Book Review: Tierra del Fuego by Sylvia Iparraguirre

2016 review of a book written

by an author whose family name starts with the letter

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

It’s a sad fact that for centuries most Europeans looked down on indigenous peoples living in the countries that their explorers not only discovered but also conquered. How often do we find that they were treated like wild beast and some of them brought to Europe to entertain kings and queens or to show in curiosity shops. Missionaries and colonists were hardly any more understanding and open-minded towards seemingly primitive cultures. In the epistolary novel Tierra del Fuego by Sylvia Iparraguirre a fictional Anglo-Argentine seaman recounts true events from the early nineteenth century surrounding a native Patagonian who is known as Jemmy Button. As a young man he was brought from Tierra del Fuego to London to learn the basics of English civilisation and years later he was put on trial, then sentenced and executed for having played a leading role in the massacre of English missionaries in the islands.

Reads for Walpurgis Night

Francisco de Goya (1746-1828), via Wikimedia Commons
Witches' Sabbath or The Great He-Goat, (1821-1823)  from the Black Paintings Series
oil on canvas, 140.5 x 435.7 cm
Prado Museum, Madrid

The night of 30 April is Walpurgis Night, the night of the witches. According to Germanic folklore it’s the night when witches and sorcerers meet on the Brocken, the highest peak of the Harz Mountains in central Germany, to celebrate one of the infamous Witches’ Sabbaths. Many legends of witches who worship Satan banqueting, dancing, cavorting, and having sex shroud the night… and unfortunately, fuelled the imagination of men like Heinrich Kramer, the author of the Malleus Maleficarum or Hammer of Witches. Thus it is inseparably linked to one of the darkest periods in European history, namely that of witch-hunts and auto-da-fés.

It goes without saying that the feast also found expression in literature, not to mention that as late witches have come quite into fashion among writers. Here’s an arbitrary selection of ten suitable reads for Walpurgis Night:

1. John Bellairs: The House with a Clock in Its Walls (1973)
2. Mikhail Bulgakov: Мaстер и Маргарита (1967), translated as The Master and Margarita 
3. Paulo Coelho: A Bruxa de Portobello (2006), translated as The Witch of Portobello 
4. Karl Kraus: Die Dritte Walpurgisnacht (1933), no translation found
5. H. P. Lovecraft: The Dreams In the Witch House (1932) 
6. Thomas Mann: Der Zauberberg (1924), translated as The Magic Mountain
7. Gustav Meyrink: Walpurgisnacht (1917) 
8. Thomas Pynchon: Gravity's Rainbow (1973) 
9. Bram Stocker: Dracula’s Guest (1914) 
10. Dennis Wheatley: The Devil Rides Out (1934)

Poetry Revisited: A Fancy by Helen Leah Reed

A Fancy

(from Memorial Day and Other Verse: 1917)

The world of dreams is all my own,
Wherein I wander – free, alone; –
And each weird, fervid fantasy
Is dearer than earth’s joys to me.
The waking world I share with you;
And yours, as mine, is the ocean's blue.
For us both spring’s early flowers are fair,
Or the cold stars gleam through the frosty air.

But in the world of dreams I rove
Over sunny fields, or in shaded grove, –
Such beauty your eyes never saw –
And all is mine without let or law.
Ah! the hopes and fears that come and go
With my flying fancy, none may know;
Though unsubstantial, it seems
My real world – this world of dreams.

Helen Leah Reed (1860-1926)
American teacher and author of children’s books

Book Review: Satan in Goray by Isaac Bashevis Singer

2016 review of a book written

by an author whose family name starts with the letter

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Today the world of the traditional Jewish shtetl in Eastern Europe only lives on in musicals like Fiddler on the Roof, films like Yentl and books like Satan in Goray. The opponents of World War II wiped it out ravaging homes and slaughtering people. Some like Isaac Bashevis Singer, the 1978 laureate of the Nobel Prize in literature, were lucky to get a chance to leave in time, but the great majority was either killed on the spot or transported to deadly concentration camps scattered all over Nazi Germany. However, the holocaust was only the broadest stroke against Jews in the region. There were other pogroms like the Khmelnytsky Massacres of 1648 that serve as starting point of the novel Satan in Goray by Isaac Bashevis Singer. Years later the survivors return to their small town and are only too willing to believe the rather unholy message of a Messiah doing miracles in the Promised Land.

Back Reviews Reel: April 2013

In April 2013 I reviewed four books that I chose according to the theme of the respective week. With the exception of the contemporary novel The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón that ended the posts exploring guilt and atonement, all reviewed books were famous classics, two of them written by Nobel laureates and one of them in the public domain. The first book on my schedule, however, was The Plague by Albert Camus (recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature of 1957) because the week was dedicated to the African continent. Then I turned to the era that brought forth what is commonly known as decadent movement today and reviewed the public domain novel The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, the only female writer featured that month. On the following Friday I discussed the novella Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse (1946 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature) dealing – among others – with vocation as theme of the week. 

Poetry Revisited: April Dawn by Isaac Rosenberg

April Dawn

(from Youth: 1915)

Pale light hid in light
Stirs the still day-spring;
Wavers the dull sight
With a spirit's wing.

Dreams, in frail rose mist,
Lurking to waylay,
Sublte-wise have kist
Winter into May.

Nothing to the sight...
Pool of pulseless air.
Spirits are in flight,
And my soul their lair.

Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918)
English poet and artist

Book Review: South Riding by Winifred Holtby

2016 review of a book written

by an author whose family name starts with the letter

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Nobel Prize laureate in Literature Sir Winston Churchill once quoted an unknown source stating “that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” Witnessing the poor performance of politicians in virtually all important matters of modern life, this can be hard to believe. In fact, many of us feel that politics have ceased to be about people because our representatives seem to care only about money and power instead of getting anything done. But this isn’t a new phenomenon as prove works of literature from all ages. The novel South Riding by Winifred Holtby shows how politics work on the local level, namely in the county council of the Yorkshire community from the title during the depression years of the 1930s, and how it affects the daily lives of people, notably of those who depend on the government to get along.

New on Lagraziana's Kalliopeion: Romain Rolland by Stefan Zweig

The Great War of 1914-18 had been raging in Europe and other parts of the world for over a year, when in December 1915 the little known French writer Romain Rolland was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “as a tribute to the lofty idealism of his literary production and to the sympathy and love of truth with which he has described different types of human beings”. In reality, he may have been chosen because in his work he advocated peace and stood up against warmongers in his own as well as other countries. Just a few years later, in 1921, the by then already renowned Austrian writer Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) portrayed the Nobel Prize laureate who was also his friend in the book Romain Rolland. The Man and His Work. But the biography isn’t a usual one because Stefan Zweig focuses on the artistic mission or rather vocation that his gifted friend felt in him from an early age and that he was determined to live although it meant sacrifice and even exile for a while.

Read more (external link) »

Related posts:

»»» Book Review: Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman by Stefan Zweig

»»» Confession of an Infatuation: Letter from an Unknown Woman by Stefan Zweig (book review on Lagraziana’s Kalliopeion)

»»» Austrians & Their Writings

Poetry Revisited: Имя твоё – Your Name by Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva

Имя твоё (из Стихи к Блоку: 1916) Имя твоё – птица в руке, Имя твоё – льдинка на языке, Одно единственное движенье губ, Имя твоё – пять букв. Мячик, пойманный на лету, Серебряный бубенец во рту, Камень, кинутый в тихий пруд, Всхлипнет так, как тебя зовут. В лёгком щёлканье ночных копыт Громкое имя твоё гремит. И назовёт его нам в висок Звонко щёлкающий курок. Имя твоё – ах, нельзя! – Имя твоё – поцелуй в глаза, В нежную стужу недвижных век, Имя твоё – поцелуй в снег. Ключевой, ледяной, голубой глоток… С именем твоим – сон глубок. 15 апреля 1916 Марина Ивaновна Цветaева (1892-1941) русская поэтесса, прозаик и переводчица

Your Name (from Poems to Blok: 1916) Your name is a finch in my hand, A small bit of ice on tongue’s end One movement of lips slightly stirred, Your name is a four-letter word A marble right-caught in mid-air, A silvery tinkle of bells at a fair A stone cast in a placid pond Will snort in the likeness of family bond As light as the clip-clop of horses’ hoofs, As loud as the cling-clang of steel-shod hoofs… The dry-click of firing-pin at our head Will sharply recall as your name is said Your name is like – that I say not! It’s like a kiss on the eyes wrought When shut, they are laden with frosty grace… Your name is like kissing a snow-swept glaze A draught of cool blue from a spring-cleft rock, Your name grants deep sleep around the clock. 15 April 1916 Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva (1892-1941) Russian poet, writer and translator Translation: Wikisource

Book Review: Serpent's Child by Peter Truschner

2016 review of a book written

by an author whose family name starts with the letter

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Relationships between parents and children are as varied as they are forming. Moreover, they have the power to still reverberate in much later generations, especially when they are marked by physical violence and/or emotional coldness. It can be difficult to shake off childhood habits and to deal with parents in an adult way, i.e. on equal terms. In the novel Serpent’s Child Austrian writer Peter Truschner relives his childhood and adolescence with a mother who can't but search for the love that she never received from her rude father and resigned mother. The author has to find his own way to cut the cord and free himself from the emotional burden of his ancestors.

Poetry Revisited: Sonnet to Spring by Charles Tompson

Sonnet to Spring

(from Wild Notes from the Lyre of a Native Minstrel: 1826)

I.
Gay blooming goddess of the flow'ry year,
Enchanting Spring, thou youth of nature, hail!
What artless beauties in thy train appear,
What balmy fragrance swells th' ambrosial gale,

II.
All nature, ravished, owns thy quick'ning power,
In brighter prospect, lo the landscape spreads!
Aërial music wakes in ev'ry bower,
Sings thro' the brake or carols o'er the meads.

III.
The sportive streamlet, as it purls along,
Laving, with modest kiss, its verdant steep,
In softer cadence wafts the woodland song,
And lulls the fond of solitude to sleep;
My Chloe seeks me in our fav'rite grove
And all creation wears the look of love!

Charles Tompson (1807-1883)
Australian poet and public servant

Book Review: The City and the House by Natalia Ginzburg

2016 review of a book written

by an author whose family name starts with the letter

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

I reckon that all of us occasionally go through times when we feel fed up with everything including ourselves and we would gladly seize any opportunity presenting itself to make a fresh start. Most of us, however, know too well that wherever we go we can’t run away from ourselves, can’t start with a clean slate like a newborn nor change overnight – probably not even in a lifetime – who we are deep down in our souls because some character traits are too fundamental and past experiences too influential. After many disillusions the middle-aged protagonist of the epistolary novel The City and the House by Natalia Ginzburg leaves Rome to join his older brother in the USA and to start a new life, but he becomes an even more solitary person who follows from the distance the troubles and joys that his friends and his estranged son have to deal with in Italy.