Ook dit jaar weer Music for Life and I love it

Just like every year my favourite radio station Studio Brussel organizes a charity in advent. This time they collect money for children orphaned by Aids. From tomorrow evening until December 24th 18:00 hours they will only play music that has been requested and payed for. If you would like to order your favourite song here is the link https://www.musicforlifedonate.be/Site/Pages/MakeDonation.aspx (be careful it's in Flemish!!). I will surely choose mine as every year. There are other projects and activities to raise money and one I enjoy a lot is the Toeterlied. Though the reality depicted is rather dire, the song and especially the horns are rather cheerful - maybe even on the verge of being annoying. Geweldig!!!

Homo homini lupus est - Sakhalin - An Evening with Michael Pennington Part 3

The ensuing talk dealt with Anton Chekhov's journey to Sakhalin in 1890. So it is arguable if it was an evening spent with Michael Pennington or rather one in the company of Anton Chekhov, for as the lecturer pointed out at the beginning the talk was a sort of "dramatisation" of this journey - mostly in Chekhov's own words (of course translated into English), though this time unlike in his one-man-play  "Anton Chekhov" (and I would rather use play instead of show, for here we actually meet the lead character(!!) and I highly recommend it to anybody who has not yet attended a performance!! It is worth any detour just to catch one) Michael Pennington was not dressed up to look like Chekhov. After some comment on the weather, which had been really extraordinarily snowy for England, he mentioned something that exactly echoes my thoughts and feelings when reading "Die Insel Sachalin" (Anton Chekhov's report on his journey). He said that when reading it and especially the anecdotes and small stories about Sakhalin's inhabitants, that are interspersed within the more scientifical and precisely stated facts of the report, one wishes it was just literature. I personally was and am still very shocked at the realisation that this was people's actual lives instead.
The first part of the evening took the audience along Chekhov's travel through Siberia and along the Amur River to Sakhalin, with excerpts from his letters. Then Michael Pennington read out some of the episodes and stories from the report. "Sakhalin Island" by Anton Chekhov is available in print.

At the end of his talk Michael Pennington referred to the fact that Chekhov's report though sort of ill-received in Russia, nevertheless served to better some of the appaling circumstances prisoners and settlers on Sakhalin had to live with. Personally I was very impressed by the talk and the artfulness of the lecturer, who not only did deliver Chekhov's disturbing report, but also left me with a warm feeling of hope despite the talk's  gloomy and dark subject.
For further reading I highly recommend not only "Sakhalin Island" by Anton Chekhov, but also "Rossya - A Journey Through Siberia" and "Are You There Crocodile - Inventing Anton Chekhov", both by Michael Pennington, both charming, insightful, highly readable, entertaining and surprising accounts of Michael Pennington's relationship to Russia and especially to Anton Chekhov.

Tradurre e Tradire - Я энаю Русский язык только немного

So I was standing in front of Pushkin House in London and the first thing I had to do was to ring the bell. After paying for the ticket for the evening's event - a talk as I was especially reminded by the seller at the desk (Was my English so bad, as I had only referred to the official title "An Evening with Michael Pennington"?!)  I had ordered, I took a look around and settled into the library, where there was also an exhibition of photographs. While I was looking at one and commenting on a cigarette, I was addressed in the following way: "Ich spreche auch Deutsch." And my subsequent reply, summing up all I do remember of my two semesters of Russian at the Westfälische Wilhelms Universität 21 years ago, was : "Я энаю Русский язык только немного", which really is a shame but I had just this one year of Russian and quit it again to study the fine arts at the Kunstakademie.

So the main event of the evening and the true reason for my journey was advancing and in the library I heard a voice that sounded familiar gently and tenderly commenting on the fact that whomever he was addressing had been all too kind to attend this event on an evening like this.

 

Anyway I decided to go upstairs and settle for some seat at the back of the auditorium, expecting the things to come...

To be continued...

To Go or Not To Go is surely no question for me

Waking up in the wee hours of November 30th, after it had been snowing on Monday, I was not sure if I would travel to London on that very day. Even an hour before I had to leave I still was not sure, yet other people, who obviously do know me much better than I myself - heck, even two wonderful inhabitants of Stockholm, with whom I had stayed just a night almost ten years ago, must have known me better after this short period, for on leaving them again, they enquired which place I would be going next, in their opinion it could be anywhere on this lovely earth - were deadly sure I would be going. And so I did against all the odds, it's a shame if one does not dare, at least one should die trying...
So I took my husband's car and went to the train station in Geilenkirchen, took the train to Aachen, where I boarded the Thalys to Brussels, all this accompanied by a more or less snowy landscape. In Brussels I took the Eurostar and observed that the amount of snow in the landscape was diminishing in Northern France. Still announcements on the train were bound to give a slightly different impression. The delay was estimated at about 30 minutes. Nevertheless I expected even less snow in England, so there was nothing actually mentally preparing me for the view I had after the Eurostar had left the Eurotunnel: The landscape was whiter than I had seen anywhere on this day before, absolutely Siberian and therefore kind of anticipating the talk of the evening.
Thus the Eurostar arrived with a delay of 28 minutes at St Pancras Station in London. The further travel to the hotel by tube was rather uneventful, apart from a group of very well behaved and good humoured young Flemish gentlemen, who reminded me of the traits I love about this particular country so very much, their cheerfulness and lightness. The hotel was nice, the staff polite, whatelse to ask for?!
With just enough time for some snack I went to Covent Garden, where silly me had to take the 193 steps of the stairs instead of the lift on my way up at the tube station. This mountainous excursion at least had the effect that it made my pulse run and oddly I passed two German women, who were nearly giving up.
Covent Garden Market was wonderful and the image that stays in my mind, is one of huge red Christmas baubles hanging beneath the roof, the snow flying through its construction and falling into my glass of red wine. Then I felt thoroughly fit to go up north to Shaftesbury Lane and from there to Bloomsbury Square and there it was right before me, Pushkin House. To be continued...

Snowy Weather - An Evening with Michael Pennington

 

If  anybody is interested in an account of the evening and the journey, these subsequent posts (and some yet to come) http://das-unmoegliche.blogspot.com/2010/12/to-go-or-not-to-go-is-surely-no.html and http://das-unmoegliche.blogspot.com/2010/12/tradurre-e-tradire.html do offer more insight.

Strange chances, as it is I felt a little bit ignorant at not giving it even a  thought to go to the Almeida instead and give Stephen Dillane a chance to convince me of his Solness, yet I've found out yesterday (December 21st) that the performance of the Master Builder at the Almeida on November 30th was cancelled due to the fact that Stephen Dillane could not make it to the theatre because of the snow!!! (I do not blame him for getting stuck on his way, looking into the landscape from the Eurostar there really seemed to be very adverse weather conditions!!)

Acts of defiance

Still thinking about The Master Builder and how Solness defies his surpressing, righteous god in the end, acts of defiance keep creeping up in my mind and how wonderful and miraculous those were.

I very fondly do remember the vernissage of photographs by Allen Ginsberg at the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen in Düsseldorf in 1998 - shortly before my exam exhibition. His last private secretary was present , whose name I've regretfully forgotten, but there is one story he told that has been sticking in my mind ever since. Following  the fatwa against Salman Rushdie both Ginsberg and his secretary were riding in a taxi in New York and realising that the driver was a Muslim Ginsberg tried to discuss this fatwa with the driver. The conclusion Ginsberg drew was that: "If there was a god like this ( ie one that would sustain this verdict) I would shit on his head". The secretary remembered feeling very awkward at this moment but obviously the driver did not speak enough English to understand Ginsberg.

Another great act of defiance - and this time also one drawn from a play - is Posthumus challeging the gods in the prison scene (Act V, Scene IV) from Cymbeline, definitely one of my favourites. Yet Shakespeare does not leave it at this but makes Posthumus realise the very, very hard way that it was not the gods who were wrong or wronging him but Posthumus' concept of them and the - all too human - revenge he commissioned driven by his mistrust - in fact to go even a step further it was already the wager he put on Imogen's fidelity.

Most probably Edmund Husserl, as far as I understand him, is right in warning us against all concepts that would not allow a doubt, for those surely are dogmatic and eventually wrong, dangerous and inhuman.

Zufall - Coincidence

Der Zufall ist das, was mir zufällt, fällt wie Solness vom Turm in meinen Schoß, wenn ich es zulasse... und doch vielleicht schwebt es doch da-zwischen, in der co-incidence.. Oder wie Maulbeerblätter im Garten...

Einige interessante Zu-fälle, wenn man nur offen ist, jedenfalls genug , um sie zu-zulassen:

Teil 1: Ex libris

Zuerst fiel mir das Exlibris von Dr P(ieter) Endt, alias Ed Coenraads, in der billigsten Ausgabe von Franz Molnárs "Der Leibgardist", der ich habhaft werden konnte, zu, denn Ausgaben von 1922 sind, da dieser Autor bei den Nazis sehr unbeliebt war, extremst selten. Diese Ausgabe stammte also aus den Niederlanden und gehörte einmal Pieter Endt, der Nietzsche ins Niederländische übersetzt hat, ein Kabarettist war und einen Roman veröffentlicht hat, der im München der Räterepublik von 1919 spielt. Sehr lesenswert.

Das nächste, noch ein wenig seltsamer, befand sich leider überklebt von einer Büchereikarteikarte - was man leider auch an dem Zustand des Artefakts sieht -, in einer deutschen Ausgabe von "2x2=5" von Gustav Wied. Allem Anschein nach gehörte dieses wunderbare Buch einmal Delia Austrian, nach der die Delia Austrian Medal für die "Most Distinguished Performance of an Actor or an Actress on the Broadway Stage" benannt wurde.

Fortsetzung folgt/ to be continued ...