Inkheart by Cornelia Funke (for German Lit Month 2018)

The magic comes out of the books themselves, and I have no more idea than you or any of your men how it works. (p. 170)

“Magic comes out of the books themselves…” and I have always known this to be true. Cornelia Funke gives us a world of magic, a world of books, suitable for adults as well as the children for whom it is written. Any good children’s book is worthy of an adult as well.

What is the best part of this story? Is it the way that each chapter begins with an enticing quote from another book, helping us to predict what that chapter may hold (or luring us to reread the book from which it came)?

Is it the way that she has captured the bibliophile’s love of literature, with homes which are stacked with books in the hallways, stairs, and on every available surface?

Or, perhaps it is the adventure story itself, with such captivating characters as Silvertongue, who is able to read people out of, and into, books; perhaps it is Meggie, who longs for the return of her father who has been captured by Capricorn.

I know that for me, this fantasy novel has far more impact than any Harry Potter book. It’s surrealism hovers on the brink of reality for how well it brings the meaning of literature to life.

Chess Story by Stefan Zweig (German Lit Month 2018)

For four months I had not held a book in my hands, and there was something intoxicating and at the same time stupefying in the mere thought of a book, in which you could see the words one after another, lines, paragraphs, pages, a book in which you could read, follow, take into your mind the new, different, diverting thoughts of another person. (p. 51)

You can see the desperation of the man who has been held in solitary confinement by the Nazis, deprived of any diversion whatsoever. He is held hostage in a hotel room, with no paper, no pencils, no books, nothing but wallpaper, the pattern of which he has begun to memorize.

When he is taken for yet another interrogation, he notices a rectangle in the pocket of a jacket hanging against the wall and supposes it must be a book. Smuggling it into his waistband, he dares not reveal the title until he has successfully kept it hidden and returned to his room.

It is a book on how to play chess. At first, this comes as a terrible disappointment, and then, it is a source of great distraction. He can play game after game, memorizing the moves required to win. Eventually, however, he can only play against himself, never against a thinking, reasoning, opposition.

At the beginning my thinking was calm and considered, I took breaks between one game and the next in order to recover from my agitation. But gradually my frayed nerves refused to let me wait. My white self had no sooner made a move than my black self feverishly pushed forward; a game was no sooner over than I challenged myself to another, for one of the two chess selves was beaten by the other every time and demanded a rematch. (p. 63)

The hold that chess has on him almost makes him mad. In fact, after an affliction of ‘brain fever’, the doctor tells him that it would be better never to go near a chessboard again.

He cannot help himself, however, when on an ocean liner he observes a game between the world champion and other passengers. He inserts himself into this game, giving advice which earns him their utmost interest and respect. A game is set up between him and the champion to see who will emerge the victor.

Suddenly, there was something new between the two of them; a dangerous tension, a passionate hatred. They were no longer opponents testing their abilities in a spirit of play, but enemies resolved to annihilate each other. (p. 79)

It is a remarkably tense book for holding a mere 84 pages. I was caught up in the story of two individuals, each of them damaged in their own way, pit against each other in the very game of which they are both obsessed. It is a story of great tension, deceptively simplistic in its presentation. One wonders, upon its completion, if there truly is such a thing as winning.

 

Effi Briest for German Lit Month; This Will Be A Short Post

Whoever said Effi Briest is like Anna Karenina has rocks in his head. If ever there was a more disappointing comparison, I don’t know of it.

Anna and Effi? One is elegant and charming and womanly and passionate; the other swings in the backyard by the heliotrope one day and is engaged two hours later to a former beau of her mother’s.

Effi succumbs to the attentions of a womanizing Major, who near the end of the book dies in a duel with Effi’s husband. There is no issue of love here, only terribly naive infatuation, and immaturity, on the part of Effi.

The end.

I found this novel boring and dull and no where near the power that Tolstoy wielded with Anna’s heart. (Not to mention the character found within Levin.)  The best I can say about it is, “I’ve finally finished it.”

Begun in November, finished in December, for German Lit Month led by Lizzy and Caroline.

(If you haven’t yet read Effi Briest, a beloved German classic, you can buy a copy here with free shipping worldwide.)

 

German Lit Month Has Arrived

I remember the books I’ve read for the challenges sponsored by fellow bibliophiles with great fondness. I would not have found The Virginian by Owen Wister, had it not been for a Western Challenge hosted by James. I would not have read Kafka On The Shore had I not hosted the first Japanese Lit Challenge. I would not have read Skylight by Jose Saramago if not for Stu and Richard‘s Spanish Lit Month, nor Therese Raquin without Thyme for Tea‘s event, Paris in July. And, I would not have read Buddenbrooks had I not picked it up for German Lit Month which comes around each November.

While I have several books on my night stand for Richard’s Argentinean Literature of Doom event, namely Buenos Aires Noire recently sent to me from Akashic Books, I am sorely tempted to read Effi Briest for German Lit Month, which came wholeheartedly recommended by Tom the last time November rolled around. (Or, was it the year before?)

Assuming that I can come through conferences unscathed, meaning not depleted of every ounce of energy remaining since Halloween’s tricks and treats, that is the book I will embark upon, with Peirene Press’ Dance by The Canal closely following.

The review site can be found here.)

Heidi by Johanna Spyri for German Literature Month (A Guest Post by my Mother)

Today I picked up a worn old book that I read 73 years ago. Yes, I was seven. My namesake aunt had gifted it to me for Christmas. Because it held a great fascination to me I have dragged it through many moves, college days and then our homes and more college days. I didn’t read it again, until today. Instantly I was put in touch with a lodestar that has truly affected my life. Once again I was meeting the invincible, courageous girl I meant to become. “She understands what she sees, her eyes are in the right place,” remarked the grandfather to himself.

From the moment Heidi’s life with grandfather begins she bustles around happily. She makes her bed out of hay, drinks the goat milk, time passes, as she learns to appreciate and listen. “…then the wind began to roar louder than ever through the fir trees; Heidi listened with delight to the sound, and it filled her heart so full of gladness that she skipped and danced around the old trees, as if some unheard of joy had come to her.” Maybe this is why I hear the wind and love it so.

After the first day on the mountain Heidi tells her grandfather, “It was so beautiful. The fire and the roses on the rocks, and the blue and yellow flowers, and look what I have brought you,” as she empties her apron of the wild flowers she had picked. “Oh, Grandfather, what has happened?” His reply was classic grandfather. “They like to stand out there in the sun, and not to be shut up in an apron.” The life lessons never end though my little self never knew I was reading life lessons. Be gentle and kind to animals, respect your elders, be obedient. Help those in need like the grandmother in the tumbling down house. Make real friends like Peter and give him half of your lunch if this pleases him. When her happiness on the mountain with Grandfather is cut short, she never gives up knowing she must get back to him. And, when after great hardship she returns to the mountain, its beauty fills her heart so that she impulsively puts her hands together when she reads to the grandmother,

“Joy shall be ours, In that garden blest, Where after storm, We find our rest – I wait in peace – God’s time is best.”

Very simple words that did not diminish the joyful emotion that filled Heidi as her life on the mountain was put back into order. Happiness for her was found in the small and simple ways that Grandfather had taught. The story continues with working out the details of Heidi, her grandmother and the Grandfather and Peter all finding new stability. Even the Frankfurt family that brought grief and separation to Heidi is smoothed out, renewed and rediscovering the simple life. Clara, Heidi’s playmate is taken from luxury to simplicity. She marvels that, “As long as I remember I have only eaten because I was obliged to…now I am longing for Grandfather to bring the milk.”

Heidi rejoices clinging to her grandmother saying, “Hasn’t it all come about, grandmother, just like the hymn I read to you last time? Grandmother responds, “Yes, Heidi, and many other good things too which God has sent me.” And the book actually concludes with this theme. “Heidi, read me one of the hymns! I feel I can do nothing for the remainder of my life but thank the Father in Heaven for the mercies He has shown us.”

I closed the book pondering its meaning for me. I turned back to the frontispiece and note the publisher was the GOLDSMITH Publishing Company, Chicago, Illinois. A long way away from this little girl receiving this book in the small city that was called Fort William, now Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada.

This is the message of my life, taught to me by parents and grandparents. To live thanking God for small and great mercies. To realize I live in a glorious world my Heavenly Father meant me to enjoy. When suffering, darkness, despair and evil frighten me, I must lift my eyes up to the proverbial hills and find refuge. Find the wonder in the wind, marvel at a tiny seed’s germination, listen to the jenny wren sing, cherish my family, hold them as dear as life. Always remembering each wind call, every seed and birdsong, all of the family is a great mercy – given to me as a gift. Thank you, thank you, thank you, forever, my great and holy God.

 

(This book was read in conjunction with German Literature Month hosted by Caroline and Lizzy. Thank you for sponsoring the event, and thank you, mother, for sharing this book with me since I was a little girl.)

German Lit Month: Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann

How stange that I should close a book of 731 pages, a book which was largely responsible for earning its 25 year old  author the Nobel prize, and wonder exactly what I ought to say about it. The scope of the novel is very large, and its themes are very big, such that it’s difficult to narrow down a review to fit into one post.

I was entranced with Antonie, eldest daughter of the Buddenbrooks family. I admired her spunk, her devotion to her father, even her tantrums which freely displayed emotion rather than tucking it away somewhere as a responsible adult would.

My sympathies lay deep with Thomas, eldest son of the Buddenbrooks family. I understood his devotion to the family business, his determination to make it all come out right, his frustration with those in the family whose primary skills were incompetence and foolishness.

My heart went out to little Johann, Hanno as he was called, because his gentle, artistic side showed a tremendous passion for music, but alienated him from his father and caused him to be tormented at school.

Of course there are countless other characters, including the rapscallion brother ironically named Christian, who exhibited behavior that was everything but that. There are countless themes including an exploration of the relationships between husband and wife, parent and child, sister and brother, homeowner and servant, to the examination of faith, education, and business.

As Buddenbrooks is the tale of the decline of a family, which is said to closely approximate that of the author’s own life, Mann has quite a bit to say about business. These are the types of quotes I found myself highlighting again and again, because they illuminate truths applicable to the 21st century as readily as they did to the setting in the late 1880s.

One quote in particular had me imagining Ayn Rand rising out of her seat in vehement protest. It comes from a discussion between the two Buddenbrooks brothers, where the eldest is chastising the youngest for something he said.

There you are surrounded by both business and professional men, where everyone can hear you, and you say, ‘Seen in the light of day, actually, every businessman is a swindler’–you, who are a businessman yourself, a part of a firm that strives with might and main for absolute integrity, for a spotless reputation.” p. 314

Why is it, then, that a firm so intent on integrity eventually flounders to the point where it is utterly dissolved? Perhaps  the company fails due to a change in economic times, or a change in leadership as the sons endeavor to maintain what their father left to them. But, I suspect it lies more in the fact that they do not adhere to the same moral principals that the consul Johann Buddenbrooks and his wife adhered to. Christianity is not something that Thomas, now responsible for the family grain company, can easily accept. He cannot rely on faith even when his own old age approaches.

Dogmatic faith in a fanatical biblical Christianity, which his father had been able to couple with a very practical eye for business and which his mother had then adopted later as well, had always been alien to him…But now, as he gazed into the piercing eye of approaching death, it was apparent that such a view fell away to nothing, was incapable off providing him even an hour of calm or anything like readiness for death.” p. 631

Whatever reason most attributes to the fall of the Buddenbrooks from the highest aristocracy to a significantly more  humble and lonely existence, I find this sentence to be the overarching theme of all the book:

Life has taught many people that riches do not always make for happiness.

It is as deceptively simple as Tolstoy’s famous first line in Anna Karenina that all happy families are alike, but an unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

(I read this book for German Lit Month, as well as one of my selections for the Classics Club.)

As 1859 drew to a close, something dreadful happened. ~ Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann

Part 6, Chapter 8, comes to a close with the sentence of this post’s title. What could possibly happen that is more dreadful than what has already occurred? As Tony tells us herself, in a letter home:

“Oh, Mother,” she wrote, “everything happens to me! First Grunlich and then bankruptcy and then Permaneder’s retirement and now this dead child. What have I done to deserve such misfortune?”

Poor Tony. My heart quite goes out to her, as her accumulated misfortunes are amounting to a rather large pile.

This Veteran’s Day, a day off from school, I am spending in my wingback chair, thoroughly immersed in the drama of the Buddenbrooks family. It is a novel I most heartily recommend, German Literature Month or not.

No, Tony, No! Don’t Marry Herr Grunlich!

But, it’s too late.

After his unannounced visit to the harbor pilot’s home, where Tony has fallen in love with the harbor pilot’s son, the adults have intervened. Both Tony’s father, and her young love’s father, have declared their romance foolishness, and tomfoolery, and Tony is brought home where she consoles herself by agreeing to marry Herr Grunlich.

I don’t trust Herr Grunlich. His speech is as gilded as his curled mutton chop whiskers. He reeks of falseness, and worse, deceit. He has tricked his way into the family, and his bride into obeying her father, and even the bride’s mother knows that future happiness is nebulous.

“Do you think she’ll be happy with him?” (she asks her husband as the nuptial carriage drives away.)

“Ah, Bethsy, she is at peace with herself, and that is the most solid kind of happiness we can achieve on earth.” (Part 3, Chapter 14)

Hmmm…sometimes, I think peace is overrated. I have sought it often in my life, and it has been a worthy goal. But, it is not without sacrifice. Peace brings with it a quiet blanket to wrap oneself in. Yet one is at the same time shrouded from excitement.

I fear Tony’s sacrifice will be worse than that. I fear her future is doomed.

(I am reading Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann for German Lit Month. It is a wonderful way to spend November nights.)

Waking of a Morning…Buddenbrooks’ Style

Say what you like, there is something pleasant about waking of a morning in a large bedroom with lovely, cheerful wallpaper and finding that the first thing you touch is a heavy satin quilt; and it is exceptional to have an early breakfast in a room opening onto a terrace, with the fresh morning air drifting in from the front garden through an open glass door, and to be served neither coffee, nor tea, but a cup of chocolate–yes, every morning, a cup of birthday chocolate, with a thick moist piece of pound cake. Part 2, Chapter 2

I’m enjoying the beginning of Buddenbrooks immensely, although it’s not a picture of my typical morning…

German Lit Month: The Black Swan by Thomas Mann

The Black Swan is the first book by Thomas Mann I have ever read. I picked it up because I was intrigued by the theme: an older woman unwilling to face aging. Only, the “older woman” in this book is younger than I am.

Rosalie was still capable of the old warm laughter that came bubbling from her heart-even at this period of her time in life, the spasmodic withering and disintegration of her womanhood, were troubling her physically and psychologically.

Rosalie Von Trummler is a widowed mother of two. Her daughter was born with a club foot, and has therefore rejected advances of love. Her son requires a tutor for adequate advance in his studies. A young American named Ken Keaton is hired to teach Eduard, and he soon becomes a regular addition to the family’s evenings. I was so intrigued by Ken’s point of view about America, one which I can see Europeans adopting. Yet, he does have valid points:

In general, despite being so unmistakably American in his entire manner and attitude, he displayed very little attachment to his great country. He ‘didn’t care for America’; indeed, with its pursuit of the dollar and insensate church-going, its worship of success and colossal mediocrity, but, above all, its lack of historical atmosphere, he found it really appalling. Of course it had a history, but that wasn’t ‘history,’ it was simply a short, boring ‘success story.’ Certainly, aside from its enormous deserts, it had beautiful and magnificent landscapes, but there was ‘nothing behind them,’ while in Europe there was so much behind everything, particularly behind the cities with their deep historical perspectives. American cities-he didn’t care for them. They were put up yesterday and might just as well be taken away tomorrow. The small ones were stupid holes, one looking exactly like another, and the big ones were horrible, inflated monstrosities, with museums full of bought-up European cultural treasures.

At any rate, Rosalie becomes entranced with Ken and fancies romantic involvement with him. Page after page describes her attraction to him, her imaginations of what could be between them. She embarrasses her daughter by giving Ken longing looks across the dinner table, then alternately ignoring him “demurely.”

What should you say, Anna, if your mother, in her old age, were seized by an ardent feeling such as rightfully belongs only to potent youth, to maturity, and not to withered womanhood?

But what becomes the turning point in the novel is the morning that Rosalie has discovered she has begun bleeding again. A strong believer in the force of Nature, Rosalie is ecstatic. She can hardly contain her joy, which she sees as permission to enter into a relationship with the younger man.

Nature has made her voice heard against it (a motherly dowager-hood). She has made my feeling her concern and has unmistakably shown me that it need not be ashamed before her nor before the blooming young manhood which is its object. And do you not really mean to say that it does not change things much?”

Things are changed dramatically, indeed, for the source of this bleeding is not a reemergence into youth as Rosalie expects, but an admittance into the horrors of cancer. It is an ironic twist to be sure, how the advent of bleeding into a woman’s life can signify two such diverse states as preparation for the possibility of birth, or alternatively, death. Thomas Mann has portrayed an enormously silly woman in the mother, especially in contrast to her practical, more mature daughter. But he has also given us a terrific psychological twist as we realize that of course, our bodies are not under our control. No matter how strong our desire for youth may be.

(I read this book for Caroline and Lizzy‘s German Literature Month this November. I hope to read Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks as well…)