“We taught it to reason, this brute can reason better than we can.” @NYRB_Imprints #thesingularity

Back in February, I was very kindly sent an ARC of a forthcoming book by an author I’ve been circling for many years; the book is “The Singularity” and the author is Dino Buzzati. He’s probably best known for his work “The Tartar Steppe” (1940) which I really must get around to; but this new release is a work from 1960, originally translated as “Larger than Life” but here rendered by translator Anne Milano Appel as “The Singularity”.

The book is set in the then near future of 1972, and Ermanno Ismani, a quiet university professor, is summoned by the authorities and asked to undertake a two-year very secret posting at a mysterious research centre. Hidden away from the world in the middle of mountains, forests and steep cliffs, the posting sounds alarming enough as it is; but more unnerving is the fact that the professor is told nothing at all about what he’ll be expected to do at the Experimental Camp of Military Zone 36. However, his young and sensible wife, Elisa, persuades him that he should do his duty for his country, and so the two set off for the research centre.

After a complicated journey passing through all manner of security measures, the pair arrive at the camp none the wiser. Speculation en route is that there may be nuclear research involved (after all, this *is* set in the middle of the Cold War); but even when they arrive and meet up with the other scientists working on the project, it takes a while to get to any kind of truth. In the middle of the complex is a strange white wall and behind this, a deep gorge fulled with sensors, radio towers, wiring and all sorts of bizarre constructions. A constant murmuring is in the background, and eventually Ismani’s colleague, Professor Endriade (head of the project) reveals that this is some kind of consciousness, constructed by the team.

From its bottom, where the waters of a stream may once have flowed, to the rim, the walls were entirely covered with strange boxlike structures, all attached to one another, which formed a chaotic sequence of terraces that followed the ledges and recesses of the cliffs. But the cliffs were no longer visible, nor could any vegetation be seen, or land, or flowing waters. Everything had been invaded and overwhelmed by a tangled succession of buildings similar to silos, towers, mastabas, retaining walls, slender bridges, barbicans, fortifications, blockhouses, and bastions, which plunged into dizzying geometries. As though a city had crashed down the sides of a ravine.

However, there are still many questions and mysteries. Is the sprawling machine sentient? What really happened to Aloisi who died recently? What will the connection between Elisa and an old love of Endriade’s reveal? And what really was the motivation behind the construction of the project? All will be revealed as the story builds to a tense and dramatic climax which is not what you might expect.

“The Singularity” really is a fascinating and compelling read with so much going on! Although this would broadly be classed as sci fi, it’s the kind I like i.e. old-school and rooted in the real world. The plot is gripping, and very cleverly done, and although the book could be now viewed as a prescient look at AI, how it will affect us, and how we can use or abuse it, there’s an underlying theme which is very human. Without wanting to give too much away, love is at the heart of the story, and Buzzati is exploring its power, how it can consume us and what it can drive us to do. I don’t want to say any more, because I would urge you to read the book – it’s short and could be done in one sitting, as I read it on a train journey in February – and it really is quite unputdownable.

As the plot develops and Elisa moves to the centre of the action, the narrative explores what it means to be a human being, and the dangers of trying to instill those characteristics into something which is artificially created. The book also explores issues of control, particularly when something which has been constructed moves beyond its original remit towards some kind of independence. I guess that “Frankenstein” would be one of the earliest works of fiction exploring these issues, and Buzzati here takes things much further with a machine-like construction. However, the issues are the same and the need for love underpins both narratives.

So as I’ve indicated, “The Singularity” is a wonderful read; compelling, throught-provoking, very much ahead of its time and still remarkably relevant, it explores the differences between man and machine whilst telling an often chilling story. This wasn’t necessarily the kind of fiction I was expecting from Buzzati (although the various military checkpoints and outposts did make me think of what I know about “The Tartar Steppe”); but it turned out to be quite unforgettable, and I had to go back and re-read some passages because they were so cleverly done. I’m very glad that NYRB has issued this new translation, as I don’t know if I would have necessarily picked up on the book otherwise; and it’s highly recommended by me!

…in which Mount TBR gets even more out of control! 😳 #bookpost

It’s been a while since I did any kind of bookhaul post on the Ramblings (apart from the birthday/Christmas arrivals) as I *am* trying to be a little more careful about what arrives here, bearing in mind how many unread books I already have. I do share incomings on X/Twitter but tbh the state of the world is so rotten at the moment that I feel a bit bad being jolly about books on there. However, there were quite a few bookish arrivals in February, including a rather lovely treat, and so I thought I would do a little post sharing them! Here they are in all their glory…

I thought I’d split them up into rough categories, so here’s a closer look!

Purchases

Six of the books in the pile are purchases (all second hand, from various sources) and so I’ve snapped them in sets of three for ease.

All of these purchases were prompted by online sources. “Deaths of the Poets” came about thanks to a discussion on Twitter, and as you might have seen from my end of February post, I’ve already read it. It’s a stunner, and has had a really bad effect on the wishlist/TBR! More will follow in the review. Roubaud’s “The Great Fire of London” was on my radar following my reading of various Oulipo things (and also Anthony’s blog, Time’s Flow Stemmed); it’s hard to find a reasonably priced copy so when I saw one online I snapped it up. Alas, it was under-described and is an ex-library edition, with lots of annotations. Fortunately, these are in pencil, so I should be able to read it without too much pain. As for the Lange, this is the only other title available in English (as far as I know) and so after loving her novel, I thought I must read her memoir too.

Here we have “The Road” by Vassily Grossman; after reading “Chevengur” I was checking out other translations by the Chandlers and making sure I had all of their Grossman renderings. Well, I didn’t have this one, so now I do! The Kawabata is a collection of short stories, and having enjoyed his writing during January, I was keen to read more. This sounded very appealing… Finally in the purchases is another book by Richard Holmes, an author of whom I think very highly. His “Footsteps” was something of a revelation and “Sidetracks” got a mention in the notes of “Deaths of the Poets”. It sounds absolutely marvellous – a collection of his writings over the years on the topics which interest him and end up in his main books – but as the print is a bit teeny I may have to read it in bits…

Review Copies

Publishers have very kind sent in some review copies recently, for which I’m always grateful!

The Borodin and the Montaigne are from Pushkin Press and I’ll be covering them for Shiny New Books – both sound absolutely fascinating. Also for Shiny New Books is “A Bookshop of One’s Own”; this is about the wonderful and pioneering feminist bookshop in London, ‘Silver Moon’, which I used to love to visit back in the day. Very much looking forward to reading and covering this. And the Buzzati is courtesy of NYRB – this is another I read last month, although it’s not actually out until May so my review won’t be up for a while. But, spoiler alert, I think it’s brilliant!

A rather wonderful surprise!

Finally, some very special incomings, which have a little story behind them…

I was lucky enough recently to win £50 worth of Penguin books, and this is the result! It’s frankly very hard to choose when you get a prize like this, and it did take me a while to decide on what I wanted, what would be a treat that I wouldn’t necessarily buy for myself at the moment, and the best configuration of books to come near to the total (these added up to £49.96 so I felt a bit smug!!)

As for my choices – Simone Weil is an author I’ve been keen to explore, and this title is a newly released one. Likewise with Foucault, I’ve wanted to read him for ages, but been slightly intimidated, so I figured a Reader would be a good way to get to know him and find out if I want to go further. Clarice Lispector needs no justification; “Too Much of Life” is a collection of non-fiction, and “An Apprenticeship…” is a fiction title I’d not come across before.

I confess to being ridiculously excited when the box turned up, as I’m not a person who generally wins things – so these were a particular treat!!

Anyway – that’s the explanations of all the new books which have arrived at the Ramblings recently. A lovely variety of texts, as far as I’m concerned, as I do like to have lots of choice of different kinds of reading. Have you read any of these? And which book would you want to pick up first???

“Prose invents – poetry discloses.” #jackspicer #afterlorca @NYRBpoets @NYRB_Imprints

Poetry is a form which makes infrequent appearances on the Ramblings, mainly when I return to my ongoing project of reading through the Penguin Modern Poets collections. I do love to read poetry, but don’t always get to it enough; however, I’ve recently started to take notice of the NYRB Poets imprint. The publisher was kind enough to send me a copy of “Magnetic Fields” by Andre Breton and Philippe Soupault, which I absolutely loved; and a recent arrival from them, in the form of “After Lorca” by Jack Spicer, sounded fascinating. Spicer is a new name to me; working in the middle of the last century, he was part of the San Francisco Renaissance and despite his short life made a lasting impression with his poetry and has also been described as “a quiet, unsung hero of the LGBTQ+ art movement”, producing six short books of work during that brief life.

“After Lorca” was published in 1957 and it’s an intriguing collection of writings; as is hinted at in the title, it takes its inspiration from the great Spanish poet Lorca; and claims that the poems are translations. The book comes with a foreword from beyond the grave by Lorca himself(!), and the poems are interspersed with letters from Spicer to Lorca. It’s not clear which poems really *are* translations from Lorca, and which have been written by Spicer himself; or indeed how accurate any translations may be. What is clear, however, is what wonderful poetry this is…

At ten o’clock in the morning
The young man could not remember.

His heart was stuffed with dead wings
And linen flowers.

(Suicide)

I always find that I prefer poetry to which I can respond instantly; whether I feel I understand it, or whether I’m just hit by the sound of the words, I want to have that connection with the work and the poet straight away. That was certainly the case with Jack Spicer; his verse is beautiful, often allusive and very atmospheric. The poems speak of life, love, death and suicide – I guess often the major topics of verse! – and writing is vivid and wonderful. “He Died at Sunrise”, for example, is particularly stunning, with its repeated phrases and beautiful imagery.

At that time I’ll imagine
The song
Which I shall never sing.

A song full of lips
And far-off washes

A song fill of lost
Hours in the shadow…

(Verlaine)

The letters too are fascinating; it’s as if Spicer considered Lorca as a kind of spiritual mentor, the two poets in dialogue; and he uses these prose pieces to discuss the whole art of poetics. The poems appear to take place over a summer, with the final letter realising that the year is starting to draw to an end and the link between master and pupil is over. It’s a moving end to the work which seems to have a strong thread of melancholy running through it.

We want to transfer the immediate object, the immediate emotion to the poem – and yet the immediate always has hundreds of its own words clinging to it, short-lived and tenacious as barnacles. (Extract from one of the letters)

Spicer was of course writing at a time when the San Francisco beat poets (such as Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti and Snyder) were making a name for themselves; yet from what I’ve read about him, he stood apart from them, refusing to copyright his poems, criticising the City Lights bookshop and at one point declining to publish his work outside California. However, I sensed in some of the poems a kind of kinship with Ginsberg, a common influence from Whitman, and I personally feel that his writing needs to be seen in the context of the time.

Anyway, “After Lorca” turned out to be a fascinating read. I was probably aided by the fact that I’ve read little Lorca, and what I have was a very long time ago! So to be honest, I wasn’t looking to see what belonged to which author, because in the end I think these poems and letters are just Spicer – and wonderful they are. I’ve included extracts from some favourite poems/letters, and I highly recommend this collection. It was a marvellous and unexpected delight, and evidence (if it were needed) that the NYRB Poets imprint is definitely worth exploring! 😀

(Review copy kindly provided by the publisher, for which many thanks!)

“I believe…that the future belongs to ghosts…” #maelrenouard @NYRB_Imprints

There are a number of imprints which turn up regularly on the Ramblings, and NYRB is one of those; as a rule, I tend to read their Classics range, although their poetry is sneaking in now and again; and today I want to share some thoughts about a recent release from their main imprint. The book is “Fragments of an Infinite Memory” by Maël Renouard – and the subtitle of “My Life with the Internet” gives some idea of what it’s about.

Renouard is a novelist, essayist and translator who’s taught philosophy at the Sorbonne; and as he reveals, is old enough to remember the time before the Internet, but young enough to have embraced it and absorbed it into his life. Here he gathers together a wonderful and thought-provoking series of writings which range far and wide whilst exploring the effect the Internet has had on human beings – and it really is a fascinating read.

Today, images come one after another, devour each other, replace each other pitilessly, as if to outmatch the boundlessness of our desire.

“Fragments…” is split into eleven numbered sections, which I would hesitate to designate as chapters, or even essays, as each branches off in many different directions. There are memoirs of the early days of the Internet; quotes from friends reflecting on their feelings about it; spoof historical sections referencing the ‘Book of Face’; projections of how we might adapt to technology in the future; and so much more. Because of the author’s memories of pre-technology times, he’s able to take a long view on how humans have been changed by their increasing interactions with the digital, and I found some fascinating resonances in these sections. Renouard’s musings on memory chimed in very much with my reading of “In Memory of Memory” by Maria Stepanova, with both authors exploring how humanity’s constant recording of the present is turning into a giant respository of information which will be accessible to all in the future.

Who hasn’t gone on the Internet looking for past loves and friends not seen for years? Time lost in search of lost time.

Renouard also explores the more potentially problematic nature of the Internet; how it’s hard to remain invisible nowadays, how we can track old friends and colleagues; and how we now seem to feel the need to share so much of ourselves online. Conversely, it’s also possible to create an online presence of someone who doesn’t actually exist… There is a whole section on photography which again ties in with Stepanova’s discussion of this, and Renouard is aware of how we lose the immediacy of the moment we’re in by constantly recording it on our phones. Whether lamenting the loss of non-digital processes, considering the possibilities of AI or discussing the concepts of immortality, Renouard is never less than fascinating.

In the Internet there is a fountain of youth into which at first you drunkenly plunge your face, and then in the dawn light you see your reflection, battered by the years.

Although the author initially seems to treat the internet as some kind of stand-alone external global memory, exploration reveals that is not the case. Mr. Kaggsy, who has a long memory, is fond of pointing out that the Internet is only a load of massive servers; despite Renouard’s occasional assertions that you can find anything you want on it, it’s not a mass repository of all knowledge and all history because it is a human creation and only reflects what is uploaded to those servers. Mr. K and I will often recall a song or a TV programme from the past, and find no mention of it online; the Internet is as fragmentary as our human, grasshopper minds, full of scraps of often random or pointless knowledge retained heaven knows why, but certainly by no means complete…

In Stalin’s time, you got rid of a person by erasing every last trace of him. Today this task is accomplished by exhibiting every last inch of him to public view.

“Fragments…”, here translated by Peter Behrman de Sinéty, was originally published in 2015 in French and so of course the Internet Renouard discusses has obviously changed markedly in those years; technology certainly never stands still nowadays. This is not a work that I feel intends to draw one overall conclusion; however, its series of observations, musing and explorations delves quite deeply, setting you off on all manner of trains of thought, and you can see by the number of places I marked how fascinated I was by the book! 😀

Map of the Internet – Matt Britt, CC BY 2.5 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

The Internet and how it affects us is a huge topic, and Renouard’s exploration of the subject is multi-faceted and really would repay re-reading; it’s a book I’d like to return to and spend time dipping back into. It can’t be disputed that we humans have been irrevocably changed by the advent of the online experience, and a quick glance at any group of people in the streets glued to their phones only serves to reinforce this. What reading a book like this encourages you to do is at least *think* about how you’re interacting with the Internet and maybe take back a little more control. We live in a digital age, and that isn’t going to change; but maybe at least we can try and keep control in our hands, and not with the machines!

Review copy kindly provided by the publisher, for which many thanks! 😀

“We have puns on our lips and constrained songs….” @NYRBpoets #surrealism

The Magnetic Fields by Andre Breton and Philippe Soupault
Translated by Charlotte Mandell

I first stumbled across the Surrealist Andre Breton a looooooong time ago – 1976 to be precise – although at the time I didn’t know it was him….. On the insert sheet of Patti Smith’s “Radio Ethiopia” album was a quote: “Beauty will be convulsive or not at all – Nadja” . I had no idea who “Nadja” was or where the quote came from; it wasn’t until much later in my reading life that I stumbled across the surrealist authors of the twentieth century and discovered that “Nadja” was actually a book by Andre Breton. I obtained my copy (I think!) in my twenties, and haven’t returned to it since. However, the Surrealists fascinate me, and a programmes about them which debuted on the inaugural night of the nascent BBC4 channel, “Surrealissimo!”, was a real joy, signalling what the channel would be at its best. Alas, it only occasionally reaches those heights nowadays, but that’s another matter…

Anyway, apart from “Nadja”, I don’t think I’ve read anything else by Breton; but I was very interested to see that NYRB were bringing out a new translation of the seminal work “The Magnetic Fields” by Breton and Philippe Soupault (co-founder, with Breton, of the Surrealist movement), translated by Charlotte Mandell. Composed in the spring of 1919, when both men were recovering from the horrors of WW1, it was conceived of as a reaction to over-composed literary works. Instead, the authors embraced ‘automatic writing’, a form of composition involving writing without consciously engaging with or controlling the words which would come out. Breton and Soupault would write every day for a week, as fast as they could, in secrecy and without revisions. The results would be left to stand exactly as they were; and that process created what has been called the first work of literary Surrealism.

On these shores of bloodstained pebbles, you can hear the tender murmurs of the stars.

Excited as I was to be able to read this, the question *did* arise as to how to approach it! There’s quite a lot of baggage and expectation built into this book, but in the end I just plunged in and wallowed in the language. And I think that’s key here; automatic writing of whatever form is not going to be linear, or tell a story, or necessarily make sense. There are nine sections, some of which are written in poetic form and some in prose, and each is filled with the most beautiful language. As you read through suddenly wonderful imagery springs out, or a sentence which lodges in the brain, and it’s full of the most stunning phrases. The pictures the writing paints are often vivid and, yes, surreal because of the unexpected juxtapositions. As I read on, the writings sparked my imagination and sent it off in all manner of directions – this was really unlike anything else I’d read (the nearest comparison I can think of off the top of my head is maybe Burroughs’ cut-ups but they’re more controlled).

We shatter like stars into incomprehensible directions, among the great blue veins of distance and in mineral deposits.

You might be wondering, well what does it all mean? Frankly, I think it means what you want it to mean and what you take from it is up to you. The fact that early in the text the authors refer to “constrained songs” immediately made me think of the OuLiPo group and their writing constraints, and in a way the Surrealists and their automatic writing were early precursors of this. In the end, I think what matters most here is the beauty of the words, rendered most wonderfully in Charlotte Mandell’s translation. Interestingly, in her afterword she reveals that the order in which the images appear in the verse was crucial to her, and I think that brings out a key element; these are words which create striking visuals, and they may cause the reader to bypass conscious controls when reading in the same way as the authors did when writing. If that causes you to dig more deeply into your unconcious, that’s an interesting side-effect of this book of beautiful words. And in the same way as surrealistic art succeeds by using unusual juxtapositions of visual items to expand the mind, so do the unusual word sequences in this book.

I dream of summer in the dormitory
They said to me What do you have in place of a heart

As you might have guessed, I found reading “The Magnetic Fields” a fascinating and stimulating experience! I’ve mentioned before how I love to wallow in words, not always worrying about meanings but instead taking images and emotions from them. Certainly, this kind of writing seems to me to be very much about stepping away from regular narrative and into something looser, more experimental and very exciting to read. “The Magnetic Fields” was everything I hoped and expected it would be, and if you want to have your preconceptions challenged concerning what writing should be like, this is definitely the book for you! 😀

(Review copy kindly provided by the publisher, for which many thanks!)

Does poetry count as non-fiction? i think so!

On My Book Table… 4 – decisions, decisions!

Since I last reported on the state of my Book Table, it has been through several changes as there have been bookish comings and goings as well as raging indecision about what to read next. This of course is particularly bad at what is a busy time of year, but as I’m now off work for the festive season, it seemed a good time to tidy up a little and take stock. So here is the current state of the Table itself:

As you can probably tell, there are a number of heavyweight books on there (and I don’t mean in size necessarily, but in content). Shall we take a closer look?

This stack is mainly review books – some lovely British Library Editions, glorious Russians from Pushkin Press, an intriguing title from Michael Walmer and an author new to me from NYRB. Then there’s “Jam Today”, a book I was very excited to track down recently. All of these would be ideal next reads.

This is what I mean by heavyweight… Essays, short fiction, Montaigne, Proust, Pessoa, philosophy. I’d like to read them all at once, which is not helpful. Especially as I feel as if I could quite easily have a month of reading nothing but Fitzcarraldo books!

And finally, Barthes… Three physical books (there is a digital one too) and the Binet book about Barthes which has been on the Table for months. I am nearing the end of “Mythologies”, but unsure whether I should read another Barthes straight off or let the first settle a bit…

Of course, there are the birthday arrivals which came into the house recently and haven’t made it to the Book Table yet (and they’ll no doubt be joined by some Christmas arrivals at some point soon). A further complication exists in the form of the Book Token my work presented me with on my birthday which is itching to be spent. An embarrassment of riches, but I do find that the more choices I have, the harder the decision becomes! What would *you* read next??? 😀

“An eternal vagabond of life and the idea” #victorserge @nyrbclassics

Notebooks 1936-1947 by Victor Serge
Translated by Mitchell Abidor and Richard Greeman

As I’ve mentioned on the Ramblings (and on any kind of social media I happen to be near!), I’ve been rather absorbed in the Notebooks of Victor Serge over the past couple of weeks. The very wonderful NYRB Classics seem to fly the flag for him; several of his novels and his “Memoirs of Revolutionary” are available in their imprint (and I’ve read most of them…) However, this volume really is something special, and I’ll share some thoughts on it below – though I fear these will not really do the book justice. I’m sorry – this is going to be a long post!

The Notebooks

Serge’s real name was Victor Lvovich Kibalchich and he was born in Brussels to Russian parents. His life was a peripatetic one, moving from place to place – France, Spain, Russia to join the Bolsheviks, prison, exile and eventually emigration. He finally went into exile in Mexico during the Second World War, and died there in 1947. Described as an anarchist, Bolshevik and Left Oppositionist, it seems to me that he was concerned overall with justice, equality and freedom; but more than anything else he was an exceptionally gifted author and a witness to his times.

All we know of ourselves is a kind of waking dream, finely worked by the will, enlightened by consciousness – but a dream all the same.

The diaries cover the period from 1936-1947, and this is in fact a landmark publication which gathers material from a number of sources. Serge’s notebooks have only partially been published in the past, and the note on the text sets out the various sources from which this material has been brought together to give the most complete edition, and the first one to be rendered in this form in English. Again, bouquets and kudos to NYRB for bringing this volume to us; because it’s an absolutely incredible and absorbing read.

The Notebooks on their travels, already a bit festooned…

The notebooks open in 1936 with Serge in Paris treating us to his thoughts on Andre Gide. The entries between 1936 and 1940 form a chapter on their own as they’re more fragmentary, but after that each year has a section of its own until Serge’s death. The years in transit and then exile perhaps afforded more opportunity for writing, and certainly the Mexico days saw Serge taking stock of the past, noting and commenting on world events, theorising about the future, and recording, vividly, his impressions of the world around him. So Serge fills his notebooks with all manner of things: impressions of those he knows or encounters, thoughts on his beliefs and what may come of socialism and indeed the world; drafts of letters to friends and colleagues; meditations on the history of the Revolution and the fate of Trotsky; his own emotions and his longing for his partner Laurette; and beautiful prose which relates his travels in exile and records the natural world around him (for which he obviously has a profound affection). It’s a heady and wonderful mix, and a privileged glimpse into the unique mind of a great revolutionary and writer.

At that time I decided, given the growing reaction, to dedicate myself to history and literature, novels, to work at defending and ripening, my ideas. Duty of a witness, conclusion that intellectual activity remained the only one possible.

Serge’s life was not an easy one; persecuted for much of it because of his beliefs and his refusal to toe the party line, things became particularly difficult in exile as he was constantly under attack for his association with Trotsky (even though he disagreed with the latter’s outlook towards the end of his life). He was under constant threat of assassination, and indeed there are still theories around that his death from a heart attack in a Mexico taxi was in fact murder. However, the notebooks reveal that his health was suffering a little and he records consulting a doctor, shortness of breath etc, which tends to lend support to a natural death.

One thing that’s stunning is the sheer variety of subjects upon which Serge touches in his narrative; from political philosophy through memoir and personal recollection to quite beautiful passages of description. And what’s quite incredible is the range of players you encounter in these pages – from Trotsky to Leonora Carrington to Andre Breton to Blaise Cendrars to Levi-Strauss, Serge knew an incredible array of people and his pen portraits are vibrant and memorable; you do find yourself wondering if there was anyone Serge didn’t know, and I didn’t quite expect to meet so many names I already knew within these pages. He seems generally clear-sighted about those he comes into contact with, and is quite critical of some; Anna Seghers does not get off lightly for aligning herself with the Stalinist regime, and he considers Diego Rivera to be very fluid in his choices of who to follow… Breton reappears at several points in the narrative; it seems that he and Serge were quite friends, although there is falling out but eventual much more understanding on Serge’s part of the man that Breton was.

One sees, one lives intensely, but not everything, for the poem changes from moment to moment, and it is so immense that it can’t all be taken in.

However, there are some extremely poignant pieces: Serge mourns the suicides of Walter Benjamin and Stefan Zweig in particular, penning a desperately moving piece on the latter. He also writes most touchingly about Mandelstam, a fragile man with nevertheless enough courage to write poetry against Stalin. Chagall makes an appearance, which has a lovely synchronicity with the fact that I picked up the latter’s “My Life” whilst reading Serge. Inevitably, there are times when the book reads somewhat like a litany of deaths, becoming a kind of memorial as Serge sees and records so many of his contemporaries fall by the wayside, either by natural causes, suicide or by assassination.

Public Domain – Via Wikimedia Commons

Certainly, he had no illusions about the forces that were ranged against him, and he offers a pithy analysis of Trotsky, Hitler and Stalin. His discourse about the horrors of the Nazi regime and the mentality of those who take part in atrocities seemed very astute to me; and his discussion of, and awareness of, concentration camps in more than one nation is somewhat ahead of his time. It’s worth remembering that Serge was in a very difficult position; he had spoken (and continued to speak) out in opposition to Stalin’s terror, and this was at a time when Russia was an ally against Germany. Therefore, he was under constant threat from all sides for continuing to say what he saw as the truth. He was probably also feared as a survivor of the Russian Revolution, uniquely placed to record the many historical events he’d lived through; of particular interest were his memoirs of his times working with Trotsky, as well as the sadness of his encounters with the latter’s widow after the assassination.

All my Serges (I have one e-book but must get a tree version…)

The Notebooks are a wonderful mix of the personal and the political, then. The sections recording his journey into exile via Marseilles, then by circuitous route by boat eventually to Mexico, are particularly powerful. As they passed the various countries on their way, Serge recorded his impressions of the landscapes in vivid and evocative prose.

The coast is low and mountainous, gullied in all directions by the rains, in places well cultivated. Reddish rocks and green slopes, sandy banks to the sea, the backdrop rounded like the backs of beasts. The land is violet and blue in the morning mist. Around noon it’s illuminated, even though the sky is cloudy, and it gathers together a mass of pink, rust, ochre, dark green, light green tones, somber touches of distant rocks, all of it full of life, almost carnal, sculpted by the waters. One can see that the Earth is alive. It’s astonishing that men haven’t sufficiently realized this obvious fact and constructed a religion out of it.

However, his thoughts are often on ethical matters, and as the ship passes by Oran, in Algeria, the setting for Camus’ “The Plague”, this is the first of many occasions when Serge reflects upon the horror and stupidity of racism. Serge is accompanied by his son Vlady, having had to leave his partner Laurette and daughter Jeannine in France. There is such power and poignancy in the writing of these sections that they’ve kind of burnt themselves into my brain. It was some time until his partner and daughter were able to join them in Mexico, when Serge was able to take joy and comfort from having his family on hand, and the notebooks reflect this in places.

I refuse to think about how far away it is, because you are near, you are coming, and I must, I want, to be able to feel you close in your absence, and all our memories must be present in the separation in order to enrich and find our strength. Our memories are us. You are every bit as real to me as everything I see, as everything I touch, I want to be yours at every moment. We are moving towards each other, united by our momentum and our communion. I am in you. You are in me.

The travel writing is quite stunning in places; Serge was always a great writer and he brought his talents to capturing the landscape around him:

More than two hundred kilometers by road, towards the Pacific, across a vast landscape of mountains under a hot sun. This volcanic earth, violently convulsed, constantly opens onto new horizons of sharp-edged ridges against mild, lustrous skies. The rocks here shattered in all directions in the era of geological revolutions. Aridity, little cultivation, the impression of a land without people, given over to plants armed with prickly thorns, splendid magueys with enormous, drooping, vase shaped leaves, organos rising straight up to a height of five meters or more, terrifying perpendicular cactus bushes of so intense a green that they seem almost black. There are areas of stony desert with silver tones. Near Taxco a semicircular hole in the wall of mountains cuts the horizon.

He seems to have moved frequently around Mexico, and there were some wonderful passages in particular about his visits to active volcanoes:

We are all squatting outside on a mat facing a crater that breathes, sings, and exhales subterranean fire. It’s cold out. The purple flames are rising without letup and falling in a rain of incandescent stones that we can see streaming to the bottom of the crater, hundreds of metres off. When the volcano catches its breath, its outline dulls, then blackens. We followed the rising of the meteors and their fall. Some of them reach as far as the green stars and float among them for a long moment. The Milky Way falls on the volcano so that it seems to have two infinite extensions: the dark, heavy, threatening extension of its clouds and the aerial, glacial, softly luminous one of the Milky Way. In contrast with the terrestrial blaze, the stars are a shimmering steel blue tending towards green. We hear the hissing descent of the lava to our right. And we see red slides flaming down the crevices of the hills.

So much of what he said rang true, so many of his descriptions took my breath away, that I ended up with a book positively festooned with a forest of post-it notes. Serge seems always so clear-sighted about the world around him, and was a great (and often prescient) thinker – this particular comment struck home at the moment:

This is the time of falsified – that is, betrayed – values. Anyone even slightly well informed has the sensation of breathing lies of such low quality that they don’t even contain the involuntary homage to truth proper to useful and, in a way, decent, lies, which only aim at misleading moderately.

I was struck too by a scary dream Serge had in 1943 which almost seemed to foresee the atomic bomb… There are also some wonderful thoughts and reflections on literature and writing; on specific authors in places, and also on the eternal problem faced by Russian writers of his time which Serge recognises in himself. Because of the hostility from all sides, Serge found it almost impossible to publish anything (and therefore to make any kind of living) and was stuck with a situation familiar to any reader of Russian literature from the Soviet period:

To write only for the desk drawer, past age fifty, facing unknown future, not to mention the hypothesis that the tyrannies will last longer than I have left to live, what would be the result?

And one of the things which makes the Notebooks such a wonderful reading experience is that the writer in Serge is always to the fore – his prose is excellent.

The final reckoning – all those post-its!!!

Well, I could go on and on, but this post is long enough as it is and I’ve really only scratched the surface. As I mentioned, towards the end of the book the entries thin out until late in 1957 they just stop… I must admit I found myself a bit emotional at this point, having immersed myself in Serge and his world for nearly two weeks. It felt kind of like losing a personal friend… 😦 I’ve had something of an obsession with Serge since first reading his fiction; reading the Notebooks has only made that much worse. Make no mistake, this is a big book and a commitment to read. At just under 600 pages (and NYRB do pack a lot onto each page!) it’s a work that you need to submerge yourself in, but it’s brimming with riches and the rewards are immense. Notebooks is a groundbreaking, vital and important work which stands, perhaps, as Victor Serge’s final testament and commentary on the times he lived through; it really is a magnificent book which I can’t recommend highly enough.

*****

A special vote of thanks needs to go to the translators for their work on the Notebooks. Both Abidor and Greeman have worked on Serge’s books before (Abidor editing and translating an anthology of Serge’s Anarchist writings; and Greeman having translated and written introductions for five of Serge’s novels). So both are well-placed to work on the Notebooks. The supporting notes appear usefully at the bottom of each page and were at just the right level for me (as I know a reasonable amount about the history and the period!); and there was an extremely helpful – nay, essential! – glossary of names at the end of the book. Inevitably, there are a *lot* of people mentioned in the book and the glossary gives a little info if you’re not sure who they are. An exemplary edition, and an essential read. Marvellous!

… in which I (mostly) resist the bookshops of Leicester! :D

Those of you who follow me on social media might have picked up that I’ve been off on my annual tour (ahem!) round the East Midlands, visiting the Aged Parent and the Offspring in their various locations. I *do* look forward to this modest journey because:

a. it’s nice to get away

b. I like to travel on trains…

c. you can read a lot on trains!

(It *is* nice to see family, too!) So I left Mr. Kaggsy holding the fort, and scheduled a lot of posts and set off. I had a bit of a quandary about what chunkster to take along to read en route, and in fact I ended up taking this:

Victor Serge is an author I’ve covered many times on the Ramblings; I love his writing, and his life is as fascinating as his books. His Notebooks have been released by New York Review Books, and the book was the perfect companion to my travels. As you can see, there is a positive *forest* of post-its – sign of a book which is going to make you think and stay with you, which this one definitely is. I am still reading and will share some thoughts eventually…

So, normally on my visits I end up buying *lots* of new books, but I was amazed to return from my travels with only *two* new volumes!! These are they:

Chagall and Berger

The  Chagall caught my eye as I whizzed into Hatchards at St. Pancras whilst on my way to a rail connection; it was about his life in exile and I kind of felt it chimed in with the Serge. Plus it’s a pretty new Penguin Modern Classic – I do like their current colour scheme! The only other book I picked up was from the one second hand shop in the centre of Leicester (nothing from the charity shops!!) It’s an old Pelican edition of some selected essays and articles by John Berger which I’d never come across before, and it was Not Cheap. However, a glance at the contents was enough to persuade me:

Berger contents

I don’t know if you can make it out from my rubbish photo, but there is an essay about Victor Serge! Berger on Serge – oh my! Not to be resisted! I still can’t believe that I only came home with these two new books; as Youngest Child reminded us, Middle Child had to lend me a suitcase on one visit as I had so many finds to transport home. Maybe I’m just becoming more selective…

Whilst in Leicester, we paid a little visit to the New Walk Museum and Art Gallery. I always like to pop in when I’m in the city, as it has a nice collection of German Expressionists as well as some dinosaurs and Egyptians. The current exhibition turned out to be an unexpected pleasure, as when we arrived we discovered there was a show dedicated to the artists who were behind the wonderful images in Ladybird Books!

The exhibition was a real treat. There were sections dedicated to the main artists involved, with original artwork, Ladybird books and covers, as well as examples of other uses of each artist’s artwork. I grew up reading these books, as did the Offspring (we may still have some in the house…); so it was absolutely fascinating to see the stories of the art behind them. I’m particularly fond of the 1950s and 1960s artwork (I love that mid-century modern feel); and it was wonderful to see some large and lovely artworks from that era.

I took a few snaps of images that particularly caught my eye:

Harlech Castle – we used to holiday in North Wales and have visited the castle!

John Bull magazine from 1951 featuring the Festival of Britain – with which I have a bit of an obsession…

An extra fun element was the fact that as well as a wall display made up of a positive mosaic of Ladybird books, there was a pile in the middle of the exhibition that you could pick up and browse through. In fact, the exhibition was very child-friendly, with places where you could draw as well as reading nooks designed for children (and into which 24-year-old Youngest Child had to crawl… you can’t take them anywhere…)

A beautiful old typewriter on display – I learned to touch-type on one of these!! 😮

It was a really fascinating exhibition, and in fact the whole gallery/museum was a lovely place to wander through. On my way out, I spotted another resonance with my current reading:

John Berger quote

The gallery has a quote from John Berger on one of the walls – so they get a thumbs up from me!

As well as visiting the New Walk Museum, we also popped to the National Space Centre (there’s a family connection – don’t ask….) I’d never actually been inside before, but Eldest Child had visited with my late dad back in the day. It was actually a really interesting place to go, as I do like hearing about space travel, and there was an interesting show in the Planetarium. I also got very silly-excited about seeing this:

Need I say more? No.

Apart from all this gadding about, there was of course the chance to explore new to me purveyors of vegan food, and a favourite was the Prana cafe where we had yummy vegan scones:

Middle Child also played host and made me a lovely vegan Sunday breakfast, so I was very spoiled!

And fortunately, because of my good behaviour, I didn’t have a ton of extra luggage to haul back with me on the train, so I was able to relax on the return journey and enjoy the Serge Notebooks – perfect! 😀

*****

I did, however, return home to some lovely bookish post:

The Hugo Charteris is from Mike Walmer, and I’m looking forward to catching up with Charteris, as I did enjoy the first of his I read. The Hess book is part of a new imprint from HarperCollins called HarperVia, and is set in Germany in the early 1960s. It sounds absolutely fascinating, and will be ideal for Women in Translation month if I get to it in time… But first I need to finish Victor’s Notebooks! 😀

“Life is scary…” @nyrbclassics #borisdralyuk @xelafleming @ani_goes_tweet

Rock, Paper, Scissors and other stories by Maxim Osipov
Translated by Boris Dralyuk, Alex Fleming and Anne Marie Jackson

There are certain publishers whose catalogues I always watch with interest to see what gems they’ll be issuing next; likewise, there are translators whose work I trust and who I always know will be bringing into English something worth reading. So when the two coincide it’s like a perfect storm, and the resulting book is one I’m desperately keen to read. That was the case with “Rock, Paper, Scissors”: the publisher is NYRB, and the translators are Boris Dralyuk, Alex Fleming and Anne Marie Jackson; so it was a no-brainer that I was going to want to read this!

The world doesn’t break, no matter what you throw at it. That’s just how it’s built.

As well as being a fine author (more of which later…!), Maxim Osipov is a doctor, a cardiologist in fact; so someone who comes from that fine tradition of Russian writing doctors (Chekhov and Bulgakov instantly springing to mind, and indeed the publicity makes great play with this). However, the Russia which Osipov writes about in this collection of short works might initially seem to be a very different one from the earlier authors… or maybe not.

“Rock, Paper, Scissors” collects together 12 short works of varying lengths, and I might as well come straight out with it and say that every single one of them is a gem. Osipov himself lives in the provinces (Tarusa, a small town 90 miles from Moscow) and the provinces do indeed feature regularly in his works (a factor which can’t help but make me think of Chekhov again). That distance from the centre informs much modern Russian writing I’ve read (Solovyov and Larionov, again a recent Russian read, was set away from things); and it’s very relevant to Osipov’s work – as Svetlana Alexievich comments in her preface, “Out in the provinces, everything is in full view, more exposed – both human nature and the times beyond the window.”

In subject matter the stories range far and wide: some tackle medical situations directly (“Moscow-Petrozavodsk“, “The Mill“, “The Gypsy“); in some stories, the medical element is almost incidental (“The Waves of the Sea“); and in some an encounter with a doctor is a jumping off point for something very different (“After Eternity“). The stories are peopled with actors, writers, criminals (of the lower and higher order), teachers, musicians – a fascinating array of human beings, all trying to make their way in what is an often disorientating world. This is a modern Russia, although often the stories reach back into Soviet times, and many of the characters seem to feel a lack of identity, sometimes struggling to negotiate a complex modern world. There is harshness and brutality, there are unexpected twists and there is a strong sense of melancholy running through many of the stories. I could say that’s down to the eternal “Russian Soul”, although Alexievich claims that’s a myth in her preface!

Day in, day out, she sees the cool sky, the river, the sunset, and suddenly she understands: life is such a simple and austere thing. And all of these little decorations, this tinsel we wrap our lives in – music, philosophy, literature – are completely unnecessary. There is some form of truth to them, in parts, but they themselves are not the truth. The truth can be put very simply.

Osipov’s writing is beautifully atmospheric, and whether’s he’s writing about a settlement in the far North or a clinic in the suburbs, each place and its characters are wonderfully evoked. As I read on I felt the author had a deep sense of compassion for fellow humans, struggling to negotiate new and uncertain terrain whilst keeping hold of their past to give them some kind of context. There are references to past leaders and past artists, and a feeling of continuity with those who’ve come before.

Maxim Osipov by Divot [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D

Reading short story collections can be a tricky thing; there’s the danger of the stories running into one, of not being differentiated enough, of becoming a blur when you get to the end. However, Osipov’s stories were all distinct and marvellous, and so good that I found myself taking a pause between each to simply let it settle in my soul. They’re stories that will affect you, that’s for sure, and in some cases break your heart. I really don’t know that I want to pick favourites, because when I read this collection again my reactions may change; however, I want to particularly mention “After Eternity“. Almost a novella in length, it tells the story of a theatre group in the frozen North through the notebooks of their Literary Director, and it’s one of those pieces of writing that you finish and then immediately go back to the start of, to re-read and rediscover meanings you didn’t quite get the significance of first time round – a wonderful piece of writing. And “Good People” was an incredibly moving and poignant piece, capturing quite brilliantly a woman whose mind is clouding with age. “Objects in Mirror” shows how the fear of those in authority continues, whatever the regime in charge. And the title piece is a complex story with many layers, looking at provincial politics and powerplay as well as the treatment of those from other countries.

… Bella was also emotional although she didn’t quite know why. There were more and more gaps in her mind, and the pathways and partitions between them were steadily narrowing, shrinking. She feared that the gaps would soon merge into one, and there’d be nothing left in her head but… what do you call that whitish liquid that swims up when milk goes sour? Ah, yes, that’s it: whey.

As you might have gathered, I think this is an absolutely stunning collection of stories, and one that has any number of layers which I want to go back and explore. This is the kind of writing that gets into your heart *and* your mind, the sort that changes the way you look at life and I do hope more of his work will be translated into English. As I mentioned, much has been made of the fact that Osipov draws on the Russian doctor-author tradition (and certainly Chekhov and Bulgakov are both authors whom I love). In the end, whether that comparison is relevant or not I don’t know; however, what is clear is that Opisov is a great observer of human life in all its light and shade, as well as a powerful author in his own right. So kudos to NYRB, Dralyuk, Fleming and Jackson – “Rock, Paper, Scissors” is a standout book, and will definitely be one of my reads of the year.

“Every great book is tied…to the very matter of the life of its author” @nyrbclassics #Proust #Czapski

Lost Time: Lectures on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp by Jozef Czapski
Translated by Eric Karpeles

Josef Czapski was a remarkable man; of that, there can be no doubt; a polymath, his life took in painting, writing and essays as well as military and diplomatic careers. And yet, until NYRB issued his works plus a biography I’d never heard of him – which is actually quite shocking. Czapski lived through the bulk of the 20th century; born in Poland in 1896, he was a student in St. Petersburg during the Russian Revolution, a painter in Paris mingling with the likes of Picasso, and during the Second World War fought as an office in the Polish army. Somehow, miraculously, he and a group of less than four hundred men survived the Soviet murder of more than 20,000 Polish officers (the Katyn Massacre); instead, they were incarcerated in a Soviet prison camp 250 miles north of Moscow, which was where this book has its genesis.

The surviving men had no knowledge of what had happened to their comrades; however, during the winter of 1940-41, with temperatures dropping down to as low as minus 45 degrees, they agreed to undertake secret lectures to keep up morale. Each man would speak about what they remembered best, and in Czapski’s case, his love of the work of Proust was his life-saver. Czapski had first read “In Search of Lost Time” (as it’s called in English here) during the summer of 1926, while he was at his uncle’s house in London and suffering with typhoid. His love of that work had stayed with him, and so when it came to the lectures, Czapski presented a series of thoughts on Proust, his life and his work. It’s heady stuff, and all the more remarkable when you think that these lectures were created and delivered without access to books or reference material, so were simply drawn from what was remembered and what Czapski retained in his head.

His work acts on us like life, filtered and illuminated by a consciousness who soundness is infinitely greater than our own.

And the lectures are remarkably entertaining. Czapski ranges over Proust’s life and influences; the society he moved in; the events and the characters in his great work; and how “In Search…” was Proust’s life’s work and in fact in many ways *took* his life. On their own, the lectures are deeply fascinating and illuminating; and I found myself quite desperate to pick up the third book in the sequence and carry on reading Proust. Czapski really shines a light on Proust’s work and his love of that work is patent.

The last volume of his novel… is the triumphant hymn of a man who has sold all his worldly possessions to buy a single precious pearl, who has measured all the ephemera, all the heartbreak, all the vanity of the joys of the world, of youth, of fame, of eroticism, and holds them up in comparison with the joy of the artist, this being who, constructing each sentence, making and then remaking each page, is in search of an absolute he can never entirely attain, and which, besides, is ultimately unattainable.

However, this is a book where context adds more and our knowledge of the background to the lectures brings extra depth to our reading of it. The latter is deeply affecting on two levels; Czapski’s highly personal response to Proust is in itself extremely moving. However, the lectures are a poignant reminder of the resilience of human beings in extreme situations and a striking illustration of how art and literature are as essential to us as air. The book is translated by Eric Karpeles, who provides an in-depth history of the genesis of the printed version of the lectures, as well as pointing out several other examples of how the memory of literature has helped those in camps to survive, from Primo Levi to Jorge Semprun, Yevgenia Ginzburg to Varlam Shalamov. It’s a testament to the power of words and the importance of literature that the deep love of those works of art helped to keep these prisoners sane whilst living through inhuman conditions.

I’m not making the case that the pages I speak about are the most valuable, it’s just a hierarchy subjectively fixed by my enthusiasm. I can’t recall ever having gone back to Proust – and I’ve done that many times – without discovering some new emphasis, some new insight each time.

“Lost Time” is a slim but devastating book; I became lost in Czapski’s thoughts on Proust only to be jerked back to the reality of where the lectures were given by his acknowledgement that he was working from memory alone with no texts to guide him. And yet his writings have a vitality and intensity born of the love of his subject, which just goes to show that the best teachers are the ones who are committed to their field. My NYRB edition is, of course, beautifully presented, with the excellent aforementioned introduction, as well as colour plates reproducing Czapski’s original schemes for his lectures and a useful glossary of names at the back. In fact, Czapski has been well-served by both publisher and translator; there is a large format NYRB softback biography by Karpeles (a painter and author in his own right, as well as a translator) of Czapski, and I’ll be covering that in coming weeks. Additionally, the publisher has issued an edition of “Inhuman Land”, Czapski’s work about his search for the truth behind the Katyn Massacre, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, which I mentioned in my post a couple of days ago; I’ll be covering that too.

I feel awfully ignorant that I’d never heard of Czapski until these NYRB editions, but grateful that the publisher is bringing these works out. Hopefully Czapski will now have a much wider audience in the English-speaking world; and works like his will continue to remind us of the horrors of the past about which we still need to be so vigilant if we’re to avoid a repeat performance…

Review copy kindly provided by the publisher via Emma O’Bryen, for which many thanks! As I mentioned in my earlier post, there is a fascinating-sounding event in London next week which explores Czapski’s work and if you can get along to it, do – more details here!