Sunset Boulevard

There we were, on Sunset Boulevard. I must say that Adobe was an entertaining and gracious host. You could sense the intelligence and the care, the thoughtfulness and restraint, much like the effort that goes into his productions.

It has never been about Stalin, in the long run; it has always been about the rich and beautiful country that he ruled for a while. Despite the ruins and the anti-intellectualism and the unstable cronyism and the misuse of cultural capital, the country is a great one. It has been a sad one, a devastated one, a nation whose sons died by the millions in service of the Motherland. But it is still great, and Stalin was just one episode in its long and colourful life.

And so, we pray for the Rodina and the space and time it occupies. Sometimes, as a wise man noted, we pray for the wrong things. It is no wonder then that we get the 'wrong' answers to our prayers.

Georgia

In Georgia, a country which I first visited in 1969, there is a place that is now a smoking ruin. That country, ironically enough, was the birthplace of the Man of Steel, that feckless and ruthless figure who piloted Russia into the torturesome modernity of the Atomic Age.

Through the smoking ruin move the tanks, landcrawling fish of the sort that Oswald Bastable would immediately know and loathe with a bitter hatred and a wondering distaste. Georgia has partly its own folly to blame. But a large part of that is trusting the promises of the West. Like all clever Caucasians, the true ones who live in the Caucasus and its environs, they ought to have known better. The Caucasians have always been crushed between hammer and anvil, divided by fire and sword, fixed by stake and noose.

And I think of one great lesson. A country is as great as the dictators it births, and whatever those dictators in turn create will one day return home; if not in body, then in spirit, in some sort of returning doom.

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I think of something else. I shall wear my trousers rolled. Haha. There is shadow under this read Prufrock. Haha. Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata. Shantih.

Akunin

Apparently, the eponymous akunin is a Japanese word that translates to 'malefactor' or 'rogue' in English and '悪人' in Chinese. I have, unusually, become a fan of a certain Boris Akunin who has written novels of an intriguing and witty complexity. These novels, translated from Russian to English, are now on sale at all the best bookstores.

I don't normally review books here. You can go look at Bookbinding if you want capsule reviews of the stuff I've read that is of the generally entertaining mass-market (or not) variety. But I think that Akunin deserves an entry every now and then, the rogue.

I began with his first two Sister Pelagia books. Bookbinding has brief details. They were pretty good, in the G K Chesterton style of outrageous crime hidden by religious and psychological misdirection. I enjoyed them. And then, I encountered Erast Petrovich Fandorin, hero of this Akunin's Erast Fandorin series of thrillers.

Sigh. I read through the first book, The Winter Queen, at one sitting. It introduces a romantic young junior clerk in the police, develops his character, matures him, and gives him a life-long sense of tragedy, all at once. It is like Ian Fleming's James Bond novels less the gadgets and womanising, and with more character development, wit and style. And that's not to mention the style with which this Akunin paints everything in pre-Revolution Imperial Russian colours. And the plot twists, turns, and peculiar machinations of terrible foes. And why 'American roulette' was renamed 'Russian roulette'. The ending is particularly poignant.

Now I am working on the second book, Turkish Gambit. This one is written more as an historical/political adventure novel. The Akunin has decided that he will showcase one kind of thriller/crime/mystery/adventure genre in each book of the series. I am being greatly entertained by his riffs (some quite deliberately anachronistic) on other authors and classics of each genre. I shall end by showcasing two unfortunately very brief excerpts of his interesting sociopolitical commentary from Gambit, of the sort totally absent from Winter Queen. Enjoy!

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[Fandorin] buttoned up his collar and replied seriously, "If you live in a state, you should either cherish it or leave it — anything else is either parasitism or mere servants'-room gossip."

"There is a third possibility," Varya parried, stung by the phrase 'servants'-room gossip'. "An unjust state can be demolished and a new one built in its place."

"Unfortunately, Varvana Andreevna, a state is not a house; it is more like a tree. It is not built, it grows of its own accord, following the laws of nature, and it is a long business. It is not a stonemason who is required, but a gardener."

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The double-headed eagle that serves the Russian Empire as its crest illuminates quite magnificently the entire system of government of that country, where any matter of even the slightest importance is not entrusted to a single authority but at least two, and these authorities hamper each other's efforts while taking no ultimate responsibility for anything.

Archival Instincts

I am very glad for the archival instincts that genetic and environmental factors seem to have planted in me. This was the thought that crossed my mind as I read through the text at this site. I have always felt some affinity for the people of Russia – not the apparently monolithic colossus of the Soviet state, but the warm and troubled people of a wide and richly-endowed country.

But why that sudden urge to celebrate the archival instinct? It was the simple joy very much like that of a man who, while being made into a non-person by the State, suddenly realises he has the State by the goolies and a vise in his hand. For 20 years after the Glorious Revolution, a mighty tome was written, and in that tome (and in the hundreds of other documents in the archives), the truth was hidden.

The State might have said that the Commissar was a bad one and that during his time in office, grain production dropped. But the official statistics of the State show that they were never higher than during his reign! The State might have said that he had said subversive things. But these things were attested by later historians to be true. The State might have done many things to disguise his star, but the facts were too obvious, too many, too bright. Perhaps they should never have made him the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs or for War; his efforts there cemented his legend. Even in his most difficult year, he was a hard worker and a voice of neutrality.

In the end, they exiled him, held show trials, and sent an assassin with an ice-pick for him. The assassin succeeded where the State had failed: the Commissar was transformed from a minor legend to an iconic myth. How had it all come to pass? It came to pass because the Commissar had in his head an archivist's mind. He was prolific in his exile and spoke too much truth against too much power. Fortunately for posterity, much of what he said has been preserved.

The same is true of good men or bad. It is a truth of the Bible as well. The archives of the written word hold truth; and the truth will (someday, and perhaps posthumously) set you free.

Day 003

Today is the third day. By the end of today, my last twelve years will have been crated up and distributed out. It is a sobering thing, to realise that all you have done and all that you own can be packaged in about 40 cubic metres of space, most of it filled with paper and emptiness.

It is like watching a play: five acts, maybe twenty scenes. Then it is over as the lights come up across the theatre. Yet, there will have been highs and lows, comedy and tragedy, fantasy and farce, serious issues and intangible ones. Love, war, power, destiny, hate, rivalry, ambition, kindness and generosity, the will to survive, the desire for peace — all these things can be revealed to us in a play.

For those of you who study business and management, who think about balance sheets and inputs and outputs, I have some advice. In life, as in business, assets should be put to work early and made to produce a return on investment. If assets held produce too little return on investment, and the overheads and downside are too great, then it is time to diversify or to divest. But all that is head knowledge. Sometimes, it has to be applied.

By tonight, I shall have filled in the boxes. By tomorrow, I will rejoin the community of believers as a penitent, for tomorrow is Good Friday. It will be time to remember the transition that is death — and also to begin to hope for all the life to come.

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Update at 5 pm: All my books are packed now. There are so many empty shelves. I have a box that contains nothing but the things my students have written about me. I spent a few hours looking through these for bad things. To those of you who felt my sarcasm, anger, or intolerance — I apologise to you for not being a better man. It is Holy Thursday now. Happy birthday to my Dutch god-daughter. Oddly enough, it's just a few days after my first god-daughter's birthday, she who is now in San Francisco.

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Update at 10 pm: I just threw out about 8 kg of materials pertaining to the past. It's amazing how much documentation exists, testifying to what I spent my youth on, signed by venerable authorities; it just amazes me. The past is truly another country, one whose borders I shall no longer transgress. Sometimes, I shall gaze forlorn across the barbed wire. It is like the experience of 20th century emigré Russians. It is still in my blood. You can take the boy out of Russia, but not Russia out of the boy.

Poetry

Yes, occasionally the grey side of me surfaces here and I actually post stuff I have written. It's a terrible failing, I know. I realise that most of my readers hate the stuff and I am not delivering something they want to read.

Well, I'm amenable to criticism as always. There'd be no point otherwise, since this is not really a vanity press. Keep it cleanly critical. And I will try not to offend your sensibilities so often.

Someone once asked me about a poem I wrote and why I wrote it. That poem can be found at this post. Well it was written over a period of four years really, with very small amendments over that time. It was written for an old friend, who is sadly no more with us.

But hey, in this postmodern world, criticism seems to stand on its own without biographical context. I hate that perspective myself, hence my need to develop a context in most of my posts. Ah, that's the paradox: the more you know, the less the text alone speaks to you. So where is the balance point?

I don't know. Why should I? It's poetry.