Placelore

Life and Fate

The axis of Vasily Grossman’s historical novel Life and Fate is the horrendous conflict that engulfed the city of Stalingrad in the severe winter of 1942–43. It is often compared to Leo Tolstoy’s famous literary effort War and Peace, based upon Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion of and subsequent retreat from Russia.

I found this an impressive, heart-rending book. It offers profound insights into the effect of conflict upon the individuals involved and also on the ideologies and state apparatus which facilitate brutality and destruction.

Grossman counsels that it is best not to judge those who informed on others unless you yourself have lived through the conditions that rested on the propaganda, violence, fear, and rewards of a totalitarian state. There are many touching and memorable descriptive passages: the last minutes in a gas chamber of a doctor who sacrifices her opportunity to survive so that she can remain to the end with a lost child; the powerful, universal emotions of a distraught mother who grieves for her dead son; a transcending love felt by a famished German soldier for a Russian woman in a cold, encircled cellar during the last weeks of the siege.

Life and Fate is a drama with a large cast of characters radiating out from and interconnected to the Shaposhnikov family. Here we have generals and soldiers, Gestapo and KGB interrogators, concentration camp inmates, escapees, refugees, torturers, collaborators, informers, and gravediggers.

What happens when the walls that insulate us from savagery and insanity collapse, when there is no longer any divide between the darkness without and within? What happens to those who think they know who they are–and what they live for? What happens to those who believe that they would never confess to concocted crimes in the confines of Lubyanka, a place where a man or woman can be so beaten that not a mark is left on the outside of the body but where every internal organ is damaged and bleeds, a place where even the strongest prisoners who have endured the unendurable finally succumb and scream out in the night, “I will sign anything, anything.”

This not a comfortable book to read. I found it humbling and on several occasions felt myself stopping and quietly turning to the words “Lord have mercy,” for as we are, are we not in need of help to enable us to protect and nourish what is fine and human?  In Life and Fate, mercy comes through suffering, a suffering that reveals that all that reduces us to slavery, in all its myriad of forms, is within. The trapped German soldier asks about life: Is it all a great folly, or is it fate? Viktor Shaposhnikov, the physicist and member of the Academy of Sciences, comes to realize that it is not too late to stand up and enter a struggle with forces which oppose his wish and determination to become an honorable man and to truly become his mother’s son.  

Tolstoy was born in 1828, sixteen years after the events he described in War and Peace. Grossman, on the other hand, personally witnessed a great deal of what he describes. His determination to record as honestly as he could earned the respect not only of many veterans of the Red Army and the civilian population, but also members of the invading forces. Life and Fate is more than a novel. It is also a historical record, part biographical, and a searching journey for truth and redemption. It is a lament for the innocent dead and an affirmation for the joy of life. It is sensitive and appropriate that the last word of this noble effort of writing is silence.

 

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Man's Search For Meaning

In the quietness of dawn I finished re-reading Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search For Meaning,[1] it is a book imbued with deep insights into the human condition, and although it has no pretensions to be so, I deem it a spiritual classic. The first part, and core of the book entitled Experiences In A Concentration Camp is eighty-four pages, each one of those pages carries the weight of someone who survived four camps, and by moments entered states not of sentimental escapism, but of transcendence.

Are there words which can truly describe such horrors, brutality, violence, as permeated such places as Dachau in 1944? What was, if any, the meaning of it all? Why is this happening? Who am I? Why am I here?

He writes,

“What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life — daily and hourly... Life ultimately means taking responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.”

The second part of the book deals with Logotherapy[2] the concluding chapter of which is aptly entitled, The Case For For A Tragic Optimism. Dr. Frankl recounts, in the camps people did not blur into a ‘uniform expression’, “on the contrary, people became more different; people unmasked themselves, both the swine and the saints... You may of course ask whether we really need to refer to “saints.” Wouldn’t it suffice just to refer to decent people? It is true that they form a minority. More than that, they always will remain a minority. And yet I see therein the very challenge to join the minority. For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best.

So, let is be alert — alert in a twofold sense:

Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of.

And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.”

 

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[1] Viktor  E. Frankl Man’s Search For Meaning, Washington Square Press 1984 edition.

[2] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lo#55D501

The Greek term logos will be familiar to students of theology. It is often translated as the "Word" or "Will" of God. In a broader sense, it can be viewed as "that which gives reason for being." Dr. Frankl prefers the simple translation of logos as "meaning."

Therapy [ˈθɛrəpɪ] n pl –pies (Medicine)

a.  the treatment of physical, mental, or social disorders or disease

b.  (in combination) physiotherapy electrotherapy

From New Latin therapia, from Greek therapeia attendance; see therapeutic.

 

 

Her Privates We

In his introduction to Her Privates We William Boyd[1] states, “it is “the finest novel in my opinion, to have come out of the First World War”, whereas I would not entirely agree with this view, the novel certainly stands among the finest. Finest in the sense that it neither romanticizes or glorifies, offering instead a valuable insight into the squalor, boredom, routine, hierarchy and uncertainty that serves violent, savage conflict.

Many passages stand out from this book but at the moment two in particular come to mind. In the first, private Bourne, the central character, is in a conversational exchange with Sergeant Tozer whose point of view Bourne appreciated, “because he understood the implication his words were intended to convey, even when he seemed to wander from the point. Life was a hazard enveloped in mystery, and war quickened the sense of both in men: the soldier also, as well as the saint, might write his tractate de contemptu mundi, and differ from him only in the angle and spirit from which he surveyed the same bleak reality.”

The second comes towards the end of the book in the midst of a shattering assault, “In this emotional crisis, where the limit  of endurance was reached, all the degrees which separate opposed states of feeling vanished, and their extremities were indistinguishable from each other. One could not separate the desire from the dread which restrained it; the strength of one’s hope strove to equal the despair which oppressed it; one’s determination could only be measured by the terrors and difficulties which it overcame. All the mean, peddling standards of ordinary life vanished in the collision of these warring opposites. Between them one could only attempt to maintain an equilibrium which every instant disturbed and made unstable.” 

Her Privates We was first published in 1929 under the title Middle Parts of Fortune, both titles are taken from Hamlet (Act II, scene 2), when Hamlet takes  part in some baudy banter with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The uncensored version of the book available for some decades makes the novel more vital, real and immediate.

The author Frederic Manning[2] was born in Sydney Australia in 1882. He enlisted in 1915 and served  with the Shropshire light infantry. His insightful well writen novel is worthy of its place along side Erich Maria Remarque’s classic, All Quiet on the Western Front.[3]  

 

 

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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Boyd_(writer)

 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_Manning

 [3]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Quiet_on_the_Western_Front

 

Blisters and Habits

In his novel about the seige of Krishnapur J. G. Farrell relates how Mr Hopkins, the Collector, while returning from a nightly tour of inspection notices the Padre digging graves and decides to help him, so he takes the spade himself and makes the Padre lie down on the path near three shrouded corpses who were to be buried.

“Then for an hour or more the Collector dug steadily by himself. At first he thought: ‘This is easy. The working classes make a fuss about nothing.’ But he had never used a spade in his life before and soon his hands became blistered and painful. He was invaded by a great sadness, then. The sadness emanated from the three silent figures sewen up in bedding and he thought again of his death statistics, but was not comforted ... And as he dug, he wept. He saw Harri’s animated face, and numberless dead men, and the hatred on the faces of the sepoy’s ... and it suddendly seemed to him that he could see clearly the basis of all conflict and misery, something mysterious which grows in men at the same time as hair and teeth and brains and which reveals its presence by the utter and atrocious inflexibility of all human habits and beliefs, even including his own.”

This is fine piece of dramatic, poignant writting. Relating the story of the deperate siege of Krishnapur from the side of the British colonial residents. It portrays the characters with their hopes, illusions, and foibles with incisive wit and tenderness. Above all it reveals the theatrical lunacy of war and the transience of life, even for those who for a time survive the death and destruction of the seige.

J. G. Farrell had both the ability and capability of being a good historian, however he elected not to undertake such a career, stating that history did not offer a proper understanding of what people felt and thought. His historical novels give unsentimental yet touching views of various characters during the inevitable decline of the British Empire.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Siege_of_Krishnapur

 

It Will Work

In his eigthy-fifth year and after many requests N. Balarama Reddy offered Reminiscences of his years living close to Sri Ramana Maharshi, the Sage of Arunachala.

Within the Reminiscences he relates how a noted Swami from Bombay (Mumbai) came to visit Bhagavan and thereupon asked him many questions about realization, samadhi, the bhakti school, and so forth. Sri Ramana responded to each question. Upon his deparure the swami stated, ‘I have truly gained something from this visit to the Maharashi.’  After he had left Bhagavan commented, ‘It will work.’

Balarama Reddy goes on to relate,”Whenever he made this observation, we understood it to mean that the converstaion the person had with Bhagavan would sink in and ultimately have positive effects.”

My Reminisceces N. Balarama Reddy, Sri Ramanasraman Tiruvannamalai 1996. Pps 67–68.

 

Numinous

The ‘approach’ to the sacred, the numinous, the unnameable is through the unknown. To honour this dimension allows for healing which by its compassion does not exclude death, for this too is in the process. Jung indicated, “The approach to the numinous is the real therapy and insomuch as you attain to the numinous experences you are released from the curse of pathology. Even the very disease takes on a numinous character.”

Gerhard Adler and Aniela Jaffé, eds., Jung’s Letters, vol.1 (Princeton University Press, 1973).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numinous

 

Unknowable

"But now you will ask me,... How am I to think of God himself, and what is he? and I cannot answer you accept to say I do not know! For this question you have brought me into he cloud of unknowing. Of God himself can no man speak."

The Cloud of Unknowing

"Whoever perceives something in God and attaches thereby some name to him, that is not God. God is ineffable"

Meister Eckhart

"God is a sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere"

Hermes Trismegistus 

" ...God is unknowable. God is also undefinable, because attaching any characteristic to the Infinite excludes its opposite, immediately violating the wholeness and completeness of the Absolute, outside of which nothing can exist"  

Healing Words The Power of Prayer and the Practice of Medicine  HarperPaperbacks 1997 

A Pleasant Enlightenment

“Some people want to recognise God only in some pleasant enlightenment—and then they get pleasure and enlightenment but not God.”

Raymond B. Blakney, trans., Meister Eckhart

 (New York: Harper & Row , 1941), 249–50. 

 

East and West

This morning while sitting overlooking a lush tropical garden in Tamil Nadu, I concluded reading William Dalrymple's historically well researched book, White Mughals,* a tapestry of stories about intimate relationships in 18th century India. Although, in my view, not his best book to date, nonetheless worth the effort of reading for those who harbour an interest in this remarkable land.

Central to the narrative is the marriage between James Achilles Kirkpatrick and Khair un-Nissa, and as their story, and those of others so well illustrate, "East and West are not irreconcilable, and never have been. Only bigotry, prejudice, racism and fear drive them apart. But they have met and mingled in the past; and they will do so again."

*White Mughals,William Dalrymple, Penguin Books 2002  

 

tinkers

Tinkers a debut novel by Paul Harding, is simple, elegant, and beautifully written. It tells a lyrical tale observed through the last eight days of the life of George Washington Crosby, but within the tale are woven other stories of his father, mother, and others who were a part of his life. This novel is within a tradition of the finest of American writing, and was the surprise winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 2010.

An Excerpt;

“I remember that my father had a birch canoe when he was very young. Indians made the canoe and my father bought it from them. Every spring, when the ice went out, one of the Indians would appear out of the woods one morning and restore the canoe for the season. I never saw my father speak with the Indian and I do not know how payment was made or collected or in what currency it was paid. After resewing loose seams and inserting new bark where it was needed, the Indian simply disappeared back into the trees. I remember squatting in the grass several yards from where the Indian worked, trying to learn what I might, which was nothing, but still something I felt compelled to do, as if my lesson was no more than the effort I made. After glancing for a moment to look at the first robin of spring, I looked back at the canoe and the Indian had vanished without sound, without seemingly, even movement, but, rather, had been reabsorbed back not only into trunk and root, stone and leaf but into light and shadow and season and time itself.”

Bellevue Literary Press, a small non-profit publisher, published tinkers.