Munich, part two

Our second day was a tram ride across the city and the river to the Deutsches Museum, which is the Science Centre with a more solemn historical mission. Being in Europe - and perhaps being in Cambridge - now more than when I was here, ten years ago now? and far too wrapped up in myself - is to feel the weight of history in every part of the ordinary day. What I remember of the Museum: glass sponges; iron balls vibrating and radiating heat to kill the tumour cells they were injected into; the technical toys exhibition (largely a generic version of lego, though not less cool for that); the glassblowing exhibition; short videos of the future (like the future of food, or of robots - but two videos each, a good future and a bad future (in the bad future, the robots turn overprotective and cage us up for our own good)); the ipod (well - mp3 technology, I think); the Jaegermeister factory model; the 19th-century clocks exhibition (an exhibition on timekeeping, more generally - there is something magical, both precise and beautiful, useless in its precision and beautiful in its functionality, about old clocks and watches and especially sundials); the laser light displays (optics, I think); and pictures of hot air balloons (aeronautics).

Lunch was bratwurst and gluhwein at the Tollwood Christmas market. (We loaded up on breakfast at the hotel - which had the best breakfast of all the hotels we had been to, though still a variation on a theme, of ham and cheese and bread and jam.) The Christkindlmarkt at the Marienplatz is touristy and schmaltzy and I love it - the stalls are wooden carts decorated with leaves and flowers and tinsel, and they sell soft toys you can warm in the microwave (to warm your bed and sweeten your sleep) and woolly hats and gloves and scarves and delicate wooden stars and bright red and gold globes to hang on your Christmas tree. Tollwood sells all that, plus bright throws with animal prints and totem heads from Africa and star-shaped lanterns from Morocco - it's food fair plus pasar malam. The grounds are huge, with one giant tent for stalls (called the bazaar) and another for food and of course stalls outside, selling bratwurst and gluhwein (fortified in all sorts of ways) and the german pizza that Magma sells (whose name escapes me now) and large slabs of preserved meat in all forms on crusty bread. I have had enough gluhwine and sausage to last me a lifetime.

A quick stop to Eilles and the other, slightly posher bakery for Christmas cookies, and then Ederer for dinner. I think it would be fair to call it an updated version of Bavarian food - not quite as heavy - and thoughtfully planned and well executed, except for dessert, which was disappointing. (Traditional Bavarian dessert, at least in winter, seems to be stewed fruit and cream, though I have a soft spot for strudel.) I have possibly also drunk enough Riesling to last quite a long time.

Munich, part one

(I haven't written a diary-type entry in so long that this feels odd, something between a study trip report and a dear diary parody.)

We got into Munich after a long train ride from Berlin, two hours longer than it should have been because of a delay near Naumberg, but German efficiency meant that we could claim a refund of 50% of our ticket price at Munich. Straight out of the Munich station are discount outlets for shoes and hats, a apothecary, train tracks swerving through the slush, a couple of sex shops, a couple of casinos, a kebab shop on the corner. Hotel Monaco is tucked away at the top floor of a derelict-looking building, and bursts into cherubic floral cheeriness once we stepped out of the lift.

After the miserable cold of Berlin Munich had perfect weather (a warm wind blowing from the south, the weather forecaster said). The free walking tour (tips only, to support American students in Munich) started at the Marienplatz, the heart of the old city. This was the 22nd - just before Christmas, no less than zero degrees, the snow was shovelled away and piled to the side, and the air was crisp and clear and full of gluhwein and mustard and sizzling bratwurst. We started with the glockenspiel (the second most overrated tourist attraction in Europe, our guide said, second only to the astronomical clock in Prague - it does last longer, but the astronomical clock is more impressive). Munich is a beautiful, beautifully-proportioned city, the third largest city in Germany (Kai, our beer challenge tour guide, said) but doesn't feel like it, not in the city centre, at least, though you could well believe that all one point four million inhabitants (Muncheners? Munchkins?) and as many tourists were all in the Christkindlmarkt. From the Marienplatz we went past the Fraukirche (built with the help of the devil, who specified only that there should be no windows, but was tricked by the architect - the floor-to-ceiling windows were obscured by the arrangement of pillars when the devil peered into the church the first time round) and the Peterkirche, to the new Jewish synagogue, to the Hofbrauhaus (the shallow channels running through the cobblestones outside, the guide said, were so men could pee without leaving their seats - the Hofbrauhaus was the king's brewery, built for him by the town when he was trying to turn Munich from a wine country to a beer country and was importing too much foreign beer at too great an expense to fill the current deficiency, and later, when it was open to all and not just nobility - all meaning all men, of course - it was crowded and without toilet facilities) - to the expensive shopping street to the Residenz and to end at the Odeonplatz and the stone lions of Munich. The monks and the lions. Munich has been carefully and thoughtfully restored to its pre-WWII state, to the cannonball lodged in the wall of the Peterkirche (I think it was). There was some argument, the guide said, about remembering the city's WWII past - even to say, WWII past, seems to downplay the horror of it - Berlin chose to erect a massive Holocaust memorial at (or near) the Tiergarten, and its Jewish museum is a monument to memory, but Munich chose a more understated approach - there is a Jewish museum and a synagogue (open only to those of the faith or by prior appointment, for security reasons), but no giant memorial. A plaque on the wall of a building at a busy street corner, near the Victualienmarkt, marks where a former departmental store, owned by a Jewish businessman dispossessed and displaced in the putsch (but who eventually returned to Munich), once stood. There is a word in German, the guide said, that means coming to terms with the past. Berlin is one way of doing it. Munich is another.

The tour ended at lunchtime, which was currywurst from the Christkindlmarkt, and then a climb to the top of the Peterkirche, from which we could see all of Munich - the twin domes of the Fraukirche (why domes, incidentally?), the slanting, snow-capped roofs of shops and houses and market stalls, the clear dark bands of road. (I can't help thinking of England and the panic over being snowed in; the German roads and clear and clean of snow, more or less, each morning.)

Then a stroll around the Victualienmarkt - I love markets, and this is a lovely market to walk around - bright exotic fruit (even mango and papaya and even dragonfruit), hams and sausages and cheeses, large barrels of gluhwein, delicate wooden filigree angels, strings of dried flowers and orange slices and green Christmas wreaths to put up - no-one, I think, does Christmas better. We had coffee and apple strudel in one of the cafes nearby, and then it was time to trot back to the train station for the beer challenge tour.

Which was a tour of three beerhouses and one bar in the youth hostel near the train station, which meant it ended just minutes way from our B&B. The first was Augustiner Keller, on the other side of the train station - away from the city centre - a good-sized beerhouse, but arranged in multiple rooms. The beer Kai recommended was Edoshtuff, or "noble stuff" - once made by monks, and drank by the pope (who ordered a small barrel every month) - a good light beer, light but with flavour. The second was Hacker Pschorr (I think) and we had the dunkel, which was stronger in taste and flavour, an almost nutty beer, and this near the Oktoberfest ground at Theresenwiese. Then Hofbrauhaus, at which we made a perfunctory but necessary stop, though only after we had been taught a German drinking song - Hofbrauhaus is large and boisterous, exactly as you imagine it might be, and a place to go to simply to go to it - and last more Augustiner (I believe) and a shot of Jaegermeister at the Euro youth hostel. A beer challenge tour that is not also a pub crawl - and we were not drunk at the end, though mostly not sober neither - attracts a particular crowd - people who enjoy their drink (or they would not be there) but somehow feel the need for some edification with their beer (hence the tour, though Kai was a good guide - the right balance of life and gaiety and sober instruction). This means an almost entirely Asian crowd, if we can count the Asian Americans and the Indian man living in Australia (and a whole family of Singaporeans, incluing the old father, who did seem to have a good time).

Letters

In order to prove, illustrious Abbé, how much you were in the wrong to quit me, and for how short a time I can exist without you, I hereby give notice that I am to set out to-morrow for Paris in quest of you. For since your departure I feel such an irksomeness diffused over my mind, as makes me to think I am incapacitated either for enjoying myself, or doing any thing with satisfaction to myself.

- Montesquieu to the Abbé and Count de Guasco, at Paris, 1749

The thing about reading 18th-century texts

is that I now lisp in my mind's voice.

I can't help giggling quietly to myself and thinking of Pratchett when I read things like these, which do not improve my concentration:

Will their fentiments, which are debafed from the love of liberty, from zeal for the honour and profperity of their country, and from a defire of honeft fame, to an abfolute unconcernednefs for all thefe, to an abject fubmiffion, and to a rapacious eagernefs after wealth that may fate their avarice, and exceed the profufion of their luxury; will thefe, I fay again, be fo eafily, or fo foon elevated? In a word, will the Britifh fpirit, that fpirit which has preferved liberty hitherto in one corner of the world at leaft, be fo eafily or fo foon reinfufed into the Britifh nation? I think not.

and

The minifter preaches corruption aloud and conftantly, like an impudent miffionary of vice: and fome there are who not only infinuate, but teach the fame occafionally. I fay fome; becaufe I am as far from thinking, that all thofe who join with him, as that any of thofe who oppofe him, wait only to be more authorized, that they may propagate it with greater fuccefs, and apply it to their own ufe, in their turn.

- From a lovely crinkled old copy of Bolingbroke's "The idea of a patriot king", 1738

Voltaire does Othello

This is Iago giving Othello proof of Cassio's perfidy:

[Cassio] said in his sleep, ‘Dear Desdemona, let us be careful, let us hide our loves.’ In speaking, he took me [Iago] by the hand, he patted me, he cried, ‘Oh, charming creature!’ he kissed me with transport, as if he had by the roots torn up kisses planted upon my lips, he put his [1] thighs upon my legs, he sighed, he breathed short, he kissed me, he cried out, ‘Cursed fate which has given you to the Moor!’

Translator's note:
[1] Wrongly translated.

- From "Plan of 'The Orphan'", Philosophical Letters

More Hamlet!

Just cos it's funny. To me anyway.

Hamlet then having deferred the murder of Claudius, in order to damn him, comes to confer with his mother; and notwithstanding his madness, overwhelms her with such bitter reproaches of her crime, as pierce her to the very heart. The old chamberlain, Polonius, is apprehensive of his carrying matters too far; he cries out for help behind the hanging; Hamlet takes it for granted that it was the king who had hid himself there, to listen to their conversation. “Ah mother,” cries he, “there is a great rat behind the hangings.” He thereupon draws his sword, runs to the rat, and kills the good man Polonius. “Ah my son, what are you about?” cries the queen. “Mother,” returns Hamlet, “it is the king that I have slain!” “It is a wicked action to kill a king;" [1] “Almost as wicked, my good mother, as to kill a king and lie with his brother.” This conversation lasts a long time; and Hamlet, as he goes out, walks upon the dead body of the old chamberlain, and is ready to fall down.[2]

The translator's footnotes:
[1] This passage is manifestly translated wrong.
[2] This circumstance is entirely of the invention of M. de Voltaire; not contented with depreciating Shakespeare, he even misrepresents him.


Voltaire continues:

The good lord chamberlain was an old fool, and is represented as such, as has already been seen; his daughter Ophelia, who, no doubt, resembled him in this respect, becomes raving mad when she is informed of her father’s death: she runs upon the stage with flowers and straw upon her head, sings ballads, and then goes and drowns herself. Thus there are three mad people in the play, the chamberlain, and Hamlet, without reckoning the other buffoons who play their parts.

- From Voltaire, "Plan of the Tragedy of Hamlet", Philosophical Letters (1733)

More Hamlet

From Voltaire's summary of the plot of Hamlet:

[Hamlet] declares that he has an inclination to quit Denmark, and go to school to Wittenberg. “Dear Hamlet,” says the queen, “do not go to school to Wittenberg; stay with us.” Hamlet answers that he will endeavor to obey her. Claudius is charmed at the answer; and orders that all of his court should go and drink, while the cannons were fired off; though gunpowder was not then invented.

- From "Plan of the Tragedy of Hamlet", Philosophical Letters (1733)

translation

Voltaire translates Hamlet's soliloquy:

Demeure, il faut choisir, & passer à l’instant
De la vie à la mort, ou de l’être au néant.
Dieux justes, s’il en est, éclairez mon courage.
Faut–il vieillir courbé sous la main qui m’outrage,
Supporter, ou finir mon malheur & mon sort?
Qui suis–je? Que m’arrête? Et qu’est–ce que la mort?
C’est la fin de nos maux, c’est mon unique asile;
Après de longs transports, c’est un sommeil tranquille.
On s’endort, & tout meurt; mais un affreux réveil
Doit succéder peut–être aux douceurs du sommeil.
On nous menace, on dit, que cette courte vie
De tourmens éternels est aussitôt suivie.
O mort!
O mort! moment fatal! affreuse éternité!
Tout coeur à ton seul nom se glace épouvanté.
Eh! qui pourrait sans toi supporter cette vie?
De nos Prêtres menteurs bénir l’hypocrisie?
D’une indigne maîtresse encenser les erreurs?
Ramper sous un Ministre, adorer ses hauteurs?
Et montrer les langueurs de son ame abattue,
A des amis ingrats, qui détournent la vue?
La mort serait trop douce en ses extrémités.
Mais le scrupule parle, & nous crie, Arrêtez.
Il défend à nos mains cet heureux homicide,
Et d’un Héros guerrier, fait un Chrétien timide.

From "English Tragedy", in Philosophical Letters (1733)

bits

On the way back - a guy cycling down Trinity Lane drinking a half-pint of milk.

in consequence

In my borrowed copy of Albert O. Hirschman's The Passions and the Interests - which I've only read a third of but recommend unreservedly - a previous reader has pencilled helpful comments in the margin.

This is the bit on Montesquieu, and Hirschman quotes Montesquieu as saying that "the natural effect of commerce is to lead to peace."

The marginalia writer's gloss: natural but unintended

Hirschman: But Montesquieu's praise for commerce is not entirely without reservations - Montesquieu worries about the monetisation of human relations and the loss of hospitality and other moral virtues.

Gloss: the unintended consequence of the CONSEQUENCE

Heh.

On rule

There is rule of the sort which is exercised by a master; and by this we mean the sort of rule connected with the necessary functions of life. Here it is not necessary for the ruler to know how to do the task himself, but only to know how to use those who do: indeed the former kind of knowledge (by which we mean an ability to do menial services personally) has a servile character.

- Aristotle, Politics, III.4

on the English

Nor was the Sun King aware of any other reason why the English should deserve attention or respect. He is said once to have asked an English ambassador whether, in his country, there had ever been any writers of note. Of Shakespeare and Milton he had apparently never even heard, and he was by no means peculiar in this regard. When Corneille was sent an English translation of Le Cid, he is said to have shelved it in his cabinet between the work's translations into such barbaric languages as Slavonic and Turkish.

- Paul Rahe, Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty

Ah, education

My notes say that I've read Rousseau's Second Discourse before, but I couldn't have gotten very much out of it.

Page 30: =)

Page 43: that's cos sick animals DIE

Page 53: yarrite

Page 54: =} (with eye roll)

Page 56: lurve...

Page 74: ?

Page 81: hungry

Better than a commencement address

Go forward, then, in virtue, beloved young men, the hope of this generation and the glory, I trust, of the generation to come. Take nature and God as your guide, apply your minds to liberal studies, and lay down a varied store of useful knowledge which you may bring forth one day in all honorable, temperate, modest, and courageous service to our country and the human race. And even at this time, with hope and courage, take to yourselves the joyous sense of a mind conscious of its own integrity, the true dignity of life, the esteem [of others], the most honorable kind of fame, and the highest pleasures of life.

- Francis Hutcheson, "On the Natural Sociability of Mankind", Inaugural Oration, 1730

like a gift

There were fireworks! Unexpectedly. Flashes through the leaves of the very large tree outside my window - pigeons always almost fly in - and crackles from afar.

M&P

To encourage more marriages and births in Rome, Caesar "forbade women under forty-five and who had neither husbands nor children to wear precious stones or to use litters, an excellent method of attacking celibacy through vanity."

- Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws

At the Fishhouses

I am starting to read again - I am always starting to read again, it feels like - and it seems to me, this is what poetry is about, what it is to read a poem. That movement, from the evening at the fishhouse, the old man netting, scales on his vest, to the silver tree trunks, the seal, the clear imperceptible inevitable movement to the water's edge, the water lifting over the stones, the fierce joy at the end of the poem. What it feels like. Dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free.


At the Fishhouses

Although it is a cold evening,
down by one of the fishhouses
an old man sits netting,
his net, in the gloaming almost invisible,
a dark purple-brown,
and his shuttle worn and polished.
The air smells so strong of codfish
it makes one's nose run and one's eyes water.
The five fishhouses have steeply peaked roofs
and narrow, cleated gangplanks slant up
to storerooms in the gables
for the wheelbarrows to be pushed up and down on.
All is silver: the heavy surface of the sea,
swelling slowly as if considering spilling over,
is opaque, but the silver of the benches,
the lobster pots, and masts, scattered
among the wild jagged rocks,
is of an apparent translucence
like the small old buildings with an emerald moss
growing on their shoreward walls.
The big fish tubs are completely lined
with layers of beautiful herring scales
and the wheelbarrows are similarly plastered
with creamy iridescent coats of mail,
with small iridescent flies crawling on them.
Up on the little slope behind the houses,
set in the sparse bright sprinkle of grass,
is an ancient wooden capstan,
cracked, with two long bleached handles
and some melancholy stains, like dried blood,
where the ironwork has rusted.
The old man accepts a Lucky Strike.
He was a friend of my grandfather.
We talk of the decline in the population
and of codfish and herring
while he waits for a herring boat to come in.
There are sequins on his vest and on his thumb.
He has scraped the scales, the principal beauty,
from unnumbered fish with that black old knife,
the blade of which is almost worn away.

Down at the water's edge, at the place
where they haul up the boats, up the long ramp
descending into the water, thin silver
tree trunks are laid horizontally
across the gray stones, down and down
at intervals of four or five feet.

Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
element bearable to no mortal,
to fish and to seals . . . One seal particularly
I have seen here evening after evening.
He was curious about me. He was interested in music;
like me a believer in total immersion,
so I used to sing him Baptist hymns.
I also sang "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God."
He stood up in the water and regarded me
steadily, moving his head a little.
Then he would disappear, then suddenly emerge
almost in the same spot, with a sort of shrug
as if it were against his better judgment.
Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
the clear gray icy water . . . Back, behind us,
the dignified tall firs begin.
Bluish, associating with their shadows,
a million Christmas trees stand
waiting for Christmas. The water seems suspended
above the rounded gray and blue-gray stones.
I have seen it over and over, the same sea, the same,
slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones,
icily free above the stones,
above the stones and then the world.
If you should dip your hand in,
your wrist would ache immediately,
your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn
as if the water were a transmutation of fire
that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame.
If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter,
then briny, then surely burn your tongue.
It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:
dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,
drawn from the cold hard mouth
of the world, derived from the rocky breasts
forever, flowing and drawn, and since
our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.

- Elizabeth Bishop

Whiling away time on the net, I find

A clock tower penthouse in Brooklyn.

Free fonts.

A really cool office in the woods.

An online invitation service at Paperless Post.

An attitude chair.

And a delusional paper towel tube.

So

V says, there is the safe choice, the right choice, the right choice for all time. This wouldn't be the safe choice. Not just probably not the right choice for all time; more likely the absolutely wrong choice. Which leaves us with?

Reading lists

Googling, I find Clifton Fadiman's reading lists - by type and with Eastern works too.

Reading Guy Davenport, 2

In moments of sweet clarity, said Hugo, I doubt if we can communicate at all. You mean one thing, I hear another, benignly in banter, violently in an argument. But, said Mariana, we've never had an argument. Of course not, Hugo said, and don't intend to. I mean that human beings probably can't make each other understand what they mean. We have to get our meaning from art, from writing. That's awful, Mariana said.

The Bicycle Rider

Reading Guy Davenport

Archaic Torso of Apollo

Even though we can never see the head that sang, with its deer's eyes staring at infinity, we have the strong torso from whose animal grace we can imagine the hot summer clarity of its gaze. If the gone head is still not there, in light, why then does the proud chest disturb your looking, or the sweet shift of the hips, slight as a smile, that takes our eyes down the cunning body, to its cluster of seeds? Otherwise this stone would stand senseless under the polished slope of its shoulders, without its wild balance, and would not be as rich with light as the sky with stars. The world sees you, too. You must change your life.

The Jules Verne Steam Balloon

Words, falling

From Swiss Miss

No thought you've thunk before

Something I came across at the Marginal Revolution blog:

Sometime in the next week - January 1st if you have that available, or maybe January 3rd or 4th if the weekend is more convenient - I suggest you hold a New Day, where you don't do anything old.

Don't read any book you've read before. Don't read any author you've read before. Don't visit any website you've visited before. Don't play any game you've played before. Don't listen to familiar music that you already know you'll like. If you go on a walk, walk along a new path even if you have to drive to a different part of the city for your walk. Don't go to any restaurant you've been to before, order a dish that you haven't had before. Talk to new people (even if you have to find them in an IRC channel) about something you don't spend much time discussing.

And most of all, if you become aware of yourself musing on any thought you've thunk before, then muse on something else. Rehearse no old grievances, replay no old fantasies.

Happy New Year everyone!

New Year Resolution?

Via Vaughn

Words from a Totem Animal

Distance
is where we were
but empty of us and ahead of
me lying out in the rushes thinking
even the nights cannot come back to their hill
any time

I would rather the wind came from outside
from mountains anywhere
from the stars from other
worlds even as
cold as it is this
ghost of mine passing
through me

I know your silence
and the repetition
like that of a word in the ear of death
teaching
itself
itself
that is the sound of my running
the plea
plea that it makes
which you will never hear
oh god of beginnings
immortal

I might have been right
not who I am
but all right
among the walls among the reasons
not even waiting
not seen
but now I am out in my feet
and they on their way
the old trees jump up again and again
strangers
there are no names for the rivers
for the days for the nights
I am who I am
oh lord cold as the thoughts of birds
and everyone can see me

Caught again and held again
again I am not a blessing
they bring me
names
that would fit anything
they bring them to me
they bring me hopes
all day I turn
making ropes
helping

My eyes are waiting for me
in the dusk
they are still closed
they have been waiting a long time
and I am feeling my way toward them

I am going up stream
taking to the water from time to time
my marks dry off the stones before morning
the dark surface
strokes the night
above its way
There are no stars
there is no grief
I will never arrive
I stumble when I remember how it was
with one foot
one foot still in a name

I can turn myself toward the other joys and their lights
but not find them
I can put my words into the mouths
of spirits
but they will not say them
I can run all night and win
and win

Dead leaves crushed grasses fallen limbs
the world is full of prayers
arrived at from
afterwards
a voice full of breaking
heard from afterwards
through all
the length of the night

I am never all of me
unto myself
and sometimes I go slowly
knowing that a sound one sound
is following me from world
to world
and that I die each time
before it reaches me

When I stop I am alone
at night sometimes it is almost good
as though I were almost there
sometimes then I see there is
in a bush beside me the same question
why are you
on this way
I said I will ask the stars
why are you falling and they answered
which of us

I dreamed I had no nails
no hair
I had lost one of the senses
not sure which
the soles peeled from my feet and
drifted away
clouds
It's all one
feet
stay mine
hold the world lightly

Stars even you
have been used
but not you
silence
blessing
calling me when I am lost

Maybe I will come
to where I am one
and find
I have been waiting there
as a new
year finds the song of the nuthatch

Send me out into another life
lord because this one is growing faint
I do not think it goes all the way

- W. S. Merwin