The Quill and the Brush

A Literary Treatment of Russia, Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah -in- USA) — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 16:36:00 +0000

Beyond the Romanov tragedy and beyond the Soviet Union itself, “the Great Patriotic War” as Russians call World War 2, remains –to this day- at the core of Russianness. Every time the Motherland is in danger, Russians stand as one man and Staline even called back those whom he had not killed but only sent to the Goulag at the end of the 1930s, to fight against the Nazis, appealing to their love for Mother Russia. The narrator in David Chenioff ‘s City of Thieves (who was the author’s grand-father), and whose own father was “purged” by Stalin, explains this : “I have never been much of a patriot. My father would not have allowed such a thing while he lived, and his death insured that his wish was carried out. Piter* commanded far more affection and loyalty from me than the nation as a whole. But that night, running across the unplowed fields of winter wheat, with the Fascist invaders behind us and the dark Russian woods before us, I felt a surge of pure love for my country.”

Amongst the most famous episodes of World War 2 on the Soviet front, the siege of Leningrad may be the horrific climax of what humans can do to each other. David Chenioff’s City of Thieves exposes these atrocities and at the same time manages to keep humor alive. It is a well-known fact that the besieged city’s only chance of survival once the horses, dogs, cats and rats had been eaten was cannibalism. In the especially cold winters of that siege, people started eating the corpses. On some streets, survivors’ gangs even ambushed, slaughtered and cut famished passers-by up into pieces: pieces to be sold, boiled, grilled… eaten. Lev, the orphaned narrator, and Kolya, the young soldier who will become his best friend, take all this in stride and as much as Lev’s encounter with cannibals is as horrific as can be, “Cannibals and Nazis didn't make Kolya nervous, but the threat of embarrassment did-the possibility that a stranger might laugh at the lines he'd written.” This is a coming of age novel, a story of war and its atrocities, but also a story of friendship and love. Kolya dies of a gunshot wound and as he bleeds to death, he still laughs at the fact that he was shot in the buttocks. His charm and charisma will live forever in the narrator’s memory, allowing him to survive the rest of the war, marry the woman he also met during that frightful episode and move to the United States.

When the Iron Curtain was raised and Communism fell, a new wave of Russian immigrants scattered in Western Europe. Not all were nouveaux riches living the celebrity life on the Riviera. A great majority was fleeing the economic upheaval that followed the end of the Marxist-oriented regime of production. Suddenly old pensioners discovered that their monthly retirement was the equivalent of a mere $130.00; middle-aged professionals realized that their careers would never blossom and younger people foud out that with the end of the authoritarian regime, they were left out with no directions whatsoever except for alcoholism and the drugs brought in by the Afghanistan war. A lot of Jews also fled the broken USSR, able to use their Germanic-sounding names to find refuge away from the rise of anti-Semitism in the new born Russia. Alina Bronsky’s Broken Glass Park, is another coming of age novel, of a young Russian Jewish teenager, Sascha Naimann, whose mother moved from Moscow to Berlin, Germany, when she was in elementary school. We know nothing about Sascha’s dad, except that he may have been a famous person. All we know is that Sascha has two siblings from her mom’s second marriage and that her husband, Sascha’s stepfather, violently murdered her and her companion. Vadim is arrested, put in jail but still manages to play games with Sascha’s mind. A young intern journalist interviews him in jail and he pretends that “remorse tears at my heart”. Later on, Vadim dies in jail, in obscure circumstances, stealing Sascha’s vindictive plan: she had intended to kill him herself.

Sascha’s quest for normalcy is encumbered by what makes an immigrant’s life difficult: prejudices (“I’m sick of having to explain everything from scratch (…) how come I speak German so well – ten times better than all the other Russian Germans put together”), loneliness, elders who cannot help because they do not know how to navigate the system or speak the language (“After almost two years here, Maria’s German is limited to about twenty words, things like bus, potato, butter, trash, boil, wash, and fuck you (…). Occasionally she tries to group her vocabulary into sentences. That usually doesn’t go too well. When she’s shopping anywhere but the Russian grocery store, she has to point to whatever she wants (…). I tried for two weeks to help her master the sentence “I only speak Russian”. She carries it around on a slip of paper in her wallet, transcribed phonetically into Cyrillic letters," lack of opportunity which leads the immigrant youth towards crime.

Sascha stands out in her Russian immigrant community, because she is an orphan, because her mother was murdered (and the Russians being superstitious, she is confronted to even more prejudice instead of being surrounded by love and compassion), and because she is really smart. Sascha becomes the bridge between the native Germans and the “Ghetto Russians”. She will meet Volker the editor of the daily paper that published Vadim’s interview and his sickly son, Felix. Her relationship with Volker is one of the troubling elements of the book .Is it pity for Felix or a normal teenager’s attraction that makes her enter into a sexual relationship with him? When she then makes love with Volker, is it an unconscious search for a father figure? And what is this other Volker, the young 24 year old Nationalist Party member she hands to the Russian youth in Broken Glass Park? Is he supposed to be representing the dark side of Volker the editor in chief? Or should the reader take to heart what she says at the beginning of the book: “I hate men”, because in truth all the men in her life have been bastards?

Broken Glass Park is a coup de maître for a first novel, a book that will not leave the reader indifferent. Sascha’s narrative voice brings out all the complex feelings a teenager exhibits: her life experiences may be more dramatic than the average teenager’s but her internal turmoil is the same, alternating between despair, love for her traumatized siblings, sarcastic humor to survive violence and her mom’s death and keeping dreams alive. My own 16 year old daughter (not an avid reader) devoured it in a week, and THAT is proof enough for me.

* Piter: is the nickname Russians gave to Leningrad. Leningrad was originally St Petersburg, then became Petrograd (Russianized version) at the beginning of World War 1, because the original name sounded too Germanic and the German Empire was the enemy. With Communism's personality cult rising, it became Leningrad (after all Lenin started the Revolution there), even though it was ripped off its "capital city" status (Moscow became again the Capital as it had been until Peter the Great). Piter was the affectionate nickname many Peterburgians used rather than the official Leningrad, a subtle way of rebelling against the regime....

A Literary Treatment of Russia: Part One

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah -in- USA) — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 05:25:00 +0000

Russia has fascinated writers from times immemorial.
Voltaire exchanged quite a copious correspondence with Catherine the Great, whom he called the “Semiramis of the North” and whose authoritarian style he celebrated as much as he admired her war on the Turks.

The Marquis de Custine, a French aristocrat who took to literature and travel to escape scandals, wrote a travelogue in letters, a sort of hybrid of Tocqueville and Montesquieu, called Lettres de Russie. His fascination with the country is comingled with criticism: “Whenever your son is discontented in France, I have a simple remedy: tell him to go to Russia. The journey is beneficial for any foreigner, for whoever has properly experienced that country will be happy to live anywhere else.” He is considered as having more or less predicted the Revolution and beyond: “One day, the sleeping giant will rise and violence end the tyranny of words. Then, equality distraught will summon the old aristocracy in the defense of freedom, only to find that a neglected weapon, raised too late in too idle hands, has lost its strength.”

21st century writers also fall for Russia. The last four books I read gave me an even bigger appreciation of the phenomenon since out of the four authors, two are not Russians: Sam Eastland and James Meek (but Meek has lived in USSR and then the new Russia), David Benioff has a Russian grandfather and the last one, Alina Bronsky, is a Russian “émigré” of the most recent Western Europe-bound immigration wave after the fall of Communism.

Sam Eastland and James Meek tackle the first part of the XX century in USSR. The most fascinating story within Russian history remains the Romanov Drama. Murdered by the Bolsheviks, the Imperial Family laid in the depth of a mining well somewhere outside Ekaterinenburg for decades. Until they were finally unearthed and identified thanks to DNA after the fall of communism, one was never sure of what had really happened to them, especially to the youngest children, Anastasia and the hemophiliac heir to the throne, Alexei Nicolaievitch.

Sam Eastland is of course aware of the latest developments but still manages to keep the reader alert as to what and how it all really happened. His first historical police thriller, The Eye of the Red Tsar, is a page turner, with the unforgettable figure of the Finnish Inspector Pekkala. Incorruptible “Emerald Eye” of the late Nicolai 2, "a man who could not be threatened or beaten or corrupted into surrendering his sense of what was right or wrong", at the beginning of the story - in 1929- Keppala is exiled in the Gulag and is brought back to civilization by a young commissar, on Stalin’s orders. Stalin is the Red Tsar and he only fears one person, Keppala. The structure of the book, with alternating chapters that tell the reader about Keppala’s past as the second son of a Finnish undertaker and as the “Emerald Eye” while the plot develops around a potential survivor of the Ekaterinenburg massacre, makes for an entertaining read. However, I doubt Sam Eastland’s writing style will ever attain the depth and the elegance of Russian author, Boris Akunin, whose heroic policeman Erast Fandorin remains one of my favorites. The problem lies probably in the fact that Sam Eastland does not master Russian Literature and History as much as native Bakunin (whose real name is Grigory Chkhartishvili.) This latter author's pseudonym pun on celebrated anarchist Bakunin -in his use of the initial B.(for Boris) Akunin- already informs the reader of more delectable literary and culturally connected surprises to come.

In that respect, James Meek’s The People’s Act of Love is a superbly written book, a strong book, a book set in the past – 1919 in USSR, at the time of the Civil War in Siberia- but that is at the same time very contemporary in its writing. The author focuses exclusively on place, characters and storyline. And what a storyline: the convergence of four principal characters, Anna, Samarin, Balashov and Mutz, each with a different point of view, at a time when the world was taking a new shape! Anna “did not believe in new worlds, but she could not help wanting to be with men and women who did.” Samarin, an escaped political prisoner, [calls himself] “the destruction (…) of everything that stands in the way of the happiness of the people who will be born after I'm dead. (…) A manifestation. Of present anger and future love.” The Christian mystic Balashov leads a sect that is seeking paradise on earth through castration and Mutz, a junior officer of the Czech Legion, simply wants to leave Siberia taking Anna with him. I will not reveal all the twists and turns of this fabulous novel, but cannot help but ask myself the following question: what constitutes a people’s act of love? Is it an act of self-sacrifice to protect the living or an act of destruction, annihilation, for the benefit of future generations? I read this book when it was released in 2005 and am still overwhelmed by it. I also just found out that Johnny Depp bought the rights to produce a movie based on the book. I am both anxious to see it and concerned that the cinematographic treatment of this masterpiece may leave out some of its essence.

To be continued: David Benioff, City of Thieves and Alina Bronsky, Broken Glass Park

Flowers of Evil

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah -in- USA) — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 18:43:00 +0000

Baudelaire could not have imagined that I would steal the title of his majestic and wonderful poetry book to write about one of my pet peeves.

Flowers of Evil bother me. To the point of repulsion. I have goose bumps, my skin crawls back, nausea invades me, I cannot breathe and sometimes I even develop an immediate headache. This morning, when I stepped into the medical building where my dentist’s office is, the symptoms flared up. I was not totally awaken and was juggling chapka, gloves, bag, book and coffee mug. I still had my sun glasses on coming into a black marble walled foyer from the sparklingly sunny snow patches. I made my way on automatic pilot into the even darker elevator, not noticing anyone or anything.

On the way out, I had my regular glasses on. The Flowers of Evil hit me right in the face as soon as I got out of the elevator.

Tall ivy plastic trees, almost unnamable exotic plastic plants, plastic ferns and foliage of sorts. Or should I say dust gatherers, allergy enhancers, BPA releasers, toxic fumes slow producers?

I wonder if anyone has taken up the fight against these Flowers of Evil yet. What purpose do they serve? Beautification? Interior Decoration? Soothing you into a hypnotic zone before you get your teeth drilled, your breast mammogrammed, your skin cancer removed? What is their carbon foot print? What is their long term health damage? Where are they made? What about the workers’ health?

Ecological Epiphany

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah -in- USA) — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 04:17:00 +0000

Voltaire wrote in Candide: "Il faut cultiver son jardin."

It takes time to understand the core meaning of this sentence. Of course witty Voltaire did not mean it for us to literally dig and plant and weed and harvest our garden, nor did he encourage us to live off the fat of the land. That would be his archnemesis' fashion, le cher Jean-Jacques, the philosophizing Tartuffe himself.
But Voltaire's beau mot became my motto as I compared my front and back gardens, took notice of sun and shadow, surveyed the terrain and calculated the optimal sun exposure per day per week per month and per season... all with the aim of becoming a "gentlewoman-farmer", or rather an "urban food-grower."

At heart I am a country girl who is happier when "playing dirty," with soil under my broken fingernails, mud on my toes, and the sun my only cosmetic. Long walks in the woods, observing birds and bears, finding praying mantises, spotting fish jumping out ot the lake or animal tracks, and learning the name of trees and plants bring me the sort of pleasure Teresa of Avila enjoyed in her Ecstasy. In Nature I find peace, I find myself and I find God.

It took me years to come to terms with this aspect of my personality. Years and a few good books. Maybe it's age after all, or all those Montaigne's Essays we were forced to read and explain when we were in High School, or the perusing of thinkers and writers like Thoreau and his Walden, Rudolf Steiner's The Agriculture Course, Annie Dillard and her Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Barbara Kingsolver and her self-sufficient year she describes in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and more recently Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemna and In Defense of Food, which I read after screening Food, Inc. Recently I also stumbled upon Wendell Berry's poems and other writings, which may have been just what I needed to finalize my education and who could be considered as a Walden-Steiner combination with an Amish twist and a few other tricks up his sleeve.

If I dig into my youth, I can already detect the first filaments of what my daughter calls "Mom's inner hip-hippie-peacenik-side." Tolstoy was my favorite writer from the moment I read War and Peace. When I read Anna Karenina, especially Part 3, Chapter 4 in which Levine cuts the hay with a scythe along with the peasants, I became convinced that for the Earth to survive, it would be necessary to put a brake on progress, to slow down instead of to constantly grow. Decrease, not increase. Save, not spend. Make, not buy. I felt like a prophet in the desert for the next 30 years...

My ecological epiphany never left me, although I toned down my enthusiastic declarations of ecological independence and refrained from writing more Constitutions of the United States of the Earth. Somehow, my fellow-citizens and college mates thought I was just a jester, another fool in the realm of dreams, living in the kingdom of Chimera CSA. Now, they are all joining their own CSAs, brag about the bounty of their weekly basket and the benefits of biodynamic agriculture. I am so happy they finally saw the light that I do not waver my finger at them in an "I-told-you-so" gesture, neither do I claim my 5 minutes of recognition.

But now at almost 50, I can accept my "inner hippie self," I can cheer for my little organic garden and its humongous harvest, I can relish in my home-made pickled chili peppers, pickled cucumbers, jams and cookies, I can support my CSA which brings my family the biodynamic dairy and animal products I cannot provide. Yet.

Top right: Photo of my garden at the beginning of June 2010
Bottom left: Photo of my first harvest, first week of July 2010.

The King's Speech... A Review of an Oscar Material Movie!

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah -in- USA) — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 00:02:00 +0000

All families keep secrets: bastard children, misalliances, mistresses or mistreatments, dishonor or disease… And no one is immune, as revealed by the very moving film, The King’s Speech which brings out into the open George VI’s debilitating stammer.

The most important moment in the movie comes when “Bertie” (Albert is the first name of the man who will become King George VI) reveals that he was an abused child. Abused by his nanny, Mary Peters; humiliated by his dad and his elder brother (who will abdicate the throne for Nazi sympathizer American divorcee Wallis Simpson), his stammer comes as no surprise and a surprise nonetheless. In the 30s, the wireless broadcast communications became the new means by which politicians addressed the crowds. A stammer, a stutter, a lisp or any form of speech impediment could undo a career. How many movie stars of the early cinema whose voices were never heard had to abandon all hope of pursuing a “talking” career once cinema discovered sound?… But a King could not simply call it quits.

Edward VIII did not in fact abdicate purely for the love of Wallis Simpson. Had the woman not been such an ardent Nazi sympathizer, maybe the Cabinet and the Church of England would have closed their eyes on her twice-divorced status. After all, didn’t King Henry VIII separate from the Catholic Church to divorce and marry… multiple times? George VI had no intention to become a King and was not trained to become one. As the younger brother, extremely shy and with his speech impediment, he was looking towards an ordinary, albeit wealthy and aristocratic, family life. Confronted with unexpected circumstances, he showed great courage as he would later on during World War 2.

Colin Firth plays an admirable and convincing George VI. I was amazed at how he learned the King’s stammer. It must be extremely difficult for an actor to master a stammer when one is not so impaired. But then it is an actor’s job to be able to act…Geoffrey Rush in the part of formidable Ryan Logue who helps George VI is simply brilliant: an Australian “nobody” as the soon-to-be King George VI calls him once, he was not a medical doctor, nor a certified speech therapist. His gift, because that is what it truly was, was to be able to bring out the best in people. WW1 soldiers whom he helped find their voices again after the traumas they endured in the trenches or Bertie/George VI, he considered all men equal in front of adversity. His mix of tongue twisters/breath exercises and yes, psychotherapy, got to the root(s) of the future King’s speechlessness. Both actors will probably be nominated for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor.

David Seidler, the scriptwriter, was also a stutterer when he grew up. He remembers having listened to the King’s slowly enunciated war speeches on the radio while a child in England. The idea of a movie on George VI was always in the back of his mind. He met with Ryan Logue's only surviving son. The project went on hold in the early 1980s when the Queen Mom (George VI's widow) asked him not to go forward while she was still alive. Little did he know he’d have to wait for so long: she lived up to the age of 102!

What strikes the spectator though at the end of the movie is the current Royal Family’s misplaced pride: if this “secret” had been exposed earlier, it would have made the House of Windsor appear more humane, less remote, less imbued with itself, with convention, appearance and history. Maybe they would have done something for Prince Charles’ ears?

The original King's Speech can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAhFW_auT20

RESOLUTIONS

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah -in- USA) — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 17:24:00 +0000

On this, the first day of Anno Domini 2011:

Resolve in no other order than what comes first to my brain:

- To look at life through a pink lense always and forever
- To get my invalidating lumbar spinal stenosis and left knee sorted out
- To run again even if it means getting a corticoid injection every month
- To acquire US citizenship
- To trust my children
- To encourage my children to become independent
- To support my children's decisions regarding their own life without regret or bitterness
- To read more
- To learn a new language
- TO WRITE and deliver these lines trotting inside of me
- To love unconditionally
- To forgive and not judge
- To make better use of my time and of my hands, cooking, cross-stitching or sketching
- To laugh
- To sing
- To play the piano again
- To learn how to make brioche
- To be in constant and silent prayer
- To get rid of moral and physical clutter
- To live

What is a heart if the flower of love is not growing inside it?

Picture taken at Deep Creek Lake, Maryland, November 2010.

L'Angoisse du Lecteur

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah -in- USA) — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 22:11:00 +0000

Non, ce n’est pas le titre d’un roman… Tout le monde a entendu parler de la fameuse “angoisse de la page blanche” qui atteint l’écrivaillon comme l’auteur le plus prolifique… Ce rectangle blanc et qui le demeure alors que l’inspiration fuit, la muse s’amuse, et la peur s’installe de ne plus être capable d’écrire, de créer. Eh bien, j’ai découvert cet été que la même chose peut arriver au lecteur le plus avide qui soit… Impossibilité de lire, de penser même à lire, de regarder un livre. Angoisse existentielle dans mon cas.

En général, je lis toujours trois, voire quatre livres en même temps. Français, américain, russe, de la littérature –beaucoup de romans mais aussi beaucoup de nouvelles et de poésie-, mais aussi des essais, ce que l’on appelle ici de la « non fiction ». Selon l’humeur, je passe de l’un à l’autre en une soirée ou je reste sur le même jusqu’à la fin. Alors comment puis-je expliquer cette angoisse du lecteur qui m’a saisie cet été ?

J’ai commencé le mois de juillet en empilant sur ma table de chevet tous les livres que je me promettais – et me réjouissais- de lire d’ici la fin septembre. Plus fourmi que cigale, j’emmagasine les lectures pendant les mois creux, sans « book club ». J’ai donc attaqué début juillet : Un roman russe, d’Emmanuel Carrère. Un peu en retard me direz-vous, le livre a déjà trois ans. Mais pour lire Emmanuel Carrère, il ne faut pas être trop fragile et je l’avais donc laissé de côté jusqu’à ce que je me sente assez forte, l’expérience de La moustache, de L’adversaire et de La classe de neige m’ayant laissée plutôt déprimée. Malheureusement, de roman « russe » avec grand élan, grands espaces et personnages hors du commun, il n’en est point, si ce n’est le fantôme de son grand-père (le père d’Hélène Carrère d’Encausse), un Géorgien arrivé en France comme les Russes Blancs, juste après la Révolution bolchevique, et qui ne trouvera jamais sa place dans la société française. A tel point qu’il disparait, à la fin de la Deuxième Guerre, pour faits de collaboration. Fusillé ? Pendu ? Renvoyé en URSS par l’entremise d’un Parti Communiste français passé à la Résistance seulement quand Hitler envahit l’URSS et de ce fait, envoyé pourrir au Goulag? Ce fantôme familial, squelette dans le placard de l’académicienne, linge sale dont on ne parle même pas en famille, est-il vraiment à l’origine d’une dépression intergénérationnelle ? Emmanuel Carrère est certes un déprimé permanent (Je l’ai rencontré en 2000… il était déjà fort sombre) et il en devient violent, abusif, jusque dans ses relations intimes qu’il dévoile sans aucune pudeur ni aucun remords, une première fois dans une nouvelle digne de Houellebecq pour le style, publiée dans Le Monde, et qui devient le centre de ce « roman russe », et une deuxième fois dans le roman même. Un tel nombrilisme donne envie de vomir, à croire que ce roman avait comme seul but originel celui d’auto-thérapie. Ni Docteur Jivago, ni Levine, ni Pierre Bezoukhov, ni Raskolnikov, ni même un des frères Karamazov – Aliocha, par exemple-, Emmanuel Carrère a encore de quoi remplir des pages de sa relation avec sa mère, avec son grand-père qu’il n’a pas connu, et avec l’histoire de France et de la Russie. Je doute qu’il ne guérisse d’un spleen que le milieu mondain dans lequel il sévit, entretient volontiers, et qu’il cultive lui-même avec une minutie qui relève de la préméditation.

Il y avait de quoi sortir profondément déprimée de ce livre. Ce fut non seulement le cas, mais ce livre eut pour autre effet de me dégoûter de la lecture. La vue d’un livre m’inspirait l’horreur et toute ma pile de livres à lire pendant l’été se recouvrit de poussière…

Je ne dus mon salut qu’à la Bande Dessinée ! Et, pour bien faire, à deux bandes dessinées particulièrement tristes : la biographie d’Anne Frank (The Anne Frank House Authorized Graphic Biography, by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon, aussi connus pour leur très émouvant : The 9/11 Report : A Graphic Adaptation), mais qui, malgré toute l’horreur de la guerre, de ce qui est arrivé à Anne Frank, à sa famille, ne fait pas dans l’exhibitionnisme à la Emmanuel Carrère ; et Stitches : A Memoir, by David Small, où là aussi douleurs personnelles et familiales sont exposées de manière pudique, avec un dessin presque anonyme.

Il m’a fallu deux mois pour surmonter cette angoisse du lecteur, un véritable état de choc du lecteur, de la mi-juillet à la mi-septembre. Deux mois qui ont semblé vraiment très longs au « bookworm » que je suis naturellement. Comme dit le proverbe : « La plume est plus forte que l’épée ». Emmanuel Carrère ne saura vraisemblablement jamais combien la lecture de l’écriture égoïste et mortifère de son « roman russe » m’aura empoisonné l’âme le temps d’un été.

Une generation au cerveau branche differemment: resultat de l'ere numerique?

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah -in- USA) — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 06:01:00 +0000

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/technology/21brain.html?hpw

Comme toujours, un article excellent du New York Times sur la manière dont le cerveau des nouvelles générations est « branché » différemment (ou le sera tôt ou tard) en raison de leur appartenance à l’ère du « numérique ». Ce qui m’amuse beaucoup, c’est que chaque fois qu’il y a eu, dans l’Histoire, un progrès technologique ou scientifique quelconque, il a en même temps été dénoncé par les Cassandres et les Luddites comme mortifère au pire, ou amenant à la décadence sociale, culturelle, voire nationale, au mieux. Il en fut ainsi du walkman et de tout appareil permettant d’écouter de la musique sans déranger son voisin (surdité garantie), de la télévision (niveau intellectuel qui baisse, concentration en déroute), et même du premier téléphone…
Or, TOUT peut avoir un effet sur le cerveau de quelqu’un et la révolution numérique, avec tout ce qu’elle peut certes apporter en « satisfaction immédiate » (mentionnée dans l'article) n’en reste pas moins une révolution et un progrès, comme le fut l’apparition du métier à tisser mécanique (j’en reviens à mes Luddites).

Depuis que je suis toute petite, je lis, c’est-à-dire je dévore des livres, et je peux dire que le livre a eu sur moi le même effet que l'ordinateur a sur Vishal Singh (dans l’article du New York Times).
Comme Vishal, je délaissais les matières dans lesquelles je n’excellais pas (math, physique) et qui me demandaient donc un effort. Il y avait toujours quelque chose de plus intéressant à faire, en l'occurrence, LIRE. Dès que j'avais un moment, je lisais: en cours de récréation, à la cantine, en descendant les escaliers de l'école pour aller en récréation (d'où cheville cassée de multiples fois), dans ma chambre, un livre sur les genoux, celui de math sur le bureau, faisant ainsi croire à ma mère que je faisais mes exercices d’algèbre, et la nuit, sous les draps avec une lampe électrique, et même dans la salle de bains, pour m'isoler de la famille quand cela braillait (voir autre exemple dans l'article) ou que je n'avais pas envie que l'on me parle. Distraite par les livres, oui, mais j’ai aussi parallèlement développé le contraire de ADD ou ADHD (déficit d’attention), c’est-à-dire, l’hyper-concentration: quand je lis, il peut y avoir le feu, un tremblement de terre, les enfants peuvent se disputer, je ne m'en rends pas compte, je n’entends rien, je suis dans un monde à part, le mien, celui de la lecture. Cela se traduit aussi par le fait que je peux me concentrer sur ce que je fais (et pas seulement quand je lis) à tel point que je peux, à volonté, filtrer jusqu’à ne plus les entendre les bruits autrement gênants: pubs à la radio quand je conduis et mon esprit redémarre et se reconcentre sur les actualités dès la fin de la publicité, les explications aéronautiques détaillées et fortement ennuyeuses de mon mari, les élucubrations hip hop de mon fils, et tutti quanti. Il n’y a que le bruit des travaux dans la rue que je ne peux ainsi éliminer alors que je suis intensément concentrée sur autre chose. De la même façon, Vishal peut se concentrer pendant des heures sur 5 minutes de film à monter : Vishal et ses confrères de la génération numérique ne souffrent pas tellement de ADD/ADHD que de manque d’intérêt pour une ou plusieurs matières. La faute en est peut-être au professeur qui ne sait pas rendre son cours intéressant.

Ce qui est aussi intéressant dans l'article, c'est le fait que ce soit des enfants de "classe ouvrière" qui soient le plus à risque de déconcentration et autres maux dénoncés par le professeur de Latin (entre autres !). Or, toujours dans le même article, il est fait mention d’ un proviseur qui essaie d'utiliser les technologies nouvelles pour motiver et intéresser les élèves en question et d’un professeur qui enseigne un cours audio avec le programme Pro-Tool. Je connais bien ce programme, car nous l'avons et que mon fils suit un cursus, après sa « high school » (lycée), de technicien du son. Il lui reste deux examens sur les 4 du premier niveau Pro-Tool à passer pour avoir la certification professionnelle. C’est là, à mon avis, la clef de l'article: ces gamins, de classe ouvrière, se passionnent et se concentrent sur un programme audio de chez Apple qui est le plus performant du monde et le plus difficile à apprendre et à maîtriser. Tous les plus grands studios d’enregistrement du monde (musique, mais aussi de plus en plus son et film ensemble, car c’est le seul programme à permettre cela de manière efficace et rapide) possèdent des consoles numériques dépendantes de Pro-Tool. La certification professionnelle pour le premier niveau seulement demande plusieurs années de maitrise du programme et pour le 2ème niveau, ils ne sont que 100 à être certifiés professionnellement dans le monde entier!

Ce qui démontre bien que l'important est de motiver les enfants en leur apportant ce dont ils ont besoin, en fonction de leur capacité à apprendre, et non en fonction du moule (du LATIN ! De qui se moque-t-on au XXIeme siècle ?) Moi aussi j'ai fait du latin, mais ce qui peut aider pour des études de droit, de médecine ou de linguistique, n'aidera pas ces jeunes de l'âge numérique. Il faut leur donner les moyens de vivre indépendamment et ce n'est pas parce qu'ils n'iront pas dans des universités prestigieuses (ou grandes écoles) ou même a l'université locale, qu'ils ne réussiront pas. Leur maitrise de la chose numérique leur sera toujours un avantage, et si leur capacité d'adaptation aux changements rapides dans le domaine technologique reste la même, ce sera justement grâce à cet "éparpillement" de leur concentration, cette habileté à faire plusieurs choses à la fois. Ni Bill Gates, ni Steve Jobs n'ont achevé leurs études universitaires... Ce sont maintenant deux des hommes les plus riches du monde, et parmi les plus créatifs. Quant à Bill Gates, malgré tous les défauts de Windows et Microsoft (surtout la sensibilité aux virus informatiques externes), c'est aussi un des hommes les plus généreux de la planète, qui a annoncé que 90% de sa fortune seraient redistribués en œuvres charitables après sa mort. Il a d’ores et déjà une fondation dédiée à l’éducation qui canalise des fonds impressionnants vers des écoles et districts scolaires dans le besoin.

Il faut garder espoir que ce jeune Vishal mentionné dans l’article devienne ce pour quoi il semble béni par les dieux: un as des nouvelles formes de filmographie. Il sera riche et donnera généreusement de l'argent à son lycée. Il y aura même une salle équipée du matériel technologique le plus nouveau, pour des cours de vidéo-audio production (ou tout moyen de ce genre que nous ne connaissons pas encore), qui portera son nom au-dessus de la porte en lettres capitales:

SALLE EQUIPEE GRACE A LA GENEROSITE DE L'ANCIEN ELEVE VISHAL SINGH!

Quadrature du Cercle au Moyen-Orient

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah -in- USA) — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 14:47:00 +0000

Edito du quotidien Le Monde ce matin sur la fragilité de la monarchie jordanienne qui rejoint un edito du New York Times que j'ai lu hier soir sur ce traître de Nasrallah et les obstacles que met le Hezbollah à une enquête approfondie sur la mort d'Hariri:

http://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2010/11/16/inquietudes-sur-la-stabilite-de-la-monarchie-jordanienne_1440766_3232.html#xtor=EPR-32280229-%5BNL_Titresdujour%5D-20101116-%5Bopinions%5D

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/16/opinion/16tue2.html?src=ISMR_AP_LI_LST_FB

Liban, Jordanie et, bien qu'on ait du mal à accepter sa position, Syrie: ces 3 pays sont sous la menace grandissante de l'islamisme fondamentaliste, en partie financé par l'Iran, mais, bien plus gravement, financé par les Frères Musulmans, le wahabisme - donc l'Arabie Saoudite- et potentiellement (mais non officiellement) par Al-Qaida. Des pays modérés (Liban, Jordanie), qu'il faut absolument protéger de cette tentation religieuse radicalisante. La Syrie, avec Assad Junior, maintient un équilibre précaire en semblant faire le jeu des Shiites et de l'Iran, mais est tentée depuis 1946 au moins plus par une invasion définitive du Liban que par la radicalisation religieuse.

Et Israel dans tout cela? Netanyahou ne semble pas comprendre que l'intérêt d'Eretz-Zion n'est pas non plus dans la radicalisation religieuse et/ou nationalistique, mais dans le renforcement de la démocratie en Israel et chez ses voisins immédiats. Une paix même fragile comme ce fut le cas au départ avec l'Egypte du temps de Begin et Sadat serait le premier pas vers un pied de nez commun (Liban, Jordanie, Syrie et Israel) à la menace fondamentaliste en Islam.

Mais qui a vraiment l'intérêt de son pays et de ses citoyens à coeur et non son propre intérêt? Hariri, Sadat, Rabin, trois hommes morts martyrs de la cause de la paix... Un autre point commun: tous trois furent tués par des "insiders", c-a-d, des terroristes issus de leur nation respective.

Comme dit le proverbe: "Ce sont toujours les meilleurs qui partent en premier" et j'ajouterai, pour plagier de Gaulle, "la chienlit" demeure....

From the NYTimes: In the Mideast, No Politics, but God's

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah -in- USA) — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 00:58:00 +0000

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/24/weekinreview/24shadid.html

Interesting article and analysis as always in the New York Times: So the fall of Nasser was the start of rising fundamentalism in the Muslim world.

Gone are the dreams of an "Arab nation" who would include all Muslim sects and the Christians (for after all, there are/were a lot of Christians in the Middle East, Christianity predates Islam...) gone the possibility for the Arab World to unite and, under an "Oumma Arabiya" banner, ensur economical and social progress in the Maghreb, the Machrek and the Arabian Peninsula.

Instead, theocracy prevails under the banner of an "Oumma Islamiya". It argues that being less "nationalistic/ethnic" as it includes every Muslim from South East Asia, Middle East, Central Asia, North and Sub-Saharan Africa and Europe now, it has more legitimacy. Except that theocracy is the death of democracy...

Until secularism prevails, the MidEast, and by extension, all of the "Oumma Islamiya", poses a risk for minorities living among them, for women and for social, economic and political progress.

In hindsight, the only ones to blame are the Western "democracies" who brought down Nasser and allowed for fundamentalism to take over secular societies in the MidEast.

Mean Girls: It Starts Younger... Very Scary!

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah -in- USA) — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 23:30:00 +0000

This New York Times article http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/fashion/10Cultural.html?pagewanted=1&ref=general&src=me
rightly claims that some Moms are responsible for their daughters' meanness, based on the fact that if their daughters are showing such signs, it is because they are "popular" and therefore feel invincible and protected by some kind of "popular immunity". Mean girls' mothers are fixated on their progeniture's "popularity" part and forgo any chance and opportunity to teach them kindness, ethics, compassion and empathy.

To illustrate yesterday's article in the New York Times about girls getting meaner at a younger age, the great feminist blog "Jezebel" has found 5 examples in classic children's literature and their TV adaptations for some of them:
http://jezebel.com/5661220/the-5-worst-mean-little-girls-of-all-time/gallery/

I still remember Nellie Olsen from the TV series adapted from Laura Ingalls' book, the world-wide famous "Little House on the Prairie." That is probably the best illustration for yesterday's NYTimes article: indeed, Nellie's Mom also fits the image of the Mean Girl's Mean Mother.

It is one thing... wanting our daughters to be Alpha Females ready to take up the world and be what they want to be (just like boys), and it is a totally different thing to assume -WRONGLY- that an Alpha Female is the one who, at 2 years old, can mimick Alicia Keys (as said in the NYTimes article) or is cute wearing sexualized grown-up attire... What are we doing to our daughters, for God's sake?

Bikers to the Rescue: an Act of Love & Respect

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah -in- USA) — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 14:31:00 +0000

On Monday, I was driving back from a work trip to ... Costco in Arlington. At the Lincoln Memorial, cars were stopped to let a funeral drive by going towards Arlington Memorial Cemetery. I was very impressed: ahead of the funeral procession, bikers on their Harley were leading the hearse and all the cars. I thought the dead soldier was a Vietnam Vet. Then I read the paper on Tuesday and again this morning, and discovered that the fallen soldier was young, one more victim of the current wars, and that the reason Vietnam Vets bikers were there was to PROTECT their comrade in arms, to create a "noisy" barrier against the hateful, loud, disrespectful and tacky demonstration of Westboro Baptist Church... the very Church who blames soldiers 's death on the fact that "homosexuality is taking over America," saying that God is killing soldiers because of "America's sin."

BIKERS, YOU ARE THE BEST, and I say THANK GOD for bikers! As for the Westboro Baptist Church, I hope to God they lose their case at the Supreme Court. First Amendment should be amended when it becomes an intrusion on private life, especially at its most painful moments: the funeral of a loved one.

Read the article signed by Doug Gansler, Maryland's Attorney General:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/05/AR2010100503827.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

And here is a picture I took in 2009, on Rolling Thunder Day, when 500,000 bikers come to DC:

A New Voice In The Sphere of Child-Rearing Books: Reina Weiner's Book

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah -in- USA) — Sun, 16 May 2010 03:26:00 +0000

Going against both sides of the mothering spectrum, Reina Weiner’s new book, Strong from the Start: Raising Confident and Resilient Kids, brings the rediscovered voice of reason and wisdom and a great sense of humor to the topic of raising children. Far from trying to antagonize one tribe (the working mothers) against another (the stay-at-home moms), she considers the child first and foremost, prodding us to “encourage [our] kids to think for themselves from the very beginning” as the under title states.

The book is very refreshing in the way that it stands clear from all the traditional literature on the subject. Away from hovering helicopter parents, which she dismisses with elegance and humor, Reina Weiner becomes the heroic standard-bearer of the silent parents, those who dare not assert that they have an identity other than being just Mom (or Dad), that they have a life other than the one revolving around their children. It takes courage nowadays for a young or even middle-aged parent to confess that they do not attend every single event in which their child participates. Try once and the choir of self-righteous mothers (the dads often seem to be able to preserve their identity more) will mark you with the scarlet letter “A” for Abomination (and not adultery, which would be much more fun since we do not live in the times of Nathaniel Hawthorne anymore). Indeed, Reina Weiner has a point and she tells it loud and clear. Too many parents seem to only be living through their children: living-rooms are so child-proofed that they look like the interior of a spatial shuttle when they are not littered with tacky giant plastic toys; time is spent driving the child from the "Mommy and Me" gym lesson to the Suzuki-method violin or piano lesson, to the Tiny Tots soccer game (and then the travel team which will take every single weekend away for 15 years)…. I could go on and on. Do we really want our children to remember us as their servants more than their parents? Do we really want to cater to their needs to the extent that they will not know how to wash their laundry or serve themselves cereals for breakfast?

I am not sure whether Reina Weiner interviewed stay-at-home or working mothers or a mix thereof. One of the reasons some of the mothers seem to be doing “everything” for their children is the apparent “lack of time” while another one confesses that it will be done by her standards if she does it herself! One wonders whether time is lacking because the child’s schedule is so loaded with activities to go to and travel time to consider, that allowing for him or her to get dressed by themselves, would disrupt the entire day. Or is it rather because nowadays mothers are pressured into perfection by the media, the parenting books, the parenting “empowerment” groups, the other mothers they meet? Judy Warner wrote a book a few years back that sums it all: “Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety” and Reina Weiner’s book adds to the theme. I particularly liked when she quoted Marsha who used to say to her kids “Unless there’s blood, don’t call me.” My own European parents had a similar attitude.

Reina Weiner also touches on the necessity for parents to share the same parenting style. This probably is one of the hardest tasks in a couple: oftentimes one of the parents will be the good cop and the other one the bad cop. I know I am the bad cop but I have to be since my husband is not so much the laid back dude (he is not!) as he is the “I did not see/hear it, so it did not happen” kind of guy. Saying yes when the other parent has said no, or even worse, saying yes when both parents originally agreed to say no is warranting mixed messages and hence limit testing sessions on a grand scale by a confused child or teenager.

Reina Weiner shares her “simple strategies” from experience and the reader can only be thankful for her down-to-earth approach to child-rearing, from letting them choose their own clothes, prepare their own breakfast, be responsible for their school bus, participate in family life (wood cutting). The reader also feels empowered by all the positive and humorous reinforcement one receives, especially in the chapter “You’re Still “Numero Uno”, which has become my new title until both my children leave the nest. Reina Weiner’s children, Laura and Daniel, seem to have swum through middle and high schools with just the occasional disappointments, such as Laura being disappointed for not having been invited to a birthday party, or Daniel not making it to a band performance for which he had worked. They handled these learning moments without any “fixing” from their parents, which is a rare occasion nowadays, as most parents tend to come to the rescue even when not asked to.

Of course, not all children grow at the same pace, and some of us face the daily challenge of a child with special needs for whom even Reina Weiner’s mom-tested strategies in trust-building may not work smoothly or right away. With a son who has Asperger Syndrome, I know for a fact that he will not leave the nest yet, and that he may need me for a much longer time than my daughter will. But that does not mean that he cannot learn, with positive reinforcement, trust and LOVE, some simple survival skills, even if it takes him longer.

I am not sure whether Reina Weiner interviewed any parents of pre-teens or teens for her book (as much as it obvious that she talked to mothers of younger children and to mothers of children who had left the nest). She does acknowledge that her own children, Laura and Daniel, grew up in the era before GPS and cell phones, although already with video games. This may be the only weakness in an otherwise extremely positive, trust-building (not only learning how to trust one’s kids but how to trust oneself raising them up) and optimistic book. In this 21th century, children can fall prey to the Internet, and I do not mean sexual predators or other horror stories. Children can fall prey to their peers through cyber bullying, “sexting”, the misuse of social networks, and a few other new things: from anonymous insulting phone calls to a photo being “photoshopped” and uploaded on the Internet , from graphic nude pictures being taken at age 12 and sent to friends “for fun”, from a mother creating a fake Face Book account to the suicide of the girl she “friended” and “de-friended” to the more recent suicide of a Middle School student in Connecticut due to intense cyber bullying, the book is missing one final chapter, on how to keep faith in and trust your kids in the face of greater and more powerful technological adversaries…

Mission Impossible? Not if we accept it and apply Reina Weiner’s mom-tested strategies from the start and relearn that common sense endures while best-selling child-rearing theories are just a fad…

©Sarah Diligenti, The Quill and The Brush, May 2010.

Winter Readings

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah -in- USA) — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 21:25:00 +0000

What else to do when snow hits as hard as it did since December 19, but read even more? Cuddled under my many blankets and even with a flashlight when I lost power, I turned many pages during this long and never-ending winter. As I write this review, snow still muffles the sounds of bird chirping and the garden still looks more like the backyard of a Datcha than Suburban America.

However, from December to February, I traveled in time and space: from Scandinavia to India via France and Ireland, without leaving my house… Surprisingly, I have discovered a new taste for Northern European Literature. I still remember how I deeply disliked Karen Blixen’s prose when I was in my 20s, so it came as a real surprise for me to fall for the pristine clarity of such writers as Per Petterson or the infectious addictiveness of no other than the late Stieg Larrson. Of course, the subjects and styles are very different: the former writes about war, about the grey shadows of life – nothing is ever black or white with Petterson- and what consequences all this bears on its narrators, in Norway (Out Stealing Horses) and in Denmark (To Siberia). Solitude is the link between Petterson’s masterful pieces and the more addictive Millenium series. If Petterson’s heroes end up lonely, Lisbeth Salander is alone from the start of her tragic life and so is Super Blomkvist (although he is more sociable) when he investigates the world of finances, corruption, and violence done to women. If I ever travel to Sweden, I will definitely sign up for one of the Millenium-themed walking tours of Stockholm! It was supposed to be a Decalogue, but ended up being a trilogy due to Stieg Larrson’s untimely death. All of us fans of Millenium will have to try and imagine what other adventures Lisbeth could have gotten into and what other unknown aspects of Sweden Super Blomkvist would have brought out in the open. If you think of Sweden like I did until I read the book in terms of Ikea, meatballs, best social services and women’s rights, you are in for a shock!

For American readers, volume 3 of the trilogy will be released in May 2010. The American titles are: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (volume 1), The Girl Who Played With Fire (volume 2) and the last one will be called The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest. These books have been a phenomenal success in Europe since their release in 2004; translations in French and other European languages have been available since 2005...

From Scandinavia, I jumped to Ireland and hated Anne Enright’s The Gathering. I know it won the Man Booker Prize and in general this Prize is a notch higher than the Goncourt in its decisions, but this book did nothing for me. I am tired of Irish multigenerational books, always filled with alcoholism, religion and the odd domestic violence and now of course, revelations on pedophilia. What do you expect of families of twelve children in a country that only started to get out of poverty thanks to the EU subsidies? All families have their shares of secrets; the Irish simply have more because they breed more! Enough! The prose is so convoluted that one even wonders whether the author is not also an alcoholic. No Irish writer seems to be able to ever match James Joyce’s Ulysses…

Delphine de Vigan’s Les Heures Souterraines is not the most cheerful book; it is actually very depressing. But it should have gotten the Goncourt. To make do, a new literary award was created and given to the author for this book: "le prix du roman d’entreprise" (Corporate World Literary Award). Kafkaian to the very end, claustrophobic, extremely well written, with alternate chapters and alternate narrators, Les Heures Souterraines is the literary dissection of France’s corporate world and traditions. If they ever make a movie of that book, it will be the new “Modern Times” (Les Temps Modernes, Chaplin) but with a darker touch. Chilling!

A hop over the Atlantic took me to Canada and Iceland this time. As I was reading Christina Sunley’s masterful debut novel, The Tricking of Freya, I discovered the intricacies of Icelandic language (one of the most difficult to learn). The unraveling of words goes hand in hand with Freya’s family secrets finally out in the open. It also deals with mental illness with a sensibility rarely seen in literature. Freya, her mother, her aunt, her grandmother, are women living poetry, breathing poetry, even dying for it. This was probably the best book I read in 2009.

A Country Called Home, by Kim Barnes – just like Two Rivers, by T. Greenwood- is a twist on American Suburbia. Many novels in recent years have dealt with this theme: The Little Children, by Tom Perrotta, and the re-released Revolutionary Road, by Richard Yates. I find it interesting that in Perrotta’s and Yates’s books, women are at the crux of rebellion against suburbia, while in Barnes’ and Greenwood’s, it is men who have to face life in the middle of nowhere. While the women often are characterized as hysterical (Yates) or newly-minted Bovarys (Perrotta), the men in Greenwood’s and Barnes’s books have to genuinely confront existence. Both men find themselves widowed with a child (a daughter in each case), and at a loss as to what to do. But where Thomas Deracotte becomes a junkie doctor, addicted to morphine, unable to take care of his daughter, Harper Montgomery is a little bit better, and suffers more from endless daydreaming or nostalgia for what could have been. Both men will rely heavily on loving caretakers: Manny and Maggie. The similarities between the two books are remarkable and it is worth a comparative reading. I still wonder though about the fact that Barnes and Greenwood, both female authors, treated their “fallen men” in a much more positive way than Perrotta and Yates did their “ fallen women.”

Far North, by Marcel Theroux, is a take on the future. The son of famous writer Paul Theroux, Marcel Theroux is not a newcomer on the literary scene. Far North takes place in Siberia, when a group of pacifist Quakers intent on saving their flock and trying to build a better world after global warming kills off the temperate hemispheres, buy land from the Russians and settle there. It is a rewriting of the Pioneer Movement, set in a very bleak future, slightly evocative of French writer Robert Merle’s Malevil (in which people tried to rebuild a life after a freak nuclear accident). Theroux’s strengths lie in a vivid imagination, a global culture and a research that may have included the best narrative accounts on the Goulag (in both tsarist and communist times, one thinks of Dostoievsky’s Notes from the Underground but also of Solzhenitsyn, of course!). His narrator’s name, Makepeace, is a probable literary homage to William Makepeace Thackeray. The narrator is in fact a woman, a fact one discovers only in the middle of the book. The writing style would not give this fact away, as it is clearly masculine writing. There is more than just one big surprise in the book so I will let you discover them. I am concerned though with the writing: at times, it is a bit shaky, almost grammatically incorrect.

Finally, to warm me up after all these snow-abundant books, I read Atlas of Unknowns, by Tania James, an Indian-American writer and Between Assassinations, by Indian writer Aravind Adinga (Booker Prize winner for The White Tiger). The first book is the beautiful story of two young Indian sisters living in the little-known Syriac Christian (Orthodox) Indian community: one is crippled by a firework accident but becomes a talented pictorial artist and the steady rock of a family still trying to recover from their mother’s “suicide” (it is not) and the other who is gifted and talented academically but who will have to steal her sister’s talent to get to America. The second book gathers chapters like a travel guide, and is in fact a very clever collection of stories between Indira Gandhi’s and Rajiv Gandhi’s assassinations, a real window on life in a Third World Country small city.

I read many more books than those mentioned here, but that is another story!

©Sarah Diligenti Pickup for The Quill and The Brush, February 2010.

No Need For New Architectural Monstrosities in the European Landscapes: Convert Old Buildings

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah -in- USA) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 02:45:00 +0000

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/world/europe/05france.html?ref=global-home
The one who must be laughing in his grave is none other than Josef Stalin. He destroyed churches by either erasing them totally, transforming them into swimming-pools, youth centers, museums, hay lofts, pigsties, etc. In Europe, chuch attendance has been decreasing steadily, without any Soviet input, since the 18th century, thanks to the "Enlightnment".
Now European (and French) churches are empty and there are not enough priests (here one priest serves many parishes). I could go on about the fact that the decrease in sacerdotal callings is due to the absurdity of the rule of celibacy for Catholic priests, but that is another subject altogether.On the other hand, other faiths are growing (Islam) and need their own buildings of worship.
Could the Europeans do like it is done here in the States, when sometimes a Church becomes a synagogue and the building changes parishioners and faith affiliation without a scandal?
After all, the meaning of the Latin word "ecclesia" does not mean a stone, cement and brick Church, just a gathering of the faithful... Church should be within one's heart and soul, not an architectural show. And since the steeple is already standing in the landscape, no need for additional minarets... My idea is not new, look at Hagia Sofia in Istambul...
Now of course, if the parishioners are truly opposed to any change (be it a peaceful revolution in the attribution of the building or the physical destruction of the church building as suggested in this article), why don't they show more fervor or faith for that matter? The hypocrisy of claiming their "Christian" or "Catholic" places of worship while not attending Mass is one more example of a decadent civilization. Practice what you say. Do not only lip-worship.
As for the government not helping, it is the rule of law: no government should be involved in spiritual issues. Temporal power and spiritual power are antinomic. And that is valid for all countries under the sun: old Europe, new Europe, the US, Saudi Arabia and Iran... Theocracies only bring out tyranny. Same with extreme secularism, alas!

Iranian Woman on Cruel Islam

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah -in- USA) — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 03:48:00 +0000

This is a very moving interview of an Iranian woman who was jailed for 3 years for having refused to wear the head scarf. She was beaten, raped, her leg was broken, the other wounded and left to become infected.
In Europe, left-wingers are demonstrating alongside fundamentalist Muslims to demand that secular laws forbidding head to toe attire be abolished. They should watch this video and understand that it is a woman's right not to want to wear this demeaning and humiliating tool of male domination: the veil and any other potato-sack looking cloth.

Fall Fireworks

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah -in- USA) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 04:33:00 +0000

Thanks for the rare sunny Sunday walks this Fall 2009...
A first Sunny Sunday Walk in October, at The Madeira School, close to Great Falls, VA, provided me with pictures of leaves floating, of ponds that Manet would not have denied, and of a camouflaged frog.

Black Pond, The Madeira School... For Manet.

The Yellow and the Red...

The Camouflaged Frog...

A second Sunny Sunday Walf offered Fall Fireworks just a mile from my house... A small burst of yellow maple leaves in a sea of red...

La chronique de Gérard Collard - Les prix littéraires

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah -in- USA) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:28:00 +0000

Enfin, quelqu'un qui ose dire la vérité sur la magouille des milieux littéraires parisiens.

NOISES

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah -in- USA) — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 01:06:00 +0000

Cat purring right by my face at night;
the MGM lion roaring;
the rain on a hot summer night, windows open;
Russian Easter Bells -once you've heard them, all other bells are but "noisy gongs";
wind chimes;
the wind in the trees, shaking their summits when it is really windy, whispering, exhaling, singing;
the wind howling in the chimney on a cold winter day;
owls hooting;
voices in the distance when one is asleep: they are muffled but you know you are not alone;
waterfalls;
waves lapping at the seaside; and
waves crashing on rocks during a storm;
the crunch of footsteps crushing newly fallen snow;
the rustle of silk;
drums in a circle of joy;
the noise the steam iron makes whenever I decide to iron accumulated laundry: it echoes my sighs…
the "psscchht" of champagne being poured into a flute; and
the "pop" of the champagne bottle being opened;
cicadas in summer;
dry leaves being raked;
squirrels sending signals sounding like policemen’s whistles;
birds chirping at 4:00am in the spring;
magpies on the lawn in Canberra;
seagulls by the seaside;
neighborhood flagpoles in the wind playing masts and sails on a sailing boat;
the fire cracking in the fireplace when I add pinecones and roast chestnuts;
a train tooting in the night;
the muezzin calling to prayer in East Jerusalem; and
the Kaddish sung at Auschwitz…

October 10, 2009
©Sarah Diligenti’s Poems - The Quill and The Brush

Le canapé rouge, par Michèle Lesbre: un livre vide et ennuyeux

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah -in- USA) — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 15:08:00 +0000

Un monologue prétendant être un dialogue entre la narratrice, Anne, et une vieille dame excentrique, Clémence Barrot (est-ce un clin d’oeil même involontaire à Clément Marrot?), voilà ce qu’est Le canapé rouge, de Michèle Lesbre… 138 pages d’introspection entre Moscou et Irkoutsk, entrecoupées de flashbacks dans le salon de Clémence, un livre lu en une heure et dont on ne retire rien.

La narratrice se remémore l’amitié qui la lie à Clémence lors d’un voyage en train vers Irkoutsk et le Lac Baïkal, à la recherche d’un ami, Gyl, qui est aussi un ancien amant, et dont elle n’a plus de nouvelles depuis six mois. Dans le train, elle “rencontre” un certain Igor, une rencontre qui n’en est pas vraiment une, car il n’y a d’autre échange que des regards, et une soupe aux choux qu’Igor offre à Anne par l’intermédiaire du cuisinier du wagon-restaurant. Igor partage la cabine d’Anne avec quatre autres voyageurs et l’interprétation qu’Anne fait de ces quelques jours passés avec Igor dans le même compartiment relève du délire hystérique. Igor serait son “ange gardien”… et elle reconnaîtrait son dos entre des milliers d’autres, car c’est surtout ce dos qu’elle a contemplé pendant les nuits de ce long voyage, le dos d'un Igor endormi sur la couchette faisant face à la sienne. Igor n’apporte rien à l’histoire, si ce n’est une touche anthropologique ou folklorique russe. De même la rencontre qu’Anne fera avec Boris à Irkoutsk est elle aussi une rencontre vide de sens. Le lecteur finit par se dire que si Gyl est parti si loin, en Sibérie profonde, là même où les Décembristes furent exilés par le Tsar en 1825, c’est qu’il voulait s’éloigner le plus possible de la narratrice, de l’ennui qu’elle porte en elle, de l’ennui et surtout du manque de vie, d’envie de vivre. Ce n’est pas une dépression : la narratrice « vit par intermédiaire », au travers des personnes qu’elle croise, au travers des vies de ces personnes, vies qu’elle imagine (Igor, Boris) ou qu’on lui raconte (Clémence).

C’est ainsi que la vie de Clémence est mise en parallèle avec celle de la narratrice. Clémence a vécu un grand amour, Paul, assassiné pendant la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale. Elle a ensuite connu plusieurs hommes, mais ne s’est jamais mariée. Clémence est une ancienne modiste et l’auteur lui donne un côté “librement-mais-non-officiellement-adapté-de-la vie-de-Coco-Chanel” qui n’échappe pas au lecteur. Anne lui fait la lecture, surtout des portraits de femmes héroïques, Olympe de Gouges, Milena (la muse de Kafka), Marion du Faouët, avec une insistance sur la traversée à la nage de la Moldau par Milena, dans son désir de ne pas être en retard à un rendez-vous amoureux, qui devient clé trop visible de la dernière heure de Clémence, victime de la maladie d'Alzheimer et qui se suicidera, se jettant dans la Seine comme Milena dans la Moldau, avant le retour d’Anne de son artificiel voyage en Sibérie.

Le livre rappelle vaguement celui de Simonetta Greggio, La douceur des hommes, dans ce dialogue entre une femme âgée, un peu hors du commun, qui a aimé et vécu librement, sans attaches conventionnelles, et une femme plus jeune, ou comme Anne à la veille d’entrer dans une maturité stérile (il est trop tard pour avoir les enfants qu’elle ne voulait pas plus jeune), minée par l’anxiété de la vieillesse et de la mort. Cette peur du changement inéluctable de son corps devient un refrain exaspérant et le lecteur a une terrible envie de lui dire : « Assez de pleurnicheries ! Il y a pire que trois rides dans le monde qui nous entoure ! » ; ou, comme Bossuet, la sermonner : « Vanité, vanité, tout n’est que vanité ! ». Tout comme Constance dans La Douceur des Hommes, Anne est une avide voyageuse et mentionne ses divers périples alors même qu’elle est dans le train vers Irkoutsk, mais là s’arrêtent les similitudes. Car le livre de Simonetta Greggio exsude la tendresse alors que celui de Michèle Lesbre se révèle un bréviaire du narcissisme et de l’introspection, un « livre des regrets », une perte de temps pour le lecteur qui se demande encore quels critères ont jugé ces 138 pages dignes d’être publiées…

Est-ce une nouvelle tendance littéraire que cette angoisse de la ménopause par des baby-boomers ayant vécu leur plus belle année en 1968, comme Anne dans Le canapé rouge ? Ou doit-on y voir un rapprochement des générations, le nécessaire dialogue entre femmes enfin renoué, entre celles qui affrontent la vieillesse et la mort en face, avec philosophie, suivant le cliché qu’avec l’âge vient la sagesse et celles qui en ont encore peur ?

October 10, 2009

©Sarah Diligenti for La Plume d'WAA

A Poem on Growing Old: Little Old Ladies

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah -in- USA) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 02:05:00 +0000

In Memoriam Stephanie Auspitz....

This poem of mine was published a few years ago in an anthology.

Little old ladies with pink ribbons in their hair,
soft, blushed, pink cheeks that smell of violet powder
when you hug and kiss them, and pretend they will
not die nor disappear in their little blue coats,

their tiny feet dressed up nicely against the chill,
the wise smile on their lips whispering how you ought
to not love ‘em so much nor cherish them so dearly,
for when the time comes they will wave bye bye gently,

lay their fragile body and their little wrinkled
hands to rest, their soft white hair elegantly brush’d,
the wise smile on their lips now hiding their little
secrets, the memories of lives past, forever asleep.

Bethesda, Dec 1 - 2, 2000

District 9 - The Movie, or the Mother of Metaphors on Xenophobia and Racism

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah -in- USA) — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 23:10:00 +0000

Originally a movie based on real events that took place in South Africa (District 6 in Cape Town was declared a White-Only area in 1966 and forced removals and evictions started in 1968. By 1982, more than 60,000 persons had been relocated 25 km from District 6 and all standing buildings been bulldozed but for the houses of worship), the South African movie, District 9, is so strong that it becomes the Mother of Metaphors on Xenophobia and Racism.

District 9 is a science fiction movie, and as such, does a good job at exposing our very human feelings vis-à-vis all things alien. The undesirable “alien” population who lives in District 9, Johannesburg, is indeed rather… different. The movie director did not go as far as totally removing all resemblance with our species. These "aliens" are able to stand erect on their two hind legs, have arms, and a head, and have a language (even so, I was thankful for the subtitles: I did not understand a single word they uttered). These aliens are alien in as much as they do look like giant shrimps, with their skin made of some hard carapace/scale and their head with the little tentacles that give them a funny mustache. They came on a mother ship that hangs over Johannesburg and has been hanging there for 20 years when the movie starts. They “landed” on Earth when the humans opened up the ship, found them starving inside, and carried them into refugee camps to feed and heal them… thus creating the slum that is now District 9 at the beginning of the movie.

Twenty years later, the threshold of tolerance is reached and xenophobia rises. A system of segregation (really, of Apartheid) separates the “non-humans” from the “humans” and the government through an agency called MNU (Multinational United, a wink to UNO?) decides to relocate the aliens further away in an altogether new refugee camp, presented as the ultimate refugee camp for cleanliness and hygiene. Evictions are served, and I will try not to spoil the movie further as I share the thoughts and challenging moments it raised in me.

Of course, I commend the director and its team. Deciding upon a reasonably alien-looking creature (a giant shrimp) but keeping the main characteristics of what’s make us superior mammals (standing erect, a developed language and a highly developed technology… much higher than ours as is always the case in science-fiction movie) is a coup de maître. The human species’ destiny in science-fiction movies always seems to be that of the mean moronic Nazi in post World War 2 movies that brought good conscience to nations who didn’t dare examine their past or their actions during the war: the Nazis were cruel to the point of stupidity, had technology, but the smart French Resistant always outdid them (no word on the French collaboration!). Here again the same scenario: the aliens have a much higher technology than the humans, but eat tinned cat food (they do not even bother to open the cans!) and get done by a bunch of illegal Nigerians who sell them hundreds of cat food cans for money, or, even better, their alien weapons. These latter are useless to humans because they work only on contact with the proper DNA. The Nigerian chief in his wheel chair is as avid of this alien technology as the MNU, South African government and by extension the Western world. But hush!

The aliens are nicknamed “prawns” by the humans. Immediately come to mind the innumerable lists of derogatory terms/slurs humans created and used every time they felt threatened by someone. From slavery-related words to segregation and Apartheid, from “Yid” to “Jude”, from the Dreyfus Affair to Nazi Germany and anti-Semitic Poland and current France, from “bicot” to “raton” to “Paki” in the post-colonization era, from “limies” to “frogs” to “macaroni” to “slant-eyes” to “red skin”, human creativity in language seems unfortunately at is best when it is speaking out hatred and fear of the alien. Is xenophobia truly such a linguistic asset of the human mind? I shiver at the thought.

When the evictions are served, other images invade the spectator’s mind. Not that I lived World War 2, or any other war, but famous pictures of the Warsaw Ghetto came to me, the little boy with his hands up… Images of millions of displaced persons, in Rwanda, in Sudan, in Vietnam, in Afghanistan, ending up parked like cattle in refugee camps… Images of Gaza and the wall that cuts the Holy Land in two, on the one side of the wall, the wealthy Israelis, on the other side, Palestinians surviving in squalid conditions... Images of the shacks in Brazil, India or elsewhere that make our planet, the “planet of slums”…

District 9 goes beyond being a metaphor on what the Apartheid regime was. District 9 illustrates the consequences of hatred and contempt for the Other, the Human Alien Other, legal or illegal.

The Warsaw Ghetto Picture….

Vietnamese Refugee in Thailand

Refugee Camp in Gaza

Elfriede Jelinek, ou le mythe autrichien ébranlé

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah -in- USA) — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 02:36:00 +0000

Briseuse de rêves ou artiste accomplie? Telle est la question que je me pose à la fin de l’été, après la lecture de plusieurs romans du Prix Nobel de Littérature 2004, l’Autrichienne Elfriede Jelinek.

Si tout comme moi, vous gardiez de l’Autriche une vision aseptisée, de bonbonnière aux douces couleurs pastel, sur fond de valse de Strauss, avec Romy Schneider et sa lourde masse de cheveux remontée en chignon quand elle interprètait Elizabeth “Sissi” von Wittelsbach, ou une vision plus sportive avec Franz Klammer slalomant à vitesse presque supersonique à Innsbruck, il se peut fort que ces dernières années aient déjà quelque peu eraflé cette naïve image d’Epinal. Entre les deux affaires de kidnapping et d’inceste, l’agence de tourisme sexuel de Nikki Lauder, ancien pilote de Formule 1, les virées politiques à la “plus à droite que moi, tu meurs!” du maintenant défunt Jorg Haider et de son parti populiste, l’image d’une Autriche aussi légère que la crème Chantilly des cafés servis à Vienne, aussi culturellement joyeuse et inspirée qu’une oeuvre de Gustav Klimt, cette image quitte votre esprit définitivement à la lecture des livres d’Elfriede Jelinek.

Célébrée pour la polyphonie de son écriture, sa dénonciation presque poétique des maux qui affligent l’Autriche d’après 1945 et l’Autriche contemporaine, l’oeuvre d’Elfriede Jelinek est avant tout sulfureuse. Certes un prodige d’écriture et de jeux de mots -au moins dans la traduction en anglais... car je n’ai pas osé m’attaquer à la version originale en allemand. Depuis Die Buddenbrooken de Thomas Mann, je n’ai plus rien lu dans la langue de Goethe-, certes des phrases vertigineuses de sens et de pirouettes littéraires sémantiques, mais aux dépens de la santé mentale du lecteur. Celle des personnages d’Elfriede Jelinek est totalement à la dérive: femmes battues et se laissant battre, victimes d’abus et d’humiliations sexuels entérinant des relations maritales sado-masochistes, comme c’est le cas pour la mère de Rainer et d’Anna dans Wonderful, Wonferful Times, ou pour Gerti dans Lust; ou encore touchant à la perversion inhérente au détournement de mineur dans The Piano Teacher.

Que ce soit d'ailleurs The Piano Teacher (dont il existe un film avec Isabelle Huppert, mais que je n’ai pas vu , -et que je ne pense pas voir, je ne suis pas à ce point masochiste-), Greed, Lust ou encore Wonderful, Wonderful Times, les quatre oeuvres que j’ai lues cet été, la violence insupportable d’une sexualité décadente, évocatrice des fins d’Empire (Romain, ou Troisième Reich revu par Visconti dans Les Damnés: http://www.in.com/videos/watchvideo-trailer-the-damned-1969-visconti-les-damnes-vo-2377373.html), s’accompagne aussi d’autres formes de violence, politique et économique, opposant Hans à sa propre mère, veuve d’un socialiste mort dans les camps de concentration, Herr Direktor à ses ouvriers, la pianiste à ses elèves; mais aussi violence faite à l’innocence de l’enfance. C’est à se demander, à travers ce déploiement intellectualisé de la violence, si ce n’est pas d’elle-même que l’auteure parle. Jelinek, tout comme Anna dans Wonderful, Wonderful Times, ou encore cette autre Anna dans The Piano Teacher, était destinée à une carrière musicale et tout comme ses deux jeunes anti-héroïnes, en proie à d’intenses dérangements psychologiques. Ces derniers ont même empêché l’auteure de se rendre à Stockholm pour recevoir son prix Nobel, tant il lui est impossible d’affronter la foule, de parler en public, comme Anna qui traverse des périodes de silence, perdant la parole, ce logos qui différencie l’Homme de l’Animal.

Discours: http://nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=721

Est-ce la condition féminine, la soumission de la femme dans la société autrichienne présentée comme capitaliste, conventionnelle et catholique, à l’instar sous-entendu des “3 K: Kirche, Küche, Kinder”, que dénonce ainsi Jelinek? A trop se répéter d’un livre à l’autre, à trop rouler dans la boue l’ego et les maux du mâle (sans jeu de mots!), de l’Homo Austriansis devenu symbole de l’Homo Sapiens contemporain, même si cela est fait dans un registre de langue autrement plus riche, recherché et intellectuel que celui de Houellebecq (pour trouver un élément de comparaison à forte connotation sexuelle), l’auteure finit par ne plus convaincre. A crier au loup quand il n’y en avait pas, Pierre perdit toute crédibilité!

Sur les quatre romans lus, celui que je recommande quand même, c’est Wonderful, Wonferdul Times: effrayante vision de l’Autriche post-hitlérienne, qui se complait dans un rôle de victime du fait de l’Anschluss, n’ayant jamais le courage qu'eut l’Allemagne de confronter ses péchés, mais aussi effrayante descente aux enfers pour les quatre adolescents du roman: Rainer, Anna, Hans et Sophie, ou comment la violence engendre la violence qui engendre à son tour une certaine forme de terrorisme et de criminalité. Ce roman, situé dans les années 50 pourrait bien avoir comme cadre les années 70 ou cette première décennie du XXIème siècle. Ames sensibles, s’abstenir!

©Sarah Diligenti, septembre 2009 pour La Plume d'WAA

Summer Strolls

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah -in- USA) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 02:36:00 +0000

There is nothing I find more relaxing than summer strolls, hunting for the unexpected flower or insect picture.

In D.C., two magic places work year round and are at their best in the spring and summer: Mount Vernon, the compulsory pilgrimage to George Washington's home and Washington's best-kept secret, the mansion, estate and gardens of Marjorie Merriweather Post: Hillwood Museum.

The Butterfly at Mount Vernon

The Bumble Bee and the Blue Thistle at Hillwood

If only choices were always as simple!

***

One may prefer decoding an artist's pictural inspirations. When strolls in Giverny are but only a dream not yet come true, strolls in Hillwood's cutting garden and Japanese garden offer comfort and hope.

The Japanese Garden?

or The Cutting Garden ?

I fancy that Manet is giving me his blessing for walking around these beautiful gardens and trying to understand what he saw, what he felt, and what he interpreted of Nature's bounty, of Nature's beauty, of Nature's colorful summer kindness to human eyes tired of the winter grays and the winter blahs.

Nympheas at Giverny, waterlilies in a Japanese garden in DC....

...Bridges to cross....

Waterfalls or water music...

...The Japanese maple trees are ablaze already...

Dame Sei Shonagon's spirit espouses Manet's.

The world is a garden...

L'amertume de l'exil: Andrei Makine

noreply@blogger.com (Sarah -in- USA) — Fri, 01 May 2009 17:54:00 +0000

Recevoir un Prix Goncourt bien mérité, qui récompensât vraiment le talent, la langue et l’originalité, ce fut le cas d’Andrei Makine en 1995 pour son superbe roman, « Le testament français ».

Ce qui n’empêcha certes pas la critique littéraire de crier à l’imposture, et de traiter Makine de “métèque de la littérature française”. Certains auteurs dont l’œuvre est ainsi récompensée, disparaissent parfois sans jamais publier autre chose; d’autres enchaînent livre après livre, exploitant un filon ou une niche, diluant leur talent et leur style, au détriment de Dame Littérature. Quelques-uns résistent au temps, aux vagues qui font et défont la gloire littéraire, et écrivent sans chercher à plaire ou parfois même prêts à déplaire.

Makine demeure un cas particulier. Il a écrit treize livres; le quatorzième, « La vie d’un inconnu », est probablement la meilleure surprise de la rentrée littéraire de janvier 2009. On peut dire de Makine qu’il reste fidèle à son style, néo-classique s’il en est, loin des extravagances linguistiques de Perec ou Devos, stylistiques de Sarraute, et sémantiques d’auteurs allant de Houellebecq à la “trash littérature”. Il reste aussi fidèle à son sujet, à cette niche qu’il revendique comme personnelle, roman après roman, celle de la Russie Soviétique et des souffrances de l’homme (ou de la femme) sous ce régime totalitaire. Si son enthousiasme pour la France qu’il “choisit” en 1987 marque ses quatre premiers livres, voire même le très controversé cinquième livre “Le Crime d’Olga Arbélina”, petit à petit est apparue une deuxième tendance dans l’œuvre de l’écrivain, celle de l’amertume de l’exil, entamée dès "Requiem pour l’Est”. Par coups de plume bien acérée, Makine écorche, égratigne, tente de secouer cette France qu’il avait idéalisée et qu’il découvre n’être pas, n’être plus, et qu’il finit par dénoncer dans un pamphlet qui est aussi un réquisitoire, “Cette France qu’on oublie d’aimer”.

Son dernier roman, "La vie d’un inconnu", marque peut-être la synthèse des sentiments qui tourmentent l’auteur en la personne de son narrateur, Choutov, écrivain russe exilé en France, le double de Makine. D’un côté, l’amertume de l’exil volontaire dans un pays adoré, choisi, mis sur un piédestal, une « France éternelle » que l’auteur souhaiterait figée dans la splendeur de son passé historique mais qui évolue au gré des migrations, et de la langue, qui n’est plus celle de Voltaire, ni celle de Stendhal, car « aujourd’hui, la personne préférée des Français est un footballeur et non plus un poète » (p 38 Vie d’un Inconnu). Face à cette transformation du pays d’élection, et aigri par une histoire amoureuse impossible, le narrateur est pris d’un violent sentiment de nostalgie pour le pays qu’il a quitté et retourne à Leningrad, maintenant St Petersbourg, persuadé d’y retrouver son âme et l’amour de sa jeunesse, mais se retrouve de nouveau en exil - «Qui est-il ? Un Russe ? Mais passez bien habillé pour cet endroit. Un étranger ? Mais manquant de cette aisance qu’on sent au contact des Occidentaux. » (p89)-, ne pouvant comprendre ses anciens compatriotes retournés (au sens du « Retournement », excellent livre de Vladimir Volkoff) par la nouvelle Russie, qui « a copié ces modes occidentales et maintenant s’amuse à les pasticher. » (p72), alors « qu’autrefois un recueil de poèmes pouvait changer votre vie, mais un poème pouvait aussi coûter la vie à son auteur. Les strophes avaient le poids des longues peines derrière le cercle polaire où tant de poètes avaient disparu… » (p99)

Si le narrateur par deux fois exilé réssuscite, c’est grâce à Gueorgui Lvovitch Volski, le vieillard grabataire qui attend silencieusement qu’on le déménage, tant il gêne les nouveaux Russes que représente Iana car «quand on était jeunes, on n’avait pas le temps de parler avec les gens comme lui » (p75) et son fils Vlad, né à la chute du communisme, qui n’a donc pas grandi dans l’univers soviétique des Pionniers et des privations, et qui « parle une langue que Choutov n’a jamais entendue en Russie » (p93). Volski (Est-ce un jeu de mots sur Vronski, l’amant d’Anna Karénine ?) est un rescapé du régime totalitaire stalinien, un de ces personnages chers à Makine et qui font la grandeur humaniste de son œuvre (La fille d’un héros de l’Union Soviétique, La musique d’une vie, La femme qui attendait). Il a survécu au siège de Leningrad, il a survécu aux camps, il a survécu à l’atrocité et la folie du régime et des sbires de celui-ci : police secrète vous emportant en pleine nuit, interrogations, disparitions… Son histoire, au-delà de la parole historique, est aussi celle de son amour pour Mila, amour qui vécut, survécut, et mourut au rythme de l’histoire de l’URSS stalinienne. Un amour qui demeure après la mort de Mila, exemplaire par sa fidélité, et symbole aussi de cette Russie d’avant l’occidentalisation.

Grâce à Lvovitch, le narrateur « sait désormais que les seuls mots dignes d’être écrits surgissent quand la parole est impossible. » (p 288) et « qu’il n’appartiendra jamais à ce monde russe qui renaît maintenant (…) dans sa patrie. Il restera jusqu’à la fin dans un passé de plus en plus méprisé et de plus en plus inconnu d’ailleurs. Une époque qu’il sait indéfendable et où pourtant vivaient quelques êtres qu’il faudra coûte que coûte sauver de l’oubli. » ( p289)

Espérons que Makine survivra à ce double exil : l’exil volontaire qui s’avère difficile à vivre dans un pays qui semble bien loin de l’idéal qu’il s’en était fait, et l’exil intérieur de celui qui ne fut jamais prophète en son pays natal et ne peut plus le reconnaître, devenu lui-même, à 52 ans, monument historique d’une époque révolue.