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Reminds Me of a Book (7): The Campaigns of Alexander

May 6, 2013 by Myrmicat Forever

So, we come to the end of this second week of themed blog posts. A few days ago, I took a stroll though the New River Walk in Islington, north London. The river, recently drained, had been looking a bit wretched and ripe for some graffiti and vandalism so I was delighted to see that it was nearly full again; indeed, the refilling process was still going on, and as I wended my way along the winding path, I saw a couple of fountain style taps shooting water four or five feet into the air. It was all very pleasing.

But if the fountains were pleasing, something else was interesting – bags stuffed with hay floating in the water. Here they are:

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and closer up,

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Why these bags of hay were present in the river I do not know but what I can say is that they immediately reminded me of a moment in Alexander the Great’s early career as king.

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Before setting off on his mission to overthrow the Persian Empire, Alexander had to first pacify the troublesome tribes on Macedonia’s northern borders; these included one called the Getae, Thracians, who lived on the northern side of the Danube river in what is now Bulgaria. This was so they did not cause trouble for Macedonia while he was in Asia and thus threaten his lines of supply.

Alexander set out from Pella (I presume), the Macedonian capital, and – predictably enough, in light of later events – won his first engagements against the enemy. After one such battle, a mixture of Thracians and Triballins took refuge on an island in the middle of the Danube. Alexander tried to reach it but the first moving current would not be gainsaid; the island was also well protected both naturally and by the tribesmen.

In light of this, Alexander decided to ignore the island and cross the river to deal with the Getae tribe who had a settlement on the other side.

But how was he to get his army – comprised of 1,500 cavalry and 4,000 men – across?

Arrian explains how he did it,

[Alexander] joined the fleet… having left instructions for the tents under which the men bivouacked to be filled with hay [my emphasis], and for all available dug-outs to be collected. There were a great many of these boats in the neighbourhood, for they are used by natives for fishing, and for visiting neighbouring tribes up the river and – fairly generally – for plundering expeditions. As many as possible of them were collected, and the troops, or as large part of them as was practicable with this sort of transport, were ferried across.

Alexander crossed the Danube in 336; ten years later, he would employ a similar trick to cross the Hydaspes River in ancient India (modern day Pakistan) on his way to fight the Indian king Porus in what would be Alexander’s last great battle; and which, as you might expect, he won.

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At the Hydaspes, which is called the Jhelum river today, Arrian reports that the hay stuffed floats were used to carry the mounted troops across. I presume this is what they did in 336 although Arrian doesn’t say.

So, there we are; now I have to think of another theme for these posts. I shall see you as and when I do!

Posted in Alexander the Great, Reminds Me Of A Book | 1 Comment »

Reminds Me of a Book (6): The Power and the Glory

May 5, 2013 by Myrmicat Forever

While serving Mass this morning, I thought to myself (see yesterday’s blog post about how easily I get distracted) that today’s Reminds Me post really ought to be about the Bible. However, we then started the Lord’s Prayer and as soon as I said the above doxology I thought of another book, namely, Graham Greene’s classic of the same name.
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The Power and the Glory is about an unamed priest who remains in Mexico in the 30s to administer the sacraments to Catholics during the Government’s persecution of the Church. He is also an alcoholic and the father of a child – whose conception he does not regret. The priest’s commitment to his work, despite the danger to himself and his personal failings, is admirable, although his lack of remorse for failing to keep his commitment to celibacy is less so. With that said, I hope the day never comes when I regard a man’s failings as more significant as the good that he has done who ever and where ever he is. The world is unforgiving enough without one adding to this most serious defect.
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To go back to Graham Greene’s priest, he continues his ministry until he is captured and executed at the end of the book. The priest is a most fallible human being but becomes a martyr. In real life, he would be in heaven right now; I daresay there are many people – not just priests – who enjoy the Beatific Vision despite seeming to fail in their lives weather it is in respect of their theology or things they have (or haven’t) done.
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What makes the priest’s fidelity to his priestly calling all the more amazing is that, if I recall correctly – and It has been a long time since I read The Power and the Glory so my memory of it is dim – his faith is either very weak or not really there; he keeps going because he feels compelled to. If I have remembered this correctly, it sounds like Greene was writing about a priest who goes through a long dark night of the soul such as John of the Cross wrote about. On this point, though, I would need to read the novel again to see if I have judged it correctly.

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Reminds Me Of A Book (5): A Time To Keep Silence

May 4, 2013 by Myrmicat Forever

I was saying Lauds this morning and, as often happens, I got distracted; this time, it was by the question of what to write about for today’s Reminds Me blog post. I thought of a book, but unfortunately, I have forgotten which one it was. Instead, I’m going to tell you about Patrick Leigh Fermor’s A Time To Keep Silence.

In the late 50s Fermor visited the Abby of St Wandrille de Fontanelle in France. He did so because he was looking for somewhere cheap and quiet to finish a book he was writing. Not very holy! Around the same time Fermor visited a number of other monastic establishments, and he wrote about them to a correspondent who, as Fermor wonderfully relates in his introduction, later became his wife! I wonder if anyone has ever met their future wife via a blog comments box.

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Anyway, I have read that up till World War II Fermor described himself (I cannot bring myself to use the ugly phrase ‘self identified’) as a Catholic but from what I have read about him his interest in the Faith appears to have had more to do with a liking for the Church’s ‘exotic’ nature rather than a belief in her teachings. Either way, I believe he ceased writing ‘R.C.’ on official forms after the war.

This did not mean he ceased to be interested in aspects of Catholicism, however, as the mere production of this book proves. Further to that, and again, in his introduction, Fermor states that although he visited the various monasteries as an outsider his appreciation of them went deeper than feeling a simple peace and quiet when in situ.

I was given my copy of A Time To Keep Silence by a priest friend last year; yesterday, I started my second reading of it while on the train to a friend’s house. At the end of the evening, I lent it to him. Really wanting to read it, though, I have downloaded a copy for £4.99 onto my iPad for I tell you this little book is an honest, elegance, vibrant, nostalgic treasure. I commend it highly to you and if any monks in France or Italy would like to invite me to their monasteries to write a few blog posts then I would dearly love to hear from you as I am in a very monastic mood right now

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Reminds Me of A Book (4): The Hunt for Red October

May 3, 2013 by Myrmicat Forever

The Twitter wires tell me that today is the 94th birthday of American folk singer, Pete Seeger. Had it not been for Bruce Springsteen’s The Seeger Sessions album I have to admit that I would never have heard of him. Here they are together:  .
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All well and good, but how do we get from Peter Seeger to Tom Clancy’s 1984 novel The Hunt for Red October which contains an awful lot about the heroic Jack Ryan’s mission to help a rogue Soviet (or rather, Lithuanian) submarine commander, Marko Ramius, defect in his new, stealth submarine without causing a nuclear war with the Soviet Union, and not very much – that is to say, nothing, about Pete Seeger?
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Well, the person who kindly mentioned that it was Seeger’s birthday embedded this video in their tweet:
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As you will hopefully be able to see, there is a big red star at the centre of the screen shot, one that is much like the red star that figured so prominently in Soviet art and propaganda and at the top of the badge on the front of Ramus’ hat at the start of the film of the book.
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I can’t remember if I ever read The Hunt for Red October, but if it is as half as good as the film then it is certainly well worth reading. To go back to the picture, one of the major pieces of music in it is the ironically named Hymn to Red October by Basil Poledouris. Here it is, complete with the hammer and sickle, and that ubiquitous star:
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As you can see, the hammer, sickle and star are encompassed by the laurel wreath; an unconscious nod, perhaps, to Moscow’s status as the Third Rome! Well, maybe not because that is how the Russian Orthodox Church regards itself, and I doubt the USSR would have wanted to connect itself to the Russian Orthodox Church. Back in those days, persecution of the faith was the order of the day.
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G. K. Chesterton once wrote that Christianity has not been tried and found wanting but found difficult and not tried. I am not at all an expert on Marxism, from which the USSR sprang, but I would bet that the latter followed its own path rather than stayed true to Marx’s ideals. This would appear to be indicated by the fact that we refer to Marxist-Leninism instead of just Marxism as the USSR’s intellectual foundation. If so, Marxism remains – like Christianity – a great untried experiment.
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If Marx was about helping everyone up rather than putting one part of society over another – as happened in the USSR – then I would be interested in that for as I mentioned on Twitter the other day, the capitalist system that we currently have is a busted flush; it privileges the rich, acts against workers who deserve their pay, protects failing institutions and generally supports a world of inequality. To that end, I am very sad that I never feel able to vote for the nearest we in my country will ever get to a socialist government, the Labour Party, because it feels too anti-God. Before you say it, I know that the Labour Party is no longer very socialist, having stolen the Conservative Party’s clothes after Margaret Thatcher’s premiership but if nothing else it still gives the impression of having a better social conscience than the Tories do.

Posted in Politics, Reminds Me Of A Book | Leave a Comment »

Reminds Me of a Book (3): Smiley’s People

May 2, 2013 by Myrmicat Forever

Chatham House

Chatham House

Above is Chatham House in St James’s Square. It doesn’t appear in Smiley’s People, so how did it remind me of John le Carré’s 1979 masterpiece today?
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In case you have not heard of Chatham House, here is its website; in short, though, it is both a place name and short hand for the Royal Institute of International Affairs – a non-partisan think tank.
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In order to encourage open debate during RIIA meetings speakers can invoke the Chatham House Rule; according to the House’s website, it is as follows:

When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed.

Now, those of you who are familiar with Smiley’s People might have closed in on one particular word in the above description – Rule.
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And if you have done that, you might have added an ‘s’ to it. Rules.
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And if you have done that, you will certainly be thinking, When are rules important in Smiley’s People?
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And the answer, of course, is at the beginning when General Vladimir calls the Circus (le Carré’s name for MI6) and asks to speak to George Smiley. He wants to meet him, he says, and their meeting must be held under ‘Moscow Rules’.
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I don’t recall le Carré explaining what exactly Moscow Rules are (here is what Wikipedia has to say about them) but as I read the book a good while ago that doesn’t count for a lot. Sadly for the General, Smiley is no longer with the Circus, and he is assassinated before he can meet his MI6 contact, so the Rule is not put into effect.
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Smiley’s People represents the third chapter in le Carré’s ‘Karla Trilogy’. In common with most people, I suspect, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, the first novel in the series, is my favourite. When I first read the second, The Honourable Schoolboy, I remember not being so fond of it because it seemed a secondary tale, as it were – being less about Smiley and more about Jerry Westerby who was only a minor character in Tinker, Tailor. It is certainly a book that I should read again as I am sure I would appreciate it more having now read the Trilogy as well as a number of le Carré’s other works.
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As I mentioned above, Chatham House is now home to the Royal Institute of International Affairs. But as the plaque below shows, it has had some very illustrious occupants in the past. No less than Pitt the Elder and Gladstone are ‘alumni’ of the address. Sandwiched between their names is that of the Earl of Derby who I am sure was a very fine man but about whom I am afraid I know nothing.

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Reminds Me Of A Book (2): Down and Out in Paris and London

May 1, 2013 by Myrmicat Forever

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Dear reader, what you see above is the sole of my shoe. As you can see, the poor thing has seen better days; much better days. What I ought to do is put the shoe out of its proverbial misery and throw it away but valuable moral lessons can be gained by keeping old clothing and footwear for a little bit longer, so maybe I will hold onto it for the time being.

By the way, if the idea of keeping it seems a strange one to you, then stop reading this and give yourself to contemplating how far removed you have strayed from the Christian tradition of asceticism. It is nigh on 2,000 years old but is hallowed not so much by age but rather by the holiness of the ascetics who have embraced it and proven thereby how (extreme) poverty can be turned to good. I am not saying you should keep your old shoes but, dear friend, only recognise that it is not so odd if I decide to.

Now then, onto the matter at hand. Believe it or not my holey shoe does not remind me of a work or saying by one of the Desert Fathers but George Orwell’s biography Down and Out in Paris and London. The title pretty much tells you what the book is about. In Paris, Orwell worked in horrible hotels and restaurants as a plongeur (dishwasher) before moving back to London where he drifts from dosshouse to dosshouse. There are lots of fleas, hungry and lousy (soft ‘s’) people in both places.

I remember reading once that Orwell’s narrative is a condensed version of what really happened to him. That is to say, after returning from Paris, he received the help of friends before going on his way. Does this invalidate Orwell’s witness to the reality of poverty? What else did he lie about?

I don’t think Orwell’s omissions help his cause; unless I have not remembered it correctly, he does present the book as the truth of what he went through; but we must be realistic and recognise that literary works will always contain an element of artifice. That is, after all, how they become literary. If we are to be prepared to accept Orwell’s book as a true record we should study Down and Out in tandem with other works – for example, histories and statistics – so that we get a rounded picture of what life was like for the destitute and poor in early 30s Paris and London.

Posted in British Literature, Reminds Me Of A Book | 2 Comments »

Reminds Me Of A Book (1a): Brideshead Revisited

April 30, 2013 by Myrmicat Forever

Once again, I am misusing the title; what it should really say is ‘Reminds Me Of A Phrase’.
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As I write, I am listening to Geoffrey Burgon’s really rather wonderful soundtrack to the ITV version of Brideshead Revisited. This reminds me that when I read the book recently, I discovered what the meaning of the Latin tag at the beginning of Book One – Et in Arcadia Ego – is; I’d love to say that some Oxford professor or such like imparted the vital information to me, but I think it was Wikipedia. I do hope that Wiki wasn’t lying – let me know in the comments if it was!
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So, what does it mean? “Even here, there is death”.
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I am convinced that if you spoke to ninety-nine people about the Oxford section of Brideshead you would get no acknowledgment that it was anything other than a simply marvellous and nostalgic time for Sebastian and Charles Ryder; the truth is, though, their story is a bittersweet one, for the seeds of both Charles’ and Sebastian’s future unhappiness are indeed there. In the case of Sebastian, the seeds of his eventual death are present.
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I refer, of course, to his his drinking. Amusing in the company of Anthony Blanche et al and with a diet of plover eggs but less so when it forces him to steal and lie, and finally collapse and die. We don’t see Sebastian’s death – in what is, I think, the book’s most extraordinary twist, Waugh writes him out of the narrative half way through – but Cordelia’s prophecy of what happens to him absolutely rings true for me.
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As for Charles, his unhappiness is, my opinion, his agnosticism/atheism. He genuflected and crosses himself in the Brideshead chapel but only out of courtesy; if only he had sought to understand the faith of the Flytes, his future (i.e. with Julia) would certainly have been much happier.
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Instead, he must endure great sadness before finally coming to the practice of the Faith. Et in Arcadia ego. His faith doesn’t change that, but it does overpower it – Tolkien’s eucatastrophe.

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