Making Changes

Dear readers, some of you may have noticed that over the past couple of weeks several posts have been made by two other authors under the nicknames IntellectualNomad and Chat Noir. They are both my friends and will occasionally contribute pieces to the blog.

As for me, over the course of the nex few weeks I will be writing reviews of seasons 5 through 7 of Doctor Who and of the books chosen by you in the poll that I conducted, which unfortunately got very few votes. Nevertheless, as the French say, c'est la vie, so I will bow down to the vox populi and review the books that were chosen.

By the end of this year you may also get the chance to read a number of opinion pieces by me. At the moment I'm not thinking of writing anything about politics or other such controversial issues but I would like to say a few words on two things that I feel strongly about: perfectionism and self-confidence. They are matters that I have given a great deal of thought to and I hope that you will be interested in my opinion.

Thank you for reading this blog. I am planning a very exciting project for next year though I have yet to make the necessary arrangements and I hope that you will bear with me until I am able to share more details about it. In the meantime, I hope that you will continue to enjoy our offerings.

An Officer and a Spy

An Oficer and a Spy by Robert Harris 

Robert Harris is famous for a number of historical novels, the only one of which I have read is the bestselling Fatherland - a detective story that takes place in an alternate historical setting in which Nazi Germany has won the Second World War. Fatherland is an exciting, well-written novel that I immensely enjoyed reading but I have to say that An Officer and a Spy is even better as it gives Harris the opportunity to fully utilise his amazing ability to create fascinating characters and illustrate complex historical events in an interesting but at the same time informative way. 

An Officer and a Spy is told through the viewpoint of Marie-Georges Picquart, a French officer who is involved with the investigation of the Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish artilery officer of the French Army from the region of Alsace who was convicted on charges of treason in 1894. Early on in the novel Harris deploys his ability to use metaphor and crisp prose to create an excellent sense of place, which I believe the following passage clearly demonstrates:

"The police line bulged, tautened and then burst apart, releasing a flood of protesters, who poured across the pavement and spread along the railings. Dreyfus stopped, turned and faced them, raised him arms and said something. But he had his back tomorrow and I couldn't hear his words, only the familiar taunts of "Judas!", "Traitor!" and "Death to the Jew" that were thrown back in his face.
.........
An instant later the order was given for the parade to march past. The stamp of boots seemed to shake the ground. Bugles were blown. Drums beat time. As the band struck up "Sambre-et-Meuse" it started to snow. I felt a great sense of release. I believe we all did. Spontaneously we turned to one another and shook hands. It was as if a healthy body had purged itself of something foul and pestilential, and now life could begin anew." (1)

Picquart is an apt choice for a character through which to tell the story as, just like Dreyfus, he was an exile of the French region of Alsace that was taken over by the Germans in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, which redefined the balance of power in Europe and caused great suffering to many refugees who were forced to leave their homes and move elsewhere in France:

"I was sixteen when the Germans shelled Strasbourg, thus kindly enabling me to witness at first hand an event that we teach at the Écoles Supérieure de Guerre as 'the first full-scale use of modern artillery specifically to reduce a civilian population.' I watched the city's art gallery and library burn to the ground, saw neighbourhoods blown to pieces, knelt beside friends as they died, helped dig strangers out of the rubble. After nine weeks the garrison surrended. We were offered a choice between staying put and becoming German or giving up everything and moving to France. We arrived in Paris destitute and shorn of all of illusions about the security of our civilised life." (2)

The novel successfully illustrates the horrific impact that the Franco-Prussian War had on the French people. This conflict resulted in the German annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, the fall of Napoleon III and the establishment of the Third French Republic. The establishment of the German Empire, which became the most powerful state in central Europe, led to the development of an almost pathological fear of potential German aggression in France, which was strongly linked to the ease with which the Germans had defeated the French Army, as well as the significant numerical advantage that the new unified German state had over France. This fear was accompannied by French revanchism, rooted in the desire of nationalists to reclaim what Alsace-Lorraine, which they believed was naturally French territory. These circumstances partly explain why the French establishment decided to punish Dreyfus severely by exiling him to the penal colony of Devil's Island and placing him in dreadful living conditions:

"The exchange with Blanche unsettles me very slightly. The tiniest speck of - no, I shall not call it doubt, exactly - let us say curiosity lodges in my mind, and not so much Dreyfus's guilt as his punishment. Why, I ask myself, do we persist in this absurd and expensive rigmarole of imprisonment, which requires four or five guards to be stranded with him in silence on his tiny island? What is our policy? How many ours of bureaucratic time - including mine - are to be tied up in the endless administration, surveillance and censorship his punishment entails?
.....
Gradually over the winter I discern that we do in fact have a policy with regard to Dreyfus, it has simply never been explained to me in so many words, either verbally or on paper. We are waiting for him to die." (3)
 
Picquart is rewarded for his involvement in the Dreyfus case by a promotion to the rank of lieutenant colonel and the position of head of the Statistical Section, France's top secret military intelligence department. During his tenure at the department, Picquart comes across evidence that there may be another mole in the French Army and that Dreyfus may not have been guilty of espionage. Yet his attempts to share his suspicions with the other officers involved in the case are fruitless, as the exchange underneath demonstrates:

"'Personally I suspected that brother of his, Mathieu. So did Sandherr, as a matter of fact.'
'But Mathieu wasn't in the army at the time.'
'But Mathieu wasn't in the army at the time. He wasn't even in Paris.'
'No,' replies du Paty with great signifiance, 'but he was in Germany. And he's a Jew.'"(4)

This exchange reveals another important issue in the affair - Dreyfus's ethnicity. It may seem shocking today but in the late 19th century there was a strong current of anti-Semitism in France. In fact, even the novel's narrator, Picquart, is anti-Semitic to some degree but this issue is skirted over as there are only a number of occasions on which this issue is mentioned and it is not explored in-depth.

Harris's novel also seems to make points particularly pertinent to life in the contemporary age of mostly digital communication, which allows almost everything that we send to be traced and recorded. He makes a good point that even just over 100 years, secrecy had already become something difficult to protect:

“There is no such thing as a secret—not really, not in the modern world, not with photography and telegraphy and railways and newspaper presses. The old days of an inner circle of like-minded souls communicating with parchment and quill pens is gone. Sooner or later most things will be revealed. That is what I have been attempting to make Gonse understand.”  (5) 

As Picquart acquires more and more evidence that Dreyfus may not be guilty, he decides to report to his superiors in the hope that they will take action. However, he is given to understand that reopening this issue would have a catastrophic impact on French society and that Dreyfus must be sacrificed for the greater good of the nation:


"Let's face it, dear Picquart: the investigation into Dreyfus was not handled as profesionally as it should have been. Sandherr was a sick man, and du Paty - well, we all know what Armand is like, despite his many fine qualities. But we have to proceed from where we are, and really we can't go back over it all again. It would reopen too many wounds. You've seen the press these past few days, the potential hysteria there is about Dreyfus. It would tear the country apart. We just have to shut it down. You must understand that, surely?'" (6)

Picquart's superiors advise him to drop the entire case and accept the fact that Dreyfus will eventually be forgotten, if no one decides to stir the hornet's nest. This situation is reminiscent of today's world in which scandals about government corruption, gross negligence or great injustice are not infrequent but they often simply fall off the agenda of the day as fatigue sets in and other striking news takes their place:

"He offers me his hand. His grip is dry, hard, calloused. He clamps his other hand around mine, imprisoning it. 'There's nothing easy about power, Georges. One needs the stomach to make hard decisions. But I've seen all this before. Today the press is Dreyfus, Dreyfus, Dreyfus; tomorrow, without some new disclosure, they'll have forgotten all about him, you'll see.'" (7) 

Picquart, however, is a man of honour who is not willing to give up even if all of his superiors are against him. He contemplates taking this matter all the way to the top of the republic's hierarchy but eventually comes to realise that the entire political establishment stands in firm support of the army, which it considers to be the firm foundation on which the nation stands:

"For a few days I consider appealing directly to the President, but then I read his latest speech, delivered in the presence of General Billot - The army is the nation's heart and soul, the mirror in which France perceives the most ideal image of her self-denial and patriotism; the army holds the first place in the thoughts of the government and in the pride of the nation - and I realise that he would never take up arms on behalf of a despised Jew against 'the nation's heart and soul.'" (8) 

Eventually, however, things get out of hand and news is leaked to the press about the particulars of the Dreyfus case. Picquart is hounded by his superiors and he eventually joins forces with some of the most formidable figures of the Republic in the crusade to free Dreyfus:

"There is a moment of silence and then one of the men - bald-headed and with a heavy drooping moustache, whom I recognise as Georges Clemenceau, the left-wing politician and editor of the radical newspaper L'Aurore - starts a round of clapping in which everyone joins. As Louis ushers me into the room, another man, dapper and attractive, calls out cheerfully, 'Bravo Picquart! Vive Picquart!' and I recognise him too, from the surveillance photo that used to cross my desk, as Mathieu Dreyfus. Indeed, as I go round shaking their hands, I find I know all these men by sight or reputation: the publisher Georges Charpentier, whose house this is; the heavily bearded senator for the Seine, Arthur Ranc, the oldest man in the room; Joseph Reinach, a left-wing Jewish member of the Chamber of Deputies; and of course the pudgy figure in pince-nez to whom I am introduced last, Émile Zola." (9)

Although many of you may know how the Dreyfus Affair ends, I nevertheless recommend that you read this novelisation of the case as it offers an exciting story and the opportunity to explore the state of French society at the turn of the 20th century through the viewpoint of an interesting character who makes some very pertinent observations about France, relations between France and Germany, the nature of power and many other matters. Harris has managed to create a plethora of fascinating characters that populate the exciting and, at the same time, frightening world of the Third French Republic and I am confident that anyone, even those with little interest in French history, will enjoy this book. The only minor criticism that I have of the book is that while Harris clearly tells us which historical sources he used in his research, he does not acknowledge any of the liberties that he has taken with the truth. I only realised that Harris had made some significant changes when I read a historical review of the book. However, I suggest that you disregard this issue and allow yourself to be entertained by this magnificent book. After all, if you are interested in the details of the Dreyfus Affair, there are plenty of historical books about it. It's only one of the most notorious cases of injustice in human history.

References
(1) Robert Harris, An Officer and a Spy, London: Arrow Books, 2014, pp. 16-17
(2) Harris, Officer, p. 28
(3) Harris, Officer, pp. 102-03
(4) Harris, Officer, p. 238
(5) Harris, Officer, p. 296
(6) Harris, Officer, p. 307
(7) Harris, Officer, p. 318
(8) Harris, Officer, p. 350
(9) Harris, Officer, p. 452

Image taken from Amazon.co.uk

Doctor Who - Season 4

Head Writer and Executive Producer: Russell T. Davies
Cast: David Tennant, Catherine Tate, Bernard Cribbins, Jacqueline King

Season 4 of Doctor Who continues the adventures of the Tenth Doctor played by David Tennant. The Doctor gets a new companion for this season - the temp worker Donna Noble from Chiswick who is rather outspoken but has a rather limited view of the world and is radically transformed by her adventures with the Doctor. Donna is played by British comedian Catherine Tate, who manages to create a memorable character that evolves from a narrow-minded person into a brave and sensitive woman. Donna's character was first introduced in the finale of Season 3 and she is further developed in the Christmas special The Runaway Bride, which aired after Season 2 of Doctor Who. However, she becomes a companion of the Doctor only in the first episode of Season 4 and she brings a breath of fresh air to the show as, unlike Rose Tyler and Martha Jones, she does not harbour any romantic feelings for the Doctor and consider him just a mate. In fact, the relationship between the Doctor and Donna is one of the best features of this season and there are a number of episode which demonstrate how the two friends make each other better.

Season 4 begins with the rather unimpressive episode Partners in Crime in which the Doctor and Donna are conducting separate investigations of Adipose Industries, a company which promises people that it can easily help them get rid of their fat. However, the way in which this happens is shrouded in mystery and the Doctor and Donna both seek to uncover the secret of the company's success. The episode shows us that Donna has become dissatisfied with her life and wishes more adventures like the one she had with the Doctor. However, the episode's villain is rather disappointing although the excellent chemistry between Tennant and Tate, as well as the loveable character of Wilfred Mott (Bernard Cribbins), that saves it from mediocrity. The Unicorn and the Wasp, which features the famous detective novelist Agatha Christie, is another offering that, in my opinion, does not really stand out against the rest of the episodes in this season. This episode includes a murder mystery in which the Doctor, Donna and Agatha Christie are forced to work together in order to discover the identity of the criminal. Although I found this episode entertaining enough, it's not one of my favourite and I would personally watch any other of the season's episodes than this one, with the exception of Partners in Crime.

However, Season 4 also features some of the best episode of the new Doctor Who series. It includes Steven Moffat's second two-parter written for Doctor Who, consisting of Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead, which introduces the mysterious Vashta Nerada as well as the character of Professor River Song (Alex Kingston), archaeologist, who will play a key role in the Doctor's future. The episode takes place in the greatest library in the universe and it reveals much about the Doctor and about his new companion whose emotional sensitivity is used to great effect in this story. This two-parter is followed by one of the best standalone episodes of Doctor Who, Midnight, in which the Doctor Who is trapped on a shuttle on the planet Midnight with a number of passengers and a mysterious and dangerous creature. This is one of the scariest Doctor Who stories and it features the famous lines from Christina Rosetti's poem Goblin Market:

"We must not look at goblin men,  
We must not buy their fruits:  
Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry thirsty roots?"

Whereas Donna plays a very small role in Midnight, in the next episode Turn Left it is the Doctor himself who takes the backseat. In this story Donna encounters a fortune teller on a mysterious planet and is somehow sent back to the past at a moment in which makes a crucial decision which determines whether she will ever meet the Doctor. This is an excellent episode that also features Rose Tyler who warns Donna that the universe in danger by asking her to deliver the message "Bad Wolf" to the Doctor. In the two-parter finale, consisting of The Stolen Earth and Journey's End, the Doctor and Donna investigate the disappearance of a number of planets, including the Earth. These two episodes feature the return of many characters from the previous season, including Jack Harkness, Martha Jones and Mickie Smith. They offer a truly epic adventure in which the Doctor is once again forced to confront his greatest enemies but is now almost powerless before them.

Season 4 also features a number of very good episode. In The Fires of Pompeii Donna goes on her first adventure with the Doctor, which takes them to the city of Pompeii shortly before the eruption of the volcano that buried it in volcanic ash around 2000 years ago. This is an interesting episode as it shows how Donna changes the Doctor as she pleads with him to save at least some of the city's residents, despite the fact that he insists that Pompeii is a fixed point in time. The story also features an interesting enemy for the Doctor and this storyline effetively complements the Doctor's struggle with his decision not to save any of Pompeii's citizens. This episode is followed by Planet of the Ood in which the Doctor and Donna discover more about the slave race of the Ood. This is an episode in which the Doctor and Donna's don't exactly do much but it gives us some interesting background to the Ood who I personally find fascinating.

The following two-parter, consisting of The Sontaran Staratagem and The Poison Sky, introduces us to another enemy of the Doctor, the warrior Sontarans, who seek to conquer the Earth with the help of a human genius. The episode also features the return of Martha Jones who is now working for UNIT (Unified Intelligence Taskforce), an international organisation under the UN that seeks to counter enemy threats. This is another fun episode that is made very exciting by the presence of Martha Jones. It is followed by the story of The Doctor's Daughter in which Donna, the Doctor and Martha finds themselves transported to an alien planet on which another person is created from the Doctor's DNA - the eponymous Doctor's daughter. This episode features a long-lasting conflict between two species which uses progenation machines to create more soldiers for their battles. However, all is not as it seems and the Doctor, Donna and Martha eventually make a startling discovery about the origins of this vicious conflict.

Season 4 of Doctor Who builds up on the success of the previos season and it offers some of the best episodes of the new Doctor Who series.The replacement of Martha Jones with Donna as a companion is particularly welcome as it makes the show even more lively and fun and Donna's character serves as a balance to Tennant's rather serious Doctor. The return of many characters from the previous 3 series to the finale is particularly welcome as it provides a spectacular end to a spectacular season that once again demonstrates David Tennant's incredible success as the Tenth Doctor.
 
Image taken from Amazon.co.uk

The Shadow of the Sun: My African Life

The Shadow of the Sun: My African Life by Ryszard Kapuściński 

For those of you who are not familiar with his work, I should mention that the Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuściński was without a doubt one of the most celebrated writers of the 20th century. Many of Kapuściński's works have been translated into English and other languages, including The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat, a tale of the decline and fall of Haile Selassie, the Emperor of Ethiopia, The Soccer War, a collection of stories about Kapuściński's experiences in various Third World countries, and Imperium, a collection of memoirs and essays on the Soviet Union. For many years in the second half the 20th century, Kapuściński served as foreign correspondent for the Polish News Agency and covered coups, revolutions, civil wars and other momentous events in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Kapuściński's work received numerous international rewards and he is held in such high regard in his native Poland that in 2010 the Council of the capital of Poland, Warsaw, established the Ryszard Kapuściński Award for Literary Reportage.

The blurb on the back cover of the book that this review is about states that "The Shadow of the Sun has been hailed as the greatest modern work on Africa and as a dazzling literary masterpice." Having read all of this praise about the late Mr. Kapuściński, you might reasonably expect that I will give you a glowing review of his work. If that is the case, you will be very surprised and perhaps dismayed, if you are an admirer of his writing.

The Shadow of the Sun is without a doubt one of the best books that I've ever read as it contains prose of staggering beauty. Kapuściński is a writer who is able to bring the world to life and his descriptions of people, landscape and events such as revolutions are so poetic that very often one has to linger on certain paragraphs in order to fully appreciate them. In this aspect the book is a complete triumph and the comparison made with the Nobel Prize winner V. S. Naipaul is completely justified as one has to wonder whether Kapuściński should have become a writer of fiction instead of reportage as he clearly has the ability to draw great characters and describe events in a unique way.

The book contains many passages of great beauty and perhaps the best thing about Kapuściński's writing is the way he uses numerous metaphors and other stylistic techniques in his descriptions. Here is just one example of Kapuściński's excellent prose:

"And finally, the most important discovery - the people. The locals. How they fit this landscape, this light, these smells. How they are as one with them. How man and environment are bound in an indissoluble, complementary and harmonious whole.
 .....
With their strength, grace, and endurance, the indigenous move about naturally, freely, at a tempo determined by climate and tradition, somewhat languid, unhurried, knowing one never achieve everything in life anyway, and besides, if one did, what would be left over for others?"(1) 

I've left a part of this passage out but I've made sure that it retains the original meaning that the author imbued it with. Kapuściński offers many such beautiful descriptions of Africans and the land that they inhabit. He explains for us in some detail how different African societies are from European ones. For instance, whereas individualism is a typical characteristic of Europe, collectivism trumps individualism in Africa and no one, even the rich, can escape it:

"But this is Africa, and the fortunate nouveau riche cannot forget the old clan tradition, one of whose supreme canons is share everything you have with your kinsmen, with another men of your clan, or, as they as say here, with your cousin. (In Europe, the bond with a cousin is by now rather weak and distant, whereas in Africa a cousin on your mother's side is more important than a husband.) So - if you have two shirts, give him one; if you have a bowl of rice, give him half. Whoever breaks this rule condemns himself to ostracism, to expulsion from the clan, to the horrifying status of outcast. Individualism in highly prized in Europe, and perhaps nowhere more so than in America; in Africa it is synonymous with unhappiness, with being accursed. African tradition is collectivist, for only in a harmonious group could one face the obstacles continually thrown up by nature." (2) 

Kapuściński explains very well how the harsh climate of Africa transforms the natives into people who lack energy and are barely able to make it through each day. I've given just one passage below but there are numerous examples that vividly explain the differences between Europeans and Africans, according to both the writer himself and Europeans who remained in Africa in the years after the European colonialist empires were pushed out of the continent:

"After a day of heat and hunger, one is weak and listless. But a certain stupor, an internal numbness, has its benefits: man could not survive here without it, for otherwise the biological, animal part of his nature would bite to death everything that is still human in him." (3) 

If you are a critical reader like me, you will have realized by now that Kapuściński often paints Africa in broad strokes. Although he gives many examples of his experiences on the continent, and unlike many other European foreign correspondents he actually made an effort to live the same way as Africans and to communicate with the locals wherever he went, Kapuściński makes generalizations about Africans such as the following:
 
"We are here among people who do not contemplate transcendence and the existence of the soul, the meaning of life and the nature of being. We are in a world in which man, crawling on the earth, tries to dig a few grains of wheat out of the mud, just to survive another day." (4)

Reading this you might think that Africa is a continent of people who struggle to survive every day, a continent bereft of intellectuals, writers, poets, artists, academics and all other people who spend a significant amount of their life pondering the meaning of life. Yet Mr. Kapuściński, despite his high intelligence and excellent observation skills, does not seem to realize that he is engaging in exactly the same stereotyping of Africa as the people that he criticizes. In fact, Kapuściński has the gall to state the following:
 
"Europe's image of Africa? Hunger; skeletal children; dry, cracked earth; urban slums; massacres; AIDS; throngs of refugees without a roof over their heads, without clothing, without medicines, water, or bread.
The world, therefore, rushes in with aid.
Today, as in the past, Africa is regarded as an object, as the reflection of some alien star, as the stomping ground of colonizers, merchants, missionaries, ethnographers, large charitable organizations (more than eighty are active in Ethiopia alone).
Meantime, most importantly, it exists for itself alone, within itself, a timeless, sealed, separate continent..." (5)

The last sentence in this passage made me pause as it reminded of the time when former French President Nicholas Sarkozy said a few years ago that "the African man has not yet entered history". One would think that someone such as Mr. Kapuściński who feels great sympathy for the plight of many poor, starving and suffering Africans would realize that despite their plight, they are part of the long history of the African continent. Yet Mr. Kapuściński astounds us even further by making an even more extraordinary statement: 

"History does not exist beyond that which we are able to recount here and now. The kind of history known in Europe as scholarly and objective can never arise here, because the African past has no documents or records, and each generation, listening to the verses being transmitted to it, changed it and continues to change it, modifies and embellishes it. But as a result history, free of the weight of archives, of the constraints of dates and date, achieves here its purest, crystalline form - that of myth.
In these myths, instead of dates and mechanical measures of time - days, months, years - other designations appear, like "long ago", "very long ago", "so long ago that no one remembers." Within these time frames everything can still be placed and arranged in a temporal hierarchy, only that within it time will not evolve in a linear fashion, but will mimic the uniform, circular revolutions of our planet. In this of view of time, the notion of development does not exist; it is replaced by the notion of the abiding. Africa is eternal abiding." (6) 

I find it difficult to decide how to begin my criticism of this passage. To state that Africa does not have any history "beyond that which we are able to recount here and now" is not just false but also incredibly ignorant. Today I spent several hours at SOAS (The School of Oriental and African Studies) near Russell Square and walking through of the corridors of this great educational institution, I was struck by how much the field of academic studies devoted to Africa has expanded over the years. It is hard to believe that Kapuściński's book, which was published in Polish in 1998 and translated in English in 2001, completely ignores the significant attention that African history and culture has received in recent decades.

Another significant problem with this passage is that it states that the purest form of history of myth. I don't understand how any respected journalist can peddle such nonsense and be praised by writers from The Guardian, The New York Times, The Washington Post and other venerable institutitons of journalism. Not only does Mr Kapuściński demonstrate his complete ignorance of the importance of the field of history, in the next paragraph he once again affirms the notion that Africa, unlike Europe, does not have any linear history as it exists in a kind of bubble of its own in which it never changes. I am almost tempted to call this statement racist although I do not think that Kapuściński felt anything but sympathy and admiration for the simple way in which many Africans live their lives and I doubt that he felt himself superior to them.

In fact, Kapuściński does criticize the behaviour of Africa's former European colonial masters and their role in the chaotic placing of the borders in this continent whose population consists of a complicated mosaic of many different ethnicities, tribes and religious. Yet the number of times that he makes derogatory general statements about Africans, which goes completely against his claim in his 1-page introduction that Africa is too vast and varied for one to even consider such a place to exist, makes it difficult to appreciate the times when he does make perceptive comments that tell us something true about the great African continent.

Nevertheless, I recommend that you read The Shadow of the Sun: My African Life even just to appreciate the beauty of Kapuściński's writing. However, do not take for granted what he says about Africa and go and read other books about this vast and complex continent, which is still trying to find its place under the sun but will hopefully never again fall under the rule of outside people and will finally be able to extricate itself from the trap of poverty, political instability and violence, which has plagued many, but not all, of its parts ever since the old, colonial European masters left Africa in a shambles several decades ago.

References
(1) Ryszard Kapuściński, The Shadow of the Sun: My African Life, trans. Klara Glowczewska, London: Penguin Books, 2002 p. 5
(2) Kapuściński, Shadow of the Sun, p.36
(3) Kapuściński, Shadow of the Sun, p. 113
(4) Kapuściński, Shadow of the Sun, p. 200
(5) Kapuściński, Shadow of the Sun, p. 228
(6) Kapuściński, Shadow of the Sun, pp. 317-18

Image taken from Amazon.co.uk

Prelude

Prelude

This is my home -

the sun, the moon, the stars

the known and the unknown

the mirth and the misery -

all are here mine.

This is my home -

the cradle of confusing ideas

the circle of outrageous arguments

the nonexplanations -

all are here mine.

This is my home -

when passing the porch,

escaping rehearsed conscience

I find my catharsis.

This is my home -

It is solid - a refuge outlasting time.

Should you pass by, exclaim your presence:

You will not be sent away.

About Today

Today I would like to discuss fear: the fear of expressing thoughts and the fear of pursuing happiness. We are living in a society that teaches us how important it is to design a safe life, to manage a check list for what we need to achieve and when it is right to achieve it. We like our present to be safe: nothing more admirable, I agree. But building up a false reality and fading out troubles or the need to deal with them cannot be associated with the idealistic concept of safety. We may lose the courage of expressing mirth, sadness, love or discontent, in fact we may lose the ability of expressing the inner pattern of emotions in general. The lack of proper communication endangers gravely harmonious cohabitation, in all areas of human interaction. Today’s society often associates proper conduct with censorship of certain emotions, when in fact expressing respect, patience, sympathy and emotional intelligence ensures functional relationships. It is fear taking control over us, when we deny ourselves the unconstrained analysis of our state of mind. It is fear taking control over us, when we deny ourselves to share the result of this analysis. It is fear of damaging perhaps a malcontent, but “safe” chapter of life. And this fear is the core of our everyday unhappiness.

Last week I stumbled across an essay of Philip Roth in which he reflects upon the experience of writing “Portnoy’s Complex”, a novel I read several years ago. In his essay, Roth analysis the reception of his novel and exposes his gear to write about a man troubled by every ruthless thought and feeling of the human spirit:

“While the protagonist may be straining to escape his moral conscience, I was attempting to break free from a literary conscience that had been constructed by my reading, my schooling and my fastidiousness — from a habitual sense of prose decorum.” (Old Books, New Thoughts – tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com)

It is a bold novel, which deals with “the quotient of the unsocialized that is rooted in almost everyone” (Old Books, New Thoughts – tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com). Everyone has to process it and denying it does not make it fade away.

Do not be afraid to break free from the prison of prefabricated ideas and concepts. Get rid of the futile weight of the cloak of fear and experiment without oppressing others, but most importantly without oppressing yourself! Do not be content with the “comfort-zone” in your life, but try making the most out of your reality!

                                                                                          Chat Noir – 16. November 2014