Grecian Urns,” objects she first saw at the age of eight…
The Water’s Edge, by Karin Fossum (Mysteries go global, part four)
In this novel, Karin Fossum has dared to portray not one but two child molesters as less than monstrous human beings.
In one scene, Inspector Konrad Sejer and his second in command, Jacob Skarre, interview Philip Akeson, a convicted sex offender. They are hoping he can assist them with a case they are currently working on: “They remembered him as mild and agreeable, open and generous by nature, and they decided to pay him a visit.” At one point in the conversation, Skarre finds himself almost smiling: “…it was impossible not to be charmed by this short, gentle man.”
You may find this description disconcerting; I know I did – at least, initially. But this rather indulgent depiction of a pedophile is more than counterbalanced by revulsion and anger at the crimes themselves. In The Water’s Edge, the particular crime in question is the abduction, abuse, and murder of a little boy named Jonas August Lowe. Jonas and his mother were a family of two. Elfrid Lowe didn’t have much, but she had her son. Had him, that is, until this awful thing happpened.
Philip Akeson had nothing to do with the murder of Jonas. Fossum takes us deep into the mind of the actual perpetrator. It is an intensely uncomfortable place, where guilt, self-pity, bewilderment, and fear are freely mixed. And suffering too, although not enough – never enough - to expiate his terrible crime.
Jacob Skarre and Konrad Sejer struggle to comprehend this mindset. For them, it is not enough to apprehend the wrongdoer. They feel a need to understand what triggers this evil impulse. Even more important to their investigation, they need to know how this corrupt individual is behaving in the aftermath of the crime. Here, Sejer speculates:
“‘No matter who he is…whether he’s got a record or not, he’s gone underground. He’s afraid to answer the telephone. He might wear different clothes, he might start to shop at a different supermarket. Whatever strength he’s got left, he’s using to build a defence for himself. He feels that the world is against him and he is most likely resentful.’
Sejer is on the right track, but it’s early days, and these observations are not, at this point, especially helpful. Sejer and Skarre must continue with their slow, agonizing search. At one point, Skarre bursts out: “‘How do people develop such a predilection?…I don’t understand it, it goes against nature.” The search for an answer to that question becomes as excruciating – and as urgent - as the search for the killer himself.
The other perplexing question concerns the victim: Why would an intelligent child, one repeatedly cautioned about the dangers of the outside world, accede to a stranger’s importuning?
“His mother’s warnings had been brushed aside, barely noticeable, like the trace of a feather across a cheek and Jonas had discarded his [walking] stick and got into a stranger’s car. People are unpredictable creatures, they invent rules which they break incessantly and they follow impulses which they later cannot explain.
Except, of course, that for Jonas August, there was no later.
There’s a certain determinism at work here. This sense of a sad inevitability is reinforced when another child is reported missing. Edwin Asalid is a sweet-natured boy whose life is blighted by compulsive eating. His mother Tulla is loving but distracted. While she hungers for her current lover, Edwin hungers for ice cream and any other treat he can get his hands on – the more, the better. He is large, even obese. And he has utterly dropped out of sight.
Or has he?
I’m not sure that I have managed to convey the extraordinarily compelling nature of this narrative. Fossum’s series benefits greatly from its setting in a Norway that is both bleak and beautiful. In addition, she has created two of the more admirable policemen in contemporary crime fiction.
“Inspector Sejer was always correct, reserved, and polite. His formality might at times be mistaken for arrogance, unless you knew him well. Hardly anyone knew him well.
Jacob Skarre knows Sejer well. Skarre himself is a more direct, open personality. In one scene, he sits silently and listens to Elfrid Lowe as she talks about her murdered son. At this juncture, the case has been solved; the killer, apprehended. Nothing further in the way of information is needed from this bereaved mother. Nevertheless, she urgently needs to talk. And Jacob Skarre lets her, makes the time, gives her his full attention.
Elfrid Lowe concludes her sad litany thus:
“‘I’m not scared of dying. Jonas has done it, so I can do it too. I don’t know much about eternity, but perhaps it’s all right. I talk and talk and you listen with reverence. Perhaps you think I’ll be fine eventually because I can put words to my feelings. But the reality is that silence terrifies me.’
Later, she takes the opportunity to thank Konrad Sejer for his work on her behalf and his kindness to her. His response is a model of grace: “Please forgive me for putting it this way, but it has been a privilege to know both you and Jonas August. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.”
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In his Rough Guide to Crime Fiction (2007), Barry Forshaw states the following: ” There is no room for debate: the most important female writer of foreign crime fiction at work today is the Norwegian Karin Fossum.” I personally feel that the word ‘female’ could be removed from that line without greatly altering its essential truth.
Karin Fossum
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As I was writing this, I found myself thinking of a musical selection entitled “The Last Spring,” by the great Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg:
Mysteries Go Global, Part Three: Death in Rio de Janeiro: Alone in the Crowd by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza
The novel begins with the murder of an elderly woman. Dona Laureta possessed knowledge so incriminating that someone was driven to kill her before she revealed certain facts to the police. Who was that frightened individual, and what did those facts consist of? This is what Inspector Espinosa and his team of investigators must find out.
Almost at the outset, Hugo Breno, a bank teller, becomes a suspect. Breno is a strange, solitary man, one who also happens to be connected personally to Espinosa: when children, they had played sports together in the streets of their Rio neighborhood. Adulthood had taken them on widely divergent paths. Breno has remained acutely aware of Espinosa, while initially, the latter can barely remember his long-ago playmate.
One of the most intriguing aspects of Breno’s personality is that he constantly seeks out large crowds of people, preferably when they are on the move. By placing himself in such a setting, he is able to assuage a constant, low level anxiety. He has no use for the beauty of nature, craving instead the anonymous press of a mass of human bodies, moving like a single organism:
“He didn’t have any interest in seeing the ocean or appreciating the sunset. For him, the oft-praised beauty of Copacabana Beach would do nothing to put him in a better mood. Nature proved useless when dealing with human problems and feelings….Man does not resemble nature. among the crowd, the human individual can either lose himself in the homogeneous mass or maintain his individuality. The feeling of belonging to something yet still keeping one’s difference is one of the supreme experiences of man among the crowd. In nature, whether the surroundings are beautiful or ugly, pleasant or unpleasant, man will always be different. Always a figure, never in the background….That’s why nature didn’t interest Hugo. When dealing with human matters, human sentiments and fears, nature was irrelevant.
You would probably agree that at the very least, we’re dealing here with unusual thought processes. Plausible, but unusual. The character of Hugo Breno immediately put me in mind of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Man of the Crowd.” Later in the book, Espinosa specifically references that haunting story.
Espinosa himself is a man of idiosyncracies In a previous post, I quoted a passage describing his method of ordering the enormous number of books he keeps in his modest apartment. I found this aspect of his personality rather endearing. As revealed in this novel, though, some of the inspector’s other traits are distinctly less appealing, especially where the conduct of his love life is concerned (about which I will say no more at present).
I liked this book, but not quite as much as Southwesterly Wind and Blackout, which remain my favorites in this series. 
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Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza is the only South American author on the “Go Global” book list that I created for my presentation. Curious to know which other writers of crime fiction hail from that continent, I consulted Wheredunnit and came up with a rather small list. I note with interest that the library has In Praise of Lies by Patricia Melo; also, I remembered reading Who Killed Palomino Molero? when it came out in 1987. 
Mario Vargas Llosa is a distinguished novelist; his Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter was one of the first new titles I read when I came to work at the library in 1982. I recall it as being inventive in the extreme and very entertaining to boot.
Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza
Mario Vargas Llosa
