How the hell does he know these things?

In Casino Royale, "M" is informed at one point by a midnight call from her assistant that Bond has logged into M16's secure computer system using her name and password. "How the hell does he know these things?" she demands, rousing herself from bed and deftly summoning a computer screen from her bedside table. 

I am prompted to echo Judi Dench's almost indignant though at the same time awe-struck question as I read Anna Karenina. How does Tolstoy know so much about the relationships he's describing? It's incredible. The way he describes the way the women relate to each other, as covered in the previous post, is merely the beginning.

Showing the two principle settings of AK: Petersburg and Moscow.

There is another point where he makes a commentary on women's ways that I'm less sure of. He describes how successfully Karenin hides from himself the seriousness and the implications of his wife's affair with Vronsky. Karenin is forever not wanting to see something, and therefore not seeing it, or not wanting to understand something, and therefore not understanding it. There is a certain lack of agency implied by the way the Maude's put it, and I wonder if Tolstoy intended readers to understand how much intention is behind Karenin's ignorance, and how much is a subconscious attempt at self-preservation in the face of a ruinous truth. I have many questions about translation, in fact, and wish I were reading this in the household of a Russian speaker. 

OK, but on with the point about women. Vronsky, during one conversation with Anna before the horse race in part II, suggests that, because she is pregnant, they run away together. Her response is rather hysterical, and he can tell she's not being honest with him or herself about her feelings. 

"Vronsky could not understand how she, with her strong honest nature, could endure this state of deception and not wish to escape from it; but he did not guess that the chief cause lay in the one word 'son' which she could not bring herself to utter. When she thought about her sons and his future relations with the mother who had left his father, she was so terrified at what she had done that she did not reason, but woman-like only tried to comfort herself with false arguments and words in order that everything should remain as before and that she might forget the dreadful question of what would happen to her son."

I feel it is rather ironic that this, being the first time we've seen this tendency in Anna, is labelled as woman-like, when the arguably weaker trait of ignoring the blatant truth has been demonstrated by her husband at least half a dozen times already. Again, I wish I could read the Russian so I could sniff around for Tolstoy's irony. He seems to aware of women's ways to entertain, himself, such an attitude toward what the womanly thing to do is.

The 1977 mini series which helped me keep
the names straight! I've only seen episode 1.

He has also captured the tendency of privileged people (like myself) to be always upset about something. Yes, this was right and everyone was laughing, and all was well, but... Kitty was still unhappy. Still, Anna could not be content. Yet, there was something that caused Levin pain. These sorts of qualifications are everywhere. We are never satisfied. 

I am in Florida on a four day vacation with Dad and Sally. We are beside the ocean, and enjoying lots of rest. In this context, where I have come in order to be away from work, I am, as it turns out, happy to have MAT work to be doing. I can also see that Dad and Sally are grateful for the telecommuting they are able to do from this location. We like to keep up with work. 

I thought about how many people must come to this area in order to escape work when I read the beginning of Part II of AK:

"SERGEY IVANOVITCH KOZNISHEV wanted a rest from mental work, and instead of going abroad as he usually did, he came towards the end of May to stay in the country with his brother. In his judgment the best sort of life was a country life. He had come now to enjoy such a life at his brother’s. 

Konstantin Levin was very glad to have him, especially as he did not expect his brother Nikolay that summer. But in spite of his affection and respect for Sergey Ivanovitch, Konstantin Levin was uncomfortable with his brother in the country. It made him uncomfortable, and it positively annoyed him to see his brother’s attitude to the country. 

To Konstantin Levin the country was the background of life, that is of pleasures, endeavours, labour. To Sergey Ivanovitch the country meant on one hand rest from work, on the other a valuable antidote to the corrupt influences of town, which he took with satisfaction and a sense of its utility. To Konstantin Levin the country was good first because it afforded a field for labour, of the usefulness of which there could be no doubt. To Sergey Ivanovitch the country was particularly good, because there it was possible and fitting to do nothing."

I'm intrigued with their different attitudes toward the country. I realize that I also want to work in the country, but only because I want the country to be part of my working life. When I finish school, I want to be able to go for a walk in nature in order to process the day. I do that frequently in Richmond by going on the gorge trail or into Earlham's back campus. I do not want to live in a city which I can escape to do nothing in the country. I want to live in the country, work in the country (well, a small city is what I mean by "country") and escape to cities where I can be diverted by all kinds of museums, cafes, people and sights. 

Anna Karenina, 2%

The kindle edition tells you where you are in the novel. I'm at 2%. This quote stuck out to me, describing Oblonsky and his friend Levin.

"They were fond of one another in spite of the difference of their characters and tastes, as friends are fond of one another who have been together in early youth. But in spite of this, each of them, though in discussion he would even justify the other's career, in his heart despised it. It seemed to each of them that the life he led himself was the only real life, and the life led by his friend was a mere phantasm."

I think this must be much more typical than we think. Indeed I have not a few friends whose careers I consider unreal, unworthy of their time, and as legitimate as a phantasm. But that doesn't always affect the way I see the friend. I think we have sufficiently alienated person from labor that it is not hard to separate the merits of a person's character from the merits, or lack thereof, of her work. 

A snatch of song, identified

Some years ago I remember very clearly recalling, as if from a dream, a snatch of classical music. I didn't know where I had heard it, or when, but a short, lyrical theme kept playing in my head. This must have been three years ago.
Since then, I have been on a passive search to find it, waiting to hear it on some classical music channel, then hearing the announcer say what it was, and by whom. It plays in my head probably a few times a month.

On Tuesday evening, I heard it on Performance Today. I fairly convulsed as I lurched toward my computer, as if I would be able to read through the sound the name of the elusive piece. But - o me! - it was only an interlude fragment, played between the first and second halves of the show, without identification.

I was not prepared to lose. I went immediately to PT's "contact us" page and explained in the comment box the nature of my quest. I told them that at 30:20 of their March 20th show, they had played part of the piece, and could they please tell me what it was?

I received the following reply, at the end of the school day yesterday:



I immediately searched the symphony, and skipping past the familiar first movement, found my precious gem of a song at the beginning of the second movement.

Here is the video I like the best, of the Seoul Philharmonic. The second movement begins at 7:30, and the theme I searched for is exactly at 7:59, then again at 9:50, where it is led in in the most incredible fashion by the strings, and the flute picks up the theme from them like a wave catching foam, and plays the snatch again. Ah -- ! Unreal.

The small world of literature

Derek Walcott, poet

I imagine that one day I will feel as though the world of literature can be mapped onto a single globe, with points that are recognizable, and relatable to one another. I'll feel as though I am able to at least conceive of the whole thing at once and gauge, roughly, the distances between eras, writers, movements, styles etc. 

At present, the world of literature feels like a 1,000 piece 3D puzzle whose pieces are flying around, and sometimes come close enough to brush against a piece that might be a match, but there is certainly no indication of what the constructed puzzle depicts, or even what the smaller, more manageable images within it are. 

Therefore, it is still thrilling when I see connections between things I'm reading. Today I finished Wide Sargasso Sea (by Jean Rhys), as Berthe woke from a dream, stole the keys from Ms Poole, and stole down the passage to the main house where she would set Jane Eyre's bed on fire. 

Then, I read that Derek Walcott, a poet who has recently died, wrote a poem about Jean Rhys, called... "Jean Rhys". I read about this in part of this postscript written by Hilton Als of the New Yorker. 

My goodness, parts of this article make me want to read a biography of Als! He, for one, seems to know exactly what the puzzle portrays, and has his opinions about whether or not each piece is really in its proper place. He's ready to call Ravensburger and make suggestions on the layout of the puzzle. His reviews of the theater in the New Yorker are so rich, so steeped, so multi-faceted and all encompassing... one hopes to accumulate even a tenth of what Als has gleaned from decades of life in what sound like they must be very engaging and exciting circles. 

I went to E's house for the evening, and got a new book recommendation, which swallowed the next two hours until I dragged myself home just now: Purple Hibiscus, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I've actually never read Adichie before, and this introduction, to a young girl narrator existing under the stifling patriarchy of a catholic father in Lagos, Nigeria, is engrossing. 

Crazy Women

Wide Sargasso Sea tells the story of Mr. Rochester's first wife, Bertha Antoinette, who is the impediment to his and Jane's marriage. Hers is the second story about a crazy woman I'm reading this weekend. The first was actually heard, on the New Yorker Fiction Podcast - a story by John Cheever called the Five Forty-Eight. 

I'm really enjoying the Jean Rhys, which is narrated alternately by Rochester and Antoinette. Here is the excerpt in which Rochester gets a letter which reveals the nature of his wife's family.

"I was later than usual that morning but when I was dressed I sat for a long time listening to the waterfall, eyes half closed, drowsy and content. When I put my hand in my pocket for my watch, I touched the envelope and opened it.

Dear Sir. I take up my pen after long thought and meditation but in the end the truth is better than a lie. I have this to say. You have been shamefully deceived by the Mason family They tell you perhaps that your wife’s name is Cosway the English gentleman Mr Mason being her stepfather only, but they don’t tell you what sort of people were these Cosways. Wicked and detestable slaveowners since generations - yes everybody hate them in Jamaica and also in this beautiful island where I hope your stay will be long and pleasant in spite of all, for some not worth sorrow. Wickedness is not the worst. There is madness in that family Old Cosway die raving like his father before him."

Both this and the Cheever story are told by solemn, passive, apparently cold, though somehow vulnerable male characters, who find themselves at the mercy of the crazy women in their lives.

I have to say, I think it makes a lot of sense that many women should be driven crazy by their lot in life.

An understanding of God

Back campus at Earlham

Today's Sunday School question (well, one of many): What informs your understanding of God?

We were talking about how in the Bible certain verses indicate that God is the source of evil, disasters, and suffering as well as good and glorious things. 

One of the things I've always appreciated about Quakerism is that personal experience is the basis of an understanding of God, not a creed learnt and recited. My understanding of God is informed by the ways in which I feel God moving in my daily life, and the trends which I feel I can attribute to God that happen over the much longer haul. God challenges me, forms me, puts me in certain circumstances, guides me, all of it. This I know because I experience it, not because it was ever told to me. 

And it wasn't. At Durham Friends Meeting we spoke of God very rarely, and no one ever tried to get me to see God in a certain way, except perhaps as a loving guide.

Lately I've been looking at more theological writing than I ever have, which has also affected my understanding of God. Or, rather, it has affected the way I think of people who know God. I feel like I'm seeing what they have seen - a world view based on God which is unknown in its detail to me, even if my world view has also been based on God. 

Anyway, these are the things I would say influence my understanding of God: my experience of God, and the reading of God that I do, and, more important than the reading in fact, are the conversations I have with Friends about God. I have so much to learn from people who have spent a great deal of time thinking about these things. 

Tonight it occurs to me that another thing has informed my view of God. Music. I don't know how directly the connection can be made, but it must be there. 

Last night I went to the Richmond Symphony, and the second half of the show featured Dvorak's Cello Concerto, which had me on the edge of my seat (literally) from about three minutes in. I came home, electrified, and immediately looked it up on youtube. I sat at my table, still dressed for the 32 degree evening, and watched the entire concerto again. 

Free will, and human agency came up during the Sunday School discussion today. Composers were given freedom to create incredible works like this one, and for that I am grateful. 

Other interesting notes this weekend: 

Earlham's back campus, with last (I hope!) remnants of snow.

A story of the extraordinary and quotidien (simultaneously) nature of the immigrant experience in the US on the New Yorker Fiction podcast.

A story of those blindsided by Trump's executive order to ban Muslims from seven countries in January on This American Life.


A poem called "We Refugees" by British poet Benjamin Zephaniah, which grade 9 looked at on Friday.

The stuffed shells recipe that the Young Adult Friends made for the Meeting's meal trains on Friday.

Zombies, and exegesis and eisegesis

This past Sunday I tried to determine if I should participate in the adult Sunday school class, which was talking about Biblical interpretation, or if I should seclude myself in order to do work associated with my job as Director of Religious Education.

My most recent post revealed that I chose Sunday School, and that I benefited from Jim's discussion of how the Bible's conflation of God and King aided colonization efforts in Africa.

Another thing I gained was an understanding, at long length, of the terms exegesis and eisegesis. I have heard these terms often, even looked them up, and never known, really, what on earth they were saying.

This week Keith described exegesis as looking at the text for what it is, and analysing it based on its context: who, when, why" kinds of questions. This analysis is objective and critical.

The other term is eisegesis, and refers to what we do when we read our own context and experience into a text. When you listen to a song, are you applying the relationship in your life to the one described in the song? When you read the Bible, are you appalled by the treatment of women, because such treatment is odious in your culture or system or morals? That's the result of eisegesis, or a subjective reading of a text.

Today I asked the 9th graders to respond to these images:

Graffiti under the bridge in Richmond

An embellishment on the railing of the gorge trail

Cave paintings from 30,000 BCE

Petroglyphs from 10,000 BCE

They provided a litany of comments to each other, which I eavesdropped on as I walked around the classroom. I then summarized what I heard to the class, and it occured to me that they had engaged in both these kinds of analysis. It was not part of my lesson plan, but I put both words up on the board, and asked Ms. Rayburn to look up the spelling in case I was wrong (I was). I said what I thought they meant, and how the class had been engaging in both. I didn't tell them that I hadn't learned these terms myself until that weekend....

I think it made them feel important! We continued to refer to those terms during the rest of our discussion of the graffiti and cave paintings we looked at.

What has been interesting this afternoon is that I've looked at a few videos that talk about exegesis and eisegesis. They are all about Biblical interpretation, and they all warn against eisegesis, the subjective reading. I find that curious.

First of all, I think it's hard to distinguish between these two kinds of analysis. Can we really be objective? I don't think so.

Second of all, eisegesis is, to me, the more relevant of the two kinds of analysis, because a text's meaning is created from what you bring to it. A text is dead until a reader injects meaning into it.

We will encourage eisegesis in our classroom. I'll talk to the classes tomorrow about my findings.

In other news, we were in the library with the tenth grade today, taking standardized testing. After the test was done, the students were asked to sit quietly in the library while the others finished in the library computer lab. I was watching. It was interesting to see which students remained sitting and stayed in their chairs with their phones, and which went over to the book shelves to explore titles. The students with the highest averages in the class went over to the books. Those who struggle with reading and writing stayed with their phones.

One boy came over and explained to his friend, who was talking to me, that a new book in a zombie series had come out. It held up the book, and was so excited. It's just the kind of book that I would be sorry to see students holding up, were I not reading Donalyn Miller's The Book Whisperer. She says, let them read whatever they want - any reading is so much better than no reading, that there is no room for judgment.

Now, I agree. This student, who is often less than engaged in class, was speaking with uncharacteristic excitement about this series, which is a horror series. Of course our class would be boring to him, if that is what he wants to read about.

More on this book later - after I finish it. It was my goal to finish before the end of February, so I need to read the last chapter before I go to bed. I've already promised this copy to three other English teachers before it's due back to Inter-Library Loan at Earlham.