literatureIn Nepal every school boy knows the name Laxmi Devkota (1909-59), author of the short Napelese epic Muna Madan. All over Himalaya his works are revered as classics, yet in Europe and the West his folk inspired narrative poems remain largely unknown. In a special interview one of his two surviving sons, Padma Devkota, explains the continuing attraction of his father’s stories, and why a tale like Muna Madan still fascinates today, almost 100 years after it was written.
Historyradio.org: Why has Muna Madan become such a central work in Nepalese literature?
Professor Padma Devkota: Muna-Madan remains a central work in Nepali literature for several reasons. Briefly, it is the first major Romantic work in Nepali literature which revolts against the age-long Sanskrit classical tradition and seeks to tell the story, as Professor Shreedhar Lohani observes in “Life, Love, and Death in Muna Madan,” of real people through lives of fictional characters, and to fictionalize real geographical space. This is the first work in Nepali literature which elevates the jhyaure song, an otherwise neglected cultural space, to a significant literary height. Next, it tells a story of the common Nepali people which remains realistically contemporary in the context of the international labor market which still attracts many indigent Nepali workers. It is a heart-rending tragedy written in a simple diction which even the illiterate people of Nepal easily understood. They found their own lives written all over the pages of this book. Even then, Poet Devkota himself was criticized by elitist writers as having done something that would mar his literary career.
Historyradio.org: Muna Madan deals with issues like poverty and caste, to what extent are these issues in present day Nepal?
Professor Padma Devkota: The caste system is not a central theme of Muna-Madan. It is mentioned only once in the course of the story when Madan’s overwhelming gratitude to the Good Samaritan figure, the Bhote, causes Madan to mention his own caste. Furthermore, the caste system itself was efficient at the time it was created. Later practices cast a slur on its original intent, which was simply a division of labor within a small, ancient community. Quite obviously it has outlasted its use in contemporary societies and the Government of Nepal has taken efficient action against all caste discriminations. However, even as poets and thinkers point up the correct path, human habits die hard. We now fear the rise of economic castes such as those that encrust capitalistic societies. I believe Nepal, especially after its secularization, has been more successful fighting the discriminatory caste system than it has succeeded in fighting poverty.
Historyradio.org: Tell us a little about your father, Laxmi Prasad Devkota. What sort of man was he?
Professor Padma Devkota: Laxmi Devkota is popular as Mahakavi (Great Poet/Epicist). The public was quick to recognize the exceptional qualities of a poet whose fifty-ninth book, The Witch Doctor and Other Essays, a collection of thirty essays written originally in English, appeared on November 11, 2017. There are several other documents waiting to be published. He wrote in practically all the genres of literature and excelled in poetry and essay. Initially, he wrote under the influence of his Sanskrit background and English education. He started out as a Romantic poet in the Nepali tradition but continually grew as a poet to a literary modernity which the bulk of his writings have shaped. As an intellectual, he participated in the socio-political life of the nation, which he loved with all his heart. As a writer, he had vision, imagination and mastery over the medium. He also raised his voice against colonialism, imperialism, discriminations and injustice. As a thinker, he asserted the necessity of scientific and logical thinking to counteract blind faith and orthodoxy which hindered progress. As a human being, he had the gift of compassion and empathy. Legends continue growing around the life of the poet.
Historyradio.org: What kind of reception did Muna Mudan receive when it was published?
Professor Padma Devkota: Muna-Madan is a long narrative poem written in the lyrical form called jhyaure in which learned people of the time found, as Devkota himself explains, “a low standard of rural taste, an inkling of distancing from civilization or of showiness or trace of ill-manners of the hills.” He tells us how the pundits “started wrinkling their nose” at the mention of jhyaure. For them, the merits of literature were with Kalidas and Bhavabhuti, the classical Sanskrit poets. For Devkota, they were not national poets and their literary output was not the Nepali national literature. So, he compares his situation to that of his predecessor, Bhanubhakta Acharya, the Adi Kavi or the First Poet of Nepal. During Bhanubhakta’s time, the elitists asked if it was possible to write poetry in Nepali. But Bhanubhakta used the Sanskrit classical meter and produced wonderful poetry in Nepali. Similarly, in Devkota’s time, the elitists asked if it was possible to write poetry in jhyaure. Devkota elevated the status of jhyaure by writing serious literature in this rhythm of the common heart. Quickly, Muna-Madan gained popularity and it still remains the best-seller even to this day.
Historyradio.org: There is a movie version of the novel, is this film faithful to the original text?
Professor Padma Devkota: I would have to look at the movie again to tell you just how faithful it is. When I watched it for the first time years ago, I thought it was sufficiently faithful to the original text, but that is just a passing claim. Gaps, additions and interpretations of the movie need a more serious revisiting.
Watch the movie trailer
Historyradio.org: Could you describe the literary style of that your father uses in his narrative? Is he a realist writer, a naturalist? A modernist?
Professor Padma Devkota: Muna-Madan is a long narrative poem written with the ballad in mind. It uses a lyrical form called the jhyaure which was popular among people at work, especially in the paddy fields where young boys and girls teased each other with songs and fell in love. Although Devkota’s poem is tragic in essence in keeping with the eastern view of life, he insists on the importance of action, which alone can give significance to life. Throughout the poem, there are reversals of the imaginary and the real, of gender roles, of situations, and so on. The poem is romantic in vision, emotionally well-balanced and under full control of the writer. It uses fresh metaphors and images that have a lasting impression upon the mind of the reader. The work is popularly acclaimed as being simple, but simplicity of diction is counteracted by the poet’s imaginative flights that trail the syntax behind them. It is as if my father wanted to apply William Wordsworth’s famous poetic declaration in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads to Nepali literature: to write about real people in their own tongues. In trying to select a “language really used by men,” Devkota strikes gold and achieves a simplicity which stands in great contrast to the complexity he was later able to achieve in the epic language of Nepali Shakuntala, for instance.
In terms of its revolt against the classical tradition and its attempt to speak in the simple language of the common people, Muna-Madan is modernist too. It does make a very powerful statement against discriminatory caste practices.
Historyradio.org: In which way does his novel fall into the narrative of Nepalese literary history?
Professor Padma Devkota: Nepali derives from Pali, which derives from Sanskrit. Very early Nepali writers wrote devotional poetry in Sanskrit; but Bhanubhakta Acharya decided to freely translate Ramanyan into Nepali using the classical Sanskrit meters. He also wrote a few poems about the political and social issues of his time. Then came Motiram Bhatta and introduced the Urdu gazal and wrote many love poems. Lekhanath Poudyal stuck to the Sanskrit tradition but wrote a Nepali that gleamed with polished language. Balakrishna Sama, a playwright and a poet, looked westward and to science and philosophy. Laxmi Prasad Devkota introduced Romanticism and Modernity to Nepali literature.
Briefly again, my father’s poetry is spontaneous, deeply felt, sincere and honest, and has a touch of spirituality in it. He loves his nation, but goes glocal. He finds his inspiration in the histories and mythologies of India, Greater India (Bharatvarsha), Greece, Rome and Nepal. For him, mythology offers a proper window into the hearts of the peoples of the world. For the human being must stand at the center of the universe. The human being is the only significantly worthy object of worship. And the poet remains a liberal humanist.
Historyradio.org: Why do you think Muna Madan is so little known in Europe?
Professor Padma Devkota: No serious attempt has been made by the Nepalese Government to introduce its culture and literature to the Europeans, who don’t read Nepali anyway. And why should they? Nepal is not an economic or military giant. So, its richest cultural mine awaits discovery by individuals who wander in search of the best in world literature. Some such as Dom Moreas who met Devkota at his death-bed and reminisced him in Gone Away: An Indian Journal or David Rubin whose translations of Devkota’s poems appear under the title Nepali Visions, Nepali Dreams or Michael Hutt of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London, who translated Muna-Madan are examples of Western scholars who have discovered him. More recently, international scholarship has grown around Devkota’s work. One such study, though peripheral to Muna-Madan, is that of Anna Stirr’s on “Sounding and Writing a Nepali Public Sphere: The Music and Language of Jhyaure” (Asian Music 46, 2015). Although Devkota himself started the tradition of translating his own works and those of his colleagues’ into English, and although he also started the tradition of writing serious literature originally in English, we have not been able to publicize it beyond the frontiers of our immediate neighbors.
Historyradio.org: Are there many foreign translations of the story?
Professor Padma Devkota: Not as many as or as good as we would like to see. Some Nepali translators have attempted rendering Muna-Madan into English. Among them are my father’s brother, Madhusudhan Devkota, and Tirtha Man Tuladhar both of whom attempted a translation of this work in 1970. Ananda Shrestha’s rendering into English appeared in 1995. Foreigners, too, have tried to translate this work in their own ways. A. M. Syangden and Ganga Singh Rai form India attempted translating Muna-Madan in 1994 and 1996, respectively. Their major problem is with the language itself. Michael J. Hutt’s translation appeared in 1996. It remains the most noted version to this day. Liu Xian translated it into Chinese in 2011. Portions of the text have been translated into Russian, Korean, French, German and other European languages, too. All of them have translated from the original text of Muna-Madan, which is shorter by 399 lines from the text revised by the poet in 1958. This one remains to be translated by someone.
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“Muna Madan follows the life of Madan who leaves his wife , Muna, and goes to Lhasa to make money, and while returning he becomes sick on the way. His friends leave him on the road and come back home saying he has died. The story also shows the life of a poor woman who suffered much without her husband and later dies because of grief. Finally he is rescued by a man who is considered to be of lower caste in Nepal. That is why it is said that a man is said to be great not by caste or race but by a heart full of love and humanity. When Madan returns to Kathmandu after regaining his health, he discovers that his wife is dead and becomes grief-stricken. Madan comes to realize that money is of no value at that point. In this poem, Devkota has written about the biggest problems in Nepalese society at the time.” (Wiki)
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short storyn the year 1841, there resided, at different points in the State of Illinois, three brothers by the name of Trailor. Their Christian names were William, Henry and Archibald. Archibald resided at Springfield, then as now the seat of Government of the State. He was a sober, retiring, and industrious man, of about thirty years of age; a carpenter by trade, and a bachelor, boarding with his partner in business—a Mr. Myers. Henry, a year or two older, was a man of like retiring and industrious habits; had a family, and resided with it on a farm, at Clary’s Grove, about twenty miles distant from Springfield in a northwesterly direction. William, still older, and with similar habits, resided on a farm in Warren county, distant from Springfield something more than a hundred miles in the same northwesterly direction. He was a widower, with several children.
In the neighborhood of William’s residence, there was, and had been for several years, a man by the name of Fisher, who was somewhat above the age of fifty; had no family, and no settled home; but who boarded and lodged a while here and a while there, with persons for whom he did little jobs of work. His habits were remarkably economical, so that an impression got about that he had accumulated a considerable amount of money.
In the latter part of May, in the year mentioned, William formed the purpose of visiting his brothers at Clary’s Grove and Springfield; and Fisher, at the time having his temporary residence at his house, resolved to accompany him. They set out together in a buggy with a single horse. On Sunday evening they reached Henry’s residence, and stayed overnight. On Monday morning, being the first Monday of June, they started on to Springfield, Henry accompanying them on horseback. They reached town about noon, met Archibald, went with him to his boardinghouse, and there took up their lodgings for the time they should remain.
After dinner, the three Trailors and Fisher left the boardinghouse in company, for the avowed purpose of spending the evening together in looking about the town. At supper, the Trailors had all returned, but Fisher was missing, and some inquiry was made about him. After supper, the Trailors went out professedly in search of him. One by one they returned, the last coming in after late teatime, and each stating that he had been unable to discover anything of Fisher.
The next day, both before and after breakfast, they went professedly in search again, and returned at noon, still unsuccessful. Dinner again being had, William and Henry expressed a determination to give up the search, and start for their homes. This was remonstrated against by some of the boarders about the house, on the ground that Fisher was somewhere in the vicinity, and would be left without any conveyance, as he and William had come in the same buggy. The remonstrance was disregarded, and they departed for their homes respectively.
Up to this time, the knowledge of Fisher’s mysterious disappearance had spread very little beyond the few boarders at Myers’, and excited no considerable interest. After the lapse of three or four days, Henry returned to Springfield, for the ostensible purpose of makings further search for Fisher. Procuring some of the boarders, he, together with them and Archibald, spent another day in ineffectual search, when it was again abandoned, and he returned home.
No general interest was yet excited.
On the Friday, week after Fisher’s disappearance, the Postmaster at Springfield received a letter from the Postmaster nearest William’s residence, in Warren County, stating that William had returned home without Fisher, and was saying, rather boastfully, that Fisher was dead, and had willed him his money, and that he had got about fifteen hundred dollars by it. The letter further stated that William’s story and conduct seemed strange, and desired the Postmaster at Springfield to ascertain and write what was the truth in the matter.
The Postmaster at Springfield made the letter public, and at once, excitement became universal and intense. Springfield, at that time, had a population of about 3,500, with a city organization. The Attorney General of the State resided there. A purpose was forthwith formed to ferret out the mystery, in putting which into execution, the Mayor of the city and the Attorney General took the lead. To make search for, and, if possible, find the body of the man supposed to be murdered, was resolved on as the first step.
In pursuance of this, men were formed into large parties, and marched abreast, in all directions, so as to let no inch of ground in the vicinity remain unsearched. Examinations were made of cellars, wells, and pits of all descriptions, where it was thought possible the body might be concealed. All the fresh, or tolerably fresh graves in the graveyard, were pried into, and dead horses and dead dogs were disintered, where, in some instances, they had been buried by their partial masters.
This search, as has appeared, commenced on Friday. It continued until Saturday afternoon without success, when it was determined to dispatch officers to arrest William and Henry, at their residences, respectively. The officers started on Sunday morning; meanwhile, the search for the body was continued, and rumors got afloat of the Trailors having passed, at different times and places, several gold pieces, which were readily supposed to have belonged to Fisher.
On Monday, the officers sent for Henry, having arrested him, arrived with him. The Mayor and Attorney Gen’l took charge of him, and set their wits to work to elicit a discovery from him. He denied, and denied, and persisted in denying. They still plied him in every conceivable way, till Wednesday, when, protesting his own innocence, he stated that his brothers, William and Archibald, had murdered Fisher; that they had killed him, without his (Henry’s) knowledge at the time, and made a temporary concealment of his body; that, immediately preceding his and William’s departure from Springfield for home, on Tuesday, the day after Fisher’s disappearance, William and Archibald communicated the fact to him, and engaged his assistance in making a permanent concealment of the body; that, at the time he and William left professedly for home, they did not take the road directly, but, meandering their way through the streets, entered the woods at the northwest of the city, two or three hundred yards to the right of where the road they should have travelled, entered them; that, penetrating the woods some few hundred yards, they halted and Archibald came a somewhat different route, on foot, and joined them; that William and Archibald then stationed him (Henry) on an old and disused road that ran near by, as a sentinel, to give warning of the approach of any intruder; that William and Archibald then removed the buggy to the edge of a dense brush thicket, about forty yards distant from his (Henry’s) position, where, leaving the buggy, they entered the thicket, and in a few minutes returned with the body, and placed it in the buggy; that from his station he could and did distinctly see that the object placed in the buggy was a dead man, of the general appearance and size of Fisher; that William and Archibald then moved off with the buggy in the direction of Hickox’s mill pond, and after an absence of half an hour, returned, saying they had put him in a safe place; that Archibald then left for town, and he and William found their way to the road, and made for their homes.
At this disclosure, all lingering credulity was broken down, and excitement rose to an almost inconceivable height. Up to this time the well-known character of Archibald had repelled and put down all suspicions as to him. Till then, those who were ready to swear that a murder had been committed, were almost as confident that Archibald had had no part in it. But now, he was seized and thrown into jail; and indeed, his personal security rendered it by no means objectionable to him.
And now came the search for the brush thicket, and the search of the mill pond. The thicket was found, and the buggy tracks at the point indicated. At a point within the thicket, the signs of a struggle were discovered, and a trail from thence to the buggy track was traced. In attempting to follow the track of the buggy from the thicket, it was found to proceed in the direction of the mill pond, but could not be traced all the way. At the pond, however, it was found that a buggy had been backed down to, and partially into the water’s edge.
Search was now to be made in the pond; and it was made in every imaginable way. Hundreds and hundreds were engaged in raking, fishing, and draining. After much fruitless effort in this way, on Thursday morning the mill dam was cut down, and the water of the pond partially drawn off, and the same processes of search again gone through with.
About noon of this day, the officer sent for William, returned having him in custody; and a man calling himself Dr. Gilmore, came in company with them. It seems that the officer arrested William at his own house, early in the day on Tuesday, and started to Springfield with him; that after dark awhile, they reached Lewiston, in Fulton County, where they stopped for the night; that late in the night this Dr. Gilmore arrived, stating that Fisher was alive at his house, and that he had followed on to give the information, so that William might be released without further trouble; that the officer, distrusting Dr. Gilmore, refused to release William, but brought him on to Springfield, and the doctor accompanied them.
On reaching Springfield, the doctor re-asserted that Fisher was alive, and at his house. At this, the multitude for a time, were utterly confounded. Gilmore’s story was communicated to Henry Trailor, who without faltering, reaffirmed his own story about Fisher’s murder. Henry’s adherence to his own story was communicated to the crowd, and at once the idea started, and became nearly, if not quite universal, that Gilmore was a confederate of the Trailors, and had invented the tale he was telling, to secure their release and escape.
Excitement was again at its zenith.
About three o’clock the same evening, Myers, Archibald’s partner, started with a two-horse carriage, for the purpose of ascertaining whether Fisher was alive, as stated by Gilmore, and if so, of bringing him back to Springfield with him.
On Friday a legal examination was gone into before two Justices, on the charge of murder against William and Archibald. Henry was introduced as a witness by the prosecution, and on oath re-affirmed his statements, as heretofore detailed, and at the end of which he bore a thorough and rigid cross-examination without faltering or exposure. The prosecution also proved, by a respectable lady, that on the Monday evening of Fisher’s disappearance, she saw Archibald, whom she well knew, and another man whom she did not then know, but whom she believed at the time of testifying to be William, (then present,) and still another, answering the description of Fisher, all enter the timber at the northwest of town, (the point indicated by Henry,) and after one or two hours, saw William and Archibald return without Fisher.
Several other witnesses testified, that on Tuesday, at the time William and Henry professedly gave up the search for Fisher’s body, and started for home, they did not take the road directly, but did go into the woods, as stated by Henry. By others, also, it was proved, that since Fisher’s disappearance, William and Archibald had passed rather an unusual number of gold pieces. The statements heretofore made about the thicket, the signs of a struggle, the buggy tracks, &c., were fully proven by numerous witnesses.
At this the prosecution rested.
Dr. Gilmore was then introduced by the defendants. He stated that he resided in Warren county, about seven miles distant from William’s residence; that on the morning of William’s arrest, he was out from home, and heard of the arrest, and of its being on a charge of the murder of Fisher; that on returning to his own house, he found Fisher there; that Fisher was in very feeble health, and could give no rational account as to where he had been during his absence; that he (Gilmore) then started in pursuit of the officer, as before stated; and that he should have taken Fisher with him, only that the state of his health did not permit. Gilmore also stated that he had known Fisher for several years, and that he had understood he was subject to temporary derangement of mind, owing to an injury about his head received in early life.
There was about Dr. Gilmore so much of the air and manner of truth, that his statement prevailed in the minds of the audience and of the court, and the Trailors were discharged, although they attempted no explanation of the circumstances proven by the other witnesses.
On the next Monday, Myers arrived in Springfield, bringing with him the now famed Fisher, in full life and proper person.
Thus ended this strange affair and while it is readily conceived that a writer of novels could bring a story to a more perfect climax, it may well be doubted whether a stranger affair ever really occurred. Much of the matter remains in mystery to this day. The going into the woods with Fisher, and returning without him, by the Trailors; their going into the woods at the same place the next day, after they professed to have given up the search; the signs of a struggle in the thicket, the buggy tracks at the edge of it; and the location of the thicket, and the signs about it, corresponding precisely with Henry’s story, are circumstances that have never been explained. William and Archibald have both died since—William in less than a year, and Archibald in about two years after the supposed murder. Henry is still living, but never speaks of the subject.
It is not the object of the writer of this to enter into the many curious speculations that might be indulged upon the facts of this narrative; yet he can scarcely forbear a remark upon what would, almost certainly, have been the fate of William and Archibald, had Fisher not been found alive. It seems he had wandered away in mental derangement, and, had he died in this condition, and his body been found in the vicinity, it is difficult to conceive what could have saved the Trailors from the consequence of having murdered him. Or, if he had died, and his body never found, the case against them would have been quite as bad, for, although it is a principle of law that a conviction for murder shall not be had, unless the body of the deceased be discovered, it is to be remembered, that Henry testified that he saw Fisher’s dead body.
Published by Abraham Lincoln, April 15, 1846
Listen to a reading of the story:
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historyThe ruins of Angkor were long hidden by the Cambodian jungle. Early explorers such as the French artist Louis Delaporte (1842-1925) sketched the glory of what they found. Little did they know that the past was even more magnificent than they imagined. Just over a hundred years later, new laser technology, or lidar, is able to strip away the overgrowth of centuries, and bring to light a clearer outline of that lost civilization. Now we can finally begin to understand what Angkor was and why the empire faded. Much still remains a mystery, but we were able to get some preliminary answers from dr. Damian Evans of the French Institute of Asian Studies (EFEO).
Historyradio.org: In what way does your new Lidar findings expand or confirm the view of Angkor presented by Zhou Daguan in his 12’ century travel narrative?
Damian Evans: There has always been a degree of uncertainty about the urban context of the temples, because it was made of perishable materials which have rotted away. However Zhou Daguan mentioned a system of residence in which multiple households were arrayed around communal ponds. Using the lidar we have identified patterns in the ground surface that we can identify as remnant traces of ponds, and earthen occupation mounds on top of which people built their houses. We’ve mapped a vast network of these features, several thousand of them, which essentially confirms the account of Zhou Daguan as it relates to residential patterning.
Historyradio.org: Marco Polo speaks of a great empire in Asia (not China), is there any chance he might have mentioned Angkor?
Damian Evans: There’s no evidence for that unfortunately. The Khmer Empire was one of many large political entities which flourished in the region at that time, so it’s not necessarily the case.
Historyradio.org: What was the population of an average city in the Angkor Empire and what was the total population?
Damian Evans: For population estimates we need to know two things: the spatial layout of the settlements, and the density of the neighborhoods. We have only just recently come to terms with the layout of the cities using lidar and other mapping techniques, and figuring out the density of inhabitants per hectare is the domain of household archaeology, which has really only just begun at Angkor. So we haven’t yet had the opportunity to sit down and make precise calculations, and we are still missing some crucial information. We can say though that figures in the one million rage for a population of Angkor are probably way too high, and I would say that there are several hundred thousand people at the capital, and some tens of thousands of people at each of the major regional centres.
Historyradio.org: What was the most surprising thing that you discovered?
Damian Evans: There are still quite a few features that we discovered that we don’t understand. There are large grids of mounds covering several hectares, and strange geometric shapes carved into the surface of the landscape. They don’t seem to have had any agricultural or residential function, and when we excavate them there is nothing inside, so they are not burial sites. They may have some larger symbolic meaning as geoglyphs or something, we don’t know. Work on that is ongoing, as they have turned up everywhere and were obviously an important component of the built environment, and perhaps also of a kind of sacred geography whose meaning is obscure to us.
Historyradio.org: Has this form of archaeology uncovered anything new about the lives of ordinary people in Angkor?
Damian Evans: Not directly, no, aside from confirming the residential patterning. One of the great values of lidar though is that it provides a very detailed and comprehensive picture of the built environment that allows field archaeologists to target excavations very precisely on areas that we know will deliver the most useful information. That work will now begin to deliver a wealth if information about the everyday life of the people. The insights from lidar are more orientated towards large-scale factors such as water management, landscape change, the structure of the urban environment, that kind of thing. One thing we can say is that people were living in a very densely inhabited space in the downtown area of Angkor, and with a lack of sanitation disease must have been an extremely serious issue.
Historyradio.org: Why are there so few traces of this empire in the historical sources?
Damian Evans: There is a local tradition of carving inscriptions in stone, and there is a corpus of around 1300 of those inscriptions. It is a rich historical record that informs most of what we know about the Khmer. In terms of accounts from outsiders, early sources are very few and far between so there are huge gaps in our knowledge. Later historical sources in the medieval period are very trade-centric, and are dominated by European accounts. Societies heavily engaged in commerce and/or located in coastal areas to take advantage of maritime trade are heavily privileged in these accounts. Angkor was engaged in trade to a certain extent, but it was most of all an inland agrarian empire and not of great interest to traders and trade emissaries, with the exception of Zhou Daguan.
Historyradio.org: Why and when did Angkor disappear?
Damian Evans: It’s a complex question, there are many theories to do with war, overextension of the empire and so on, but none of the theories really stand alone as sufficient explanations. Increasingly we are seeing that their water management system evolved over centuries in a way that was problematic and ultimately unsustainable; because it was crucial for the success and maintenance of Angkor as the capital region, when the water management system ultimately failed – perhaps in the face of extreme climatic events – the royal court decided to relocate towards the coast and re-orient the economy towards commerce.
Historyradio.org: If Angkor had such extensive building complexes, canals and waterways, isn’t it natural to assume that they were advanced in the fields of science, mathematics and engineering? Do we know the names of any prominent scientists from the Angkor period?
Damian Evans: Not really, no, although there are mentions of some specific professions like architects who seemed to be quite prominent within the royal court. The inscriptions in stone that are our main historical sources are not really informative on such kinds of issues, as they are mostly poetic dedications to the gods which glorify the rulers and list donations to the temples. So we know very little of the mechanics of how things were built and why, and by who. Looking at the extremely precise way that the temples were built however there would have been a cohort of professionals who were very skilled in these fields, and who had the benefit of thousands of years of technical knowledge inherited from China and India and beyond.
Historyradio.org: What sort of language did the ancient Khmer have, and are there any remains of their literature, either in their own language or in translations in other languages? If not, why not? After all ancient Greek sources often survived in Arabic translations?
Damian Evans: They had their own language which is the ancestral language of modern Khmer, although they had no indigenous script and expressed it in writing in a script that was borrowed from India. The language is intelligible to scholars. The high language of religion and the royal court was also borrowed from the Indian tradition – it was Sanskrit, which of course can also be translated easily enough. The corpus of 1300 or so inscriptions has been mostly translated into French.
Historyradio.org: The lidar technology that you used has been applied most recently on the ancient Maya. Is there any room for improvements in the technology? What will be possible in the near future?
Damian Evans: At the moment the technology is still very expensive. In the future, as lidar instruments become miniaturised and as UAV technology develops, we should start to be able to cover wide areas with that combination. For now though it is not practical to cover wide areas on the scale of Angkor for example with UAV technology. But that will come soon I think in the next few years. Unfortunately there are technical limitations which prevent high-resolution space-based lidars. But in a decade or two we might achieve that as well, which will provide cheap global coverage. The amount of archaeological material that will be uncovered then will be extraordinary.
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short story
“Karen’s Christmas” by Amalie Skram
Translated by Michael Henrik Wynn
At one of the steamship ports in Kristiania there was some years ago a gray wooden structure with a flat roof, no chimney, just over two and a half yards long and slightly shorter in width. At both end walls there was a small window, one slightly higher than the other. The door opened onto the waterfront and could be shut both from the inside and the outside with iron hooks that connected to eyes of the same metal.
The hut was originally erected for the ferrymen in order to provide shelter from rainy days and winter chills when they sat waiting for travelers to demand passage. Later, when the small steamships assumed more and more of the traffic, the ferrymen moved elsewhere. Now, the building temporarily became a residence for whomever had a use for it. The latest occupants were some masons who, two at the time, used to eat their meals there when they one summer repaired a nearby quay.
Eventually, nobody took any notice of the little old shack. It remained where it stood because the port authorities never conceived of the idea of removing it, and because nobody complained that it was in the way of anyone or anything.
Then, one winter night in December just before Christmas. There wasn’t much snow because it melted as it fell, and that made the mud on the cobblestones of the quay even thicker and more sticky. The snow lay like a fine-meshed gray cover on the gaslights and the steam powered cranes, and if you reached the ships, you could see that it hung like a festoon from the masts and the riggings. The dirty yellow glare of gaslights burnt in the dark-gray humid air, while the lanterns glowed murky and red. Now and again a sharp chime cut through the damp atmosphere, when the watch on board struck eight bells.
The constable who patrolled the quay stopped by the gaslights just outside the former refuge of the ferrymen. He pulled out his watch to check how late it was, but as he held up to the light, he heard something resembling the cries of a baby. His lowered his hand, looked about and listened. No, it couldn’t be? Then he looked at his watch again. Yet again there was the sound, this time mingled with a calming hush. He lowered his hand again, and again there was quiet. What kind of devil’s trickery was this? He looked around, but found nothing. A third time the watch was raised to the glare of the gaslight and this time he could, in the silent night, see that it was soon 4 o’clock.
He drifted along the quay, passed the old shack, wondered a little, but then dismissed it all as pure fancy….Or how could it be?
A little while later when he returned the same way, he approached the hut. What was that? Didn’t he detect movement inside? Light from gas-lamps flowed in through both the windows in the end walls, and made it seem as if the interior was illuminated.
He walked over and looked in. Quite right. There was a shape on the bench right under the window, a tiny huddled up creature, who leaned forward fiddling with something, he could not see what. He stepped around the corner, stopped at the door and tried to enter. It was locked.
“Open up!” – he shouted and and knocked with his knuckels.
He heard someone startled. There was a faint exclamation, then all turned quiet.
He knocked again with his fist and repeated:
“You in there, open up! Open up this instance.”
“What do you want? Dear God, there is no one here,” – said the terrified voice on the other side of the door.
“Open up. It is the police!”
“My goodness, the police–oh my dear, it is just little old me. I am not doing any harm, I am just sittin’ here, you see”.
“Can’t you get a move on and open this door, or I will most certainly give it to you straight. Will you…”
He got no further, for at that very moment the door opened, and in the next instance he hunched through the doorway into the tiny room, where there was barely enough space to stand upright.
“Are you mad? Not allowing the police entrance! What were you thinking?”
“I am so sorry Mr. Policeman, — I did open the door, you see.”
“And that was the best thing you could have done,” he growled.
“Who are you anyway, and who has given you permission to take up lodging here?”
“It is just me, Karen,” –she whispered. “I’m sittin’ here with my babe”
The policeman eyed her over closely. She was a slim little thing with a pale and narrow face. There was a deep scrofula scar, a straight line, on one cheek. She was barely an adult. She wore a light brown garment, some kind of sweater or jacket, with a cut that betrayed its age, and a darker skirt, which hung like rags down to her ankles. On her feet there were a pair of worn-out soldier’s boots, laces missing. In her one arm she held a bundle of cloth, which lay across her waist. Something white protruded from the top end of the bundle. It was a baby’s head, which suckled her meager breast. The woman had tied a ragged scarf around her head which was fastened under her chin. From her neck locks of hair stuck out. Her entire body shivered from cold, and when she moved, there came squishy and squeaking sounds from her boots, as if she was stepping in mud.
“I didn’t think I would be a bother to anyone” she stated in her shrill voice – “the hut is here anyway, isn’t it?”
The policeman suddenly felt uneasy. At first he had had intended to drive her out into the streets with harsh words – let her off with a warning. But then he saw the miserable wretch before him with a tiny child in her arms pushing up against the bench, so fearful and humble that she was afraid to sit down. He could not help but be moved.
“But dear God, my child, what are you doing here?”
She perceived the sympathy of his voice, her fears settled and she began to cry.
The constable reached for the door and swung it shut.
“Sit down for a moment” – he said – “the child is so heavy”
She slid down unto the bench.
“Now, then”- the constable said encouragingly and sat down on the bench opposite her.
“Oh dear, Mr Constable – let me stay here” she lisped through her tears. “I won’t do no mischief – not the slightest – keep clean, I will. You can see for yourself, I am hygienic. What you see over there are breadcrusts “. She pointed to bundle on the floor. “I go begging every day – there’s some water in the bottle. Let me stay the nights here, till I get back my job back – if only the Madame will come for me”. She blew her nose in her fingers and wiped them on her skirt.
“And this Madame, whoever might that be?” asked the constable.
“I was in her service, see. I had ever such a nice position with board, 4 shillings a month and breakfast. But then I got knocked up, you see, and then I had to go, of course, Madame Olsen herself went to the Charity and got me in. She is ever so kind. I was in her service right until I went there. You see, Madame Olsen is on her own, and she said she would keep me as long as I managed. But then Madame Olsen had to travel, see, she is a midwife. And then she got ill and bed-ridden out there in the countryside. And now they say she won’t be comin’ home till Christmas.”
“But dear God, are you planning to roam the streets with this baby while you are you are waiting for this Madame! What good can come of this?” The constable shook his head.
“I have nowhere to go” she whimpered. “Since my father died there is no one to help me when my stepmother throws me into the streets.”
“What about the father of your child?”
“Oh him,” she said and made a slight toss with her neck. “I don’t think he will be of much help either.”
“But surely you know that you can get him sentenced to pay child support?”
“Yes, they say so,” she replied. “But how are we going to go about it, when he doesn’t exist?”
“You just give me his name,” the constable interjected, “then he will be produced, you will see.”
“Yes, if I only knew,” she said casually.
“What are you saying? You don’t know the name of the father of your own child?”
Karen stuck a finger in her mouth and begun to suck on it. Her head tilted forward. She smiled in a helpless, silly way. “N-O” she whispered with a long emphasis on each letter and without removing her finger from her mouth.
“Never in my life have I heard such a thing,” the constable began, “How on earth did you hook up with this man?”
“I met him in the streets at night, when it was dark,” she replied without a hint of bashfulness, “but it didn’t go long before he was gone, and I haven’t seen him since”
“Have you not made inquiries?”
“Of course I have, but nobody knows where he has gone. He has probably gone into the country, because he either worked with horses or carriages, I could tell from his smell.”
“My God, what a mess you are in,” the constable muttered. “you must report to the authorities,” he said more loudly, –“then they can work things out for you.”
“No, I won’t do that,” she answered with sudden defiance”
“Surely it must be better to go to the workhouse and receive food and shelter than what you are doing now?” the constable said.
“Yes, but when Madame Olsen arrives — she is so kind, Madame Olsen — she will make me a temporary maid. I know this for a fact, because she promised me she would. Then I know a woman who will give us board for 3 shillings a month. She will look after the wee one while I am with Madame Olsen. And then I will help her out when I return from the Madame. It will all work out fine, when Madame Olsen comes. She will be here for Christmas, they say.”
“Very well, my dear, every adult know their own business. But you have no right to stay in this here hut.”
“What does it matter if I sit here at nights – does it harm anyone? Dear God, let me stay, the wee one won’t cry. Only till the Madame arrives. Dear Mr. Constable, only till the Madame arrives.”
“But you will freeze yourself blue, you and the child.” He looked at her poor clothes.
“Surely, this will be better than walking the streets? Oh, dear Mr. Constable- only til the Madame arrives.”
“Really, you should have accompanied me to the station, you see,” the constable said and thoughtfully scratched his ear.
She startled and moved towards him. “No, don’t do it,” she whimpered as her frozen fingers caught hold of his sleeve. “I beg you- in the name of our beautiful Lord – only till the Madame arrives.”
The constable reconsidered. There were only three days till Christmas, he counted.
“Very well,” he said as he got up. “You can stay till Christmas, but not a day longer. And mind you, no one must know that you are here.”
“God bless you, God bless you, and thank you,” she exclaimed.
But remember to be gone by 6 o’clock in the morning, before the rush of traffic begins out here,” he added when he was half-way out the door.
The next night, when he passed the hut, he stopped and looked in. She sat leaning against the window, the profile of her scarfed head dimly visible against the glass. The child was at her breast suckling. She did not move and seemed to be asleep.
Next morning, it was freezing. During the next day the thermometer dropped to 12 degrees below. It was bitterly cold, calm and cloudless. Rime formed on the windows of the tiny ferryman’s hut, the glass was no longer transparent.
The weather changed again Christmas Eve. There was a thaw, and every surface seemed to drip. You almost needed an umbrella, even if there was no rain. The storehouse windows were frost-free, and the roads more slippery than ever.
The constable arrived in the afternoon around two. His doctor had given him leave of absence from work the last few nights because of a feverish cold. Now he was coming down to talk with a man on one of the steamships.
It so happened that he passed the hut on his way there. Even in the fading daylight he saw, at several paces, something which caused him to stop. It filled his mind with worry. There she was seated in precisely the same position as she was two nights ago. The same profile was visible against the glass. He really didn’t give it much thought, just felt a sudden horror at seeing the petrified figure. A sudden chill went down his spine. Perhaps something had happened?
He hurried to the door, it was closed. He broke the glass in a window, got hold of an iron bar which he stuck through the opening and unhinged the hook. Then he slowly and carefully entered.
They were both stone dead. The child lay on top of her mother and was still suckling, even in death. A few drops of blood had trickled from the nipple down the child’s cheeks and coagulated on her chin. The mother was terribly emaciated, but her faced seemed fixed in a tranquil smile.
“Poor girl, what a Christmas she got,” the constable muttered rubbing his eye.
“But perhaps it was for the best for them both. I suppose our Lord has a purpose with everything.”
He left the hut, shut the door behind him and fastened the hook. Then he hurried to the station to report the incident.
The first day of work after Christmas weekend, the port authorities demolished the hut and removed it. They couldn’t have it there attracting all kinds of vagrants.
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history / moviesWhen we read speculative fiction, our minds conjure up the most fantastic creations. Through writers like H.G. Wells we are able to transcend time and space, even envision the most terrifying aliens. How these creatures look, however, is entirely dependent on our own imagination. Ed French is an Oscar nominated and Emmy Award winning special effects make-up artist whose job it is to bring such dreams into the realm of reality. He has worked on some of the most successful science fiction franchises, Star Trek and the Terminator series, and now, more recently, on Westworld. We asked him some questions about his job in the entertainment industry.
Historyradio.org: How does one become a special effects man in Hollywood?
Ed French: Talent and perseverance. Luck plays a part. I think you have to love the whole process of film making . Most of the people I know that do this for a living dreamed about working in movies from an early age.
Historyradio.org: How much of what we see on TV and cinema is produced by make-artists and special effects men (and women), like yourself, and how much is the vision of the director
Ed French: On T2, James Cameron had a very clear, specific vision about every aspect of his him. He made his own drawings. When I worked on Star Trek VI, Nicholas Meyer wouldn’t micro-manage. He gave me complete freedom to create the alien characters the way I saw them. I’ve often worked on projects where I was contracted to create a character based on a drawing by an art director or rendered by a production artist. In the end though, when that character arrives on set, the finished work of the makeup artist will determine if the “vision” has succeeded.
Historyradio.org: Do you have a particularly well-developed imagination?
Ed French: I think that as A Special Effects Makeup Artist I’m a conduit for other people’s imagination. I’m a creative person. I feel as though I’ve come up with some imaginative ways to make characters or certain effects believable to the camera’s eye. Interesting question. Quite often I’m required to create an effect such as say, an autopsy makeup with an actor lying in a morgue with a closed, sewn up “Y incision” scar and 3 bullet holes in the chest. That should appear exactly the way the audience EXPECTS it to look.
Historyradio.org: How do you know if an alien is realistic on not? Are you inspired by creatures in nature?
Ed French: I don’t consider most of the aliens I ’ve done to be “realistic.” Star Trek is to realistic aliens as “The Wizard of Oz” is to realistic lions…perhaps the most “realistic aliens” were the ones in “2001: A Space Odyssey.” They were mysterious entities beyond our comprehension and Kubrick depicted them as such. Sometimes the alien makeup concepts I do will integrate elements from a creature in nature. I try to make them appear somewhat plausible. Organic.
Historyradio.org: Some of the make-up work is extremely elaborate. What is the longest make-up session you have had?
Ed French: “White Chicks.” It took almost 5 hours to turn Sean Wayans (an African-American comedian) into a white woman. And after that, constant touch-ups were required. I was trying to maintain a “beauty” makeup over prosthetics that transformed a black man into a hot young white woman. I would start at 3:30 AM and work till 7P.M. And then I had to clean the prosthetics and body paint off, which usually took about an hour. There were a few shooting days when the turnaround was about 6 hours.
Historyradio.org: You have worked with some pretty famous actors. Do you ever get star struck?
Ed French: I’ve worked off and on for 15 years creating the autopsy and “scene of the crime” trauma and casualty make-ups for N.C.I.S. spending a lot of time in “Ducky’s” forensics lab in scenes involving David McCallum. When I was kid, his early TV appearances on The Outer Limits and The Man from U.N.C.LE. made a huge impression on me. I’m always a bit in awe when I’m working around him. He was Illa Kuryakin!
Historyradio.org: What is your favorite type of job? Do you prefer regular make-up, aliens, monsters or period drama?
Ed French: I like my job because I get to do all those makeup categories. I particularly enjoy creating historical look-alikes. I like to feel like I’m an entertainer. It’s magical when you make someone up to look like Albert Einstein or even the Frankenstein Monster. Everything stops on the set and everyone wants their picture with the character.
Historyradio.org: How much has CGI and computers affected the special effects make-up business?
Ed French: It has eliminated a lot of “creature effects” that use “practical” makeup, prosthetics or creature suits, animatronic puppets and so forth. A lot of my colleagues have reservations about CGI being used to “touch up” their makeups or replacing makeup altogether. I think its fabulous if it can correct a prosthetic makeup that NEEDS a touch up.
Historyradio.org: In the series Westworld, the characters are human robots. Did this pose any special challenges?
Ed French: This is where C.G.I. hasn’t quite taken over completely. We had robot actors that required full body makeup. In cases where the robots went back for repairs we would apply prosthetics simulating the effects of massive trauma injuries. Chests ripped open, skulls partially blown off, arms missing, etc. There were some fun challenges. We did authentic period makeup for the “old West.” Facial hair and Beards for the men and cowboys. Native American makeup too. There were a few days when I got to do a Samurai makeup with a bald pate.
Historyradio.org: You are also blessed with a wonderful reading voice, and publish audio narratives on youtube. How did you get into audio production?
Ed French: Thanks. Through a circuitous route. I was a radio announcer for a couple of years back in the 70’s. I would have been more at home with radio during its golden age. Radio drama and comedy, all that stuff was long gone by the time I sat behind a microphone. I abandoned radio for theatre and as that career sort of fizzled out I found a niche in Special Makeup Effects just as it was gaining momentum in the 80’s. It was fortuitous. However, I never lost the urge to want to perform. I think it was 9 years ago (?) I discovered that the equipment to make professional audio productions at home was available commercially. When I was in radio everything was analog. We recoded on big magnetic Ampex tape reels. There was a learning curve with the digital software. I’m still astounded by what you can create with just a lap top, and audio box, Audacity WAV editor and a microphone . It has enabled me do my “Day Job” and play the storyteller on the side.
Historyradio.org: What is your favorite piece of speculative fiction?
Ed French: H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine comes to mind when you ask that. Or The Invisible Man. There’s a man with imagination. He wrote before the cinema invented, or at least before the techniques of film story telling had moved beyond the “staginess’ of the early silent movies. His work, particularly The Invisible Man is cinematic. When I was recording it I could see vividly how every scene would be filmed. Close-ups, wide shots, shock cuts.
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creative writing / literatureWhen you think of writing most people imagine a solitary philosopher, an ivory tower, or something of the kind. However, there are some, who for commercial and practical reasons, create stories in a group. These are the showrunners, the men and women who build the stories behind our TV series with detached and sometimes cynical eye. I have talked with one such man, Arne Berggren, whose resume in Norwegian and Scandinavian TV drama is too long to mention here.
Historyradio.org: I thought writing was a solitary job? I thought it depended on the genius of individual minds? Why am I wrong?
Berggren:
“For for most writers their job is a solitary one. Those who write fiction, for instance, are almost loners, I guess. How many of them that are geniuses, I cannot say, but there is definitely something dysfunctional about many of them. Something that perhaps makes them less suited for teamwork, that is my belief. Many writers consciously try to remedy some personal flaw through writing, or try to discover things about themselves. Often people like that have strong egos and like to follow their own train of thought and impulses, rather than conforming.
But many writers also find that it is liberating working with others. No matter how smart or brilliant you may feel, they see that more minds can achieve more together than on their own. If you want to write for TV, the process is so centered on deadlines that it becomes an industry or a craft. Volumes of pages need to be produced in a short period of time. Some get a little kick out of the fact that they share this responsibility rather than taking on the burdens themselves. In a group you can produce TV scripts fast , and I suppose that is why the whole idea of so-called Writers’ Rooms emerged. TV is an industry, and that implies process and teamwork.”
Historyradio.org: How exactly does the writing process work, do you sit around a table and brainstorm? When is the actual writing done?
Berggren:
“All Writers’ Rooms are different, and there isn’t an extensive tradition for this kind of work in Europe. When you write comedy, however, it is quite common to sit in groups and brainstorm. But in drama too we see more and more of this kind of work. In our company, Shuuto, we have a joint session in the preliminary stages, in which we test vague ideas. It is important that we move beyond brainstorming at this point, and when there’s a pitch, something that resembles a dramatic premise, we try to work our way to potentially interesting characters, look at the longer storylines and so on. What, for instance, are the worst things to which our characters may be exposed?
Eventually we get round to the actual writing of the scripts. On those occasions we are generally four writers in a full-day session, once a week. We delegate, and the script producer decides on shorter meetings, if they are needed. So the actual writing process is still solitary, but the script producer or the showrunner are never far off. There might be daily deadlines for scripts that are reviewed and then rewritten. It is a very organic process, but the workload may be heavy. We like to take our time in the preliminary stages, but then we produce scripts for one episode a week.”
Historyradio.org: There have been many story factories in literary history. Some say Shakespeare might have run such a factory. Dumas is another example. Still, both Shakespeare and Dumas got top billing. Isn’t there sometimes a clash of egos?
Berggren:
“Where there are writers, there is always a clash of egos. But you won’t last long in the TV-business if you create a lot of conflict wherever you go. As manager I have learnt to compromise, I think. I am looking for writers and a staff that are productive, with an ability to work things through. This creates positive vibes, I think.
I must admit that I haven’t always been a role-model in this regard myself. But one learns by making mistakes, and I try my best to help others. Some of the most famous American showrunners have been strong egos. Even so, they have created environments in which others could flourish. There aren’t any showrunner academies in Scandinavia, so it is a trial by error process. You need to search out people with a certain set of qualities, and create a relaxed work environment with as few egos as possible.
The writers need to understand that this is not about them, but about getting the job done. Their job is simply to assist the showrunner or the script producer, to make his or her life easier. So they are free to return to their “ivory tower” as long as they deliver on time.”
Historyradio.org: So how should the public think about you? Are you a company executive, a writer, a brand? What?
Berggren:
“I am slightly schizophrenic, I guess, split between being a writer and an executive producer. I still write books and theater, but as a TV-guy I am first and foremost a producer. If there is a brand, it must be Shuuto, our company. We don’t really concern ourselves with core values and strategies of communication. In fact, we have a hard time defining what we do, except for the fact that we produce script-based content in a slightly different way than the larger production companies and book publishers.”
Historyradio.org: What does it take to make it as a writer in TV, do you think?
Berggren:
“You need to write, write and write. And in between read and watch tv. Sometimes I must admit I am a little shocked by young writers who want to get into television, and who produce nothing. You cannot wait for a break. In fact, it’s all about actual writing experience. Even if it is difficult to write something without seeing the final product, this exactly what you need to do. Write in all genres, and get as much feedback as possible, if only from your mother or someone you know. And you need to watch a lot of TV, in all genres, several hours a day. You need to analyse how the the skilled minds think. Sometimes you can learn even more by watching half-decent drama. You see what’s wrong, notice the way they think, and when it doesn’t suit your palate you imagine what you might have done if you had written the story yourself.”
Historyradio.org: Norway is a small country, yet recently our TV series, actors and directors have made it in Hollywood. Are there international opportunities for script writers?
Berggren:
“Yes, I think this might happen soon. Already a select few have been offered seats in writing rooms in LA. Some might get a job, and it’s much harder than you imagine. You need to be proficient in English, and this is where many Norwegians tend to over-estimate our own skills. I think you can get an entry into the US market if you become a co-producer on remakes of Norwegian TV-series, or work on developing new series for the international market. Or you could move to LA or England, get your education there, network, become a part of the scene, as much as you’re able. We have had foreigners with Norwegian as a second language in our writers’ rooms here in Norway, and I can tell you this wasn’t easy. No matter how great they think their language skills are.”
Historyradio.org: Let’s say I were a 20 year old who desperately wanted to write something for TV or film. What would be my best option for achieving my goals?
Berggren:
“I would be very patient. Try to get a foot in the door anywhere on set. Be a runner. Make coffee, sweep the floors. Staple the scripts and so on. I would have done it for free, even if our unions might object. Once you have access, relations are built, gradually trust is gained. If you’re the sort of fellow who listens to criticism, thrives on it, more responsibility will eventually come your way.
But in terms of cognition, you need to remember that the 20 year old brain is, in fact, not fully mature. That doesn’t happen until you reach 25, I think. What you believe the world to be as a 20 year old might be false. A 20 year old is impatient, and wants to been seen and recognized. They think things revolve round them. I have seen plenty of 20-year-olds who were presented with great opportunities, but who were swiftly disappointed, told everyone to go to h.. and moved on to what I assume were greener pastures.
I guess, I once was a little like that myself. I have missed out on opportunities myself, you see. But “patience”, “networks”, “relations” and “trust” are the keywords. Most people are hired by someone they already know. And of course networking among people your own age is crucial. Someone that you know is sure to make it, and they will be searching for people their own age to join them. It is , in my view, almost impossible to predict who makes it. But their shared characteristics are gaining work experience, building relations and networks. So if you know “a mingler”, latch on.”
Historyradio.org: As the head of a writing group, you must have seen many mistakes, and many who lacked the skills. What are the most common mistakes of the rookie writer?
Berggren:……..
“They’re impatient. Afraid of criticism. You think that your way of thinking is the only one. Some lack humility. Some are lazy. Some are thin-skinned. Some jealous. Some believe themselves to be smart and that they deserve to be discovered. This is fact typical of 9 out 10 writers that we encounter. Great ego, inflated view of their own skills.”
Historyradio.org: I am going to ask you a difficult question that concerns most writers and artists at one time or another. How should one deal with rejection?
Berggren:
“This might sound like BS coming from some one with one foot in the grave, but embrace your rejections. The people I truly admire have one thing in common. They have been rejected more than most. You’re fired. You’re humiliated. And every time you learn something that makes you a better writer and better person. Rejection is the scariest thing I know. It hurts like hell, it hits us right in the gut. Still, it is the key to progress.
If you manage to put on a brave smile and move on. Rejections are not about You. The person rejecting you might be looking for something completely different. Often you will be offered new jobs from the very same person who once rejected you. As an employer I am looking for someone who is able handle themselves professionally. Patience. Humility. This can only be achieved by coming to terms with rejection. I know it sounds like crap, but this is something I know to be true. I have experienced plenty of rejections myself.”
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short storyby Jack Boyle (1881- 1928)
A MASSIVE safe, seemingly impregnable, was in the corner of the darkened office. Before it stood ‘Boston Blackie, chief of the “mob” of “peter” cracksmen. Gray-haired, stern-faced, laconic and efficient, Blackie had made his criminal profession an exact science. Given a strong box of certain dimensions, certain thickness and certain make, he knew to a fraction of a drop how much “soup,’—as the profession styles nitroglycerin,—would force the steel door from its hinges and drop it with the least possible noise on a bed of mattresses, placed by his assistants. In his eyes, a drop too much was a stupid blunder, a drop too little an inexcusable catastrophe. Snapping on an electric torch he carefully examined the plaster of soap with which he had made air-tight the tin; crack between the door and the safe walls. In the center of the door at the top fashioned a soap cup capable of holding a couple of tablespoonfuls of liquid. At the inner and lower edge of this cup a tiny orifice, unsoaped, in the crack of the door, made room for the explosive to trickle down behind it. Satisfied with his inspection, the chief turned to one of the two men behind him. “Gimme the ‘soup,” Cushions.”
“THE youngster called “Cushions” produced a bottle with hands that were not quite steady. Uncorking it, the cracks man poured a couple of teaspoonfuls into a physician’s measuring glass, then, examining his measure with infinite care, he added a couple of drops and was satisfied. Returning the bottle to the youth, he poured the heavy fluid into the soap cup. A few drops spilled on the cement floor by a shaky hand would have ended the careers of the trio. But Blackie’s hands didn’t shake. Taking a fulminating cap from his pocket, he placed it firmly against the crack through which the explosive had flowed into the safe and crushed the soap cup over it to hold it in place. A six-inch fuse dangled from the cap.
” K. Y. , give Jimmy the signal,” was the next command. The third man who, until now, had neither spoken nor moved, slipped silently away toward the front doors of the store. A moment later a peculiar tapping, scraping sound made with the backs of the finger nails was heard on the glass. It was the opium-smoker’s “rap,’—a signal familiar the country over to users of the drug. In answer, from across the street came a few whistled bars from a popular song. “Everything’s O. K.” reported K. Y., noiselessly re-entering the office. In his absence Blackie and his helper had covered the entire safe with heavy blankets, filched from the store’s shelves.
“Get the mattress,” ordered Blackie. The two men dragged in a big double mattress and laid it on the floor in front of the safe door, “A little to the right and a couple of inches farther back,” instructed the “mob” leader, measuring the door with his eve. “Get down behind that counter out there and lie close to the floor. Here she goes,” he said, striking a match and igniting the fuse. Then, with the same match, he relighted the cigarette between his lips and, without any haste, slipped through the doorway and dropped down d the counter where his pals laying. There was a hissing, sputtering sound as the fuse burned, then a smothered detonation that rattled the store windows, followed by a puff of smoke, and the great outer door of the safe, torn from its place by the irresistible power behind it, sagged outward and dropped squarely in the center of the mattress, still swathed in the torn folds of the blankets.
In a second Blackie was at the inner door of the safe, testing the combination with fingers of experience. Taking a light sledge from among the tools laid out ready on the floor he laid it flat against the door near the top and brought it down with a sharp tap on the combination. It dropped, cut off as cleanly as by a knife. Then with a steel punch he forced the broken shank back into the lock, using a leather-covered hammer to deaden the noise. A few turns of the knob and the broken tumblers and disks slipped apart. A moment’s prying and the wrecked door swung open. The safe was cracked. Unhurried and without excitement, but quickly, Boston Blackie forced drawer after drawer, tossing out flat packages of bills to the men behind him, and finally emerging himself with a coin sack marked “Gold”. This he dropped into a concealed pocket inside the lining of his overcoat. “That’s all. Let’s go, boys,” he said. The tools were left on the office floor. Sledges and hammers, drills and a few punches, are cheaply bought at midday. They are hard to explain away, however, if found on a man in the vicinity of a wrecked safe at three o’clock in the morning.
DIAGONALLY across the street from the store they had just left, an automobile engine began to cough. Crossing to the machine, in which sat a driver, muffled and goggled, Blackie and his companions climbed into the tonneau and the car shot away into the night. A half hour later the quartet lay on their hips in a circle, an opium “layout” in their midst, while the erstwhile chauffeur, called “Jimmy the Joke,” rapidly toasted the pungently sweetish brown pills, as the pipe passed round and round the circle from lip to lip. There was no discussion of the “job” they had just turned, no excitement or exultation over its success. It was all a part of the day’s work with them and, anyway, opium smokers in the throes of a “habit” have no desire for speech. Boston Blackie, whose piercing black eyes and New England birthplace had won him his nickname, lay in the position of precedence to the left of the “cook.” Next came K. Y. Lewes, second in command, whose drawling Southern accent betrayed his Kentucky boyhood. Pillowed on him was the “Cushions” Kid, so called because once when the rest piled into a freight car to make a short trip he paid his last five-dollar bill for a railway ticket—and went hungry for twenty-four hours in consequence.” And, lastly, there was “Jimmy the Joke” who had been christened James Tener. Long ears before, he had done a “jolt” in a Western penitentiary. The judge sentenced him to ten years. “Is that meant as a joke, Your Honor?” queried the prisoner blandly. “A joke!” ejaculated the old judge. “Yes, Your Honor,” replied the prospective convict. “Didn’t I just understand you to say a ‘tener’ for Tener?”
AN HOUR passed. Each of the four was beginning to feel the physical relaxation and mental exhilaration that binds its victims to opium. A knock—the “fiend’s rap”—sounded on the door. “Come in,” called Blackie. The owner of the “joint” in which they lay entered—a haggard-faced skeleton of a man called “Turkey-neck” Martin. “Good evening, Blackie,” he commenced, after carefully closing the door. “Hello, boys! How’s every little thing? The Joke’s ‘cheffing,” as usual, eh? Some cook, you are, Jimmy, old boy. Need any more ‘hop’ yet, Blackie?” “That’s not what you butted in here for, What is it you’ve got to say?” This from Blackie. ‘The human wreck half-cowered under the reprimand. “Well, it’s this way, fellows—not that it’s really any of my business,” he began hesitatingly, “but knowing what a ‘right’ crowd you fellows are, and how you put up the dough for that Denver Kid’s bonds, and—” “Aw, cut that stuff and get down to what you’re trying to say,” growled Blackie. “It’s this way,” began Turkey-neck again, “The pinch come off yesterday. They’ve got him right, and it’s a trip over the bay to the Big House if it aint squared. l’i’e’s broke, and the boys are taking up a purse.” “Who’s pinched, you gabbling fool ” interrupted Blackie. “Why, ‘Mitt-and-a-half’ Kelly. He—” “What?” cried Blackie raising himself on his elbow and glaring at the flustrated joint keeper with more excitement than any of his listeners had ever seen him show. “You come to me from that white-livered rat! Why, he just misses being a copper. I don’t put it past him to ‘stool’ at that. We’re a different breed here from that skunk. Tell him fi;)rn me that he’s safer behind the bars than—” But the joint keeper had slipped from the room and Blackie choked Ezck the flow of his indignation. His three friends waited in silence for the explanation they knew would come.
BLACKIE took the next pill in a “long-draw,” inhaling the smoke until his lungs seemed bursting, then exhaling slowly in short puffs. “I’m going to tell you the story, boys, of a fellow who had principles and paid for them, same as we all must pay for anything that’s worth while having,” he commenced. “The man I mean is “Three-Fingered Mac.”
“Poor old Mac! I remember when he got his ‘jolt,’” chimed in Jimmy. “He did one before that,” went on Blackie. It was characteristic of him that, having smoked, he dropped the aror of the Joint bit by bit, and reverted to the clean speech of his college days. “Fifteen years is what they gave him. It was a bank safe job. Fifteen years! That’s nine years, five months solid, allowing for good conduct ‘copper.’ judge can say fifteen in a fraction of a second, but it’s a long, long stretch when you have to do it—one day at a time. “Mac had a woman, loyal and true as steel, who did his jolt too, on the outside— one day at a time. That’s the worst of this rotten business. Our women have to do our time the same as we do, if they’re worth while, which Mac’s wife was. Almost all the money he’d laid away went to his ‘mouth-pieces” (lawyers) at the trial, so she opened a little millinery shop and took care of herself and the kid while Mac was ‘buried.” She wrote every week and never missed a visiting day in all of those long years. Well, at last he got his time in and they turned him out at the gate to start life with a five-dollar gold piece and a ‘con’ suit. I ran across them on the train to the city—Mac, his wife, and a long-legged boy who had been an infant when Mac went across. I was looking for a man to fill in my ‘mob’ just then, and felt him out. He shook his head. ““Blackie,” he said, ‘I’m done, I haven’t lost my nerve and you know I’ve always been “right.” But look at that little woman there. She’s waited and worked for me for nine years and five months. She’s saved enough to buy us a little chicken ranch up Petaluma way, and I’m going in for the simple life, with her and the boy to hold me straight when I get restless for the old, exciting days.’
“I SHOOK hands with him and told him how lucky he was to have a woman like that,” continued Blackie. “Then he asked me where Mitt-and-a-half Kelly was living. He had a message for him from a pal who was doing twenty up above. “He’s living at the Palm, same house with me,’” I said, ‘but he’s under cover. You and the folks come on to a show with me and I’ll take you up to see him afterward.” “‘Not tonight,’ he said. ‘Im going to spend this night at home with them, nodding over his shoulder at his wife and son. I’ll meet you to-morrow might, though, for we leave for the country the next morning.” “We went to the Orpheum the next night and Mac missed half the show explaining to me how much money could be made with chickens. Afterward, we went up to the Palm, looking for Kelly. He was out. I asked Mac down to my room, but he refused. He knew I was due to smoke and didn’t want to tempt himself with even the smell of ‘hop,” he said. So I let him into Kelly’s room with a passkey, and went down-stairs to my own layout. It was midnight then. “It couldn’t have been over half an hour, for I was still smoking off my first card, when I heard a copper’s tread on the stairs. Then two more of them. I planted the layout and lamped out through the transom. I could see them at the head of the stairs, hammering on Kelly’s door, and every man had his gun out. Mac opened the door, and in less time than it takes me to tell it they had three ‘rods’ at his head and the cuffs on his wrists. Then, after searching the room, they took him away, along with a bundle of clothes they had found. “I stepped down from the transom laughing to myself. I knew the coppers were working a ‘bum rap’, for Mac had been with me all night. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that they would have to turn him loose in the morning. When they had gone, I slipped down-stairs, for I wasn’t any too eager to interview the chief myself just then. All the way down on the stairs there was a plain trail of blood, and in the doorway a big splotch where a man had stood while he used his latchkey. I knew then that somebody had got in bad and had been hurt.
“I SPENT the rest of the night at the joint and got the first editions of the papers. I found what I was looking for plastered all over the first page. A ‘peter’ mob had been surprised at work on a safe out on the south side by a ‘harness bull’ (uniformed policeman) just as the midnight watch was changing. “There was a lot of shooting. The copper got his and died on the operating table at the hospital. One of the mob, too, was hurt, the paper said, for a trail of blood led up the street in the direction theyhad gone. A later edition announced the capture of Three-Fingered Mac, a desperate criminal just released from the penitentiary. In his room at the Palm Hotel he was caught stripping off his blood-soaked clothing. A policeman, noticing blood on the sidewalk, had traced it to the hotel and up the stairs to Mac’s room. In the room they found a bloody handkerchief and a .44 Colts with every shell exploded. The prisoner had no visible wound except a gash on his head, probably made by a night-stick. The blood on his clothing, it was explained, came from the wounds of the dead policeman with whom the prisoner had a hand-to-hand struggle as he fled. I knew then that poor old Mac wasn’t going to start for that chicken ranch the next day. I went down-town and sent a lawyer up to him, and then went out myself to break the news to that little woman of his. She hadn’t been to bed, and was waiting for him. It was the toughest job I ever tried, to hand her that paper. “He’s innocent as you are, ma’am,” I said. “He was with me from eight o’clock until midnight, and this job was done before twelve.”
”I TOOK her up to the lawyer’s office, and we waited all day for him to get to Mac. When the mouth-piece finally came in he had a worried frown and I could see more trouble ahead. ““You’ve given me a crazy man for a client,” he said, irritably. “He swears he is innocent, but admits he knows the guilty man. Says this mysterious friend came in with a bullet wound in the arm and that he dressed and bandaged the hurt. Then the fellow changed clothes, threw his revolver in the bureau drawer and skipped out, knowing the police would follow the trail of blood he left behind. While Mac was washing the blood off his hands, the coppers came battering at the door. He opened it and «Bull” Dunnigan rapped him on the head with his stick, cutting a long gash in the scalp. Then he was pinched. Not a bad yarn that, true or not. But right there’ he “crabs” it all, He absolutely refuses to tell who this other man is. Says he’ll take a jolt rather than turn informer. Can you beat that for idiocy? He says he has an alibi—that he was at the theater with a friend and didn’t leave him between eight and midnight.” “That’s true. I’m that friend,” I interrupted. “We went to the theater, sat through the whole performance— here are our seat checks —and then went up to the hotel. It was just midnight when Mac went upstairs to wait for his friend. I know he couldn’t have had a hand in that job.”
“Your testimony will help, Blackie”, the lawyer went on after a moment’s thought; “but you know you’re not exactly a witness that will carry weight with a jury. Mac says there is a bullet hole in the right sleeve of the coat belonging to his friend. Mac’s coat is bloody, but there is no hole in the cloth and no wound in his arm. If I had that coat, I’d acquit him. But listen to this: Mac says Bull Dunnigan has been trying to force him to betray this friend of his He told the detectives the same story he told me. Dunnigan came out flatly and told him he believed he was telling the truth, but that somebody would have to swing for killing that policeman. “It is either you or your friend, Take your choice,” said Dunnigan. “You’ll come through or you’ll swing, and I don’t give a finger-snap whether you are innocent or guilty. I’ll get you. And Mac swear he’ll never “stool”. Can you beat it?’ “Mac’s woman had been leaning forward looking at the lawyer with a light in her eyes that would asbestos. She had aged ten years since I saw them on the boat two days before, all so happy and carefree “My, poor boy, my poor,” she cried. I can’t dose Dim again, I won’t—not when I know he isn’t guilty. Oh, Mr. S–, save him some way, save him from himself. You’ll have to do it all yourself, for Mac won’t help vou. He’ll never “snitch” on a friend. I know him. I can’t see him go buck there to prison. Only yesterday I was so happy, so hopeful, and now,—oh, it drives me mad!”
THEN she broke down and the tears came. I was glad. Anything is better than the terrible dry-eyed grief of a woman who sees her man being torn from her—and unjustly at that. “She told the lawyer all their plans about the chicken ranch, and he perked up a bit. He told her not to worry and finally sent her home, heartened up some because he assured her that her testimony would help more than anything that had turned up. When she had gone, he turned to me. “Is that yarn true?’ he asked. “Absolutely, every word of it.” “If I could get that coat with bullet hole in it, I’d acquit him. But, Blackie, will wil we ever see that coat?” He looked at me questioningly. “Not if those framing coppers are wise that it will acquit Mac. Dunnigan will railroad him for this as sure as eggs make omelets, unless he snitches, and he won’t,” I replied.
A MONTH later they put Mac on trail. All through that month I had been expecting Kelly to show up and do something. I thought he’d get his mob. together and stick up the patrol wagon taking Mac to and from the county jail to curt. But he didn’t show. The trial wasn’t long. The papers all took it for granted that Mac was guilty, and the jurors admitted reading about the case but declared that they had no ‘fixed” opinions and could give him a fair trial. That word “fixed” muse save many a juror’s conscience, if any of ’em have any. “The coppers testified about the trail of blood that they had traced almost from the scene of the crime to the room where they found Mac washing his bloody hands and wiping blood spots from his clothes. Then they produced the revolver and the empty shells and proved that the policeman was killed with that sized gun and that it smelled of fresh powder when found in the room. Then Dunnigan filled in all the gaps in the chain of evidence. First he told what a desperate criminal Mac had been and produced his photograph in stripes taken at the penitentiary. The judge refused to permit this in evidence then, but the jury had all seen it before it was ruled out. Then he swore that Mac had a scalp wound received before he was arrested, presumably, from intimations by the prosecution, in the dearh struggle with the murdered policeman. Then Dunnigan settled Mac’s chances with the foulest perjury I ever heard. He told how he reached the dying policeman’s cot in the hospital ten minutes before he died. “Did he know who shot him? asked the prosecutor. “He didn’t know him by name, answered the detective slowly, turning to the jury would be sure to get every word, “but he said the man was a big fellow with dark clothes, and he said also that two fingers were missing on bis gun hand and chat he had a scar from his eve to his chin on the right side of his face.”
THERE sat Mac in full view of the jury with his mutilated hand in plain sight and the scar on his face turning fiery red as he heard the lie that damned him for life. 1 knew it was all off then. The lawyer did his best, but we were beaten before we started to put a defense in. I told my story—the exact truth—bu they sprung my record on me, and I knew by their looks that the jury wasn’t even paying attention to me and my story. Mac’s woman made a great witness. I tell you, boys, no one who heard her tell about their plans for that chicken ranch, and how her husband had determined to live square, could help believing her. There was something that choked up my throat in the desperation with which she fought every step of the way for her man. The jury seemed impressed for a few moments, but it didn’t last until they commenced balloting. “The landlady of the Palm was called to prove that Mac did not rent or own the room where he was caught. As ill luck would have it, Kelly had go: me to rent the room for him, he being under cover, and old Mother McGunn showed my name on the books and swore she didn’t know whether one or twenty men visited the room, as long as the rent was paid. We demanded the coat with the bullet hole in it and made an awful howl when the police denied even seeing it, but the jury set it all down as a fake of ours.
“Mac made a good witness. He told the truth in a straightforward manner— that is, all but Kelly’s name. On cross-examination the district attorney asked just one question: “Who was this man you say came in wounded just before your arrest?” “Every drop of blood seemed to leave Mac’s face. He started to speak, stopped, looked over at his wife in whose eyes there was the look of Death itself. He hesitated a second, then turned to the jury: “I refuse to answer,” he said. “Thank God it isn’t my business to be a copper like chat lying perjurer there,” pointing at Dunnigan. “I’ve never betrayed a friend or sent a man to jail yet, and I never will!” Mac was convicted anyway, but that refusal settled every doubt. The jury was out just long enough to get a dinner at the expense of the county, and then brought in a verdict of guilty and fixed the penalty at life imprisonment. A couple of them objected to hanging. As they took Mac back to jail, Dunnigan passed by him. “Just remember while you’re doing another man’s time,” he whispered, “that I said I’d get you, and I did” Mac leaped at him and would have brained him with the handcuffs if the deputy sheriffs hadn’t overpowered him. The papers next day called it “a desperate murderer’s attempt to escape.””
A HALF-DOZEN times the pipe went round the complete circle before other word was spoken. “What did the woman do?” asked Cushions at last. “There are some things too painful for even hardened crooks like us, and sometimes those same things also are too fine and sacred for a bunch like this to talk over in a place like this. That little woman and her dead hopes and plans for that ranch are among them,” answered Blackie slowly. “And now, boys, you know why I said what I did about Mitt-and-a-half Kelly. Mac is doing ‘all of it’ (life imprisonment) because he was too right to snitch even on a skunk. Kelly didn’t do a thing for him—not even as much as sending dough for his defense. Cushions, my boy, when your turn comes to do time, and it will if you stick by hop and us, remember Mac who had principle and paid for it like a man. What a price, though, when you think of that wife and boy of his!” Jimmy the Joke toasted the last pill of hop and handed the pipe to Blackie. Lewes, pulling back the heavy curtains, let in a ray of bright morning sunshine. They all bundled into their overcoats.
“I’m going,” said Blackie. “You know the meet for us to-night. Eight o’clock sharp. You three go out one at a time five minutes apart. No bunching up on the street. And Lewes, you size up that ‘hock’ shop job this afternoon. Press the button for Turkey-neck and his bill.”The joint keeper came shuffling in. “There’s an extry just out,” he began in his quavering voice. “Another swell job’s come off. That peter mob that has been doing the whole of this rough stuff around town got another one last night—it’s the Boston Department Store this time.” “Good for them,” said Blackie without interest. “About that dough to spring Kelly from jail. We—” “Let it go; let it go,” Turkey-neck broke in. “The moment you refused the money—” “Refused the money!” cried Blackie turning on the astounded joint keeper like a flash. ““Refused nothing! I said Mitt Kelly is a low-lived skunk who ought to be shot on sight. But I didn’t say I wouldn’t chip in dough to help him beat the Big House. I’d give up my last five-case note to keep the fleas on a yellow dog from doing time. We’ll put in fifty dollars. If you don’t get enough, say 50 to-night and I’ll make up the rest. But tell him from me, that he has the black curse of the snitch on him now and forever. Hell never have a day’s luck while he lives, and he’ll die in the gutter like the cur he is.* So long, fellows.”
“The man described here as Mitt-and-a-half Kelly was found shot to death in a doorway near an opium joint in Seattle some six months after the date of the incidents in this story. No trace of his murderer was ever found.”
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historyIn 2008 Radio Prague covered the publication of a new Czech book about Jean-Paul Belmondo (1933-2021, he passed away a few days ago). Their brief report described Belmondo’s unique standing in the old Soviet-bloc country; the only major, western action star to gain a foothold behind the iron curtain during the Cold War. Through him a generation of Eastern Europeans got to experience capitalist action flicks.
Among hipsters around the world today Belmondo is sometimes elevated to a rugged icon of snobbish intellectualism, through the early films of the Nouvelle Vague-movement. But in Eastern Europe he is remembered as B-movie royalty, the macho man with a twinkle in his eye.
Of course, it was Jean-Luc Godard’s À bout de souffle (1960) that became his break-through, but in many ways his collaboration with Phillipe de Broca (1933-2004) was just as important for his future career. De Broca had been a film photographer during the war in Algeria, and became so disillusioned by the events he witnessed that he decided to make more cheerful and uplifting movies. He started out as an assistant for a few Nouvelle Vague directors, but changed paths and made comedy farces when he established himself as a director. His two producers, Alexandre Mnouchkine and Georges Dancigers, suggested Belmondo for the role of the brash swashbuckling Robin Hood-character Cartouche. A few years earlier they had produced the adventure classic Fanfan la Tulipe (1952) with the legend Gérard Philipe in the lead, and now de Broca bet on Belmondo to revive the swashbuckling genre.
Cartouche (1962) was an instant box-office hit, and two years later that success was followed by L’homme de Rio (1964) – an action-packed contemporary adventure about a soldier (played by Belmondo) who pursues the men who kidnapped his girlfriend from Paris to the Amazonian jungles. The Oscar-nominated movie features a series of spectacular action-scenes, and de Broca declared in an interview that the movie was made because “he needed a hit”. His producers had only been reluctantly swayed, and he had spent five months finishing the script. The result was satisfactory, even to himself, but the film was by no means a favorite for de Broca among his own productions. He said: “This was the kind of movie I longed to see when I was 14”.
As a director, de Broca often took a hands-off approach to his actors, and Belmondo tended to follow his instincts. “Belmondo will always be Belmondo. You cannot change him. You cannot hide his personality. When he plays a drunkard, he is a drunk Belmondo. When he is in love, he is Belmondo in love.” (de Broca in Gardner 1969-70: 153-157). Belmondo’s charismatic self shone through, especially in B-movies like Tendre voyou (1966), Flic ou voyou (1979), Le cerveau (1969) and L’as des as (1982). The two latter were action-comedies by Gérard Oury, France’s pre-eminent comedy director, most famous for his collaboration with the hilarious genius Louis de Funès.
In the 60s and 70s, Belmondo became affiliated with the commercial side of French cinema. Godard and Truffaut ruled the film festivals and the student-bodegas, but ordinary Frenchmen rushed to the cinemas to experience the shenanigans of Louis de Funès and the hazardous stunts of Jean-Paul Belmondo, his broken nose and seductive smile. To critics like Pierre Maillot, however, Belmondo represented the “disillusionment” of French identity because so many of the models for genre movies were American.
Two of the great “golden ages” that have supported the self-esteem of French cinematic culture have been the poetic realism of the 30s and 40s and the Nouvelle Vague (“New Wave”) of the 50s and 60s. As a major star and the leading man of the Nouvelle Vague Belmondo therefore became the natural successor to Jean Gabin, the icon of the 30s. But where Gabin had acted tempered and cool – often under dire circumstances – Belmondo would burst with joie de vivre. There was a generational gap between parents in the 1950s and the new rebellious youth. The young wanted more than traditional French values, they needed happy endings. The vulgar neon-lights of Hollywood and Las Vegas beckoned in the distance. Belmondo grew out of the Nouvelle Vague into a new commercial reality.
The Armenian-born Henri Verneuil (1920-2002) was a director unconvinced by new wave-ideology. The Belmondo we witness in Verneuil’s movies was rougher, the soldier in the second world war, the tough criminal and the uncompromising cop. The inspiration for Peur sur la ville (1975) was probably Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry. Belmondo plays a policeman pursuing the serial killer Minos through the streets of Paris – in stylish cinematography. The Belmondo we see in this movie is not his usual careless self, the lives of young women were at stake. A contemporary reviewer called it “a tough and ruthless movie”. The newspaper stated that “It was impressive to see Belmondo dangling in a rope from a building, jumping between roof-tops several floors above the asphalt and making subway journeys on top of the cars. Because Belmondo has no stuntman…” (Aftenposten, 06.02.1976)
Belmondo also kept a serious face in the gangster movies Borsalino (1970) and Le voleur (1967). The latter was directed by Jacques Cousteau’s old cameraman, Louis Malle, today one of the major names in the history of French cinema. In Le Voleur (1967) Belmondo shines as an actor. He penetrates the mind of a professional thief. He persuasively portrays nerves of steel and deliberate theft. According to the contemporary press Belmondo used all his tricks, “his whole range of charm”. Like Belmondo, Malle would transcend Nouvelle Vague conventions, and create a memorable genre movie aimed at the masses, based on a novel, quite contrary to contemporary ideas about the “auteur”.
Belmondo was therefore not only an actor who drifted from art into commercialism, he was a personification of a suppressed part of French cultural history.
There existed another France alongside Godard and Truffaut and the other Cahiers-directors, a cinematic culture unashamedly modeled on Hollywood. Belmondo, that first ingratiating face of the Nouvelle Vague-movement, became the major box-office draw of this “other” France. He was just as charming as Roger Moore, and – at his best -adventurous to the level of Harrison Ford.
by Michael Wynn editor Historyradio.org
*
Sources:
Philippe de Broca and Paul Gardner, «Philippe de Broca: talking to Paul Gardner», The Transatlantic Review, no. 33/34 (winter 1969-70), p. 153-157
Aftenposten (a major Norwegian newspaper), 06.02.1976, s. 6 (signed O.T.)
Note: This article was originally published in the Norwegian movie review Montages.no by Michael Henrik Wynn 30. januar 2014. It has been translated by him and published at this site with the consent of Montages.no.
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history / literatureRecent visitors to the satellite capitals of Eastern Europe have ‘been surprised to find excited crowds Lining up to buy tickets for performances of non-Communist films, plays and musicals.
Communist officials, however, have their own reasons for permitting this seemingly paradoxical state of affairs. For one thing, satellite leaders apparently feel that the granting of minor entertainment concessions is a relatively harmless way of allowing the people an escape valve for their pent-up irritation and boredom.
Menioérs of the Communist ruling apparatus, despite their insistence that “all is calm and under control,” seem to realize that the boredom which appears to be an unavoidable accompaniment of the party’s dictatorship must be prevented from developing into more serious social unrest.
There is boredom with party jargon, boredom with the disparity between word and deed, boredom with the whole heritage of a Communist decade. The satellite regimes appear to be trying to counter this sense of irritation and isolation from the rest of the world partly by economic concessions and partly by a more liberal attitude toward popular entertainment.
Communist officials, however, are finding that a solution for their self-created problem is far from simple.
An impressive list of facts illustrate the dilemma of entertainment circles in the Communist states. Plays and films which receive official praise and recognition have proved to be flops, while films and theatrical products condemned for their “petty-bourgeois and decadent tendencies” have had popular runs. In Poland, out of a total of 3,400 motion picture theaters, only 96 have been profitable. In Hungary, 300 film theaters were on the verge of closing, until a 30 percent increase in the price of tickets and a system of government subsidies saved them, In Bulgaria, the biggest box-office successes have ‘been the locally produced “Legend of Love,” “Year of Love” and “On A Little Island.”
However, these very films were censured by the Party’s Central Committee for “undermining Communist ideology, distorting and wrongly representing the character of the people’s revolutionists.”
What, on the other hand, has been the fate of works rich in Communist ideology?
Some Hungarian provincial theaters which tried to conform with party guidance and filled their repertoires with Soviet productions and other straight propaganda plays finished their seasons in virtual bankruptcy. The National Theatre of Miskolc, largest provincial town in Hungary, played consistently before houses a quarter or half-filled during the last season. On one occasion only seven theater-goers turned up for a performance of “One Night” by Cerbatov. The Kecskemet Theater finished its season with a 50,000 dollar (one million forints) deficit. The National Theater of Gyor was given high official praise for its “excellent performances of Soviet and Czech plays.” But the box-office results were so appalling that the manager resigned in the middle of ‘the season. This theater went ‘bankrupt despite heavy subsidies.
Conversely, those theaters and playhouses in Hungary and Poland whose managers bowed to popular demand have played to full houses. In Poland, 19 modern “western” plays had successful 1958 runs. In Hungary the plays of Tennessee Williams, Thornton Wilder and John Osborne, as well as pre-war operettas and light musical comedies, are unrivaled as ‘box-office hits.
Party spokesmen have repeatedly scolded directors of cultural centers end theaters for saying “we go bankrupt with modern Socialist plays, for works with topical themes can be neither artistic, nor successful, so let’s turn back to bourgeois entertainment.” The University Playhouse in Budapest has tried both ways. A series of shows about revolutionary songs and poets were produced for swell audiences. The next program concentrated on popular folk songs and a recital of Burns’ poems. As the Hungarian newspaper Nepszabadsag remarked, the directors “avoided with painful cautiousness the modern Soviet and Hungarian Socialist works, assuming that in doing so they could avoid the empty houses.” While the party paper scoffed at the unpolitical schedule, the series drew capacity audiences.
Recently a special commission investigated the program of 42 cultural centers and 10 factory clubs in Hungary. It concluded that operettas, folk songs and bourgeois plays are preponderant. When asked why this is so, the managers replied unanimously: “This is what our people want. Coming from work, they want light entertainment. And we need the income in order to finance our other programs,” The same argument is valid in other satellite countries, such as Romania. Currently, a musical comedy has had a popular run in the Tanase Theater in Bucharest, although the director was accused by the party newspaper of having succumbed to bourgeois taste and ideology. Night clubs, such as the Lido, Ambassador and Continental in Bucharest have been reprimanded for playing decadent music – although to full houses.
In Romania and Hungary, regime authorities have started a massive campaign of persuasion and coercion to strengthen party guidance over a series of flourishing amateur theater ensembles. More then 4,000 Hungarian artists who tour in small groups, and are not affiliated with large theaters, are being screened by a special commission. Every single performance must be submitted to a Control Board 15 days before the scheduled showing. The cultural departments of the Municipal Councils also exercise control over songs and plays, In Romania, roving inspectors supervise the local ensembles. The manager and director of the Victoria Club in Cluj, for example, were discharged because they permitted presentation of a program “pervaded with petty bourgeois taste.” In general, professional or semi-professional theatrical groups in Hungary, Poland and to some extent in Romania prefer one-act plays or musicals which ere devoid of any propaganda and political angles. While heavily-subsidized regular theaters wrestle with chronic financial troubles, these ensembles, by meeting popular demand are immediately successful.
At the same time, however, satellite financial authorities demand box-office results from the theaters and movie houses, while regime cultural spokesmen seem determined to repress any tendencies toward artistic freedom. So the unhappy managers are forced to pay lip-service to the cause of “socialist realism” by advertising Soviet and other Communist plays and then filling their houses with school-children or workers bribed with free tickets. Simultaneously they try to balance their budgets by showing more “western” or non-political Hungarian plays.
“We must eliminate the gap between the wishes of the unsophisticated masses and the superior claims of Socialist culture,” the recently issued cultural directives of the Hungarian Communist Party warned. But “the clash between the needs of the box office and those of party doctrine remain as sharp as ever. Meanwhile, satellite theater managers and directors are constantly tormented by the problem of either reaping official praise and going bankrupt or making money and running the risk of being labeled ‘politically unreliable’…”
From the 1959 CIA report, “The Creative Artist in A Communist Society” (now in the public domain and free online). Paul Landy (born 1929-) is a former Budapest writer and editor who left Hungary after the country’s unsuccessful 1956 freedom uprising.
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short storyby John Llewelyn Rhys (1911-1940)
WHEN the Old Man came into the ante-room the young officers began to rise in their chairs, but he waved them back with an impatient gesture. It was warm and comfortable in there and the tenor of idle chatter continued. One could hear the crackle of a newspaper page and the sound of bidding from the four who were playing a Chinese game in the corner, their minds apparently intent on the little walls of white blocks on the table before them. ‘ Beneath the Wing-Commander’s arm were a number of files. On the outside of the files was a map. Robert recognised its shape and his heart kicked inside him. And now every pilot in the squadron was watching the senior officer, . watching him without movement of head, watching him while seeming to read, watching’ him while crying ‘Three Characters.’ The Old Man nodded, first at one, then another, and finally at Robert. Silently they rose to their feet, leaving their circles of friends, their reading, their Chinese game, and filed into ‘the neighboring room. The Wing-Commander stood by the grand piano waiting for them to gather about him. 1 IE looked suddenly older, Robert thoughts Now his hair, shone with grey, new lines emphasised the hardness of his features. But his voice was unchanged, harsh, imperious. ‘Gentlemen, the show’s tomorrow.’ He paused and looked ‘slowly at the circle of pilots. . . ‘The target, you know. Here’s the latest from Intelligence and a few other little details I want you to know.’ ? Robert heard his instructions and memorised them, with an ease born of practice, but the words seemed meaningless rattling like hail on the roof of his mind.
‘Any questions?’
But they were all old hands, and no naive youngsters among them wanted to make themselves heard. ‘Well … good luck! I know you’ll put up a good show.’ His voice was suddenly shy. ‘I wish they’d let me come with you.’ They went back to the ante-room, went on talking, reading, playing the Chinese game. Robert sat down by a friend.
‘If anything,’ Robert’s voice was quiet as be flipped the pages of a magazine, ‘if anything were . .] . to slip up . .; . tomorrow, would you attend to the odd detail?’
‘Of course, old boy.’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘Yes.’
‘Tough show?’
‘Tough enough.’ It was almost day as Robert walked over to Flights with the Squadron Leader, and cold, with the half light lying dead on the roofs of the camouflaged hangars and the wind sock napping drearily on its pole.
Mechanics were beginning to start up the motors which clattered protestingly to life, back-firing and shuddering on their bearers.
‘Looks like a good day, sir?’
The leader of the raid looked up, then kicked his heel into the turf.
‘Yes; hope this frost holds off. I hope to hunt next week.’
When Robert got to his machine only the starboard engine had been started. Impatiently he watched -the efforts of the crews. If only they’d get that engine running, he thought, if only they’d get it running. He, went up to the fitter, ‘You haven’t over-doped?’ ‘
No, Sir. She’ll go now.’ Still she refused to start. He climbed up the ladder into the cock.
‘Got your throttle setting right?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said the corporal, ‘she’ll start in a minute.’ The second pilot was inside, busy at the navigator’s table. ‘All set?’ Robert asked.
‘Bombs, petrol, and everything hunkey-dorey, sir,’ the sergeant answered.
If only they’d start that engine, he thought. If only they’d get it going and we could take off. At last the motor roared to life, and be climbed into his seat, ran up the engines, pulled up the ladder and waved away the chocks. As he waited on the aerodrome, his airscrews throwing long flickering shadows, he kicked the heavy rudder violently from side to side. Where were the others? Where were the others? They would be late off the ground and there would be a row. Then he glanced at his watch, and found to his surprise that it was five minutes to his zero hour. And now the other machines were taxiing towards him, huge, heavily laden monoplanes, grim against the dawn, moving fast over the close cut turf, beating down dean thick lines through the white frost. He glanced down at the controls, felt the various cocks, checked the cylinder head temperatures, the hydraulic and brake pressures. Then, when all was ready, he pushed open the throttles, the noise increasing till it filled the long, narrow compartment, beating mercilessly upon his ears, drowning the screams of the hydraulic gear. She was heavy with full petrol and a belly full of bombs, but as he felt her becoming airborne he brought the wheel gently back and she bumped up into the air. From time to tune Robert switched on his microphone and spoke to each gunner in his turret. They were alert and cheerful, and behind him the second pilot worked at his check navigation. Sometimes they saw fishing boats whose crews waved frantically, and minesweepers busy in their deadly task, and once a convoy with destroyers like sheep dogs on its flanks. The weather was fine, with high lumps of cumulus, and they began to climb. In a little while the second pilot came forward and held up eight fingers, Robert nodded. Eight minutes. He felt cold inside, his teeth were shattering, he wished they were in the thick or It, and grinned at his companion. The target came into view, a smudge on the horizon. The leader began to give his orders over the radio, and they started a big circle so as to attack from out of the sun. As they came up the sky filled with anti-aircraft fire. The second pilot had switched on his microphone and Robert could hear him jeering at the enemy gunners, for the shooting was poor, though some of the bursts were un comfortably close. They came over the target and released their bombs. Robert watched the sky unceasingly for enemy fighters, wondering if any aircraft were lurking in its glare waiting for the anti-aircraft to cease before diving to the attack. The second pilot was busy with the camera recording the hits far below, whistling as he worked. A burst of Archies off the port wing tip made the machine rock violently. Soon they were out of range of the ground guns, and Robert saw one of the other machines break formation ‘and rock its wings. He spoke to the gunners. ‘Keep your eyes skinned. There’s a fighter about somewhere.’ Then he saw it, a lone enemy machine, a single seater fighter with square wing tips. It came up quite slowly, lazily, lying on to the tail of one of the bombers. It was so simple a manoeuvre that it might have been a pupil on his circuit at a flying training school. As it turned off, short jabs of black smoke jerked themselves from the back cockpit to the bomber. The fighter turned slowly on to its side. First smoke, then flames poured from its engine, splashing down the fuselage. In the bright sunshine, against the blue sea, the machine fell slowly, twisting, turning, diving.
‘Here they come!’ said the second pilot; and Robert saw that the sky seemed to be filled with fighters. They broke up and began to attack. Robert watched two circling him from the front. As they turned the flank his rear-gunner switched on his microphone and Robert could hear him swearing. Tracer from the enemy streamed overhead, curved in a graceful trajectory, and dropped out of sight. Then the gunner was silent Robert heard the rattle of his guns and his voice, jubilant ‘Got him, sir.’
‘Good. Keep you eyes skinned. Be patient,’ Robert said. Now a twin-engined aircraft came up on the beam, accompanied by one of the smaller fighters, which attacked from the rear. A burst of fire shattered the roof over the second pilot’s head. The front gunner coolly brought his guns to bear. The twin was an ugly brute, the first Robert had seen with extended stabilisers on the tail. He was frightened now. His mouth dry, his hands wet inside the silk lining of his gloves. Attack after attack came up, filled the air with tracer, turned lazily away. The middle gunner brought down another fighter before he was hit in the leg. Robert sent the second – pilot back- in his place. One burst of machine-gun fire shattered half the instrument panel, sent a shower of broken glass over his knees. Darkness filled his eyes, but in his mind he could still see the face of the enemy gunner, red and foolishly grim, as he fired from the rear cockpit of the fighter. The wheel went limp in his hands, the strain of months of war, the nag of responsibility, lifted from his consciousness… Then his vision cleared, and he – pulled the aircraft level. To his surprise the fighters had vanished, and at his side was the Squadron Leader’s machine, which he thought he had seen go down. He began to sing, thumping his hands on the wheel. They were separated from the others and flew in tight formation, the Squadron Leader turning his head from time to time and grinning and doing a thumbs up. They lost height till they were just above the sea, their patterned shadows sliding effortlessly over mile after mile of water desolation. On crossing the coast their senior officer altered course for base. They flew at a few hundred feet over the sleepy countryside, their shadows now vaulting hedge and haystack. As he looked, first to the north at the black rich earth of the fens, marshalled by dykes, then south to the loveliness of Suffolk, each feature of the country fitted into its place in his mind, each town he knew, each stretch of river. How familiar, he thought. How well I know it all. Truly, England is my village. Soon the little lake, shaped like an elephant’s trunk, appeared and they dived low over the hangars, then broke away, dropped their wheels, and came to land. There were no other machines about and the camp seemed strangely deserted. A little later they walked into the mess. It was warm and comfort able in there and the words and phrases of the many conversations jumbled themselves into a haze of sound. At the table by the fire there was an empty chair at the Chinese game. When Robert saw the other players he stopped in his stride. There was Nails, who got his on the first show, and Dick, who went down in flames, and Thistle, his second pilot and Badger, who was lost in the North Sea in December. ‘Come on’ Badger said. ‘We’re waiting for you.’ ‘But I thought …’ Robert said. ‘I thought …’ A VOICE from a distance interrupted him. A woman’s voice. There were no women in the room. Then the room and the men in it were gone. Robert was lying in a bed,, in a long, dim chamber With other beds up and down its length. The face of the woman whose voice he had heard was looking at him. . It was an *frg»foh face, plain and pleasant, framed severely in a familiar headdress. ‘What was it you thought?’ the nurse was saying to him. ‘You’re all right, you know. Home in England. The second pilot brought you in.’ Robert stirred fretfully in the bed, but the pain made him lie still again. The nurse put a hand to his bandaged head to quiet him. He closed his eyes and thought of the room he had left just a moment ago. He tried to will himself back into it, to be with Badger and the others. It bad seemed so hospitable’ there, so farm, so safe, so full of friends, so free of pain. He couldn’t reach it. Almost . . . Almost . . . Not quite. He couldn’t What h~d happened to him — that he had been there with them, the brave, admired dead, and come away and couldn’t get back to them again? In pain and bewilderment be thought: ‘I wish I knew— I— wish— I knew
From The Mail (Adelaide) 22 February 1941
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historyArchaeologists have discovered a treasure deep in the jungles of meso-America more valuable than any city of gold: a Mayan writing system that developed in isolation from Europe or the ancient cultures of Africa and Asia. However, due to the passage of time and our own brutality as colonizers only fragments remain. But what do we know about these sophisticated, urban people and their hieroglyphs? As always, language offers rare glimpses into the minds of the defeated. Historyradio.org contacted Brown University’s Anthropology department, and talked to Mallory Matsumoto, a Ph.d. student who is a specialist on Maya culture and writing.
Historyradio.org: The Maya were one of the very few literate cultures in ancient meso-America, how common was reading and writing among their people? Did everyone know how to read and write?
Mallory Matsumoto: As far as we can tell—from the quantity of texts we have, their contents and contexts, archaeological evidence for scribes, and comparison with other cultures—only a small minority in pre-Columbian Maya society would have been able to read or write. Moreover, these people probably would have been elites; some lower-status persons or commoners, who were the majority, may have been able to recognize the hieroglyphs as writing or even interpret a few signs, but probably did not engage with the writing system much more than that.
Historyradio.org: Did the Maya use literature for personal entertainment like we do today?
Mallory Matsumoto: For the most part, we don’t have direct evidence indicating in what context or for what purposes the Maya used their hieroglyphic texts—we must deduce this largely from text content and context, including where and when it was created. For example, some monumental texts were positioned to be clearly visible to people, in a space that would have been accessible to many; thus, these may have been intended to serve a broadcasting function. Their texts often record historical or biographical information about the dynasty and appear with images of the king or his allies. The relatively few surviving murals, like those at Bonampak, Rio Azul, or Xultun, would have only been visible to those who were able to enter the building or tomb in which they were painted, and in some cases, the hieroglyphs were small enough that the viewer would need to come up to the wall to read them. In contrast, writing on portable objects, like ceramic vessels or ornaments, is thought to have been intended for more restricted or even individual use. These texts may more directly address the object itself or a mythological narrative, for example, rather than political events.
Historyradio.org: Do we know anything about what sort of literature they had? Is it possible to talk of any Maya literary style, for instance?
Mallory Matsumoto: Unfortunately, it’s not clear to what extent the texts we have represent the entire breadth of Maya hieroglyphic writing as it was used in pre-Columbian times. Most hieroglyphic texts have not survived, because of a combination of preservation bias that favors materials more durable than bark paper or (probably) palm leaves, (intentional or otherwise), and random chance.
Nonetheless, one key stylistic feature of Maya writing and orality for which we have ample evidence is parallelism, a strategy of articulating two or more comparable elements (words, grammatical forms, etc.) to add nuance or communicate additional meaning. In its most basic form, this strategy juxtaposes two elements (words, grammatical forms, etc.) in a couplet. But more elaborate examples can combine three or more elements to convey very subtle levels of nuance. We have examples of parallelism in hieroglyphic texts from pre-Columbian times, as well as in alphabetic writing and oral traditions recorded since the early colonial period, and it remains an integral component of Maya expression through the present.
Historyradio.org: Many of the books were of course destroyed during the Spanish conquest by people like Diego De Landa? Do we know anything about what was lost? What do the sources tell us about what Landa destroyed?
Mallory Matsumoto: Almost all pre-Columbian books have been destroyed or lost. Some simply decayed; painted and plastered bark paper would have needed extraordinary conditions to survive, especially in the hot, humid Maya Lowlands. In this context, it is unsurprising that the four books that we do have all date to within a few centuries of European contact. Archaeologists have found eroded remains of much older, pre-Columbian books, but they are illegible because they are so fragmentary.
Most of those books that did manage to survive the stress of time, the elements, and general wear and tear, were abandoned or confiscated by colonial officials as part of cultural persecution under European colonialism. Because these books were written in a writing system completely foreign to the colonizers and many books were integral components of Maya spiritual and ritual practice, they were seen generally as threats to the Europeans’ civilizing and evangelizing mission. We do have records of Europeans seeing these books, but for the most part, their descriptions have proved to be unreliable for reconstructing the original books’ contents. More frequently, they refer to the documents in passing as exotic and impenetrable, if not outright threatening, objects.
Historyradio.org: What about the remaining manuscripts, what sort of text are they?
Mallory Matsumoto: Only four books or codices are known to have survived into the present. These books contain hieroglyphs and images painted on bark paper, and their contents are, as far as we can tell, largely calendrical, religious, or astronomical. However, many passages are still opaque, so there is plenty that these codices have left to tell that we don’t yet understand.
Historyradio.org: Are there any significant literary texts inscribed in stone?
Mallory Matsumoto: Almost all known hieroglyphic writing is preserved on more durable media, like stone or ceramic, although a handful of surviving texts were recorded on wood, bone, shell, or other, more fragile materials. Hence, texts inscribed in stone have been critical in decipherment efforts and in the ongoing development of our understanding of pre-Columbian Maya political history, among other issues. However, they are not, as far as we can tell, representative of all genres of Maya writing: those on stone monuments typically deal with politically, historically, or dynastically relevant information, whereas those on portable stone objects like jade celts or earspools are, necessarily, briefer, and tend to focus on the immediate context of the object itself and its user.
Historyradio.org: What about the oral traditions of the Maya people, do they in any way reflect what you have discovered in manuscripts and in texts?
Mallory Matsumoto: Many narratives known from later oral traditions probably would have been recorded in books and other media that have not survived into the present. We see hints of this in texts from the colonial period, most famously the Popol Wuj, that record community histories and cosmology. However, it’s likely that much content of known oral traditions would not have readily been written down during the colonial period, at least not in documents that were made available to those from outside the local community, because they could have been seen as incompatible with European (especially Christian) values. We have a small number of comparable texts from the pre-Columbian period as well, including the four surviving codices, but most known hieroglyphic texts are different in content and style from oral traditions that have been recorded since European contact.
Historyradio.org: The Maya language system seems very difficult, does it bear any resemblance to any other language found in meso-America or elsewhere?
Mallory Matsumoto: Mayan languages form their own linguistic family and are not known to be related to other languages in Mesoamerica, but there has been a substantial amount of contact and borrowing between Mayan languages and those spoken by their neighbors, including Mixtec, Zapotec, and Nahuatl. The language primarily recorded in hieroglyphic texts, now referred to as Classic Mayan, is no longer spoken today. Even at the time, it was probably an elite, literary language that was not spoken by most of the population. Around 30 Mayan languages are spoken now by several million people, although most of them are not directly descended from Classic Mayan.
Historyradio.org: Do you know if the rediscovery of the Mayan script has influenced any modern mexican writers, or literary movements?
Mallory Matsumoto: Research on pre-Columbian Maya contexts has certainly influenced contemporary literary and artistic movements. Artists are incorporating elements and motifs from pre-Columbian Maya culture into their paintings, sculptures, prose, poetry, etc. Growing interest, both locally and internationally, in (especially pre-Columbian) Maya society and culture has also generally inspired more pride and association in some contemporary Maya peoples with the heritage of the more distant past. One important, recent development in this context has been the revitalization of the hieroglyphic script itself, led by local and international intellectuals interested in reclaiming the ancient writing system in the present. In addition to hosting workshops to disseminate knowledge of the script, they have also created new murals, paintings, books, and monuments with hieroglyphic writing.
Historyradio.org: What is the most surprising thing you have discovered after the Mayan scripts were deciphered?
Mallory Matsumoto: One key realization, catalyzed by the work of Tatiana Proskouriakoff and Heinrich Berlin in the mid-20th century, has been that the content of hieroglyphic texts, especially on monuments, is overwhelmingly historical and biographical, rather than singly focused on esoteric, spiritual themes. This advancement had consequences for our view of pre-Columbian Maya civilization as a whole—as scholars have become able to read more and more and have interpreted them as historical sources, they have developed a more dynamic view of Maya politics and warfare, among other aspects of society. It continues to drive much current epigraphic and archaeological research as we have been able to reveal more of the complexities of pre-Columbian Maya society.
For me personally, one of the more surprising aspects of studying the Maya hieroglyphic script has been the sheer diversity of the corpus—of the text forms and contents, of the objects on which they were created, of the manner of presenting the texts, of the materials used to produce them, of the contexts in which they were made and used, among other aspects. It continues to remind me just how many perspectives and corners of Maya epigraphy there are to be explored.
Historyradio.org: Are there any remaining mysteries concerning the Mayan scripts?
Mallory Matsumoto: Despite decades of intense and insightful epigraphic work, the Maya hieroglyphic script has not yet been fully deciphered; a number of glyphs cannot yet be interpreted, phonetically, semantically, or both. The early and late hieroglyphic texts remain some of the most enigmatic—to really understand the history and development of the script, we need to be able to read them, which will require the discovery of additional texts and more concentrated effort from scholars.
We also know relatively little, for instance, about how much linguistic diversity that the hieroglyphic script records. Most texts seem to have been written in a relatively standard variant, now called Classic Mayan, but this elite literary language would not have been the primary language of everyone, certainly not most non-elites across the region who spoke any of many different Mayan languages. Scholars have found some evidence of local, vernacular influence on hieroglyphic texts, but we still do not fully understand the relationship of the writing system to spoken languages(s), and work on this topic remains ongoing.
And these are just a few examples—there certainly plenty of issues waiting to be addressed by future generations of Maya epigraphers. Every discovery or advancement in Maya archaeology or epigraphy raises more questions.
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short storyby Michael Henrik Wynn
I have suspected my neighbor of using my garden hose without my permission for many years, perhaps even 20. Of course, I have never asked him about it, even if he sometimes comes to dinner in my own home. In stead, I have begun watching him. I sit by my window in the evening observing him as he goes about his business. My thought was that if I could catch him in the act then I would rush out and finally have my theories proven.
I am retired, and I don’t have much else to do. After having been at my post every morning some years, I discovered that someone else, the neighbor one house up, was in fact using my neighbor’s garden hose in his absence, most certainly without his permission. Clearly, this was extremely immoral, and I would not stand for it. So, I got the idea that if I informed my long hated Nemesis about the fact that his neighbor was taking liberties, the two of them would bring about each other’s downfall.
So, one morning I casually walked up to my dishonest neighbor and mentioned, almost in passing, that I had seen the neighbor one house down entering his house that morning. My neighbor did not say anything, but his eyes revealed a total shock. I was very pleased, and returned to my lookout post.
The next day, I could see my Nemesis peering through his curtains, obviously trying to verify my gossip. He also began walking down the road, looking up at his neighbor’s house in disbelief. The two passed even each other in the street, and my Nemesis gave the neighbor a very nasty look. I almost had to smile.
But what happened then was not what I expected. My Nemesis told me over dinner that he had discovered that the matter was related to a use of a garden hose, and that he had talked with his neighbor one house down, and that the garden hose would be placed in the shed, where they both could get to it with ease. The matter was settled, he said.
This was not what I wanted, so I had to come up with something else in the spur of the moment. “And what about your car?” I asked. “My car?” said my neighbor. “Yes, I have seen your neighbor driving your car while you are away? I thought you had an agreement?” My neighbor was wonderfully shocked, threw down his dinner napkin and ran out the door.
The next morning the two of them were shouting it out on the front lawn. I was hidden behind a semitransparent curtain in front of an open window. I could not see their faces, but I saw the distinct silhouettes of their waving arms and heard their mutual accusations and insults. I almost laughed when my long held Nemesis struck his neighbor in the face. Now it would be a matter for the police, and the courts would be involved. And I was quite right.
I wandered down the road to the neighbor one house down. I have never known him very well. Still, I feel some connection to him because his sister is the ex-wife of my own brother. She is a very nice person, but I have kept my distance out of respect for my brother. They quarreled, you see.
I found him frantically dialing something on his mobile phone. He had a black eye, and was very agitated. “Hello”, I said. “Have you been in an accident?” I pointed to my own eye to indicate what I meant. “No! I most certainly have not,” he said. “My neighbor has gone absolutely insane and has started to accuse me of using his car. It all started with me using his garden hose without his permission. I thought it would be no big deal.”“No big deal!!” I exclaimed. “Taking liberties with others is a huge breach of trust. And now he has struck you in the face! You must take legal action!”“I was planning to, but then I thought my credibility would be ruined by the fact that I had used his garden hose. I have admitted this in front of witnesses. But using a garden hose is not the same as using his car. Which is what he is now claiming.”“Well”, I said. “Your neighbor might not be as morally upright as he is pretending to be. In fact, I may be willing to testify in court to this fact. And as you know, I may be retired. But I have impeccable credentials after spending almost 40 years as a clerk in the legal department of the town property registry. No one will doubt my word”.“Really? You would do such a thing for me? But we hardly know each other?”“We do in a way. Many years ago, your sister was married to my younger brother. I have never mentioned it because they argued so terribly, and I kept my distance out of respect for my brother. But I have always liked your sister much better than my own brother.”“I see,” he said and thoughtfully scratched his ear. “Will you give me a week to think about this. I will do as you say. But I must find a good lawyer. Some are very expensive?”“Of course”, I said and smiled confidently. “I understand completely”.I then returned to my home, and had a full bottle of wine to celebrate. Finally, I would be given a chance to confront my best friend about his illegitimate use of my garden hose. The whole world would be able to read the court transcripts a hundred years from now. If there is one thing a legal clerk knows, it is that history does not remember things that are not written in black and white.A week later, I was informed that a date for a trial was set. Of course, the case was not given priority, so we all had to wait half a year. But it was worth the wait because matters of principle cannot go unsettled.The two of them appeared in court on opposite sides with each their own suited lawyers. I was seated at the back, and would appear as a witness later. They both knew this, but I had not been too specific about what I was going to say. I had mentioned the hose, but I thought I would air some other flaws in my Nemesis’ character that had annoyed me over the years.First, there was some legal mambo-jumbo, but then finally the man was on the stand telling the horrific story of the unmotivated violence to which he had been so unfairly subjected. I smiled as he recounted the unsubstantiated car story to the court. “But of course, this is nothing compared to the man who is about to appear as a witness. He always uses this man’s lawnmower when he is gone. And he also sometimes steals his mail.”“WHAT!!” I shouted from the back.“Yes, I can confirm this” my Nemesis said. “I have seen this many times. He is always taking liberties. He is not honest. I am very sorry for having struck you. Will you forgive me?”Then the two of them met in front of the judge, and hugged. The judge sighed. Then, he lifted his gavel and, almost in dismay, struck at the table as he said: “case dismissed”. My two neighbors and their lawyers then left, almost without looking at me.I sat alone at the back utterly confused. But then I got up and shouted at the judge: “I have NEVER EVER used someone else’s lawnmower without their permission. These are all lies, I tell you!”.
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literatureA few years back Ify Iroakazi, a Nigerian drama student, sat down and wrote a fantasy novel, a dark 400-page epic about war between kings, magic and revenge. However, writing such a book is one thing, getting it out to the public is another. We asked him some questions about the difficulties he has faced as an African.
Historyradio.org: There can’t be that many African fantasy epics? Why did you decide to write a fantasy novel?
Ify Iroakazi: I chose fantasy because this literary genre affords me the opportunity to explore life and reality beyond this material world. I think that it is only in fantasy that writers stretch their imaginative string to its limit. Your imagination must be highly fertile before you will be able to write a great fantasy novel. Take Harry Potter and the Songs of Ice and Fire (Game of Throne) series, The Wheel of time, The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings and many more. The writers of these fantasy novels taught me that fantasy writers are not only writers, but also inventors and creators. We invent objects and create beings in fantasy books. And by reading these works, readers will enrich their lives.
Historyradio.org: Which writers would you say inspired you the most?
Ify Iroakazi: A lot of writers inspired me. I am simply a lover of words and beautiful sentences. I enjoy fiction and non-fiction – there are no limts – I am good as long as I have something new to learn or faint memories to rekindle. But I would say that Shakespeare’s The Tempest introduced me to fantasy.
Historyradio.org: When you wrote the novel, did you have any idea about how you would go about getting it published?
Ify Iroakazi: No. I knew absolutely nothing about publishing when I began writing this work, but I believed like every other writer that somehow it would be published. Even when I was done writing, I still was not sure of the direction.
Historyradio.org: Tell us something about the difficulties you have faced?
Ify Iroakazi: The first difficult was money. I was and still am very poor. There is no shame in telling the truth about yourself. Born and raised in an environment where I lack the basic necessities of life, I struggle to survive each day. I am very ambitious and I would dare even the devil (hahaha) to change my narrative. My worst ambition was trying to get a university education. This is truly the worst. I think poverty is the major challenge in this part of the world. People rarely afford what to eat, decent shelter and decent clothes. I could not afford the services of proofreaders/ editors when I was done writing the final manuscript. This is one of the reasons it took so long for the book to be published.
Another difficulty is finding interested literary agents and traditional publishers to pitch my manuscript. I tried few online. Well, I don’t want to go into my experiences here. But just remember that I am a Nigerian. The first person (I think he is also the only person) who has ever trusted and believed in me outside the shores of Nigeria is a Norwegian guy I met on Facebook. He edited this work for me and helped with the publishing as well.
Historyradio.org: You don’t even own a computer, do you? How did you manage to get the text into a digital format?
Ify Iroakazi: No, I don’t own a computer. I wrote the greater part of the work on paper, a large exercise for a book, and then paid for it to be typed. The last part of it I typed with my phone using an app.
Historyradio.org: What about the price of the book, can you afford to buy your own book?
Ify Iroakazi: Hahahaha…This is a very funny question. But unfortunately the answer is that I cannot afford the paperback of my own book which is 14.99 USD. The one I think I would have been able to afford was the Kindle version which is 4.99 USD if Amazon had not restricted readers in Africa from accessing it.
Historyradio.org: What about other Africans, can they buy it?
Ify Iroakazi: I think not as many as those on the other side of the planet can afford the paperback. Like I said earlier, Amazon restricts readers in Africa from accessing the cheaper version, the eBook.
Historyradio.org: What about payment. Not all payment options are available to Africans, are they?
Ify Iroakazi: No. This was also the difficult I faced during the time I was trying to publish this work. Amazon KDP doesn’t do direct deposits into bank accounts in Nigeria. Writers and publishers here have to go through certain intermediaries to receive their royalty. Some of these intermediaries include PayPal and Payoneer, but unfortunately PayPal currently does not allow deposits into account holders receding in Nigeria. You could send out money but can’t receive. Payoneer is the payment option that is currently working for Nigerian KDP authors and publishers.
Historyradio.org: We have heard that you have no birth certificate and no identity card, is this common in Africa? How did this affect your publishing efforts?
Ify Iroakazi: Yes it is common in Nigeria, probably all over Africa, in that most people were not given birth to in an established hospital. In fact, most of us were born at home. In the farm, etc. So your birth certificate is always a court affidavit which you get later in life when official necessities call for it. Well, I didn’t care about an identity card, especially the National Identity card, because of the bottleneck involved in getting one until I was asked to fill information from such a card during publication.
Historyradio.org: Now the book has been published, has there been a lot of attention?
Ify Iroakazi: Well, NO is the answer for now. But it’s too early for that. The book is not a month old. However, I have been getting a lot of of congratulations from many people. Many from my university chat and call to know how they can get my book.
Historyradio.org: Do you have a marketing plan?
Ify Iroakazi: For now I don’t have a very serious marketing plan other than a kind of book signing in December. I am hoping to make my book available to those those who have the resources to support me come December. I have plan of using that medium to get my books to local libraries and those who love reading, but cannot afford to buy a book.
Historyradio.org: If you were to give any advice to other African who try to self-publish a book, what would that be?
Ify Iroakazi: Be ready for the challenges would be my advice.
Historyradio.org: What is next for you now that this book has been published?
Ify Iroakazi: Next is to take my time and decide on my next move.
Ify’s novel is available from Amazon.
Click the link below to get it:
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literature / moviesIt is 1956, the height of the Cold War, only a few years after the alleged UFO incident at Roswell. Don Siegel’s movie adaptation of an obscure serialized novel about an alien invasion shows a raving doctor running down a dark highway shouting “They’re already here! YOU’RE NEXT” . The warning stabs into the paranoia of the age. But what does it really mean? What did the writer, Jack Finney, want it to mean? I contacted Jack Seabrook, one of the few specialists on Finney in order to find out more.
Historyradio.org: Was Jack Finney making some sort of personal statement in The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, either politically or psychologically?
Jack Seabrook: I can answer this two ways: by telling you what Finney said and by telling you what I think. Finney’s novel was called The Body Snatchers—they added “Invasion of” for the movie, surely because there was a boom in science fiction movies at that time. In Danse Macabre, Stephen King quoted Finney as saying: “I have read explanations of the ‘meaning’ of this story, which amuse me, because there is no meaning at all; it was just a story meant to entertain, and with no more meaning than that . . .” Having studied all of Finney’s writing, from his earliest short stories in the 1940s to his last novel in the 1990s, I think that The Body Snatchers fits neatly into a theme that he explored over and over, and that is the belief that something has gone wrong in small-town America and the present is not as good as the past. The fact that readers on both sides of the political spectrum have seen aspects of the novel that support their points of view suggests to me that it is simply a well-written book, one that allows readers to see in it what they want to see.
Historyradio.org: When and how did he come up with the idea for the novel?
Jack Seabrook: I don’t know how he came up with the idea for the novel, but it was most likely written in 1954, since it was serialized in three issues of Collier’s magazine in November and December 1954. The novel, which has some important differences from the serial, was published in 1955.
Historyradio.org: I know he was born in Wisconsin, and then moved to California. What sort of life did he live on the west coast? Did he become part of any literary movement?
Jack Seabrook: Finney was a very private man who rarely gave interviews and who shunned publicity. He moved to Mill Valley, California, in the late 1940s and lived there for the rest of his life with his second wife, Marguerite. They had a daughter around 1951 and a son, who was born around the time The Body Snatchers was serialized.
Historyradio.org: He had some sort of background in advertisement. Did that influence his writing or his career in any way?
Jack Seabrook: Finney worked as a copywriter for advertising agencies in the 1930s and 1940s, first in Chicago and then in New York City. As of 1946, he was 35 years old, working in New York City, and had been an ad copywriter for 12 years, so it was probably his first job out of college. His time in the advertising business was a major influence on his writing. Many of his stories and novels satirize the world of advertising; for example, Good Neighbor Sam (1963) is the story of a man who works for an ad agency and is caught up in a hilarious mix-up involving his wife and the beautiful woman who lives next door. One of his most famous and suspenseful short stories, “Contents of the Dead Man’s Pocket” (1956), tells of a young man whose obsession with his work nearly costs him his life.
Historyradio.org: Did he experience any financial success in the aftermath of the first film version?
Jack Seabrook: Finney had been financially successful as a writer by the time the film came out, but the film certainly made him more famous and wealthy. The rights to the serial, on which the film was based, were sold for $7500, so I don’t think that was much of a windfall for Finney, but the film made him more well-known than he was before it opened in theaters. In a 2000 article on Finney, J. Sydney Jones wrote that Invasion of the Body Snatchers “changed everything for the forty-three-year-old writer and . . . allowed him to support his family solely on his writing.”
Historyradio.org: Do we know anything about the relationship between Finney and Don Siegel? When did they meet?
Jack Seabrook: In early January 1955, producer Walter Wanger, screenwriter Daniel Mainwaring, and director Don Siegel went to visit Jack Finney at his home in Mill Valley, California, to talk about the story and to scout filming locations. However, Finney was not involved in writing the screenplay.
Historyradio.org: There are differences between Finney’s novel and Siegel’s movie. Finney actually communicates hope at the end of his work, while the movie ends in a nightmare. Are there other differences?
Jack Seabrook: There are differences between the two, yet the film is faithful to the novel. The famous framing sequence is not in the book. A major character, Jack Belicec, is taken over by aliens in the film but this does not happen in the novel. Most important is the transformation of Becky into a pod-person near the end of the film; this is also absent from the book. As you note, the book ends happily while the film concludes with a much more ominous message, though it does leave open the possibility of salvation.
Historyradio.org: There isn’t much information about Finney online. What sort of man was he? He seems to have lived an uneventful life. Tell us something interesting about him?
Jack Seabrook: Finney was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1911 and named John Finney. He was nicknamed Jack as a baby and the nickname stuck. His father died when Jack was just two years old and the boy was renamed Walter Braden Finney, in memory of his father, but always went by Jack. In the 1920s, as a child, he visited Galesburg, Illinois, in the summers, and many years later he wrote a famous story called “I Love Galesburg in the Springtime” (1960). He also attended Knox College in Galesburg. In the late 1940s, he and his first wife were divorced in Reno, Nevada, and he met his second wife while he was there. He later wrote stories set in that town, such as “Stopover in Reno” (1952). He died in 1995, less than a year after the publication of his last novel, From Time to Time, a sequel to his classic novel, Time and Again (1970).
Historyradio.org: The Invasion of The Body Snatchers was by some condescendingly regarded as a mere «serialized novel». However, numerous masterpieces have emerged from the pens of «pulp writers». Why do you think that is?
Jack Seabrook: Finney never wrote for the pulp magazines, which paid much less than the so-called “slick” magazines, where most of his short stories were published. Both the pulps and the slicks were home for writers of popular fiction, such as Finney, and I think that the middle part of the twentieth century in America saw an explosion of talent among American writers. There were so many markets, so many places to sell one’s fiction, that it was not surprising to see some excellent work come out of non-literary publications. The more literary writers of the time, at least in America, were increasingly writing fiction that did not appeal to the common reader, so a gulf between popular and serious fiction began to grow. Still, many writers whom we today consider literary, such as William Faulkner or John Steinbeck, were looked down upon for years as writers of popular fiction. I think that sometimes a period of time is necessary to be able to see what is really quality fiction.
Historyradio.org: A lot of famous stories have been serialized. Oliver Twist and Conan the Barbarian come to mind. The Body Snatchers was originally a serial in Collier’s Magazine. What was Finney relationship with that magazine? Did he write for other magazines?
Jack Seabrook: Collier’s was one of the slick magazines that published many of Jack Finney’s short stories. Collier’s was founded in 1888 and, by World War Two, it had a weekly circulation of 2,500,000! Imagine that! One of Finney’s first short stories was published in Collier’s in 1947 and he had twenty-nine stories published in that magazine between 1947 and 1956, when it ceased publication. He also had stories published in other magazines, including Ladies’ Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, The Saturday Evening Post, and Playboy. From 1947 to 1965, he was a prolific short story writer; after 1965, his fiction was confined to novels.
Historyradio.org: When the pod people take over, they copy everything about the original person, except for their feelings. The world slowly becomes populated by emotionless clones? Why is this so frightening, do you think?
Jack Seabrook: Your adjective “emotionless” sums up the problem. Without love for each other, what is the point of living? When people have no emotion, when they don’t care about themselves or others, they began to lose interest in everything around them. I think this was Finney’s point in the novel—the decline in small town living in America in the post-World War Two period seemed, to him, to be a symptom of a greater problem in society. People did not take care of themselves or their homes and towns began to get run down. This led to more crime, juvenile delinquency, etc. I think that a life without emotion, without feelings, is no life at all.
Jack Seabrook is the author of Stealing Through Time: On the Writings of Jack Finney (2006), published by McFarland & Co. He is an independent scholar residing in New Jersey.
Read a tribute to The Invasion of the Body Snatchers below, courtesy of author Mike San Giacomo, artist Mike Williams, inker Tom Scholendorn and Tyrone McCarthy.
The full graphic novel is called Tales of the Starlight Drive-In (Image Comics), and includes many other stories. You can buy it here
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history
In 1909, Benito Mussolini was a left-wing editor of an Italian newspaper. His readers loved his serialized novel about illicit love at the top of the Catholic church in the 17th century. His book, The Cardinal’s Mistress (1910), became a bestseller. Later, when he shifted his political affiliation, marched on Rome and became dictator, he banned his own quite embarrassing sentimental yarn. This ensured the interest of the press, and it was published in English in 1929. Below you can read excerpts and some reviews, and find a link to the whole novel, which is available for free online.“Emanuel, the last, had the Maecenisni and the prodigality of the lords who governed the Italian cities in the dawn of the Renaissance. He squandered his wealth, since in him the race would be extinguished and the Principate left without an heir. Of what use to save money in anticipation of a future which would never be? It was better to live without worrying. Rejoice and forget. Then for twenty years the passion of love had seized him with such volurpe that he cursed the Principate and despised the purple of the cardinalate.He loved Claudia.This relation was universally known and for the most part condemned and regarded as a serious sin. “
“Emanuel had rejected them all. He rejected the intervention of great princes and sovereigns. He desired instead to give her in marriage toVincent Particella, son of the Councillor Ludovico, a young man of most noble qualities. But Filiberta loved, with a love that was profoundly reciprocated, the Count Antonio di Castelnuovo. From this arose the quarrel with the uncle who perhaps dreamed of finding in the house of Particella the heir of the Principate. Finally he sent her into virtual imprisonment in the Convent of the Holy Trinity. “
“Phthisis had emaciated Filiberta’s countenance and a cadaverous pallor had taken the place of the rose glow of first youth, but the eyes, which had become deeper, preserved all their passionate intensity.The eyes were fixed immovably on one point. The girl’s disordered hair fell over the pillow. Her hands lay underneath the covers, beneath which her body was indicated by a scarcely visible line.Emanuel dared not speak. The sight of Filiberta dying had turned him to stone. He was the person solely and uniquely responsible for her miserable end. He had had her imprisoned, yielding perhaps to the threats or the prayers of Claudia. He had kept her imprisoned, caring not for the protests of the people or for the prayers of her true lover. He had deprived his niece of the sun, and above all he had violated the instinct of her heart by seeking to marry her to a man whom she did not love and could never love.Emanuel Madruzzo must now eat of the fruit of his obstinacy Before him lay the innocent victim. Remorse clutched his heart. He could not succeed in calming himself with illusory hopes..”
The novel is available as a free download from the Internet Archive
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literature / short storyThe vast Amazon Valley, traversed by the largest river in South America, is covered from end to end by forests of spectacular beauty, and is without equal anywhere. However, these jungles have a terrible reputation due to the extraordinary abundance of reptiles hidden beneath those endless canopies of greenery.
The most colossal boas can be found there, either lurking below or suspended from the branches of the trees. They wait for unfortunate animals or people to pass by, then drop to coil around their prey. The thinnest and smallest snakes, only the length of a quill pen, are also found here, and these are perhaps even more deadly due to the potency of their poison.
Woe to any careless man venturing into these magnificent forests without a large knife or a good machete! He will not leave this place alive, and either die in the terrible coils of the boas or perish from the venom of coral snakes, for which there is no antidote.
Some years ago, a great unease spread among those who worked at the San Felipe plantation, which belonged to a Brazilian who had amassed a fortune cultivating coffee.
Slaves who had ventured into the nearby forest for kindling spoke with terror of a serpent without equal in length or size.
When the owner of the plantation, Don Manuel Herrera, was told about this, he feared that his laborers, mostly Black slaves, would flee for their lives. So he summoned loggers to help him verify the tales – the stories seemed too fantastic even to Don Manuel Herrera.
Don Manuel had seen large snakes himself several times, and had even killed quite a few of them. He had also heard indigenous stories of an immense monster called “giloia,” native to the swamps and the marshes, and which was sometimes observed in certain caves along the banks of the Amazon.
The four loggers and their overseer, who was also happened to be the farm manager, returned from the jungle and reported to the owner. The poor souls were still trembling with fear.
“Tell me, Como,” he said to the oldest one. “Did you find any serpents?”
“A huge, horrible snake, sir,” the terrified slave replied. “I’ve never seen one like it, and I don’t think there is in all of the Amazon.”
““We were cutting a dead tree when the ground rumbled… a long crack appeared…. a bad demon rose from hell. It was strange…inexplicable………we ran to a clearing.
“Then we saw the monster. The ground had split! Plants were broken. The gigantic snake rose from that crack, master. Twenty-five meters long… thicker than you and me.”
“You saw this with your own eyes?”
“Yes, sir,” the four of them replied in unison.
“Are you sure it wasn’t a python?”
“No, sir. No python.” Como replied.
“What did it look like?”
“It was dark as a demon….with the skin of a dragon”
The planter turned to his overseer, a local man who was also well traveled.
“Do you think serpents so enormous can exist?” he asked.
“It could be a ‘giloia,’ sir,” the overseer replied. “A rare reptile whose existence was doubted for a long time, but it does live in certain Amazon forests.”
“How dangerous is this creature?”
“They say it can tear a man limb from limb.”
“I don’t believe in the existence of such prehistoric monsters at all,” the planter said. “However, I intend to seek out this reptile, determine its species and kill it.”
“Don’t expose yourself to such danger, sir.”
“Would you be afraid to accompany me?”
“I will follow my master anywhere,” the overseer replied. “If you are heading into danger, it’s my duty to accompany you.”
“Then we’ll go and look for this legendary “giloia,'” the planter said with a determined voice. “If it exists at all. Gather my weapons and prepare my dogs.”
Less than half an hour later Don Manuel Herrera left his house, followed by his overseer and four his enormous mastiffs, dogs used to chase off jaguars and cougars and for hunting runaway slaves.
They were fierce and hardened canines, each wearing an iron collar covered with sharp spikes to prevent them from being strangled by wild beasts.
The four slaves had proceeded in advance, and were waiting at the edge of the forest.
It was noon. The sun – now at its highest – scorched the backs of the poor laborers across the fields, and the valley seemed locked in an ominous silence. The birds, drowsy from the intense heat, no longer chirped. Even the parrots, those eternal chatterboxes, remained quiet, hidden beneath the enormous leaves of the jupati palms.
Don Manuel and the overseer hurried across the open fields. The heat in the Amazon valleys, especially between eleven in the morning until four in the afternoon, is extremely dangerous. Only indigenous tribes or Blacks may defy the mid-day sun with impunity, and work without woven head ware.
Fortunately, the protective roof of the forest was nearby.
It was more than a forest; it was an endless expanse of virgin wilderness, extending from the deserted banks of the Amazon – for leagues and leagues.
Plants of all species and sizes grew side by side wrapped in vines. Many of them were highly valuable. In such fertile regions, a person could find the necessities of life without farming or even work.
In the depths of the forest, there were trees that produce excellent milk not much different from what a cow might provide. A cut in a tree trunk would make the tasty liquid drip in abundance.
Other trees produce a kind of bread, or rather, certain fruits as large as a child’s head. These are filled with pulp that is sliced and toasted on charcoal, and which they say taste almost like artichoke.
And still others that produce excellent wax for the making of candles, and filaments for weaving very sturdy clothing, as well as delicious fruits like bananas, pineapples, and more.
When the planter and the overseer reached the first trees, they found the four Blacks crouched behind the trunk of a coconut palm, their faces pale.
“Master,” Como said, “do not make us meet the devil again. The ‘giloia will eat our soul.”
“I don’t know what to do with your help,” the planter replied. “Have you seen the serpent again?”
“No, sir.”
“Where did you see the crack?”
“The gates of hell lie 500 paces yonder, master!”
“Let’s go, overseer,” Herrera said. “And you cowards, may return to the plantation!”
He released the four mastiffs, loaded his rifle, and ventured into the forest.
“Always keep an eye on the treetops, master,” the overseer said. “Boas often hide among the leaves and drop from above as soon as they spot prey.”
“I’ll be cautious,” the planter replied.
The dogs began to show signs of unease. They stopped frequently, sniffing the air and the ground, and growled while looking at their owner.
They seemed frightened, yet they were fearless animals, that never shied away even from the fiercest jaguars, which are the tigers of America.
Five hundred paces into the forest, they found the huge fissure. The ground, which appeared to be made of dry mud, had been lifted along a vast stretch, and the force exerted by the monster had been such that it had overturned several plants.
“It was under here that the reptile was hiding,” said the planter, astonished that a serpent could develop such strength.
“You can still see scales and bits of skin scattered among the debris,” sighed the overseer.
“Do you really think it’s one of those infamous ‘giloias’?”
“They say that these monstrous reptiles, during the dry season, immerse themselves in swamps where they fall into a deep slumber or hide in caves, only to emerge two or three months later.”
“In which direction do you think the monster twisted?”
“It must have headed toward the river to seek refuge in caves. There are many of them in these parts, you know.”
“Let’s rely on the dogs,” the planter said. “I believe they are already on the right track.”
The four mastiffs, after sniffing along the entire crevice, had moved up to the opposite side, trotting among the dry leaves covering the forest floor. They had picked up the scent of the enormous reptile and were determening a direction.
Don Herrera and the overseer loaded their rifles and set off after the dogs, looking under the thick bushes and among the branches, although they were convinced that a creature of that size couldn’t climb those trees without breaking them.
They had discovered a passage among the plants, like an immense furrow, which must have been created by the monstrous reptile.
Many young plants had been flattened, and numerous shrubs were completely broken.
It now dawned on the planter that the indigenous legends of the ‘giloia,’ might be true, after all. The evidence was simply too strong.
They had been walking for half an hour, trailing the dogs, when barks and agitated growls were heard.
They were now near the river. The distant roars of the immense Amazon could already be heard, its waters smashing against protruding rocks.
“Master,” said the overseer with a pale and solemn face, “we must be near the serpent’s refuge.”
“Are there caves here?” the planter asked.
“Yes, there’s a huge one that no one has ever dared to explore, and it’s believed to lead into the heart of a mountain.”
“We’ll cut some resinous branches and go visit it.”
As they were about to move on, they heard screams from the river, shrill female cries:
“Jaco! Jaco!” with an indescribable tone of terror.
The howling dogs lead the planter and the overseer toward the river. At this point, the amazon streamed between tall and rocky banks, pierced by deep holes that might lead to the mysterious caves.
After passing the cliffs, the planter stopped, and overcome by a paralyzing fear, he was for a moment unable to lift his rifle.
An enormous serpent, over twenty-five meters long, all dark, with its body covered in very thick scales still encrusted with mud in their joints, emerged from one of those black crevices, sliding down the steep bank.
At the bottom, in a wooden canoe, a young woman from the tribes, desperately clasped her baby, shouting in desperation and despair:
“Jaco! Jaco!”
It was probably her husband’s name.
The terrifying reptile had spotted her and was descending with its mouth wide open, flicking its forked tongue and hissing.
Paralyzed by fear, the woman -who belonged to a local tribe – was unable to push her canoe from the banks. She embraced her precious child in desperation, as if this would save it.
When she saw the two of them, her arms stretched towards them, holding up her baby. Her voice – almost choking with terror – screamed:
“Help, white man!”
Two gunshots rang out, one after the other. But it was too late.
The enormous reptile had snatched the woman and the child, and with incredible speed, it had slid into its black hole, vanishing from sight.
For a moment, they still heard the cries of the poor woman, then there was a profound silence.
Even the dogs no longer barked.
“She’s lost!” the planter exclaimed, throwing his arms in the air. “We arrived too late.”
At that moment, an tribesman armed with an axe hastily descended the riverbank.
“My wife! My son! The ‘giloia!'” he shouted, stopping in front of the planter.
“Accursed snake! I knew it had to be here. I must avenge my wife and my son, or I can no longer be a chief for my tribe.”
After the outburst, he composed himself with a sudden self-control unique to Red men.
Whether they belong to the warlike tribes of North America or to the indolent and wild ones of South America, emotions will never disfigure their faces long. Once the initial surprise or anger has passed, they vanish behind a mask of indifference – as if nothing had happened.
This came as no surprise to the planter, who had had frequent dealings with the indigenous tribes.
“What will you do now that the ‘giloia’ has destroyed your family?” he asked.
“I will avenge my wife and my son,” Jaco replied, his jet-black eyes sparkled and gleamed fiercely.
“Have you ever killed a ‘giloia’?”
“No, those snakes are rare. But I heard that my friend, the chief of the Ottomachi, found one near a cave last year and killed it. Why shouldn’t I, Jaco, neither a weakling nor a coward, be able to do the same?”
“The monster won’t be taken by surprise,” said the overseer. “It knows we’re here, it will be on guard. After devouring its prey, it will prepare for a fight.”
“At night, snakes sleep,” said the tribesman “Behold the shadow of evening!”
“Do you know that cave?” Don Herrera asked.
“I’ve visited it several times to find the green stones that we use as amulets against enemy arrows.”
“If you help us kill that monster, I’ll give you a rifle.”
That was all it took to win over a tribesman. Besides, the man wanted to avenge his wife and son, not because he was grieved by the loss of his companion and heir, as tribesmen are not overly attached to their families, but because of that primal instinct that dominates primitive peoples.
“I will kill the ‘giloia,” he said calmly. “Wait for me here.”
He climbed up the bank, and half an hour later, he returned with a bundle of resinous branches, which were to serve as torches, and his blowgun, a kind of wooden tube, slightly wider at the base and narrower toward the top, which they use to launch their arrows with tips dipped in the highly poisonous curare.
By blowing forcefully into it, they can send their darts a distance of up to fifty meters and are so skilled that they don’t miss even the smallest birds.
“When the white man is ready,” he said after distributing the branches.
The sun was about to disappear behind the thickets, and night was descending rapidly.
The birds were fleeing, and giant bats, ominous vampires that feed on blood, flapped over treetops. They feed on any man or animal that falls asleep in the forests or on the riverbanks.
The planter, the overseer, the tribesman, and the dogs climbed the bank and stopped in front of the crevice where the colossal reptile was last seen.
Fearing that it might be nearby, they first lit resinous branch and stretched it into the opening, shaking it in all directions.
Hearing no noise or hissing, the three men cautiously entered the cave, their rifles and blowgun ready.
“It must have fled into the cave,” said the tribesman. “There’s a hall of stone…the ‘giloia’ will feel safe… And a lake without bottom..they love water.”
“This tribesman has courage,” the planter said to the overseer.
“I must admit, master, that I have an uneasy feeling about this.”
“We have the dogs in front of us, and they’ll warn us of danger.”
The mastiffs preceded the hunters, but they didn’t seem too eager to discover the terrible cave boa.
From time to time, they stopped and turned their heads toward their master, as if to ask if it wouldn’t be better to give up the expedition, which didn’t seem to be to their liking.
The cavern widened enormously. Huge rooms adorned with magnificent stalactites followed one another, with lateral cavities that it was impossible to know where they led. The monster could be lurking in any one of these.
The tribesman, appearing confident, never hesitated. He continued to advance under the dark vaults, holding the resinous branch high, its reddish flame sometimes flickering, as if strong air currents were entering from invisible cracks.
They had already crossed four caves when Jaco stopped, bending toward the ground and showing something that wavered in his hand.
“Do you see the ‘giloia’?” the planter asked.
The tribesman stood up, extending his hand.
“My wife’s hair,” he said in a hoarse voice. “The ‘giloia’ spat them out.”
Then he added with a certain satisfaction:
“They are black and long and will make a good impression on my war shield.”
“These tribesmen,” said the planter, disgusted. “They have not an ounce of heart!”
Jaco hung the hair, still smeared with blood and saliva, from his belt and resumed the march. He had abandoned his blowgun and was now wielding the war ax, a much better and safer weapon for facing such a reptile.
They crossed four more caves, each one longer than the previous. Then they entered a gallery and arrived on the banks of a large, almost circular, blackwater pond.
They were about to go around it when a gust of wind, coming from a lateral gallery, suddenly extinguished their torches, leaving them in utter darkness.
“Light the torches! Light the torches! the terrified planter yelled to the tribesman.
They heard Jaco rummaging in the bag hanging from his belt, then he exclaimed:
“I no longer have the flint!”
“Overseer, you do it!” Don Herrera whispered, as if afraid to draw the attention of the lurking boa.
“I’m not a smoker, master,” was the reply. “I never carry one with me.”
At that moment, they heard the dogs growling, and then the black waters of the pond began to roar and gurgle.
“Let’s flee!” the planter cried. “The ‘giloia’ is breaking the surface”
They rushed toward the gallery they had crossed shortly before, fumbling in the profound darkness. A few seconds later, they bumped into a wall, and all fell together.
“Where are we?” Herrera asked.
“We must have lost our way and entered a side gallery,” the tribesman said.
“Listen!” the overseer exclaimed, shivering.
From the depths of the cave, near the pond, they heard shrill hissing and furious barking.
“My dogs are attacking the reptile,” Herrera said.
“They’re lost,” the tribesman said.
The barking had turned into lamenting cries that lasted for a few moments, and then silence once again enveloped the cave.
“The serpent has killed my dogs!” the planter exclaimed, making an angry gesture.
“We’ll avenge them too,” the tribesman replied.
“You know what, let’s just get the hell out of here,” Herrera said, losing all confidence in the tribesman.
“We’ll find the exit,” Jaco said. “Stay close to me, or better yet, hold onto my belt.”
He detached from the wall and pushed forward, trying not to veer to the right or left, eventually finding a passage.
“We must be in one of the seven caves,” he said then. “Keep following me.”
He walked at a very fast pace. He, too, wanted to get out as soon as possible, afraid that the terrifying serpent might strike at them at any moment.
Suddenly, he stopped, leaning against a wall.
“Halt!” he said.
“Have we lost our way again?” the planter asked.
“Listen.”
A rustling noise sounded nearby, the slither and rattle of the ‘giloia’s’ large scales, and it was approaching at some speed.
“Could the boa be heading for the exit?” Herrera whispered.
“Yes,” the tribesman replied. “Hold your breath and don’t move! If it senses our presence, it will come at us.”
They pressed up against the wall, their rifles and blowgun ready, fearing an attack at any moment.
The rustling drew nearer. But then there was a sudden silence. They thought had been discovered, but then the sounds resumed as it moved farther and farther from them.
“It has passed us,” the tribesman said. “Now we attack!”
“Perhaps we should let it go?” the overseer suggested.
“No,” Jaco replied. “We’ll wait until it is halfway out of the crevice, and then off its tail.”
They tiptoed after the rustles, until, finally, the mouth of the cave appeared before them – illuminated by the moon.
“The ‘giloia’ is about to leave,” Jaco said, holding the ax. “Wait until the head and half of its body is out!”
The attack from the dogs had disturbed it, it no longer felt safe and now it searched for another hiding place.
The enormous body slid into the crevice, almost blocking it entirely.
It was caught in a trap, unable to turn in its defense.
“Attack!” the tribesman yelled, his eyes had already adjusted to the darkness.
He leaped with the ax raised and began to strike the serpent’s tail vigorously, while the planter and the overseer, with their rifles unloaded, grabbed the cutlasses, which were no less sharp than the tribesman’s ax.
As the serpent felt pain it its tails, it hissed angrily and writhed, trying in vain to back up and confront its attackers.
The narrow opening held it in a lock.
Now, the two planters and the tribes stuck at it repeatedly, breaking its vertebrae and scales.
The serpent, mad with pain, then tried to escape. With one final effort, it withdrew the end of its body and slid down the slope into the river below, and vanished in the water.
“It’s gone!” the planter exclaimed with regret. “I wanted to preserve its skin.”
“It will be my gift to you,” the tribesman said.
His wife’s canoe still floated by the banks, and he stepped into it and paddled off.
Two days later, Jaco returned to the fazenda, followed by six tribesman carrying the skin of the enormous reptile.
He had found the monster on an islet, where it had gone to die.
The skin measured twenty-four meters and had a circumference of seventy centimeters.
Today that fearsome cave boa makes a fine display in the lounge of the San Felipe plantation, and naturalists flock to admire it.
translated by Michael Henrik Wynn
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literature / travelWhen Somalis appear in western media it is often as victims or perpetrators. “It is to be expected. They come from a country in anarchy”, we’re told. Yet, even among the ruins of Somalia, books are being read and written, and problems are being discussed in fictional form. Ali Jimale Ahmed is a professor of comparative African literature, and he draws a nuanced picture of the cultural life of his native country.
Historyradio.org: Somalia has long been considered a failed state, but are there still significant authors who write about daily life in the country?
Professor Ahmed: By all accounts Somalia is a failed state–governmental structures and the ideologies that sustained them have collapsed. But that does not mean that a semblance of pseudo-state organizations are absent. The international community–the U.N., the EU, the AU, and a host of other organizations are in the country to shore up the internationally recognized government.
That said, when we speak about Somali writing and writers, it is much better to differentiate between two forms of discourses, namely, discourses of the state and discourses of the nation. Seen from that perspective, there are significant authors who write about daily life–the trials and tribulations, as well as the accomplishments of people trying to eke out a living under difficult circumstances–in all parts of Somalia. These writers publish articles and books inside the country. One need only read the many books published in the “country.”
Historyradio.org: What sort of education do the normal citizen of Somalia get these days?
Professor Ahmed: Education is one of the sectors severally impacted by the collapse of the state. There is no uniform or harmonized curriculum. The various state entities do not have a coherent educational policy in place. Private institutions and civil society groups run the educational sector. Depending on their affiliation or from where they get their financial or moral/intellectual support from these institutions replicate the kind of curriculum found in Kenya, Ethiopia, Egypt, Sudan, and the UK, and so on.
That said, graduates from those schools and universities are found to be well prepared to undertake undergraduate and graduate studies in European and North American universities. Some such students are now studying at Princeton, for example.
Historyradio.org: Like many African countries Somalia has a proud and ancient history, to what extent do Somali today writers revive this tradition of stories in their work?
Professor Ahmed: This is one of the reasons that Somali society has still a viable and resilient culture. Since the collapse of the state, there has been a concerted effort on the part of intellectuals to publish on Somali history and literature. There are Somali websites like Hoyga Suugaanta and Laashin that specialize in literature, and Somali presses, such as Scansom, Laashin and Iftiinka Aqoonta in Sweden, Looh press in England, Redsea-online publishing Group in Italy/UK/Somaliland, that publish the findings and collections of both aspiring and established authors.
Literature, in all its forms, is held in high esteem. Indeed, the etymology of suugaan, Somali word for literature, means the sap or fluid of certain plants like the geesariyood. These plants are evergreen, and are associated with life and the sustaining of life under precarious situations or conditions. When all else is gone as a result of a drought, for example, the sap from this plant will sustain a modicum of existence, of life. Thus for the Somali, literature is sustenance that nourishes both the body and mind.
Historyradio.org: When we hear news from Somalia, they often involve Al Shabab and Islamic extremism. What sort of attitude do the major Somali writers take to religion?
Professor Ahmed: With the exception of Nuruddin Farah, whose novels have internationalized the Somali case, other major writers rarely discuss religious issues in their fiction. In Maps and Secrets, for example, Farah is at times critical of what he perceives to be excesses and transgressions by those who claim to be religious. In his Past Imperfect Trilogy (2004-2011), In Links, the narrative limns the contours of the post-Siad Barre Somalia–warlords, U.s. intervention, the successes of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), and the eventual arrival on the scene by the better equipped Ethiopian soldiers that denied the ICU what seemed to be a total victory against the warlords. In Crossbones, farah’s narrative reveals a misreading of Somali pirates who were perceived to be Al Shabab members or surrogates.
Historyradio.org: The diaspora is central to the Somali experience, and thus also the racism and prejudices that its citizens face abroad. Are there novels in the Somali language which tell the story of refugees?
A recent novel that touches on this topic is Ismaaciil C. Ubax’s Gaax (“Deferment or Postponement”), . It is a novel that describes or trails the lives of three main characters who, even though they live in different climes and times, share certain uncanny characteristics.
Equally important are books written for Somali children who are born in the Diaspora. Musa M. Isse’s bilingual tales written in Somali and Swedish help kids born in the Diaspora to develop strong identities. Isse is also the Editor-in-Chief of the first Somali Children’s Magazine in the Europe.
The subject of racism is discussed in Igiaba Scego’s Italian-language short stories, and Yasmeen Mohamed’s novel Nomad Diaries, written in English. The topic is also taken up in the novels of two seasoned and award-winning novelists in the Diaspora: Nadifa Mohamed who writes in English and Abdourahman Waberi who writes in French.
Historyradio.org: Somali is a non-european language. Do writers leave their native tongue in favor of English, French or some other European language? To what extent is the Somali language under threat?
Professor Ahmed: Somali writers who write in European languages are small compared to those who write in Somali. I do not perceive any threat per se. Rather, the absence of a strong state to nurture and promote the language is perhaps more of a threat to the flourishing of Somali language.
Historyradio.org: Are there big differences between the literary schools of Europe and Somali literature? Is there a Somali modernist school, for instance? Will the intellectual thoughts of urban Europe even make sense in a Somali context?
Professor Ahmed: We live in a globalizing/globalized world. The kind of Somalis who could read novels in Somali are, more often than not, the ones who are able to traverse borders. The hundreds of thousands of Somalis who live in Europe travel constantly between Somalia and Europe. That said, we must distinguish between modernization (the process) and modernity (the consciousness).
Historyradio.org: Some parts of Somalia have experienced peace for some time. What sort of literature have been produced in these areas?
Professor Ahmed: There are several writers who have written books on their experiences (or those of others) as refugees. But a great deal of literature is coming out of the parts of Somalia that have experienced peace. One need only catalog the plethora of novels published in the country and exhibited at the Hargeysa International Book Fair in Somaliland. The last few years have witnessed the growth of Book Fairs in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, and Garoowe in Puntland.
Historyradio.org: We hear a lot about “the great American novel”. Is there such a thing as “the great Somali novel”? Is there a book or a novel that all Somalis love?
Professor Ahmed: The novel has not been fully domesticated in Somalia. Of course, the novel genre is such that it is in its protean form; it has yet to crystallize and assume a definite form. That said, two novels would contend or vie for the distinction. Maxamed Daahir Afrax’s (Mohamed Dahir Afrah) Maana Faay (1981;1993) ushers in a new form of storytelling, as it exhibits ingenious and conscious ways of using language to reflect the quotidian life of its characters. With Maana Faay the novel genre in the Somali language comes of age, both in terms of content and structure.
The other novel is Yuusuf Axmed Ibraahin-Hawd’s Aanadii Negeeye, a riveting story that recounts the gory details of murder and revenge. The narrative unfolds as the eponymous protagonist, Negeeye, whose father was murdered shortly after Negeeye’s birth, remembers his mother’s account of the brutal killing of his father. Negeeye, then, plots to avenge his father’s death.
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historyMy first lesson in how to live as a Negro came when I was quite small. We were living in Arkansas. Our house stood behind the railroad tracks. Its skimpy yard was paved with black cinders. Nothing green ever grew in that yard. The only touch of green we could see was far away, beyond the tracks, over where the white folks lived. But cinders were good enough for me, and I never missed the green growing things. And anyhow, cinders were fine weapons. You could always have a nice hot war with huge black cinders. All you had to do was crouch behind the brick pillars of a house with your hands full of gritty ammunition. And the first woolly black head you saw pop out from behind another row of pillars was your target. You tried your very best to knock it off. It was great fun.
I never fully realized the appalling disadvantages of a cinder environment till one day the gang to which I belonged found itself engaged in a war with the white boys who lived beyond the tracks. As usual we laid down our cinder barrage, thinking that this would wipe the white boys out. But they replied with a steady bombardment of broken bottles.
We doubled our cinder barrage, but they hid behind trees, hedges, and the sloping embankments of their lawns. Having no such fortifications, we retreated to the brick pillars of our homes. During the retreat a broken milk bottle caught me behind the ear, opening a deep gash which bled profusely. The sight of blood pouring over my face completely demoralized our ranks. My fellow-combatants left me standing paralyzed in the center of the yard, and scurried for their homes. A kind neighbor saw me and rushed me to a doctor, who took three stitches in my neck.
I sat brooding on my front steps, nursing my wound and waiting for my mother to come from work. I felt that a grave injustice had been done me. It was all right to throw cinders. The greatest harm a cinder could do was leave a bruise. But broken bottles were dangerous; they left you cut, bleeding, and helpless.
When night fell, my mother came from the white folks’ kitchen. I raced down the street to meet her. I could just feel in my bones that she would understand. I knew she would tell me exactly what to do next time. I grabbed her hand and babbled out the whole story. She examined my wound, then slapped me.
“How come yuh didn’t hide?” she asked me. “How come yuh awways fightin’?”
I was outraged, and bawled. Between sobs I told her that I didn’t have any trees or hedges to hide behind. There wasn’t a thing I could have used as a trench. And you couldn’t throw very far when you were hiding behind the brick pillars of a house. She grabbed a barrel stave, dragged me home, stripped me naked, and beat me till I had a fever of one hundred and two. She would smack my rump with the stave, and, while the skin was still smarting, impart to me gems of Jim Crow wisdom. I was never to throw cinders any more. I was never to fight any more wars. I was never, never, under any conditions, to fight white folks again. And they were absolutely right in clouting me with the broken milk bottle. Didn’t I know she was working hard every day in the hot kitchens of the white folks to make money to take care of me? When was I ever going to learn to be a good boy? She couldn’t be bothered with my fights. She finished by telling me that I ought to be thankful to God as long as I lived that they didn’t kill me.
All that night I was delirious and could not sleep. Each time I closed my eyes I saw monstrous white faces suspended from the ceiling, leering at me.
From that time on, the charm of my cinder yard was gone. The green trees, the trimmed hedges, the cropped lawns grew very meaningful, became a symbol. Even today when I think of white folks, the hard, sharp outlines of white houses surrounded by trees, lawns, and hedges are present somewhere in the background of my mind. Through the years they grew into an overreaching symbol of fear.
It was a long time before I came in close contact with white folks again. We moved from Arkansas to Mississippi. Here we had the good fortune not to live behind the railroad tracks, or close to white neighborhoods. We lived in the very heart of the local Black Belt. There were black churches and black preachers; there were black schools and black teachers; black groceries and black clerics. In fact, everything was so solidly black that for a long time I did not even think of white folks, save in remote and vague terms. But this could not last forever. As one grows older one eats more. One’s clothing costs more. When I finished grammar school I had to go to work. My mother could no longer feed and clothe me on her cooking job.
There is but one place where a black boy who knows no trade can get a job. And that’s where the houses and faces are white, where the trees, lawns, and hedges are green. My first job was with an optical company in Jackson, Mississippi. The morning I applied I stood straight and neat before the boss, answering all his questions with sharp yessirs and nosirs. I was very careful to pronounce my sirs distinctly, in order that he might know that I was polite, that I knew where I was, and that I knew he was a white man. I wanted that job badly.
He looked me over as though he were examining a prize poodle. He questioned me closely about my schooling, being particularly insistent about how much mathematics I had had. He seemed very pleased when I told him I had had two years of algebra.
“Boy, how would you like to try to learn something around here?” he asked me.
“I’d like it fine, sir,” I said, happy. I had visions of “working my way up.” Even Negroes have those visions.
“All right,” he said. “Come on.”
I followed him to the small factory.
“Pease,” he said to a white man of about thirty-five, “this is Richard. He’s going to work for us.”
Pease looked at me and nodded.
I was then taken to a white boy of about seventeen.
“Morrie, this is Richard, who’s going to work for us.”
“Whut yuh sayin’ there, boy!” Morrie boomed at me.
“Fine!” I answered.
The boss instructed these two to help me, teach me, give me jobs to do, and let me learn what I could in my spare time.
My wages were five dollars a week.
I worked hard, trying to please. For the first month I got along O.K. Both Pease and Morrie seemed to like me. But one thing was missing. And I kept thinking about it. I was not learning anything, and nobody was volunteering to help me. Thinking they had forgotten that I was to learn something about the mechanics of grinding lenses, I asked Morrie one day to tell me about the work. He grew red.
“Whut yuh tryin’ t’ do, nigger, git smart?” he asked.
“Naw; I ain’ tryin’ t’ -it smart,” I said.
“Well, don’t, if yuh know whut’s good for yuh!”
I was puzzled. Maybe he just doesn’t want to help me, I thought. I went to Pease.
“Say, are you crazy, you black bastard?” Pease asked me, his gray eyes growing hard.
I spoke out, reminding him that the boss had said I was to be given a chance to learn something.
“Nigger, you think you’re white, don’t you?”
“Naw, sir!”
“Well, you’re acting mighty like it!”
“But, Mr. Pease, the boss said . . .”
Pease shook his fist in my face.
“This is a white man’s work around here, and you better watch yourself!”
From then on they changed toward me. They said good-morning no more. When I was just a bit slow in performing some duty, I was called a lazy black son-of-a-bitch.
Once I thought of reporting all this to the boss. But the mere idea of what would happen to me if Pease and Morrie should learn that I had “snitched” stopped me. And after all, the boss was a white man, too. What was the use?
The climax came at noon one summer day. Pease called me to his work-bench. To get to him I had to go between two narrow benches and stand with my back against a wall.
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Richard, I want to ask you something,” Pease began pleasantly, not looking up from his work.
“Yes, sir,” I said again.
Morrie came over, blocking the narrow passage between the benches. He folded his arms, staring at me solemnly.
I looked from one to the other, sensing that something was coming.
“Yes, sir,” I said for the third time.
Pease looked up and spoke very slowly.
“Richard, Mr. Morrie here tells me you called me Pease.”
I stiffened. A void seemed to open up in me. I knew this was the show-down.
He meant that I had failed to call him Mr. Pease. I looked at Morrie. He was gripping a steel bar in his hands. I opened my mouth to speak, to protest, to assure Pease that I had never called him simply Pease, and that I had never had any intentions of doing so, when Morrie grabbed me by the collar, ramming my head against the wall.
“Now, be careful, nigger!” snarled Morrie, baring his teeth. ” heard yuh call ‘im Pease! ‘N’ if yuh say yuh didn’t, yuh’re callin’ me a lie, see?” He waved the steel bar threateningly.
If I had said: No, sir, Mr. Pease, I never called you Pease, I would have been automatically calling Morrie a liar. And if I had said: Yes, sir, Mr. Pease, I called you Pease, I would have been pleading guilty to having uttered the worst insult that a Negro can utter to a southern white man. I stood hesitating, trying to frame a neutral reply.
“Richard, I asked you a question!” said Pease. Anger was creeping into his voice.
“I don’t remember calling you Pease, Mr. Pease,” I said cautiously. “And if I did, I sure didn’t mean . . .”
“You black son-of-a-bitch! You called me Pease, then!” he spat, slapping me till I bent sideways over a bench. Morrie was on top of me, demanding:
“Didn’t yuh call ‘im Pease? If yuh say yuh didn’t, I’ll rip yo’ gut string loose with this f–kin’ bar, yuh black granny dodger! Yuh can’t call a white man a lie ‘n’ git erway with it, you black son-of-a-bitch!”
I wilted. I begged them not to bother me. I knew what they wanted. They wanted me to leave.
“I’ll leave,” I promised. “I’ll leave right now.”
They gave me a minute to get out of the factory. I was warned not to show up again, or tell the boss.
I went.
When I told the folks at home what had happened, they called me a fool. They told me that I must never again attempt to exceed my boundaries. When you are working for white folks, they said, you got to “stay in your place” if you want to keep working.
My Jim Crow education continued on my next job, which was portering in a clothing store. One morning, while polishing brass out front, the boss and his twenty-year-old son got out of their car and half dragged and half kicked a Negro woman into the store. A policeman standing at the corner looked on, twirling his nightstick. I watched out of the corner of my eye, never slackening the strokes of my chamois upon the brass. After a few minutes, I heard shrill screams coming from the rear of the store. Later the woman stumbled out, bleeding, crying, and holding her stomach. When she reached the end of the block, the policeman grabbed her and accused her of being drunk. Silently I watched him throw her into a patrol wagon.
When I went to the rear of the store, the boss and his son were washing their hands at the sink. They were chuckling. The floor was bloody, and strewn with wisps of hair and clothing. No doubt I must have appeared pretty shocked, for the boss slapped me reassuringly on the back.
“Boy, that’s what we do to niggers when they don’t want to pay their bills,” he said, laughing.
His son looked at me and grinned.
“Here, hava cigarette,” he said.
Not knowing what to do, I took it. He lit his and held the match for me. This was a gesture of kindness, indicating that even if they had beaten the poor old woman, they would not beat me if I knew enough to keep my mouth shut.
“Yes, sir,” I said, and asked no questions.
After they had gone, I sat on the edge of a packing box and stared at the bloody floor till the cigarette went out.
That day at noon, while eating in a hamburger joint, I told my fellow Negro porters what had happened. No one seemed surprised. One fellow, after swallowing a huge bite, turned to me and asked
“Huh. Is tha’ all they did t’ her?”
“Yeah. Wasn’t tha’ enough?” I asked.
“Shucks! Man, she’s a lucky bitch!” he said, burying his lips deep into a juicy hamburger. “Hell, it’s a wonder they didn’t lay her when they got through.”
I was learning fast, but not quite fast enough. One day, while I was delivering packages in the suburbs, my bicycle tire was punctured. I walked along the hot, dusty road, sweating and leading my bicycle by the handle-bars.
A car slowed at my side.
“What’s the matter, boy?” a white man called.
I told him my bicycle was broken and I was walking back to town.
“That’s too bad,” he said. “Hop on the running board.”
He stopped the car. I clutched hard at my bicycle with one hand and clung to the side of the car with the other.
“All set?”
“Yes, sir,” I answered. The car started.
It was full of young white men. They were drinking. I watched the flask pass from mouth to mouth.
“Wanna drink, boy?” one asked.
I laughed, the wind whipping my face. Instinctively obeying the freshly planted precepts of my mother, I said:
“Oh, no!”
The words were hardly out of my mouth before I felt something hard and cold smash me between the eyes. It was an empty whisky bottle. I saw stars, and fell backwards from the speeding car into the dust of the road, my feet becoming entangled in the steel spokes of my bicycle. The white men piled out, and stood over me.
“Nigger, ain’ yuh learned no better sense’n tha’ yet?” asked the man who hit me. “Ain’ yuh learned t’ say sir t’ a white man yet?”
Dazed, I pulled to my feet. My elbows and legs were bleeding. Fists doubled, the white man advanced, kicking my bicycle out of the way.
“Aw, leave the bastard alone. He’s got enough,” said one.
They stood looking at me. I rubbed my shins, trying to stop the flow of blood. No doubt they felt a sort of contemptuous pity, for one asked:
“Yuh wanna ride t’ town now, nigger? Yuh reckon yuh know enough t’ ride now?”
“I wanna walk,” I said, simply.
Maybe it sounded funny. They laughed.
“Well, walk, yuh black son-of-a-bitch!”
When they left they comforted me with:
“Nigger, yuh sho better be damn glad it wuz us yuh talked t’ tha’ way. Yuh’re a lucky bastard, ’cause if yuh’d said tha’ t’ somebody else, yuh might’ve been a dead nigger now.”
Negroes who have lived South know the dread of being caught alone upon the streets in white neighborhoods after the sun has set. In such a simple situation as this the plight of the Negro in America is graphically symbolized. While white strangers may be in these neighborhoods trying to get home, they can pass unmolested. But the color of a Negro’s skin makes him easily recognizable, makes him suspect, converts him into a defenseless target.
Late one Saturday night I made some deliveries in a white neighborhood. I was pedaling my bicycle back to the store as fast as I could, when a police car, swerving toward me, jammed me into the curbing.
“Get down and put up your hands!” the policemen ordered.
I did. They climbed out of the car, guns drawn, faces set, and advanced slowly.
“Keep still!” they ordered.
I reached my hands higher. They searched my pockets and packages. They seemed dissatisfied when they could find nothing incriminating. Finally, one of them said:
“Boy, tell your boss not to send you out in white neighborhoods this time of night.”
As usual, I said:
“Yes, sir.”
My next job was as hall-boy in a hotel. Here my Jim Crow education broadened and deepened. When the bell-boys were busy, I was often called to assist them. As many of the rooms in the hotel were occupied by prostitutes, I was constantly called to carry them liquor and cigarettes. These women were nude most of the time. They did not bother about clothing even for bell-boys. When you went into their rooms, you were supposed to take their nakedness for granted, as though it startled you no more than a blue vase or a red rug. Your presence awoke in them no sense of shame, for you were not regarded as human. If they were alone, you could steal sidelong glimpses at them. But if they were receiving men, not a flicker of your eyelids must show. I remember one incident vividly. A new woman, a huge, snowy-skinned blonde, took a room on my floor. I was sent to wait upon her. She was in bed with a thick-set man; both were nude and uncovered. She said she wanted some liquor, and slid out of bed and waddled across the floor to get her money from a dresser drawer. I watched her.
“Nigger, what in hell you looking at?” the white man asked me, raising himself upon his elbows.
“Nothing,” I answered, looking miles deep into the blank wall of the room.
“Keep your eyes where they belong, if you want to be healthy!”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
One of the bell-boys I knew in this hotel was keeping steady company with one of the Negro maids. Out of a clear sky the police descended upon his home and arrested him, accusing him of bastardy. The poor boy swore he had had no intimate relations with the girl. Nevertheless, they forced him to marry her. When the child arrived, it was found to be much lighter in complexion than either of the two supposedly legal parents. The white men around the hotel made a great joke of it. They spread the rumor that some white cow must have scared the poor girl while she was carrying the baby. If you were in their presence when this explanation was offered, you were supposed to laugh.
One of the bell-boys was caught in bed with a white prostitute. He was castrated, and run out of town. Immediately after this all the bell-boys and hall-boys were called together and warned. We were given to understand that the boy who had been castrated was a “mighty, mighty lucky bastard.” We were impressed with the fact that next time the management of the hotel would not be responsible for the lives of “trouble-makin’ niggers.”
One night, just as I was about to go home, I met one of the Negro maids. She lived in my direction, and we fell in to walk part of the way home together. As we passed the white nightwatchman, he slapped the maid on her buttock. I turned around, amazed. The watchman looked at me with a long, hard, fixedunder stare. Suddenly he pulled his gun, and asked:
“Nigger, don’t yuh like it?”
I hesitated.
“I asked yuh don’t yuh like it?” he asked again, stepping forward.
“Yes, sir,” I mumbled.
“Talk like it, then!”
“Oh, yes, sir!” I said with as much heartiness as I could muster.
Outside, I walked ahead of the girl, ashamed to face her. She caught up with me and said:
“Don’t be a fool; yuh couldn’t help it!”
This watchman boasted of having killed two Negroes in self-defense.
Yet, in spite of all this, the life of the hotel ran with an amazing smoothness. It would have been impossible for a stranger to detect anything. The maids, the hall-boys, and the bell-boys were all smiles. They had to be.
I had learned my Jim Crow lessons so thoroughly that I kept the hotel job till I left Jackson for Memphis. It so happened that while in Memphis I applied for a job at a branch of the optical company. I was hired. And for some reason, as long as I worked there, they never brought my past against me.
Here my Jim Crow education assumed quite a different form. It was no longer brutally cruel, but subtly cruel. Here I learned to lie, to steal, to dissemble. I learned to play that dual role which every Negro must play if he wants to eat and live.
For example, it was almost impossible to get a book to read. It was assumed that after a Negro had imbibed what scanty schooling the state furnished he had no further need for books. I was always borrowing books from men on the job. One day I mustered enough courage to ask one of the men to let me get books from the library in his name. Surprisingly, he consented. I cannot help but think that he consented because he was a Roman Catholic and felt a vague sympathy for Negroes, being himself an object of hatred. Armed with a library card, I obtained books in the following manner: I would write a note to the librarian, saying: “Please let this nigger boy have the following books.” I would then sign it with the white man’s name.
When I went to the library, I would stand at the desk, hat in hand, looking as unbookish as possible. When I received the books desired I would take them home. If the books listed in the note happened to be out, I would sneak into the lobby and forge a new one. I never took any chances guessing with the white librarian about what the fictitious white man would want to read. No doubt if any of the white patrons had suspected that some of the volumes they enjoyed had been in the home of a Negro, they would not have tolerated it for an instant.
The factory force of the optical company in Memphis was much larger than that in Jackson, and more urbanized. At least they liked to talk, and would engage the Negro help in conversation whenever possible. By this means I found that many subjects were taboo from the white man’s point of view. Among the topics they did not like to discuss with Negroes were the following: American white women; the Ku Klux Klan; France, and how Negro soldiers fared while there; French women; Jack Johnson; the entire northern part of the United States; the Civil War; Abraham Lincoln; U. S. Grant; General Sherman; Catholics; the Pope; Jews; the Republican Party; slavery; social equality; Communism; Socialism; the th and th Amendments to the Constitution; or any topic calling for positive knowledge or manly self-assertion on the part of the Negro. The most accepted topics were sex and religion.
There were many times when I had to exercise a great deal of ingenuity to keep out of trouble. It is a southern custom that all men must take off their hats when they enter an elevator. And especially did this apply to us blacks with rigid force. One day I stepped into an elevator with my arms full of packages. I was forced to ride with my hat on. Two white men stared at me coldly. Then one of them very kindly lifted my hat and placed it upon my armful of packages. Now the most accepted response for a Negro to make under such circumstances is to look at the white man out of the corner of his eye and grin. To have said: “Thank you!” would have made the white man think that you thought you were receiving from him a personal service. For such an act I have seen Negroes take a blow in the mouth. Finding the first alternative distasteful, and the second dangerous, I hit upon an acceptable course of action which fell safely between these two poles. I immediately-no sooner than my hat was lifted-pretended that my packages were about to spill, and appeared deeply distressed with keeping them in my arms. In this fashion I evaded having to acknowledge his service, and, in spite of adverse circumstances, salvaged a slender shred of personal pride.
How do Negroes feel about the way they have to live? How do they discuss it when alone among themselves? I think this question can be answered in a single sentence. A friend of mine who ran an elevator once told me:
“Lawd, man! Ef it wuzn’t fer them polices ‘n’ them of lynchmobs, there wouldn’t be nothin’ but uproar down here!”
Richard Wright starred in the 1951 movie adaptation of his own novel, Native Son.
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historyThe earth is my homeland and humanity is my family.
Gibran
Gibran Khalil Gibran (1883- 1931) left Lebanon for the United States in 1895 when he was twelve years old, but three years later he returned to Beirut to study Arabic. Thus 1903, the year in which he went back to Boston, may be regarded as the date when he began nearly a lifetime’s residence in North America, where he divided his time between his studio in New York and his sister’s house in Boston. Gibran thus spent the first three decades of the twentieth century in one of the world’s major centres of “modern culture”, far away from his native land, itself a major world centre of “traditional culture”.
Gibran’s emigration to the west was not due to personal or family reasons. It was part of a larger, more general movement in which Syrians and Lebanese migrated to Egypt and to the Americas, fleeing from the appalling conditions resulting from the decline of the Ottoman Empire around the end of the last century. The origins of this wave of migration lay in the suppression of freedom of expression and belief and in the series of famines, epidemics, wars and earthquakes that ravaged the Levant at the turn of the century.
In earlier days successive waves of migration had been motivated by trade and the other maritime activities for which the people of Phoenicia had been famous since ancient times. The novel feature of the migration at the turn of the century was that the migrants associated trading interests with cultural aims. These Lebanese and Syrian émigrés laid the foundations of culture, journalism and the arts in Egypt, establishing publishing houses, theatres, cinemas and newspapers. The same phenomenon occurred, to vary ing degrees, in North and South America. Gibran himself tried his hand at business, alternately making and losing money, while Mikhayil N’aimi, as he confesses in his book on Gibran, worked as a commercial representative. Thus it was the quest for freedom of intellectual expression and economic opportunity that drove the intelligentsia of the Arab East to migrate in successive waves either to Egypt or to South and North America. All these men and women combined the trade of journalist, writer or artist with that of dealer in stocks and bonds. Trade, art and politics almost always went together in their lives and only in rare cases did one take precedence over the others. Gibran Khalil Gibran was one of those rare cases.
Gibran’s life and works present a number of distinctive geatures. First of all, he was fully a child of his times. The first three decades of the twentieth century set the tone for the new age which Gibran did not live to see. It was a time of wholesale destruction that was also marked by an upsurge of activity in culture, art and science and by an attempt to experiment with visionary ideas that had risen from the ruins. These were the decades of the First World War, the first socialist revolution, the birth of Nietzscheanism and the spread of Freudianism. All these unprecedented occurrences had a strong influence on sculpture, poetry, painting, the novel and the theatre, shattering old forms and dictating new subject-matter.
Gibran was immersed in his epoch, an actor not a spectator. His migration from Mount Lebanon to Boston may be seen as the journey of a prophet. When the Ottomans began their slaughtering in the Levant, all the intelligentsia of Syria (which then included the whole of the Fertile Crescent region) fled. For Gibran and a few others, the goal was a spiritual one. For them migration was a stage which would necessarily be followed by a return to the homeland. They did not go in search of refuge, exile, trade or money, but in search of a vision, following a circular path that necessarily ended where it began.
The second feature that epitomizes the life and works of Gibran is that while he lived at a geographical distance from his native land, he maintained close links with it and with its history. Although distant from Lebanon, he was always strongly influenced by émigré Arab culture and the Arabic press, and remained in constant communication with his homeland. Geographical distance gave him a broader and deeper insight into Gibran’s “modernity” was the reverse side of his deep-rooted cultural identity; his migration was at once an inward and an outward journey.
Gibran’s greatest creative achievement was, then, his own life within whose short span he was only fortyeight years old when he died the public and private dimensions were indistinguishable. His views on women, marriage and the clergy were not simply theoretical standpoints expressed in his writings and drawings but represented his practical views on life, love and religion. More than half a century after the death of Gibran we are beginning to understand the major importance of his book The Prophet (1923); we should not, however, fail to recognize the equal importance of his work Jesus, the Son of Man. In fact, the key to Gibran’s works lies in his attitude towards authority, whether represented by established tradition, prevailing convention, religious institution, social structure, economic system or foreign occupying power. The “movement” that grew out of Gibran’s life and art (drawing, painting and writing) was clearly founded by a man possessed of prophetic vision. And his founding of the “Pen League”, his defence of his country against the Ottomans, his long dedication to art in his New York studio and to literature in a secluded house in Boston were for him indissociable activities. His metrical verse and his free verse, his narrative prose and dialogues, plays and novels, all served that one vision. The forms these writings took grew naturally out of
I am a traveller and a navigator, and each day I discover a new country in my soul. My friend, you and I will live as strangers to this life, strangers to one another and to ourselves, until the day when you will speak and I will listen to you believing that your voice is mine, until the day when Ishall stand before you, thinking that I am before a mirror.
Gibran
their subject-matter, for Gibran did not set out deliberately to modernize poetry and language. His constant concern, once he had discovered his life’s mission, was to express his “vision”. Was Gibran a Romantic when he wrote A Tear and a Smile? Did he become a symbolist with The Madman, The Forerunner and The Wanderer? Was he a philosopher in The Prophet, The Garden of the Prophet and The Earth Gods and a novelist in Spirits Rebellious and Broken Wings?
Gibran’s life and death, his writings and works of visual art defy such classification to which, moreover, he was opposed throughout his life. He fought against all forms of pigeonholing, against all that would straitjacket thoughts and feelings. Throughout his spiritual journey, Gibran Khalil Gibran remained true to his vision and through his art and writings in the first three decades of this century he proclaimed his prophetic message.
Ghali Shukri (1935-1998) was a renowned Arab literary critic educated at the Sorbonne. From The Unesco Courier, and published online at the UNESCO website under a creative commons license: CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
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historyIn the shadow of the dying Hapsburg Empire a new treatment that focused on conversation was invented: psychoanalysis. However, who would benefit from Freud’s new method and what end would it finally serve?
Sigmund Freud saw himself as part of the supercilious materialist wave that reduced men to Darwin’s apes. He was part of the liberal bourgeoisie of Vienna around 1900 and was educated in the neuro-physiology of Brucker and the hypno-theraphy of Charcot. Some time between 1895 and 1900, he broke with his old mentor Breuer and produced psychoanalysis.
Like his role model, Charles Darwin, whom he praised in a 1917 essay*, he benefited greatly from his privileged background, and like him, he was sometimes haunted by his historic limitations. While Darwin swore by his own observations, Freud based his ideas on conversation and analysis. At the turn of the century, Freud was tested in a way that would expose the difficulties of psychoanalysis, the case of Dora.
Privileged patients
Psychoanalysis was the outcome of Freud’s conversations with women who could not survive in their social straitjackets. So it was with Dora, or Ida Bauer, as her real name was, an 18 year old who was sent to Freud by her wealthy family. She had been abused by an older friend of the family as a 14-year old, and as a result she had developed several symptoms, such as continued arguments with her father, fainting and the writing of suicide notes.
«In their nature women are like feeble, exotic green house plants» Stephen Zweig joked. The contemporary ideal was, according to Zweig that «A young girl from a good family should not have the faintest idea about what a man’s body looked like; not know how children are conceived, they were innocent angels». Freud never denied the fact that he benefited from family power structures and that the psychoanalyst borrowed his authority from the father figure.
But because Freud saw himself as the as a prophet of psychology, he never understood the ways in which he came to rationalize oppressive conditions in his own society. Ida Bauer was told that she denied her own sexuality when she described her fear of her abuser, «Mr K», and this qualified her to the obscure diagnosis «a hysteric». However, there were many women who claimed to be sexual victims, and Freud may have had some reason for doubt. Even so, the diagnosis becomes incomprehensible without understanding the social and historical context.
Vienna at the time
At the start of the 1900s Freud was an ambitious doctor who had struggled long in the shadow of positivist physiology; he was well established with a large family which, excluding himself, included his wife Martha, as well as relatives, colleagues and a brood of children. From the safety of his home at Berggasse 19 he could defy the medical establishment and acquire the clinical experience that brought him- after several detours- to a better method of treatment. In addition, he developed a new theory about dreams and the structure of the mind.
In spite of progress, Freud failed to rise in the academic hierarchy at the university of Vienna, where he had been employed as an assistant professor for years. Vienna was the center of a conservative empire. According to Stephan Zweig there was only one thing that could shatter the social neurosis and liberate the creative forces: Art. «all these social strata existed in their own own circles and even in their own neighborhoods, the aristocracy in their palaces in the center of the city, the diplomatic corps in a third area, industry and merchants around Ringstrasse, the petty bourgousi in the inner parts, the proletariat in the outer. But they all met in the theater».
Anti-semitism flourished in the wake of various financial scandals and the French Dreyfuss affair. The right wing mayor Karl Leuger had been elected in spite of massive protest from the aristocracy and the powerful Jewish bourgeoisie. Barring the foul mob that rose from the gutter, few had the power to force through moderate reforms. Upper-class liberals like Freud now turned their back on politics and sublimated their own rebellions. A rigid society therefore seem to wither from within.
Complicated by social factors
Freud was among the first to develop a theory about how human dialogue can solve mental problems. A bi-product of this was an unsentimental description of the power structures in this conversation, both how they prevented and contributed to communication. When Dora one day slammed her door and shut Freud out, Freud saw it as a sign of weakness. Posterity, and a few literary scholars and theoreticians in particular, has compared Dora to Ibsen’s famous heroine, Nora.*
To other thinkers like Hélène Cixous, Dora became the woman who exposed Freud as a chauvinist. Women, like some religious people, have discovered that the more you criticize psychoanalysis, the more you seem to confirm its diagnosis. In the essay «On femininity» Freud declared that psychoanalysis doesn’t ask what a woman is, but how she is made. Psychoanalysis is seemingly impervious to any attack, and raises itself high above women, the religious and other so-called pathologies.
More humane after all
On the other hand, Freud took an important step away from the macabre laboratories of neuro-physiology and the institutionalized sadism that preoccupied many contemporary institutions. He communicated with his patients and wasn’t afraid of touchy subjects, like sex, death and aggression. But perhaps because Freud developed a theory to penetrate the defenses of the self and unveil hidden motives, he was later seen as the architect of a state sponsored invasion of the private sphere. In the doctor-patient relationship, historical positivism and its wave of materialism became a social tool of the establishment.
The power of definition
Of course, this spurred a host of counter-theories. Freud’s studies revealed that all women at some point in their childhood discovered that boys have something which they apparently lack, and that leads to “penis-envy” and supposedly causes neurosis later in life. Freud never accepted that this was in some ways a description of, if not a rationalization of, contemporary attitudes.
Later psychologists like Karen Horney understood that women needed to justify fundamental needs. They need to find a response to the old language of power. The feminist Susan Gubar begins one of her articles with the question «Is anatomy linguistic destiny?» Such a fate seemed inevitable to early feminists who suggested that penis-envy be replaced by “womb-envy”, or the stage in a boy’s life when he discovers that he is unable to give birth and consequently develops neurosis. It is not hard to see that this theoretical tug-of-war masks a power struggle.
Psychoanalysis in a vacuum?
Darwin had won his victory by gradually placing his followers in strategic positions within the scientific societies. The psychoanalytic movement followed a similar pattern, and spread throughout Europe after 1906 through intrigues and personal animosity.
The totalitarian side of psychoanalysis became increasingly more apparent as Freud clamped down on heretics within his own movement: Fleiss, Adler, Jung, Reich and others. This is a fate that psychoanalysis shares with Marxism. Where Marx saw exploitation, Freud saw neurosis, and the twentieth century seemed to follow these two in their search for hidden agendas.
Whether Freud was a positivist is debatable. However, he did write texts in which he saw himself as part of an accumulating corpus of knowledge. He also clung to scientific objectivity, and is consequently often scolded for his arrogance. Yet, it seems like posterity has blamed him for not being able to bring conversational analysis into a social vacuum. Can we really predict human behavior as reliably as the laws of Newton or describe them as eloquently as Darwin’s finches? It is not without reason that the great Karl Popper labeled both evolution and psychoanalysis as «metaphysical research programs».
Such unreasonable demands may also have also influenced Freud’s view of himself. However, in 1914, after a heated debate over psychoanalysis, the world experienced a series of irrational tremors that swept the old bourgeoisie and their prejudices aside: the shell shocks of the first world war. The immense tragedy of that conflict secured both women and psychoanalysts a better position in society.
Michael Henrik Wynn
* “A difficulty in the path of psychoanalysis” Sigmund Freud 1917.
* A simple search in google scholar revealed serveral who made the comparison.
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historyLamin Bajinka is a very fortunate man, a history teacher in a country where the unemployment rate is sky high. Yet, his days are far from care free, and often he too dreams about a comfortable life in Europe or America. Originally from the rural part of the Gambia, he lives in an urban area during the academic year, and moves back with his extended family on a farm during holidays. There he ploughs the fields by hand and tries to assist his relatives. «We grow delicious watermelons», he boasts. A devout muslim, he often prays and finds comfort in simple things. In his spare time, he trains the local soccer team, and it is not without pride that he talks about their many achievements on the pitch.
Historyradio.org: Tell us a little about your background. Why did you decide to study history?
Lamin Bajinka: I began my education in a small village called Kiti. Then I went to the Gambia college campus in Brikama, which is five kilometres from my native land. Brikama has about 90 000 inhabitants. I sometimes live in a town called Brufut, on the Gambian coast, with my mum.
My grandfather inspired my interest in studying history. During my youth he narrated vivid stories to me, which inspired to know the history of this land and her people.
Historyradio.org: How many students do you have, how old are they and what do you teach them?
Lamin Bajinka: I teach classes of 35 to 40 students and we have 4 history classes in the school. The age of my students differ. They are between 15 and 20, but there is nobody older than 20. In the Gambia, the history syllabus is divided into two: National History and West Africa and the Wider World. We try to read more about our own country and West Africa.
Historyradio.org: What about your pay as a teacher, is it sufficient for a decent life?
Lamin Bajinka: No, my wages are not enough for decent life because I can’t even buy a bicycle or construct my own house.
Historyradio.org: And tuition, is it free for all Gambians?
Lamin Bajinka: Yes, today basic education is free for all Gambians. Girls were the first to get free tuition, in order to empower and encourage female education in the country.
Historyradio.org. What sort of methods do you apply in your classroom? Lectures? Group work?
Lamin Bajinka: I normally I put the child at the center of the class and allow them to express their own understanding of the subject or topics. Then we have group work while I guide them.
Historyradio.org: What are the greatest difficulties that a Gambian student faces in school?
Lamin Bajinka: Many have difficulties with the distance they travel to attend school. Not every village or community is blessed with a school. So, as a result, some students travel far in order to get a better education.
Historyradio.org: Once a student graduates, what are their chances of attending university?
Lamin Bajinka: The chances are very slim due to the student’s financial circumstances. I am a good example of this, I haven’t finished my university degree. Yes, there are scholarships, but it is not sufficient for the number of people who want to have a university education.
Historyradio.org: Do you think there is adequate focus on Gambian and west African history in the media?
Lamin Bajinka: There is not enough focus on west African history, particularly Gambian history. European countries don’t focus much on our history in their media, do they?
Historyradio.org: If you were to teach Gambian history to a European class for a day, what events and topics would you focus on?
Lamin Bajinka: I will focus on the ethnic groups of Gambia, that is the people of the country, their social and political structure, and our economy. Then you can see how we live.
Historyradio.org: If you were to recommend a book on Gambian history, what would it be?
Lamin Bajinka: If I am to recommend a history book for my region, it will be any history of the ethnic groups of the Gambia that you can find. Our diversity is so important.
Historyradio.org: What are your dreams for the future?
Lamin Bajinka: I pray to become a successful business man.
The Gambia:
There are 8 main ethnic groups in the Gambia: Mandinka, Wolofs, Akus, Jola, Fulanis, Serahule, Serer and Tukulor all living in relative peace.
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short story«Sieg, Heil!» the nervous man said upon entering the main auditorium in 1938, his hard polished shoes echoed against the marble tiles. Short of breath, he placed his leather briefcase on the mahogany podium, and eyed his audience with anxious suspicion. There was rustling of paper, distant coughing. The apparatus for showing slides was prepared in the wings by a secretary in formal attire. Some of the employees seemed curious at least, while others had shown up as a matter of duty. And yawned. No doubt there were those in the small crowd for whom the word “duty” had special significance.At one wall a long crimson flag with a swastika, on the others the long history of the company, portraits of past industrialists that had built something from scratch, and hammered out the might of the German nation from steel.Finally, a small cortege of black suits entered the room, headed by the manager, a formal man by any standards, a man who appreciated efficiency, and man who knew he had proven his worth, and risen to senior rank.He eyed the speaker with a certain skepticism, but with acute interest.«My dear employees», he began upon entering the stage. «I have arrived to introduce our speaker tonight, a man of extraordinary courage and dedication who has traveled far and wide as a representative of our Fatherland, and been a unique witness. I will make no further comment, but let him recount his own story. The stage is yours, Herr Rabe. We are honored by your visit»The tall and nervous John Rabe then entered the podium.«As you all know, I have come from China recently, and in particular from a great city known as Nanjing. It is of the events that I witnessed there that I now wish to speak.”“Where is this city?” shouted a man from the back. The manager turned in anger in his seat, but fell silent when he saw the face of the man in the audience, and sighed.“That is a very good question. The city is centrally placed in China and have been historically of considerable significance for the Chinese, which is why I – as a representative of Der Fuhrer- was placed there. And it was in the service of our Fuhrer and as his envoy that I was able to witness the atrocities that I am about to reveal to you, the ruthless murder of thousands of old men, women and babies by the Japanese army. It is true that we in Germany are of a higher race than other nations, but we must also act in accordance with this, which is what I tried to do.”“But these people were of the mongol race, were they not?” persisted the voice.Herr Rabe stopped, the light over his head was bright, it hit his face in such a way that he was unable to make out the contours of the shadow in the audience, the annoying back seat heckler. But he did not need to see the face, he knew by the authority of the voice that personal animosity would get him nowhere. He had to fall back on his powers of persuasion. At that moment, he was taken back to that recent battlefield, and to the face of an elderly grand mother. She had run past him carrying a small child as he stood on the lawn. Artillery thundered in the distance, the glimmer of explosions colored the horizon. And then the shrill cries of the assaulting Japanese. For some reason he stood watching her escape. Just as she was about to melt into the fog, a shadow had stepped out of nowhere, a sharp blade was raised, and moments later both the old woman and the child lay dead on the grass one hundred meters from him.“Herr Rabe! Please continue”, a voice said. He shook his head, and found himself once again in the great hall wiping sweat off his forehead.“Yes, I am sorry. I will do as you say. I arrived I the city of Nanjing, and took up my position at our German station, and in that position, by the grace and might invested in me by Der Fuhrer, I witnessed the most horrific scenes that any man, even those who lived through our Kaiser’s great efforts, would ever have imagined. But I will say no more. I will let you see for yourself. Lower the lights, please.”There was total silence as the room submerged in darkness, the only sound that was heard was Herr Rabe’s nervous fiddling with the slide machine. Finally, it was working, Herr Rabe corrected his brown tie in order to breathe more freely, and the first slide appeared. It was a harmless photo of his place of work, then followed by scenic views of the city.Herr Rabe then began to lecture on the history of the region, upon his journey and upon the great assistance provided by his staff. He praised their efforts, he praised their patriotism, and the great dignity with which they had faced hardships. But then he stopped, fell silent for a moment. His face was the only one visible in the room, hard light hit it from the side, making his worried wrinkles stand out while the rest of the room brooded like a uniform shadow in curious anticipation.Then a new slide was loaded with a click resembling that of an automatic riffle: dead bodies on a road. There were coughs in the room. Herr Rabe said nothing, then loaded the next slide with military efficiency, close-ups of dead pregnant women. Then the next, children. The sight of the photos had brought back that surprising courage he had once displayed. Again he was back where it had all started. Slide after slide was loaded, it was all there: the torture, the corpses, the rapes, the blood-soaked cadavers, the screams and gazes he was unable to forget. There was something manic and automatic in the way that he loaded each slide, slowly and rhythmically as if to convince himself.Then he sighed. It was done. They had seen what he had seen, and his mission was complete.He asked for the lights, but had to shade his eyes as the audience re-emerged blackness. He now examined them one by one, searching for responses.There was a young man on the front row who was on the verge of tears, but he stared to the floor. Herr Rabe did not want to embarrass him. There was a balled fat man in a white suit with a very worried look, but Herr Rabe was unable to tell what caused that worry. Then he saw the face of the industrialist, the manager himself, thin and neat and composed. A poker face, it was impossible to say what such men were thinking.At first this annoyed Rabe a little, but then he thought about what sort of job the manager had. It was not possible for all men to wear their hearts on a sleeve. A manager was a political pawn, as well as a benefactor for workers in times of need. It was a pity that society produced his kind, but the world was what the world was.«I now wish to tell you about various actions that I took in the name of our great Fuhrer to prevent these horrific events, and how I was partly successful. I can tell you that…«But what did these mongols do to merit such punishment? You haven’t told us what they have done?»«What do you mean? Done? These are women and children?»«Some of the most cruelest people in history have been women, Herr Rabe?»Herr Rabe moved closer to the edge of the stage, spying into the audience. There again was that same voice, penetrating and authoritative. It was clear what he was. But Herr Rabe had influence, he would not be harassed by nobodies. If some upstart of a policeman thought he could be crueler than a Japanese samurai, he was sadly mistaken.«Are you sure you are not a socialist, Herr Rabe?» said the voice.Herr Rabe now stepped off the stage, and moved up the aisle passing many young and nervous clerks.Then he saw the man, tall, neat, well dressed, a mouth twisted in cynicism and a penetrating and intelligent stare.«Are you a true German?» asked Herr Rabe. «Can nothing make an impression upon your soul»«Soul? You are a sentimental dreamer, Herr Rabe. You must come with me, please».He saw the man approaching with determined steps.«Look here, I am a representative of Der Fuhrer. I am not just a nobody. You cannot treat me this way,” he continued.Before the man reached him two men who had been seated at the edges had grabbed his arms and were leading him towards the exit.Herr Rabe struggled, and broke free. Then he straightened his suit.«I will not stand for this!» he shouted. «I simply will not stand for it».But then, as he turned, he glimpsed the massive cynic just behind him, and something hit his head with such a force that he blacked out.When he woke, Herr Rabe was in the back of a moving van, and he heard city traffic. The man was treating his forehead with some cloth.«You need not worry, Herr Rabe. You are important and the party is grateful for your service. But your information is not wanted. I had no choice but to put an end to your performance»«Performance? Did you not see? Are you not a patriot?»«I am a liberated national from the Sudetenland, Herr Rabe. I was thrown in prison for that, I have no need to prove my patriotism, even to man such as yourself.»«And my slides?«What policemen, businessmen and politicians think is their own affair»The man then leaned back against the side of the van, lit a cigarette and sighed. He didn’t even look at Herr Rabe as the van stopped and Herr Rabe was directed toward the interrogation room.«Here our ways separate Herr Rabe,» the man said as they stopped by a gray door.«May I have your name, I wish to report you.»«My name is Schindler…Oscar Schindler. You may report me, if you wish.»And then the man turned and quietly walked towards the exit.
by Michael Henrik Wynn
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historyIn 2016, China’s submission to the Academy awards followed a 7th century monk on his journey of exploration to India. The record of Hiuen-Tsiang’s (b. 602– dec. 664) travel has had an enormous impact on Chinese culture, inspiring one of the country’s age-old novels. The manuscript also contains one of the most detailed descriptions of the old Nalanada monastery in India, an intellectual powerhouse that dominated the world for a thousand years, before being reduced to ruins. In this text from 1911, a prominent sinologist comments.
“Centuries before biography became a business, before the peccadilloes of royal mistresses and forgotten courtesans obtained a “market value’ the writing of the Master’s life by some cherished disciple was both an act of love and piety in the far East. The very footprints of the famous dead became luminous, and their shadows shone in dark caves that once withheld them from the world. Memory looking back viewed them through a golden haze; they were merged at last in ancient sunlight; they were shafts of God rayed in the tangled forests of time. In this spirit, then, the man of compassionate feeling, the Shaman Hwui Li took up his tablets and wrote the life of Hiuen-Tsiang.
The Master had already written his immortal Great Tang Records on the Western Regions (published 646 AD), yet the sixteen years of that wonderful quest in far-off India, of cities seen and shrines visited, of strange peoples and stranger customs, cannot be crowded into one brief record. And so we watch the patient disciple waiting on those intervals of leisure when the task of translation from Sanskrit into Chinese is laid aside, when the long routine of a Buddhist day is ended, waiting for the impressions of a wandering soul in the birthplace of its faith. The Life is supplement to the record. What is obscure or half told in the one is made clear in the other.
Hwui-Li begins in the true Chinese manner with a grand pedigree of his hero, tracing his descent from the Emperor Hwang Ti, the mythical Heavenly Emperor. This zeal for following the remotest ancestors over the borders of history into the regions of fable may be largely ascribed to a very human desire to connect the stream of life with its divine source. We are chiefly concerned to know that he came of a family which had already given notable men to the State, and was launched in the troublous whirl of birth and death but a little distance from the town of Kou-Shih, in the province of Honan, in the year 6oo A.D. Here and there biography leaves us a glimpse of his outward appearance as boy and man. We are told that at his opening life he was rosy as the evening vapours and round as the rising moon. As a boy he was “sweet as the odor of cinnamon or the vanilla tree.” A soberer style does justice to his prime, and again he comes before us, “a tall handsome man with beautiful eyes and a good complexion. He had a serious but benevolent expression and a sedate, rather stately manner.”
The call of the West came early to Hiuen-Tsiang. From a child he had easily outstripped his fellows in the pursuit of knowledge, and with the passing of the years he stepped beyond the narrow limits of Chinese Buddhism and found the deserts of Turkestan between him and the land of his dreams. Imperfect translations from the Sanskrit, the limited intelligence of the Chinese priesthood, the sense of vast truths dimly perceived obscurely set forth, the leaven of his first Confucian training—all contributed to the making of a Buddhist pilgrim.
The period of his departure, 629 A.D., was an eventful one for China. Taizong (b.598- d.649), the most powerful figure of the brilliant Tang dynasty, sat on the throne of his father Kaotsu, the founder of the line. The nomad Tartars, so long the terror of former dynasties, succumbed to his military genius, and Kashgaria was made a province of the Empire. Already the kingdom of Tibet was tottering to its fall, and Corea was to know the devastation of war within her boundaries. Ch’ang-an was now the capital, a city of floating pavilions and secluded gardens, destined to become the center of a literary movement that would leave its mark for all time. But the days were not yet when the terraces of Teng-hiang-ting would see the butterflies alight on the flower-crowned locks of Yang-kuei-fei, or the green vistas re-echo to the voices of poet and emperor joined in praise of her. Only two wandering monks emerge furtively through the outer gates of the city’s triple walls, and one of them looks back for a glimpse of Ch’ang-an, the last for sixteen eventful years of exile.
Others had crossed the frontier before him, notably Fa-hian and Sung Yun in the fourth and the fifth centuries AD, others in due course would come and go, leaving to posterity their impressions of a changing world, but this man stands alone, a prince of pilgrims, a very Bayard of Buddhist enthusiasm, fearless and without reproach.
As we read on through the pages of Hwui-li the fascination of the Master of the Law becomes clear to us, not suddenly, but with the long, arduous miles that mark the way to India and the journey home. Take the Master’s tattered robes, let the winds of Gobi whistle through your sleeve and cut you to the bone, mount his rusty red nag and set your face to the West. In the night you will see ‘ “fire-lights as many as stars” raised by the demons and goblins; travelling at dawn you will behold ‘ “soldiers clad in fur and felt and the appearance of camels and horsemen and the glittering of standards and lances; fresh forms and figures changing into a thousand shapes, sometimes at an immense distance, then close at hand, then vanished into the void.” The time comes when even the old red steed avails not, the Great Ice Mountains loom in front of you, and you crawl like an ant and cling like a fly to the roof of the world. Then on the topmost summit, still far away from the promised land, you realize two things—the littleness of human life, the greatness of one indomitable soul.
But the superman is also very human. With the vast bulk of his encyclopedic knowledge he falls on the pretentious monk Mokshagupta in the Kingdom of Agni, he flattens him and treads a stately if heavy measure on his prostrate body. And withal clear-sighted and intolerant of shams, he is still a child of his age and religion. With childish curiosity he tempts a bone to foretell the future, and with childish delight obtains the answer he most desires. In the town of Hiddha is Buddha’s skull bone, one foot long, two inches round. “If anyone wishes to know the indications of his guilt or his religious merit he mixes some powdered incense into a paste, which he spreads upon a piece of silken stuff, and tlien presses it on the top of the bone according to the resulting indications the good fortune or ill fortune of the man is determined”
Hiuen obtains the impression of a Bodhi and is overjoyed, for, as the guardian Brahman of the bone explains, “it is a sure sign of your having a portion of true wisdom (Bodhi).” At another time he plays a kind of religious quoits by flinging garlands of flowers on the sacred image of Buddha, which, being caught on its hands and arms, show that his desires will be fulfilled. In simple faith he tells Hwui-li how Buddha once cleaned his teeth and flung the fragments of the wood with which he performed the act on the ground ; how they took root forthwith, and how a tree seventy feet high was the consequence. And Hiuen saw that tree, therefore the story must be true.
But it is not with the pardonable superstitions of a human soul of long ago that we need concern ourselves. The immense latent reserve, the calm strength to persist, is the appeal. It comes to us with no note of triumph for the thing accomplished or the obstacle removed, but rather underlies some simple statement of fact and is summed up in these few trite words: “We advanced guided by observing the bones left on the way.” The little incidents of life and death are as nothing to one who looks on all men as ghosts haunted by reality. And so the Master of the Law resigns himself to the prospect of a violent end at the hands of the river pirates of the Ganges, to the miraculous interposition of a timely storm, with the same serenity with which he meets the long procession streaming out of Nalanda in his honor, with its two hundred priests and some thousand lay patrons who surround him to his entry, recounting his praises, and carrying standards, umbrellas, flowers, and perfumes.
“The tradition of the old people is this:
To the south of the convent, in the middle of an Amra garden, is a pool. In this pool is a Naga called Nalanda, and the convent built by the side of the pool is therefore called after his name. Again there is a saying that Tathagata whilst a Bodhisattva was the king of a great country and built his capital in this place. He was deeply affected towards the orphans and destitute, and, ever moved by this principle, gave away all he had for their good. In memory of this goodness they named the place ”doing charitable acts without intermission,” The place was originally the garden of the lord Amra. Five hundred merchants bought it for ten lacs of gold pieces, and presented it to Buddha. Here Buddha preached the law for three months, and most of the merchants obtained the fruit of Arhatship, in consequence.
After the Nirvana of Buddha an old king of this country called Sakraditya, from a principle of loving obedience to Buddha, built this convent. After his decease his son seized the throne, and continued the vast undertaking; he built, towards the south, another temple. Then his son built a temple to the eastward. Next, his son built a temple to the north-east. Afterwards the king, seeing some priests who came from the country of China to receive his religious offerings, was filled with gladness, and he gave up his royal estate and became a recluse. His son succeeded and built another temple to the north. After him a king of Mid-India built by the side of this another temple.
Thus six kings in connected succession added to these structures. Moreover, the whole establishment is surrounded by a brick wall, which encloses the entire convent from without. One gate opens into the great college, from which are separated eight other halls, standing in the middle. The richly adorned towers, and the fairy -like turrets, like pointed hill- tops, are congregated together. The observatories seem to be lost in the vapours of the morning, and the upper rooms tower above the clouds. From the windows one may see how the winds and the clouds produce new forms, and above the soaring eaves the conjunctions of the sun and moon may be observed.”
There are moments of sheer delight when scenes of physical beauty are fair enough to draw even a Buddhist monk from his philosophic calm, when even Hiuen-Tsiang must have become lyrical in the presence of his recording disciple. Who would not be the guest of the abbot of Nalanda monastery with its six wings, each built by a king, all enclosed in the privacy of solid brick?
“And then we may add how the deep, translucent ponds, bear on their surface the blue lotus, intermingled with the Kie-ni flower, of deep red color, and at intervals the Amra groves spread over all, their shade. All the outside courts, in which are the priests’ chambers, are of four stages. The stages have dragonprojections and colored eaves, the pearl-red pillars, carved and ornamented, the richly adorned balustrades, and the roofs covered with tiles that reflect the light in a thousand shades, these things add to the beauty of the scene.”
Here ten thousand priests sought refuge from the world of passing phenomena and the lure of the senses. Wherever our pilgrim goes he finds traces of a worship far older than Buddhism. He does not tell us so in so many words, yet underneath the many allusions to Bodhitrees and Nagas we may discover the traces of that primitive tree and serpent worship that still exists in remote corners of India, as, for instance, among the Naga tribes of Manipur who worship the python they have killed.
In Hiuen’s time every lake and fountain had its Naga-raja or serpent-king, Buddha himself, as we learn from both the Si-yu-hi and the Life, spent much time converting or subduing these ancient gods. There were Nagas both good and evil. When Buddha first sought enlightenment he sat for seven days in a state of contemplation by the waters of a little woodland lake. Then this good Naga “kept guard over Tathagata ; with his folds seven times round the body of the Buddha, he caused many heads to appear, which overshadowed him as a parasol ; therefore to the east of this lake is the dwelling of the Naga.”….
The Buddha sat for seven days contemplating this tree ; “he did not remove his gaze from it during this period, desiring thereby to indicate his grateful feelings towards the tree by so looking at it with fixed eyes.” Hiuen Tsiang himself and his companions contributed to the universal adoration of the tree, for, as that impeccable Buddhist the Shaman Hwui-li rather baldly states, “they paid worship to the Bodhi-tree.” How did Buddhism come to be connected in any way with tree and serpent worship? The answer is, through its connection with Bralimanism. As Buddhism was Brahmanism reformed, so Brahmanism in its turn was the progressive stage of tree and serpent worship. Siva the destroyer is also Nag Bhushan, “he who wears snakes as his ornaments.”…
But Hiuen-Tsiang was born into a world that beheld the tree of Buddhism slowly dying from the top. He bore witness, if unconsciously, to a time of transition and a noble faith in decay, and the swift, silent growth of jungle mythology around the crumbling temples of Buddha. His record of these sixteen years of travel is a priceless one, for through it we are able to reconstruct the world and ways of Buddhist India of the centuries that have passed. Yet far more priceless still is that record, read between the lines, of a human soul dauntless in disaster, unmoved in the hour of triumph, counting the perils of the bone-strewn plain and the unconquered hills as nothing to the ideal that lay before him, the life-work, the call of the Holy Himalayas and the long toil of his closing years. It is difficult to over-estimate his services to Buddhist literature.
He returned to his own country with no less than 657 volumes of the sacred books, seventy-four of which he translated into Chinese, while 150 relics of the Buddha, borne by twenty horses, formed the spoil reverently gathered from the many lands we call India. And so we leave him to his rest upon Mount Sumeru, where once his venturous soul alighted in the dreams of youth, with the serpents coiled beneath its base, with its seven circling hills of gold and the seven seas between, and the great salt ocean encompassing them all.
May 6th, 1911″
by sinologist Launcelot Alfred Cranmer-Byng (1872-1945).
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history
In a story by Edgar Rice Burroughs an explorer chops his way with a machete through the Cambodian jungle to a lost world – a remnant of ancient Angkor still thriving. The tale of “The Land of Hidden Men” may be an entertaining yarn, but Angkor Wat – one of the greatest cultures of the medieval world- was swallowed by the jungle, and then rediscovered in the nineteenth century. The ancient kingdom boasted 102 public hospitals. Only one first-hand account of its capital exists, from the pen of Zhou Daguan, a contemporary Chinese diplomat who later published a book entitled “The Customs of Cambodia”. Zhou Daguan was born Zhou Dake, in a small town in a coastal region of China. For some reason, he changed his name after he returned from Cambodia. Some speculate that the Chinese emperor planned to attack Cambodia, and that that might be the reasons for the many details in Daguan’s book. His text only caught the attention of the world after it was translated into French by Paul Pelliot in 1902. The following are excerpts:
“This Tche-la is also called Tchan-la. The native name is Kan-po-tche. The current dynasty, based on Tibetan religious books, calls this country Kan-p’ou-tche, phonetically close to Kan-potche.
The royal palace, as well as official buildings and noble residences, all face east. The royal palace lies north of the Golden Tower and the Golden Bridge. Where the sovereign conducts his affairs, there is a golden window; to the right and left of the frame, on square pillars, there are mirrors, about forty to fifty, arranged on the sides of the window. The sill of the sovereign’s window is shaped like an elephant.
Everyone, starting with the sovereign, both men and women, wear their hair in a bun and have bare shoulders. They simply wrap a piece of cloth around their waist. There are many rules regarding the fabrics based on each person’s rank. Only the prince can wear continuous patterned fabrics. He wears a golden diadem, similar to those on the heads of vajradharas. Sometimes, he does not wear a diadem and simply wraps a garland of fragrant flowers reminiscent of jasmine in his bun.
Among common people, only women can dye the soles of their feet and the palms of their hands; men would not dare to. High officials and princes can wear fabrics with widely spaced patterns. Only officials may wear fabrics with two groups of patterns. Among common people, only women are allowed to wear such special types of cloth. But even if a newly arrived Chinese wears a fabric with two groups of patterns, it is not considered a crime because he is “ngan-ting-pa-cha”, a person who does not know the rules.
When officials go out, their emblems and their entourage are arranged according to their rank. The highest dignitaries use a golden palanquin and four parasols with golden handles; the following have a golden palanquin and two parasols with golden handles, then a golden palanquin and one parasol with a golden handle, and finally a simple parasol with a silver handle.”
“Both regular writings and official documents are always written on deer or deer skin and similar materials, dyed black. Each person cuts the skins to their liking, depending on their dimensions in length and width. People use a kind of powder that resembles Chinese chalk and shape it into sticks, which they call “so.” Holding this stick in hand, they write characters on pieces of skin, these do not fade. When they finish, they place the stick behind their ear. They can also recognize a writer by his characters. The characters will fade, however, if you rub them with something wet. All documents are written from left to right, not from top to bottom.
These people always make the tenth Chinese lunar month the first month of their year. In front of the royal palace, a large platform is assembled that can accommodate more than a thousand people, and it is entirely adorned with lanterns and flowers. In front, at a distance of twenty paces, using pieces of wood placed end to end, a high platform is assembled, similar in shape to scaffolding for the construction of the Buddhist mounds we now call “stupas”. Each night, three, four, five, or six of these platforms are constructed. Fireworks and firecrackers are placed at the top. These expenses are borne by the provinces and noble houses. When night falls, the sovereign is invited to witness the spectacle. Rockets are launched, and firecrackers are lit. The rockets can be seen from over a hundred miles away, and the firecrackers are as large as boulders, and their explosion shakes the entire city. Mandarins and nobles contribute with candles and areca nuts.
The sovereign also invites foreign ambassadors to the spectacle. This continues for fifteen days, and then everything stops. Every month, there is a festival. In the fourth month, they play ball. In the ninth, they enumerate. Enumerating means gathering the population from all over the kingdom and reviewing them in front of the royal palace. In the fifth month, they fetch water for the Buddhas. They gather the Buddhas from all over the kingdom, bring water, and, in the company of the sovereign, wash them. In the sixth month, they navigate boats on dry land. The prince climbs a belvedere to watch the festival. In the seventh month, they burn rice. At this time, the new rice is ripe, and they fetch it outside the South Gate and burn it as an offering to the Buddha. Countless women go to this ceremony by cart or on elephants, but the sovereign stays at home. In the eighth month, there is dancing. The term “ngai-lan” means “to dance.” They designate actors and musicians who come to the royal palace every day to perform “ngai-lan.” There are also pig and elephant fights. The sovereign also invites foreign ambassadors to attend.
The sovereign holds court twice a day for government affairs. There is no schedule. Officials or people who wish an audience wait on the ground outside. After a while, distant music is heard in the palace. Then the sound of conch shells outside announces his arrival. I have heard that the sovereign travels in a golden palanquin to these meetings; he does not come from far away. A moment later, two palace maidens raise the curtain with their delicate fingers, and the sovereign, holding a sword, appears standing at the golden window. Ministers and people fold their hands and touch their foreheads to the ground. When the sound of the conch shells ceases, they can raise their heads. It is at this moment that the sovereign takes his seat, and on such occasions, he is always seated on his lion’s skin, a royal heirloom. As soon as the matters to be handled are completed, the prince turns around, the palace maidens lower the curtain, and everyone stands up.”
The excerpts come from Paul Pelliot’s French translation, first published in 1902 (then revised before his death and published in 1951). Below is Monash University’s youtube reconstruction of medieval Angkor, from 2017.
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short storyBy Margie Harris, Racketeer Stories, February 1931
(Courtesy of John Locke. His collection of her stories is available from Amazon)
It’s a hell of a thing to be waiting for the rubber hose in your B.V.D.’s and suddenly see yourself looking into your cell at you, with blood all over your face!
horty Breen, get-away driver for the Bull Coleman gang, was keenly alive to the trouble hunch which had been riding him all afternoon. So it needed but the touch of heavy fingers on his shoulder to send him jerking, leaping, twisting through the crowd on Fourteenth Street.
His first spring carried him through a group of chattering women. In a few seconds more he was clattering down the steps of the subway. Behind him was the usual chorus of “Stop, thief!” but over all resounded the bull-like roar of Police Captain McGrehan.
An express train was standing in the station. Shorty dropped a nickel in the turnstile, dashed aboard as the doors closed. Damn McGrehan anyway. Two nights before he’d caught Shorty in a dark corner and given him purple hell for playing with Bull’s gang.
“Damn ol’ goat,” Shorty growled. “Where’s he get ‘at stuff? You’d think he was me ol’ man, instead of him being just a guy ‘at wanted to marry Mom w’en she was a goil!”
At Thirty-fourth Street he slipped from the train and cast a furtive eye over the crowd. Hell’s fire! There he was, getting out of the last car! There was no mistaking the blue uniform with its captain’s bars and stripes in gold, nor the heavy, squared jaw above it. Shorty dashed up the stairs two at a time, made the first half block at a rapid walk. Then he slowed, but no police uniform showed behind him.
At Eighth Avenue he turned south, stopping for a final survey of his back trail. He was safe. McGrehan had lost him. Heaving a sigh of relief, Shorty started to stroll along toward Finnegan’s café and Bull’s headquarters above it.
For the moment his underworld guardian angel was not on the job. He stopped at the curb to light a cigarette in the lee of a parked Checker cab. He gave the cab and driver no attention until he sensed a flurry of movement. He started to turn but it was too late.
A blue clad arm shot forth, clamped iron fingers on his shoulder, dragged him, struggling, into the cab. A split second later he heard the order.
“Down to Center Street, lad; drive right intuh the garage.”
Shorty didn’t need to see his captor’s—McGrehan’s—face. He couldn’t, had he wanted to. His face was jammed into a corner of the seat, his knees were on the floor. The pressure relaxed; Shorty heaved himself erect, only to suffer the shame of being shoved back, slowly, relentlessly into his former position.
“You’re a tough guy, Clyde!”—Jeez! how he hated that pansy name Mom had given him—“But I’m tougher than all of you gaycats. Now sit you down and listen to me.”
The big hands heaved again, slammed him back onto the seat.
Captain McGrehan’s eyes were blazing; steely fingers were digging into Shorty’s shoulder muscles. Shorty tried to out stare the cop; his eyes fell first.
“What th’ hell?” he growled. “This a pinch?”
“What does it feel like—a swimmin’ lesson?”
“Aw, what have I done? You got nothin’ on me.” The old formula between cop and crook the world over.
“I have me hand on you, which’ll do for the present,” McGrehan responded with heavy wit. “It looks like a tough night for you, Clydie.”
Shorty winced again at the hated name. “Clyde!” for the speedball who drove the chopper car last week when Bull Coleman’s rodmen shot it out with The Yid’s organ grinders, hijacked two trucks of alky. Uh-huh. Two cops had been killed, but that was their hard luck.
“You don’t take kindly to th’ name a good mother gave you, Clyde.” There was contempt in the Captain’s sarcastic drawl. “Well, it’s a hell of a name for a gangster—and it’s a hell of a gangster you’ll be after this night.”
Shorty stirred uneasily. Jeez! Suppose some of Bully’s scouts saw him riding with McGrehan. They’d be calling him “Canary” and tomorrow taking him for a ride. Yet he hated a “chirper” worse than anyone, almost.
“Lissen, Cap,” he pleaded. “Lemme go. Jess because you’n Mom went to school together’s no reason fer youse to get me put on the spot.”
“The spot, is it now?” The reply was a bellow of derision. “You’ll be wishin’ for the spot before tonight’s over. It’s the Third we’re fixin’ up for you.”
Shorty’s blood turned cold within him. The dreaded “third.” And at the hands of this ramping, raging old Mick on whom he’d always looked, though from a distance, as a family friend!
“Yuh can’t give me no hosin’,” he said. “Whaddyuh think you got on me?”
McGrehan’s lips didn’t move; his hand did. It slid down to a point on Shorty’s arm between elbow and shoulder. The fingers tightened, dug into the nerve center under the biceps. Shorty tried to jerk loose. The movement brought a howl of pain from his lips. McGrehan was pitiless. Slowly the grasp tightened. Horrible searing pains flashed down the arm to the finger tips, up over the shoulder.
“Enough?” The Captain growled the word. Shorty nodded in mute agony.
“Listen to me, then. Don’t you start tellin’ me what I can or cannot do this night. In five days more I retire on pension. Nobody can change that. Them five days is to be given to runnin’ down some rats that killed two brave men recent—and to makin’ a man out of Mary Ann Breen’s lousy brat—or killin’ him.”
Shorty sunk down in his corner. Suddenly he felt terribly alone. McGrehan he knew was tough, iron hard. It was said he preferred a billy to a rubber hose—and followed his liking.
“Yes, Clyde,” the Captain’s tones were silky now. “It’ll be a tough night, and here we are ready for it to start.”
The cab swung across the curb, into a big room filled with riot cars, prowl cars, the fast buses of the strong arm squad; the big racers in which the Commissioners and Brass Collars buzzed to danger points. McGrehan handed the driver a bill, pointed over his shoulder with a big thumb.
“Out,” he growled.
As the automatic doors closed, he spun Shorty about, crossed his pile-driver right to the button with a snap.
Shorty went limp. McGrehan caught him, did not let him fall.
“Poor, dumb lad,” he half whispered. “Spoiled as he is, I wish he was mine.”
Two plainclothes men came from the shadows, took the drooping form, carried it to the silent cells where there is only silence.
While Shorty still was unconscious, the detectives stripped him of coat, hat, shoes, collar, trousers, hat and tie.
“Cap said to leave him his cigarettes and matches,” one of the searchers said.
“Yeh?” his mate replied. “The ol’ boy’s gettin’ soft. Wouldn’t be surprised to come down here in a day or two an’ find he’s been getting drinkin’ water.”
II
Doubling for Shorty
“McGrehan speaking, sir. I have the lad. May I come up?”
“In five minutes, Captain. I’ll ring.” The Commissioner’s voice was curt but friendly. “Any trouble?”
“For him, not for me, sir.”
McGrehan sensed the beginning of a chuckle as his superior hung up the receiver.
Commissioner Van Voort turned back to the stockily built, severe faced man opposite him, Captain Michaelson, Chief of New York’s Secret Police.
“That was McGrehan,” Van Voort said. “Reporting he’s turned in the Breen boy. Dammit, Michaelson, I don’t like the thought of Springer and Haddon taking such chances.”
“Nor do I.” Michaelson’s face was granite hard. “McGrehan’s plan to save this little Breen rat is apt to spoil it all. But we’re ready—checked and rechecked on the plan.”
“Yes, we’re too deep in now to change,” Van Voort replied. He drew a map toward him. “We’ll go over it once again; then you can get your crew together. Here’s the district, with the route marked in red arrows.
“The point marked ‘J’ is where the truck will be, with tools, tear bombs, extra ammunition; whatever’s required. When Bull’s third car passes, the boy who’s been trying to start the engine will slip around the corner and signal Lieutenant Henry. The signal to close in will be a burst of blank cartridge machine gun fire. Right? All clear?”
“Perfectly, Mr. Commissioner. And in the meantime the other group will surround Bull’s headquarters over Finnegan’s. When the word is passed that the warehouse raiders have been mopped up, we’ll hit Bull from all sides and the roof.”
“Good, Captain. Goodnight and good luck.”
A touch on the button brought McGrehan from downstairs.
“Good work,” the Commissioner said. “Anyone see you get him?”
“Not a chance, sir. I snatched him offen the sidewalk before he could squawk. He was goin’ to Bull’s; thought he’d ditched me in Thirty-fourth Street. I hopped a cab, beat it the other way and copped him on Eighth Avenue.”
The Commissioner stared for a moment at the stubborn old face before him.
“See here,” he said. “It’s a devil of a thing you’ve made me ask of Springer—to gamble his life for a crook like that.”
“Wait ‘til you’ve seen Springer in his clothes. They’re enough alike to be twins, except their eyes is different. Springer has painted a couple of fine blue bruises on his lamps to take care of that. You’d swear he’d been in a pip of a fight.”
“It’s a terrible chance—” The Commissioner paused.
“No worser’n any other man of the Secret Squad’s takin’ every day, sir. No more than the other boy we shoved in on Bull’s gang. It’s all risky; that’s how we’re cleanin’ up on the tips they get.”
“I hope you’re right, McGrehan. Anyway, after tonight there’ll be no more cop killings by the Coleman gang.”
“Which’ll be a blessin’ in a wicked world, Mr. Commissioner.”
McGrehan saluted, about faced and departed.
Thirty minutes later the lookout at Bull Coleman’s headquarters opened the peep panel, recognized Shorty Breen and admitted him.
“Where th’ hell youse been, punk?” the lookout demanded. “Bull’s been askin’ for youse.”
“Aw hell! I had a fight wit’ a guy over a pool game,” Shorty replied out of the corner of his mouth. “I got a pair uh shiners.”
“Damn if you ain’t—an’ maybe Bull won’t slap youse down fer that.”
Shorty did not reply. Instead he shambled across the room and, dropping into a chair commanding a view of both the office and entrance doors, he seemed to doze.
III
The Stage Is Set
Sharp at 10 o’clock Bull Coleman opened the door of his private office to crook his fingers at four of the loungers. Shorty followed Ginger Olsen, Chopper Allen and Sid Haddon into the room.
“Shut the door, kid,” Bull growled. “All of youse set down and hang out an ear. Everything’s set. Sid’ll drive the lead car wit’ two roddies an’ Chopper wit’ his grinder. Shorty’s to drive the guard car. He’ll take two more rods, an’ Ginger wit’ his Tommy.
“On th’ way youse’ll pick up the third car, which’ll run between lead an’ guard. That one’ll back into th’ shippin’ alley beside the warehouse. Shorty pulls down th’ street half way of th’ block, headin’ east. Sid heads back west and pulls near to the corner. That way, if they’s a ruckus, they won’t burn each other down.
“Now lissen. That gives a guard car headed whichever the dope buggy heads when it comes outta the alley. The other one’ll swing an’ follow. Get me?”
All nodded, but Bull, himself a strategist, duplicated the scene of a few moments before in the Commissioner’s office, when he produced a rough map of the route to show the course to be taken.
To one man in the room the scene had its element of humor. It was his second view of the maps—one down in Center Street, the other in Bull’s office. For Sid Haddon was the “other fellow” mentioned by McGrehan—a member of the Secret Police, planted on Bull’s gang through clever plotting.
Something warned Haddon. He looked up, caught the burning eyes of Chopper Allen studying him intently. Instantly he let his face go blank, gazing back almost stupidly at the other. This simply wouldn’t do. Allen never had been friendly. Just now it is possible the man had caught the half grin on his face.
Bull’s bellowing voice brought the duel of glances to an end.
“Everybody out now,” he said. “But stick around. Youse know th’ rules. I’ll tell youse when it’s time.”
That was Bull’s method. At the last moment he outlined his plans in detail. After that no one was allowed to leave the hangout or to telephone. Even then the exact hour was kept secret until the moment of departure.
At the door, Chopper turned back.
“See you a moment, Bull?”
“Yeh. What youse got on your chest?”
Chopper saw to it that the door was closed. He returned to the desk and leaned forward.
“It’s that guy, Haddon,” he half whispered. “Lemme knock him off, chief; he’s poison. Don’t ask me how I know. I just feel it. I’ve seen him in my dreams putting the cuffs on me. Every time he comes near me I smell the cops.”
“Aw cripes, Chopper, you’re nuts,” Bull answered. “He was sent to me by Mickey the Harp from Chicago after he got into a jam there. I had him watched plenty, and I know he’s all right. Just because you’re a damned old woman’s no reason for me to lose a guy with th’ kinda guts he’s got. He’ll go down intuh hell if I send him—’n come back wit’ a bottle of pre-war in each hand.”
Chopper shrugged, started for the door; turned back.
“Lissen, chief—” He was bitterly, insanely angry now. “When this guy sends you to the Big Squirm up in Sing Sing just remember that I told you to get rid of him.”
Bull’s heavy face crimsoned, turned purple.
“Get th’ hell outta here, you damned croaking louse,” he shouted. “When anybody sends me to the Hot Seat it’ll be some rat like youse, afraid of his own shadow. Mebbe you’re th’ one ‘at needs his horns knocked off—”
Chopper shivered involuntarily.
“Forget it, chief,” he said placatingly. “It’s you I’m worryin’ about; not me. When do we start?”
“When I send you, rat,” Bull snarled. “That good enough for youse?”
Chopper slouched to the door, white-faced, humiliated.
The stage was set for the third act of the drama of Secret Police versus the Coleman dusters.
IV
The Attack
Zero hour was 1:30.
Bull strode into the main room, followed by Ginger and Chopper, each carrying his favorite sub-machine gun.
“Smitty and Shuffle!” he barked. “Get your rods and go wit’ Ginger. Dutch and Ike, you go wit’ Chopper. He’ll tell youse what to do.”
“Come on, punk; get your driving eye alive,” he snapped, halting before Shorty’s slouched form. He stopped and peered under the boy’s hat brim.
“Jeez, you would pick a night like this to get slapped up,” he snarled. “One slip-up from you, gaycat, and I’ll knock youse off myself. Kin you see well enough to drive?”
Shorty spat nonchalantly. “Sure!” he responded. “What’s a shiner got to do wit’ steppin’ on th’ gas?”
“Hell! Get goin’,” Bull demanded. “Ginger’s grinder in your car. If he tells you to drive offen a dock—do it.”
Quietly the four slipped through the outer room, down the rear stairs to the alley garage where waited a stolen Packard touring car. Shorty wriggled under the wheel, touched the starter, listened for a moment to the motor’s purr. He cut the switch, looked about him tranquilly.
The outer door opened. Sid Haddon entered, followed by Chopper and the two rodmen. Beside the opposite wall stood a Buick. Half way there, Haddon whirled and said to Shorty:
“Slip us a pill, kid, I’m all out.”
Shorty obligingly extended a package of cigarettes to Haddon.
Before returning it, the other snapped his pocket lighter and set the fag going. Stepping close to the side of the Packard he handed the package back to Shorty with his right hand. At the same time, with a deft twist of his left, he tucked a squat automatic between the padding of the front seat and Shorty’s leg.
“Thanks, kid—see you in church,” he said nonchalantly, turning back to the other car.
Shorty’s eyes flashed to the rear vision mirror. Had Ginger or the other two seen Haddon slip him the rod? It was Coleman’s rule that drivers of get-away cars must not be armed. Thus, if they started any treachery, they’d be at the mercy of the other gunmen.
Seemingly Haddon’s sleight-of-hand had gone unnoticed. Dutch Schmaltz, who had been standing at the right of the car, slipped in beside Shorty. He inspected his automatic, lighted a cigarette and wriggled to a comfortable position.
“All right—let’s go,” Ginger said in a moment. “Follow Chopper half a block behind, When we pick up the other car on Eleventh Avenue slide back a little further; don’t want it to look like a parade.”
The garage doors swung open on oiled hinges. In another moment they closed behind the two dark cars. The side curtains were up on both, but a touch on the bottom buttons would open them for the death-spewing choppers. Otherwise there was nothing to distinguish them from the other motor-cars of the night.
Shorty kept a watchful eye on the red tail light of the Buick. He speeded up when the other driver found a hole in traffic; slowed when the lights caused a temporary jam.
On Eleventh Avenue, where traffic was light in the early morning hours, a dark shape curved out of an intersecting street, buzzed up alongside the Buick, then dropped into line. It was the raiders’ car. Shorty slowed down to give it room behind the lead car.
“All set now,” Ginger barked. “Remember, when we get to the warehouse, you pull east and stop about fifty feet past where Sid turns and heads west. Let the engine run and be ready for a quick lam.”
“Gotcha!” Shorty grunted. “Second corner, ain’t it?”
“Yeh. What th’ hell’s that ahead of us?”
At the curb ahead the lights had picked up an unlighted black shape. As Ginger spoke he saw the twinkle of a flashlight and lifted the grinder from the floor. Shorty gave the engine more gas, swung so that his lights also lit up the scene.
By the curb stood an ancient Model T Ford, seemingly broken down. The hood was up and an elderly man, overall clad, was looking on as a youth tinkered with the engine.
“Breakdown,” Shorty called over his shoulder. “ ‘Sall right.”
“It is—like hell,” Ginger growled “It’s punks and old apple knockers like that who’ll remember seein’ three cars come along and turn the corner.”
Grumbling, he glared back through the rear window. Shorty swung his car on the trail of the other two. He cut his lights as he saw the first car turn west. The second was backing into the loading area.
Fifty feet farther on he drifted to a silent stop, jazzed his engine to blow out the last vestige of carbon, then let it purr sweetly while they waited.
In the rear vision mirror he could see the outlines of the Buick at the opposite curb behind them. He grunted as he reached for a cigarette and remembered the orders were: “No smoking.”
As he sat there in the darkness, he felt his nerve tauten as he visioned dark forms creeping through the warehouse, stalking the watchmen, ready to hijack the trunkful of cocaine and hyoscine Snuffles Thornton had stored there three days previously.
Wriggling about as though he tried to see farther up the street behind him, Shorty succeeded in getting the automatic under his coat and thence to the holster under his armpit.
Ten minutes passed, fifteen, twenty. Still there was no sound from the warehouse, no movement in the street.
“Looks like a pipe,” Ginger whispered. “They’ve got the watchman by now, an’ if there’s any dingdongs, they’ve beat ‘em. Pink Tiernan’s the best man in the world on alarm systems.”
Another five minutes dragged by. Suddenly three bird notes sounded shrilly. It was the “Get Ready” signal—a special whistle carried only by lieutenants in charge of a job.
It meant that the raid had succeeded, that the others were coming out. In a minute or so the trunk would be tossed into the rear of the raiding car. In thirty minutes it would all be over.
“Hold ‘er, Shorty,” Ginger warned raspingly. “See which way they turn. Only one man knows. That’s Bull’s system.”
With the last word every man in the car stiffened to attention. From somewhere in the distance came the muffled tac-tac-tac of a machine gun—a sustained burst which ended as suddenly as it had begun.
“W’at th’ hell?” Ginger growled. Shorty unlatched the door and looked back up the street. When he resumed his seat he saw to it that the latch did not catch.
“Sounded like a grinder to me,” he said. “Long ways off, though.”
He let his eyes probe the darkness ahead. There were shadows, he thought, shadows in the heart of shadows out there; flitting forms, or did his eyes play him tricks?
He turned his head, spoke over his shoulder to the others.
“Prob’ly somebody else turnin’ a trick,” he said. “This’ll be a damn good part of town to get away from quick.”
Ginger grunted assent, moved uneasily.
A shot crashed somewhere near at hand. Then it seemed that the whole world went mad. Orange and blue streamers of flame sprang out of the night everywhere. Ginger howled curses, thrust his weapon out through the curtains.
“Now or never,” Shorty whispered to himself. He gathered his body into a compact ball, slid the door open another inch; fell against it and to the ground.
As he struck, instead of leaping to his feet, he rolled under the body of the car, lay there quiet. Fifty-feet distant Sid Haddon was executing a similar maneuver, warned by the crash of the first shots. Now the two cars were driverless, helpless until one or another of the rodmen took the wheel.
Heavy feet scraped the pavement in the darkness nearer and nearer at hand. From doorways service guns were belching streams of death. Ginger, still howling curses, shifted his grinder to the left door, sprayed the shadows with red-hot bursts of fire.
Somewhere in the darkness a moan told of a stricken man’s agony. A pistol fell to the pavement, followed by the thud of a falling body.
Over the staccato barking of the rods and the deeper growl of the Tommy guns, grew a new sound. Motors were dashing up from every hand. It was but the second minute of the attack but already scores of blue-clad cops were out of hiding, converging to add their share to the death din.
Bullets were thudding now into the body of the car above Shorty. Something wet flowed along and soaked his coatsleeve as he lay hugging the pavement. A strong odor assailed his senses. Gasoline! A cop’s bullet had punctured the gas tank. Shorty dragged himself a bit to one side. It wouldn’t do to soak up a lot of that stuff and then get in the way of a pistol flash.
The body of the car above him swayed and groaned. Someone put his weight on the running board, dragged something from the tonneau, pattered across the sidewalk. A moment later Ginger’s chopper began chattering from a recessed doorway where he had taken up his position.
The value of his strategy was proved instantly. Entrenched as he was, he could hose death at the compact group of police across the street. Wounded men shouted, fell. The group melted, tried to re-form; melted again. Viciously Ginger swept the muzzle of the chopper right and left.
Bullets from service guns slithered off the brick walls of the entryway, ricocheted. Ginger stopped only to change clips, then resumed his firing.
“Dammit—get that guy!” The command was bellowed from somewhere near at hand.
Shorty swung crosswise under the car, lifted the muzzle of his rod; tried to peer back of the spitting flashes to get a bead on Ginger. It was no use. Another agonized shriek came from the ranks of the attackers. Shorty loosed two shots from his rod at a point beside the spitting muzzle of the chopper. His answer was a burst of slugs which spun from the pavement near his head. Ginger was not to be caught that way.
Shorty raised his hand to rub his dust-filled eyes. The odor of gas was strong again.
That was the way! He lay for a moment, trying to think clearly. Yes, he could do it—provided the cops did not kill him the first second or two after he had acted.
Rolling out from under the car he came to hands and knees. Overhead was the sound of the passage of swarms of giant bees. The smashing impact of slugs against the car’s riddled sides was nearly deafening. The roll of pistol fire was thunderous.
Shorty snapped his gat back into its holster. His right hand felt for and brought out his pocket lighter. Holding it within his cap, he spun the wheel. The first spark failed—and the second. Then the wick caught.
Deftly he skidded the metal box across the pavement, then dropped flat, rolling rapidly toward the opposite curb.
Almost there he collided with someone’s legs. A great weight descended on him; throttling hands caught at his throat.
“Springer—headquarters!” he gasped.
The hands still held for a split second. The flame from the lighter snatched at a drop of gasoline. Instantly the opposite curb for a distance of twenty feet burst into flames which eddied and danced, making the scene light as day. Whoever was holding Shorty loosed his grasp. A tongue of fire ran along the pool, under the tank, leaped up and enveloped the container. The force of the outpouring liquid was too great as yet to permit the fire to enter.
With the lift of the blaze an exultant shout rang out.
“There he is—that doorway! Get him, men!”
Shorty stared across the way. Ginger and his chopper were outlined as on a motion picture screen. For a second he squatted there, staring dully at the blaze. Police guns barked. Ginger instantly fell prone, sending his stream of death back full in the faces of the attackers.
It was a moment of intense drama. Outnumbered, knowing that he could not escape—that the infuriated police would stop shooting only when he was dead, Ginger lay there coolly, firing methodically into the shadowy groups across the street.
The car’s body was burning now. Flames burst from underneath the hood and chassis, climbed up the sides, caught at curtains and top. One of the rodmen, badly wounded, pitched out through the flaming curtains, his clothes smoking. Police guns rattled. Dust spots billowed from his clothing in a score of places.
He twitched, died. As the curtains burned away, another huddled form could be seen in the tonneau. Death had been merciful to one gunman.
Ginger was still in action, but he was firing jerkily now. A passing gust of breeze made the light lift, grow stronger. It showed a hate-twisted, bloody mask, little resembling a human face.
A dozen police pistols crashed simultaneously. No one possibly could live through that storm of lead. Expectantly the cops held their fire.
There was a moment’s pause, then an unbelievable burst of shots from the doorway. “Tac-tac-tac-tac-tac!” Twenty-five, thirty times the grim chopper sang its song of menace. Silence at last.
The police guns roared again. One man, braver than the rest, charged into the doorway, firing as he ran. In a moment he was out, waving his hands excitedly. Others rushed to him.
“He’s dead!” they shouted after a moment. “Croaked with his finger on the trigger.”
They dragged the body into the light, marveled that one so torn and mutilated could have the spirit to continue fighting.
“All right, men.” It was a captain calling. “That mops up this bunch. The others are inside yet. We’ve got ‘em from above and from all sides. Get in there. Don’t let one get away.”
Shorty turned dazedly, walked a few steps toward the Buick. He realized now that the firing there had stopped long before. In the darkness he collided with someone in civilian clothes.
“You, kid?” the other asked.
“Haddon!” There was joy in the tone. “You got through all right, too!”
“Yeh—just a few scratches. Better duck now. You know the orders—under cover with cops as well as civilians. They’ll mop up this mess, and anyway I want to be in on the raid on Bull.”
Together the two Secret Police melted into the darkness, caught a nighthawk cab and speeded back to the vicinity of Finnegan’s.
“I had to tell a flattie I was from headquarters after I’d touched off the gas,” Shorty said after awhile, “but he didn’t get a good look at me. Everything’s jake.”
“Nice party,” Haddon said reflectively. “Wonder what the real Shorty’d have done in your place!”
“That fuzz-tail!” Springer’s voice was hard. “He’d be dead back there with the rest of ‘em. Wonder why McGrehan wanted to save him?”
“Damfino! Hell with that. If you want something to fret about, figure what the newspapers are goin’ to say about half the department layin’ for a bunch of thugs and knockin’ ‘em off. Them and the reformers. Hooey!”
“I can see ‘em now,” Springer answered. “And I’m damn glad I’m on the Secret Police instead of the regulars.”
The taxi rounded the last corner, skidded to a stop. Uniformed police blocked the way. “Broadway or Tenth,” they chanted monotonously. “Don’t turn up Seventh or Ninth.”
The trap was being sprung at Finnegan’s then, according to plan. Haddon and Springer, ex-Shorty, dropped out and paid the driver. For two blocks the avenue was free of moving traffic. At the corner nearest the hangout stood several armored motorcycles, police prowl cars, and two of the big armored trucks used by the riot squad.
One of the flatties came over to them.
“What’re youse guys hangin’ ‘round here for?” he demanded truculently.
“Sixty-six,” Haddon replied, giving the code word which in the department on that particular night meant “on special duty.”
The word changed nightly. Only men within the department could know it. It was whispered to each relief on leaving the station.
“Oh, yeh?” the policeman said. “Well, youse guys better crawl intuh th’ ol’ tin vests if youse’re gonna stick aroun’ here. Know what’s doin’?” He leered at them craftily, with the curiosity of the harness bull as to what the plainclothes men were doing.
“No, handsome; what is it?” Haddon’s reply was like a slap in the face.
“Ahrrr, nuts!” the cop replied. “Kiddin’ somebody, aintcha?”
Turning, the two scurried along the darkened store fronts. A rhythmic pounding, somewhere ahead, came to their ears.
“Smashing down Bull’s steel door in the middle of the stairway,” Haddon said.
“That’s a tough spot,” Springer replied. “Be plenty hell when they finally get through.”
His words were prophetic. Guns were in action now, their spatting sound curiously muffled by the building’s walls. From higher up came a crashing, rending sound. The roof detail was smashing a way through to the upper floor. Across the street someone opened a window on a fire escape. Two cops with a machine gun stepped out onto the landing, trained the weapon on the windows opposite.
The armored motorcycles made a crescent before the open doorway. Each carried a passenger in its protected tub; each passenger carried a Tommy gun. The men in the saddles crouched forward behind their shields, automatics ready for business.
The shooting, which had died down after the first few shots, crashed forth again. A policeman, his right arm dangling loosely, blood dripping in a stream from his fingers, staggered from the doorway.
“They’re givin’ us hell in there,” he said through set lips. “Door’s down but they’re hosin’ the stairs with a rapid fire from back of a steel shield set on the second flight. Never get ‘em this way.”
Springer turned on Haddon, jerked his head. Haddon nodded.
“Try it, anyway,” he said.
They raced toward the front of the place but were stopped by a captain.
“Sixty-six,” Springer whispered. “My friend thinks he knows a way in through Finnegan’s. There’s a half balcony there and a doorway that’s been boarded up. We’ll signal through the window.”
“Good! The other way’s suicide. See what you can do, boys.”
In the rear of the hallway, under the old-fashioned stairway, was a descending stairway leading to the Finnegan half of the basement. Haddon clicked on a pencil flashlight; inspected the lock. Springer flicked out a bunch of skeleton keys, turned the lock with the second.
In a moment they stood in the cellarway. A heavy partition divided the two halves of the basement from left to right. Along this stood a table where peelers prepared the vegetables. At the left, at the wall, was a narrow stair—hardly more than a ladder.
Springer led, tried the door at the top. It was held by a bolt on the other side.
“Hold my feet so I don’t slip,” he said. Swinging as far back as he dared, he launched his wiry shoulder against the barrier. It creaked but did not give. A second thrust splintered a panel.
Three or four driving blows with his palm made a hole big enough to admit his arm. The bolt clicked back. They were in the café now. Outside the Captain stood shading his eyes, peering into the window. Springer seized a bill of fare, wrote on it; ran lightly to the front.
“hallway. through cellar and back up here,” the Captain read by beam of his hand torch. He nodded, ran to the doorway, beckoning others to follow.
Springer looked about. Haddon was at his side. “Boost,” he demanded.
“Right, kid,” the big fellow said, catching the smaller man by the cloth at his hips; boosting him straight up as one might raise a chair.
Springer’s hands caught the cross-piece; pulled him up.
“Go up the stairs,” he whispered. “Feel along the wall from the stair head toward me. I’ll work back. There’s a boarded up door somewhere.”
They met, but without result. “It’s farther back,” Haddon said. “I remember now.”
It was almost at the back corner. They ripped away the light deal casing.
“This won’t get us anywhere,” Haddon whispered. “They’re still on the floor above us.”
“Old building,” Springer grunted. “I’m gambling the stairs are built all the way up on a scaffolding. You know the old system. Four-by-fours, with two-by-four supports; like a grandstand. Get under there—shoot hell out of the choppers from underneath.”
“Sure’s hell something there, or there’d be no door,” Haddon replied.
“Cripes, listen to those flatties stumble up the stairs!” Springer said. “Good thing everybody’s shooting.”
He flashed his torch to outline the way to the stairs. Three men accompanied the captain. One carried a chopper. The other had a sawed-off shotgun and a net of tear bombs.
The third attacked the door slit with a jimmy. The old wood gave readily. Back of it, as Springer had surmised, was a dark passage which led toward the rear of the building under the stair supports.
One of the flatties produced a long-beam flashlight, disclosing twenty feet back, the outlines of the second floor landing.
“I’m going up,” Springer said quietly. “When I find which step they’re on we can shoot ‘em loose in two seconds.”
He dropped his coat, set the pencil flash upright in his vest pocket; shinned up to the first cross support. From there he swung like a monkey, up and back to a point a score of feet above the others’ heads.
Their flashes revealed him as he balanced on a two-by-four, clinging with knees and one hand. With the other he felt of the risers and treads until vibration told him where the gunmen rested for their shooting down the stairway.
Still clinging precariously, he took out his flash and counted the stairs. It was the seventh. A moment later he dropped to the floor, dripping with sweat, his palms bleeding from a score of sliver wounds.
“The seventh stair,” he said, “but there’s no use shooting them out of there until the cops are set for a rush. Get word out to be ready.”
“That’s the dope,” the Captain replied. “I’ll send word for the boys to be ready. Here, Wilkins, get out and tell ‘em what we’re doing. When they’re ready to rush, wig wag me with a light and when you hear my whistle, you other boys blow them rats to hell outta there.”
The police machine gunner took up his place back in the darkness, found a rest; set his weapon with the rays of a flash so he could spray his death hail through the rotting wood of the stairway.
It was stifling in the narrow passage. The minutes dragged terribly. At intervals firing was resumed in the stairway. Also there was firing at some distant point; probably the roof crew fighting their way downward. Below, in the rear, were other smashing sounds as the basement was occupied.
Haddon, his nerves ragged from waiting, started toward the balcony. Before he had taken three steps, a shrill note cut through the medley of other noises.
Springer and the harness cop threw their flashes upward. The gunner’s finger compressed on the trip and the Tommy-gun began its death chatter.
Its barking roar smashed on their ears like the turmoil of a boiler shop. Orange flames spurted in a continuous stream from its blunt muzzle. The tread of the seventh stair seemed to lift under its smashing blows. Men bellowed in agony and a heavy object clattered downward. The stairway creaked. The tread flew apart; became a mass of splinters.
Springer touched the flattie’s shoulder; mentioned for him to sweep the remaining six steps to blot out any lurking thugs.
He obeyed. Other yells of pain or anger burst out in answer. He hosed every nook and corner where a gunman might be hiding.
“Hold it!” Springer barked the word. Heavy footed men were pounding up the stairway from the ground floor. It wouldn’t do to shoot down any of the attackers. The cops had gained the hallway now, but were being fired on from within the gang’s assembly room. From farther back came the chatter of guns as well.
“Bull’s holed up in the office,” Haddon muttered. “He’s cornered, but it’ll take a hell of a lot of lead to get him out. He’s shooting from behind the big safe; that’s a bet.”
Springer shrugged. “Let’s get going,” he said. They slipped back through the café and cellar, into the hallway.
The heavy fumes of cordite made it almost impossible to breathe. The stairs were heavy, slippery with broken plaster, pools of blood. At the top the cops stood massed out of range of the death hail from inside.
As they watched, Springer and Haddon saw three men raise the steel shield from behind which the defenders had held the stairway. Others fell in behind it, pushed it through the open doorway of the clubroom. The others thrust forward. Springer nudged Haddon, pointing.
Three dead men lay at the foot of the second flight of stairs. Another sprawled grotesquely over the splintered tread.
“Must have got them with the first burst,” he said. “Wonder if we can drive Bull out the same way?”
“Nope. Safe’s on a steel plate about seven by four feet. It stands across the corner. Anyone behind it, with the doors open might as well be shooting from a battleship.”
“I’ve got it through the wall.” Springer rushed back along the stairway, returned in a moment, cursing. “Hall only goes part way back; they’ve built a partition there,” he said.
“Above then,” it was Haddon’s turn now. “There’s some way for us to get at that rat.”
They ran up the stairs, shoving the body of the dead gangster aside as they went. Springer leaped to the door at the head of the stairs, opened it, slammed it again—dragged Haddon down flat on the floor.
Lead smashed in a stream through the panels at the height of a man’s chest. More of the defenders were in there, holding back the crew attacking from the roof.
A battered broom stood in one corner. Springer tiptoed over to it, tore loose the cord of a droplight and wound it about the handle, leaving one end free.
“We’ll pen ‘em in there,” he said. “Door opens inward. When it comes time for them to smash us from the rear, they can’t get out.”
Silently he slipped to the door-casing, laid the broom across horizontally, motioned for Haddon to hold it level. He wound the wire several times about the doorknob, then about the broom, tied a granny-knot. Purposely he jiggled the handle. More slugs crashed through, then someone tried to pull the door open from the inside. It held.
“That’ll keep ‘em off our backs. Come on,” Springer barked. They ran to the rear of the hallway. The attic scuttle stood open. Back in the shadows he could make out the outlines of a face.
“Up with them—I’ve got you covered,” a voice commanded.
“Sixty-six,” Springer replied. “Drop a couple of men down here into the hallway to help smash into them from the rear. I’ve got the door barred from this side.”
“How’ll that help,” the other demanded suspiciously.
“Easy. They figure they can hold us off, while Bull stands your fellows off from back of the safe in his office. We’ve got to smash this bunch and then get Bull through the floor from above.”
Long, blue clad legs appeared in the opening. The cop swung for a moment by his hands, fell to his knees. Another followed with drawn gun.
“All right, Bob,” the first said. “Headquarters, special service men with the password.”
“Get a grinder,” Springer interrupted. “We’ll never get anywhere with hand guns.”
The second cop was still suspicious.
“Say,” he demanded. “Who in hell are you anyhow, young fellow? You look a helluva lot to me like a punk that hangs ‘round with this gang.”
“Yeh!” Springer snapped. “And if it means anything to you, I look a lot like my father too. Come on! Get busy. Introductions can wait.”
Still surly, the copper went back and called to someone above through the scuttle. In a moment a third policeman swung down, holding by one hand while he passed over a Tommy gun.
“How many in there?” Haddon asked. The policeman rubbed his nose reflectively.
“Half a dozen anyway. We got into the attic all right, but they pumped so many holes around our feet that we couldn’t break through. Four of our boys are up there, shot up. They burned the hell out of us every time we started.”
“What’s the layout?”
“Two big rooms with a door in the center of the partition. Two rooms on this floor, three in the same space on Bull’s floor.”
Springer pointed to the door with its broom-and-wire lashing.
“By now they’ve found its barricaded,” he said. “That gives us a chance to surprise ‘em. Put the guy with the grinder on the stairs, with just the tip of the gun showing over the landing. You others plant back in the dark and knock over the ones he don’t get. I’ll loosen the bar and kick the door open.”
The firing within was intermittent. It seemed that the gangsters were satisfied with a stalemate; glad to hold the raiders from the roof on the attic floor. Springer’s hands were working now at the wire lashing. Silently he released the broom but retained his hold on the doorknob. Flattening himself against the wall he waited for another burst of firing.
When it came he nodded to the others, turned the knob and sent the door sweeping back against the inner wall. Someone inside loosed a scattering spray of shots from an automatic through the opening. The copper on the stairs withheld his fire for a second, while the others, waiting for his first burst, stood silent.
Springer looked over his shoulder and unconsciously flinched aside from the doorway as the Tommy-gun went into action. He could feel the death-draught of the flying lead.
A medley of cries came from within. A bullet or two buzzed through the opening, smashed harmlessly into the plastering.
Haddon and his two supporting cops leaped forward, but Springer was first into the room. Four men were prone on the floor. A fifth, his legs shot from under him, was trying to crawl into the second room.
Springer’s gun belched twice. The crawling gunny squirmed; lay still. Feet were thudding on the floor inside as the cops dropped from the low attic opening.
Springer turned and ordered the man with the Tommy-gun to keep on firing erratic bursts so Bull and his group could not know that the cops finally had occupied the floor above him.
“Give me a jimmy,” he gritted. “I want to tear up the floor in this corner.” He cast his eyes about the two rooms. Roughly they approximated the three of the gang headquarters below. Therefore the southeast corner would be directly above the spot where Bull was holding out against his attackers.
One of the cops disappeared; returned almost immediately with a jimmy big enough to wreck the City Hall. Springer snatched at it hungrily; turned to the corner baseboard. His agile shoulders twisted. The baseboard came loose. Another wrench. The inside flooring board flipped back in splinters. Another. Another. Haddon slipped to his knees beside Springer.
“Easy does it,” he warned. “You’re tipping your mitt. Can’t you hear? They’ve stopped shooting downstairs.”
Springer stared at him, wiped the sweat from his forehead.
“Who the hell cares?” he snarled. “I’m going to get Bull.”
“Be smart,” Haddon said and caught at his wrist. “Don’t be a sap. We’ve got all night—but we’ve got to put this thing over or the Commish is sunk.”
Springer nodded in understanding. He slipped the jimmy under the next board and levered it up carefully. It ripped loose at one end. Haddon slipped his fingers beneath the edge and wrenched quietly. Another board gave. Springer arose, wiped the sweat from his eyes.
“Enough?” he said, indicating the opening. Haddon shook his head. “More,” he said. “At least three feet. Safe stands across the corner, you know.”
Springer loosened two more boards, then a third. Haddon levered them out, keeping the nails from creaking. Then the firing started up again on the floor below, Springer motioned to the copper with the Tommy.
“Lie down,” he directed. “Listen carefully and see if you can tell from the sound just about where he’s standing.”
The cop complied, laid there a matter of moments, then arose, grinning.
“Bet I knock a hole in his skull first thing,” he boasted.
“Then get at it,” Springer snapped, passing the gun to the man’s waiting hands. “There’s a big safe across the corner that he’s using for a shield. Sponge out every inch behind it.”
The cop up-ended the weapon, stopped to kick loose a sliver of board from a cross beam. He grinned over his shoulders at the others.
“Watch this,” he said.
He brought the trigger back; drew a jagged line of holes straight from the corner back almost to his feet. The slugs tore through the plastering as a knife cuts whey. He moved the muzzle patiently from left to right and back again, probing into every possible corner. Suddenly there was a dull crash followed by a white dust cloud. A square yard of the ceiling had fallen.
Several slugs from automatics buzzed through the opening and crashed into the attic flooring but Haddon, unmindful, leaned forward to peer down. Springer shouldered him aside roughly.
The top of the safe was heaped with fallen plaster, as was the floor beside it. Two huddled forms were slumped against the wall. Springer detected sudden movement and dragged Haddon back as one of the two fallen men jerked half erect and emptied a clip from his rod at the faces above him.
Feet dashed across the floor below. Rods spoke their death word and the gangster, riddled anew, pitched forward; lay there quietly.
“Come on—it’s the finish.” Springer snatched at Haddon’s arm and raced to the stairhead. In the club-rooms below they came upon a scene none of the living participants forgot for days.
Five wounded or dead police lay in a corner where they had been dragged by their comrades out of the line of Bull’s murderous fire. The door and partition between the two rooms were splintered wrecks. The steel shield, used first by the defenders and then by the attackers, lay overturned near the doorway. Hardly an inch of its surface had escaped a scoring by flying lead and steel. Back of it lay one of the police, one side of his face shot away by a long burst of fire.
Within the inner room the walls and furnishings had been torn to fragments by the hail of bullets. Bull had left open the big doors of the safe as an added protection against police guns. The drawers and pigeonholes were wrecked, their contents smashed and torn until they were mere heaps of waste paper and rubbish.
Three dead gangsters lay in a corner back of a heavy oak table which they had up-ended to use as a shield. Another lay beside the safe, at the left.
A policeman caught at a pair of feet protruding from behind the safe and dragged out a wounded man. His head was smashed, but he still breathed—horribly, bubblingly.
Springer wriggled through the press and caught Bull’s inert form by the collar. The gang leader was badly slashed about the head, either by grazing bullets or falling plaster. Blood gushed, fountain-like, from a wound in his left shoulder. One wrist was smashed. The hand hung, grotesquely, like a wet glove.
The movement roused the gangster to consciousness. He gazed, dazedly at first, at Springer. For a moment hope leaped into his eyes. Then he saw the police uniforms and realization came to him. Hate distorted his blood smeared features; his hand clawed at his trousers band for the spare rod he carried there.
“You damned, stinking, lousy rat!” he whispered. “Turned stoolie—gave me up to the bulls, damn you! I’m goin’ out—but I’m takin’ you with me.”
Bull’s great body surged forward, his right hand clutching at Springer’s throat. Then, forgetful of his wounds, he tried to put his weight on the smashed wrist. The bones grated against the floor; sent him crashing back onto his face. The others were gathering up the injured policemen, only Haddon standing by.
Springer jerked Bull erect into a sitting posture again. The gangster’s eyes shifted to Haddon’s face.
“Another—rat!” he whispered. “Stool! Snitch! And I—I was warned. You—Shorty—lice, both of you!”
Springer leaned forward until his face was within inches of that of Bull. Hatred blazed in his eyes.
“No, not Shorty, Bull,” he snarled. “His double. Eddie Springer, son of one of the cops you and your rods knocked off two weeks ago. Take that down to hell with you—and see how it tastes for a kid to make things square for his old man.”
Bull’s eyes widened in utter unbelief. “Liar!” he mumbled. “You’re Shorty—and a stool.” He sagged back hopelessly. Springer shook him viciously.
“Your mob’s gone,” he gritted. “Every one at the warehouse, everybody here. They’re all finished—like you’ll be in a minute.”
Bull sighed. Suddenly his body went limp.
The Bull Coleman gang was wiped from the roll of “men wanted for major crime.”
V
Shorty’s Awakening
Daylight! Shorty Breen awoke, shivering in his underclothing in the silent cell. Slowly his mind grasped his predicament. He was A.W.O.L. with Bull. That meant he’d have to duck the town or take a one-way ride with some of his former pals.
Damn old McGrehan! Just like a thick-headed cop to get a fellow into a jam like this.
Feet resounded eerily down the corridor. Shorty strained his ears to hear. Then he leaped upright, gibbering with fear.
His senses told him that he was sitting erect on the hard board in the cell, yet there he stood outside the locked door, dressed in his everyday suit, peering in through the bars at himself!
For the first time in years, Shorty made the sign of the cross. The figure outside stood leering at him, wordlessly. Shorty tried to mouth a question—ended with a shrill scream. The words would not form in his mouth. His throat was a frozen waste. With the sound the other Shorty moved soundlessly aside, disappeared.
Long minutes passed. Never ending minutes. Once Shorty thought he heard whispering in the distance.
The boy fought to still the trembling which shook his every nerve and muscle. He lay back, eyeing the steel grating above him. It was a trick, a dream; something they were doing to crack his nerve. Well, damn them, he’d fool them.
Then, while he promised himself they wouldn’t frighten him again, there was a loud click. He snapped erect, gazing in wide-eyed horror; burst into a shrill torrent of screams.
The other Shorty—his counterpart—was back, unlocking the door—coming in after him. He covered his eyes with his arms, cowered back against the cold steel wall of the cell. The other was inside now; probably come to take him down into hell.
A heavy hand clutched his shoulder, dragged him up, and out, and into the corridor.
It was more than even gangster flesh and blood could stand. Convulsively, squirming like an eel, Shorty broke the hold, ran down the corridor at a shambling pace, rounded the cell block—smashed full into the burly form of Captain McGrehan.
Clyde Breen, ex-speedball and gangster, burst into tears.
He forced himself to look into the eyes of the double who now stood at his side. His face was bloody, his hands gory and torn.
“Get goin’; the Commissioner’s waitin’.” Captain McGrehan was speaking for the first time.
“Here he is, Mr. Commissioner,” said McGrehan, thrusting the half clad Shorty opposite the official.
For a long moment the Commissioner stared appraisingly into Shorty’s eyes. Finally he spoke.
“Of all the Coleman gang, Breen, you only are alive today.”
Shorty stared at him, unbelievingly. The toneless voice continued:
“We trapped them in the warehouse raid, surrounded Bull and the others over Finnegan’s in the hangout; killed every one of them. Captain McGrehan saved you—for your mother’s sake.”
“Why? How?” The words were whispered. Shorty’s world had come tumbling about his ears.
“Why did we clean them out?” The Commissioner’s tone was savage. “Well, you know why. You drove the chopper car on the raid on The Yid’s trucks. That night two policemen were killed. One of them was the father of Springer here—this boy who wore your clothes, pretended to be you tonight—and drove one of the cars to the warehouse.”
Shorty turned and stared wonderingly at Springer. Within his mind he said one word. It was “Guts!” The Commissioner’s dead voice continued tonelessly.
“Better men than you’ll ever be, died tonight, Breen. They’ll lie and mold in their graves while you go on living, breathing, maybe loving.
“Captain McGrehan convinced me we should save you for two reasons. The first is to keep your mother’s heart from breaking. The other is that you’re going to sit down now and tell a stenographer about everything you know that the Coleman gang did in a criminal way, including the death of the two policemen. You hear me?”
“I hope he says ‘no,’ Mr. Commissioner. I want a chance to slap him down until he’s only two feet high.”
Captain McGrehan, fists clenched, was advancing from the doorway.
“Get square, kid; start all over again—we’ll all help.” It was Springer who drove the clinching nail.
“I’ll do it,” he said.
Shorty saw the Commissioner but once more.
That was the day when Mom and Captain McGrehan went before the good Father O’Grady and rectified the mistakes of their younger years.
The Commissioner was best man. Shorty gave the bride away.
At the end of the ceremony, the Commissioner said good-bye to Shorty last of all.
“Keep your head up, boy,” he said earnestly. “You’ll make it all right.”
“An’ damn well you know it,” his new father growled. “He’s ji’nin’ th’ Navy tomorruh.”
“Uh—uh—why, sure!” Shorty replied.
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history / literatureIn the 1980s, a new academic discipline became popular in western academia: Postcolonial Studies. New theories emerged from the former colonies around the world about how they would deal with their shared past. Postcolonial Studies emerged from an attempt to give a voice to writers and thinkers that had been marginalized. Suddenly the original ideas of the colonial diaspora and the African universities became visible. As it turned out, even in places as far afield as Papua New Guinea intellectuals had something to say. This new branch of studies became immensly influential, and the first textbook on the subject was called The Empire Writes Back (1989). We contacted one of the authors of that work, professor Bill Ashcroft, and asked him a few questions about what postcolonial studies is and how he and his co-authors came to write this first book.
Historyradio.org: You have worked with postcolonial theory all your career, how and when did you become interested in the subject?
Professor Ashcroft: My interest in postcolonial studies originates in the field of Commonwealth literature, which began with the establishment of the Association for Commonwealth Language and Literature Studies (ACLALS) in the 1960s. By the 1970s new terms were emerging such as “New Literatures” and by the late 1970s I became increasingly dissatisfied with the untheoretical and New Critical approach of Commonwealth literature. In 1978 I edited and issue of New Literature Review (later New Literatures Review) on postcolonial literature. By the 1980s the term postcolonial had taken over from other descriptions of the field and my focus at this time was on the transformations of language particularly in African literatures.
Historyradio.org: You published the first textbook on postcolonial theory in 1989. Why did it take so long before postcolonial studies appeared as an academic discipline in the West?
Professor Ashcroft: During the period after WWII when colonies were gaining independence ‘post-colonial’ meant post-independence. The emergence of Commonwealth literary studies dominated the field of English literature in the 1960s until the term ‘postcolonial’ began to gain strength in the 1970s. The Empire Writes Back was written to bring together the textual attentiveness of Commonwealth literature and sophisticated approaches to contemporary theory that could evolve a way of reading the continuing cultural engagements of colonial societies. In fact the conversations in which the book began occurred in the early 1980s.
Historyradio.org: Where did you meet your co-authors for The Empire Writes Back?
Professor Ashcroft: We had had known each other in the late 1970s but the project took shape when we met at an AULLA (Australian Universities Language and Literature) conference in 1980.
Historyradio.org: You must have done a careful selection of thinkers to reference. Which ones would you say were the most important ones for you?
Professor Ashcroft: Our aim was to highlight thinkers from the colonized societies as much aspossible. Of course Colonial Discourse theorists such as Bhabha, Spivak and Said were prominent in the landscape at that time but contrary to popular belief they were not a major influence on the book. Said’s Orientalism was a well known analysis of Europe’s representation of its others but none of these theorists had a prominent place in our work at that time. This is surprising to most people since I later wrote a book on Edward Said with Pal Ahluwalia, but at that time he featured very little in the book. Our aim was to distil the theoretical insights from postcolonial writers themselves.
Historyradio.org: Postcolonial Studies became quite popular in the nineties. Has it lead to any improvements for the cultural life in the former colonies?
Professor Ashcroft: I was struck by the statement by a Dalit woman at a conference in 2006 that The Empire Writes Back “gave us a voice.” Any ‘improvement’ in colonized cultures is represented in this statement through the voice that colonized people were able to use. However a greater and more important improvement has been made by postcolonial writers themselves, who appropriated English, the language of the coloniser, and used it represent their own culture and society to the world. To choose a language is to choose an audience and choosing English ensured a world audience.
Historyradio.org: Isn’t there a point in history when the colonial period becomes irrelevant, when too much time has passed for it to be used as an excuse?
Professor Ashcroft: This question is based upon a fundamental misunderstanding of the postcolonial. The idea of a chronological stage ‘after colonialism’ was the way the term was used in the 1960s, after the surge of independence. But from the publication of The Empire Writes Back the situation changed radically. ‘Postcolonial’ refers to neither a chronology nor ontology but a way of reading. It is a way of reading the cultural resistances and transformations of colonised and formerly colonised cultural producers. Sometimes this was anti-colonial but more often it was transformative as transformation proved to be the most powerful and productive form of resistance. Postcolonialism has continually transformed itself to provide strategies with which to analyse global power. We live after colonialism but never without it.
Historyradio.org: There is a local scholar here in Norway, Dag Herbjørnsrud, who recently wrote a book in which he argued for the establishment of a new global Canon. Is this in line with what you were trying to do in the 90s?
Professor Ashcroft: I don’t think so. Postcolonial studies have always been suspicious of canons, which arise when those with cultural power determine what is best. Postcolonial studies rejected the idea of a canon of ‘great works’ because these invariably marginalized the non-European writers. If we dispense with the idea of a canon, however, then certainly the significance of writers around the world needs to be recognised.
Historyradio.org: There has been some debate here in Norway about epistemology, and alternative ways of acquiring knowledge. This may seem harmless in literary studies and philosophy, but it would seem to contradict much of what has been achieved in the natural sciences. In what way was postcolonial theory, as it appeared in the 90s, relevant for the hard sciences?
Professor Ashcroft: In our next edition of The Postcolonial Studies Reader we are including a section on Postcolonial Science. Postcolonial theory is relevant for the hard sciences because it proposes that indigenous and non western ways of knowing the world, and particularly ways of knowing and caring for the natural world, are of equal importance. As the climate crisis approaches the need to consider alternative ways of knowing the world is increasing.
Historyradio.org: You have read many postcolonial novels in your long career as a literary scholar. Which one would you say was most influential for postcolonial studies? And why?
Professor Ashcroft: This question smacks a little of canonical thinking, but one book that stands out is Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children written in 1980. This is because it deconstructs so many forms of imperial discourse – the discourse of nationalism, the discourse of history itself within which nations come into being; the discourse of language; those of race and ethnicity and their embedding in language. All these offer a picture of the range of Rushdie’s radical dismantling of the myths of identity that surrounded that fateful midnight when India became a nation, taking over the architecture of the colonial state. What Rushdie is dismantling is not so much the idea of nation as the wider ranging tyranny of borders within which such concepts come into being. The book reminds us of the many ways in which societies unthinkingly take on the model of western society.
Historyradio.org: Sometimes when you read literary text from around the world, there are great surprises. Is there a literary culture today that you feel is neglected, that is just waiting to be discovered and recognized?
Professor Ashcroft: At this stage of my career there are few surprises. I don’t know of a culture that’s being neglected, especially since publication, and particularly publication in a world language is a form of recognition. There are many books that could be better recognised by critics. I will mention just one: Agaat by the South African writer Marlene van Nierkerk.
Historyradio.org: You have traveled the world as an academic. What sort of issues are universities in Africa and elsewhere concerned with today?
Professor Ashcroft: Universities in Africa face the same issue as those around the world, only to a greater degree: the marginalization of the humanities and the struggle for funding.
Corrections: the introduction to this interview has been edited due to some technical problems during publication.
Further reading:
Ashcroft B;Griffiths G;Tiffin H, 2013, Postcolonial Studies: The Key Concepts (3rd ed), 3, Routledge Press, London
Dag Herbjørnsrud, “Beyond decolonizing: global intellectual history and reconstruction of a comparative method” in Global Intellecural History
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short storyAt an undisclosed time in British history, there lived a 14 year old boy with undiagnosed, but mild autism who was fond of school debates. His mind was such that he could challenge most normal people simply by overwhelming them with masses of facts from his prodigious memory. As he grew older, he realised that he could use this in a court of law, and make good money as a barrister. Passing a degree in pedantic quotation and logics posed no problems for a high riser of his particular talents. He got top marks, and was immediately hired by a large London law firm to argue a very important case before a senior and very respected judge.
When the new barrister entered the court, however, he immediately turned many heads because of the elevated sound volume with which the fresh legal representative presented his arguments, this being the method he had applied to win school debates. The old judge – first frowning, then staring in disbelief – observed the performance in silence, and then – out of sheer curiosity – got the solicitor into a short discussion. I say short, for five minutes later the fresh barrister was arrested in contempt of court on the grounds that “shouting and screaming like a madman does not improve a flawed line of reasoning”.
The barrister remained in his cold cell a few days, until the judge took pity on him, and paid a him a visit. He sat down next to the man, and assumed the role of a well-meaning grandfather. “I am going to order your release tomorrow”, he said. “But in my 40 years as a judge, I have never seen something similar in my court as what you perpetrated a few days ago.”
“I understand”
“There is a condition to my release, so do not rejoice until you hear it: I want you to promise me that you will NEVER work as a barrister, but in stead find a profession more suited to this kind of rudeness, these constant interruptions with tedious facts and details. This inability to allow a full line of reasoning to reach a natural conclusion. This sort of circus will halt all progress in my cases, and assure that nothing gets done, you see. Will you promise me this?”
The young barrister sighed. He was not a bad person, in fact he was kind. He just did not understand. Nor was he a person who would knowingly disrespect authority.“I will heed your advice, Your Honour.”
The door slammed shut behind the judge as he left, and the very next morning the barrister was released. He quit the law firm, and for while drifted aimlessly through various business ventures. Even with moderate success in these, he felt that he had been robbed of a setting in which his natural talents for debating would blossom. However, this story has a very happy ending, for the historical records indicate that he – 20 years after the said events – became the most admired Speaker in the history of the British House of Commons.
by Michael Henrik Wynn
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history / literatureLewis Carroll, who wrote Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking-Glass, was, in private life, a professor of mathematics at the University of Oxford named Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. He latinized Lutwidge to Ludovicus or Lewis and Charles to Carolus or Carroll, and, under this name, produced the first Alice book in 1865 and the second in 1872.
He produced other books as well – mostly on difficult mathematical subjects. Queen Victoria, enchanted by the Alice books, asked for all of Mr Carroll’s publications and was bewildered by the delivery of treatises on trigonometry and the binomial theory. Lewis Carroll was also the first of the great photographers, and his studies of children – especially of little Alice Liddell, who was both the heroine and the first reader of the two great books – have a charm and a mastery of technique envied by the snappers of today.He never married, he was deeply and innocently religious, he liked to be cut off from the dangerous outside world. He was happy to be enclosed by the walls of an Oxford college and to tell stories to the little daughter of Dr Liddell, the great Greek scholar. But the publication of the two Alice books brought him fame. There was something in the adult imagination and yet it pleased, and continues to please, children. Carroll was a greater man than he knew.
Listen to an imaginative dramatization about how Alice in Wonderland was written, from 1937.
Both the Alice books are fantasies, aspects of the love of nonsense which was prevalent in England in the Victorian age. There was no nonsense in the rest of the world. When, in the early years of the twentieth century, France began to discover the delights of nonsense, this was called surrealism, and it was regretted that the British were too old-fashioned to produce surrealists in the staid age of Victoria, and of these perhaps Lewis Carroll was the greatest.
Surrealism consists in destroying the logic of ordinary life and substituting a kind of logic of the unconscious mind. Alice’s adventures take the form of dreams in which bizarre things happen, but these things are based on a more serious approach to language than we can permit ourselves in waking life. By language I mean, of course, the English language in which Carroll wrote; many of his dream-jokes are impossible to render into other tongues. If there is an insect called a butterfly, it seems dreamily logical to have a bread-and-butterfly, and Carroll’s illustrator, Tenniel, draws us one of these. The flower known as a dandelion is a dandy lion, hence it can roar. There is a school in which the lessons get shorter every day: the lessons “lessen”. If your watch stops, the dreamworld says that time has stopped. The watch of the Mad Hatter and his friends the March Hare and the Dormouse has stopped at teatime, so they must go on taking tea forever.
One of the characters who appears in the looking-glass world is Humpty Dumpty, who is a talking egg. His name not merely describes him: it is him (or he). An egg has a hump above and a dump below. He is the most dangerous, and yet the most persuasive, philosopher of language imaginable. He says “There’s glory for you”, and he explains that “glory” means “a fine knockdown argument”. Alice protests, but Humpty Dumpty says “It’s a question of who is to be master, you or the word.” Words, in other words, can mean what we want them to mean or else what the logic of dreams wants them to mean. Their normal everyday meaning doesn’t apply when we pass through the looking-glass.
Alice’s world is a world full of eccentric English Victorians disguised mostly as animals. Like real grown-ups they can be very rude or pompous to a child like Alice, but in her dreams Alice can answer back without being punished for her effrontery. She is temporarily living in a kind of Garden of Eden, in which total liberty seems to be possible – in Wonderland, Alice can change her shape and size merely by drinking from a bottle that says DRINK ME – but liberty is circumscribed not by notions of right and wrong but by mad logic. In the songs she hears or sings herself this mad logic seems to disappear, but there is substituted for it the spirit of parody, which implies an existing logic in the waking world. Alice knows very well a song that goes:
Twinkle twinkle little star,How I wonder what you are,Up above the world so highLike a diamond in the sky.This becomes:Twinkle twinkle little bat,How I wonder what you’re at,Up above the world so high,Like a teatray in the sky.
Why bat? Why teatray? For that matter, why is a raven like a writing-desk? We feel that if we dig deeply enough we shall find our answers, but there is no time for digging, except for apples. If, in French, potatoes are pommes de terre, they are apples in the earth, and digging is quite in order. It is the very English eccentricity of the denizens of Wonderland and the Looking-Glass world that endears them to us. The White Rabbit, the Queen of Hearts, the White Knight, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, marvellously drawn by Tenniel, are also very fully characterized by Carroll. They speak as we would expect them to speak, and they are full of an appalling self-will and vigour. But the men are less vigorous than the women. It is a child’s world of petticoat government in which the women – mothers, sisters, governesses – are near and magisterial, as well as wantonly cruel, while fathers are more distant, nicer, and busied with their own eccentric affairs.
But finally the appeal of the Alice books is to the creative imagination, by which space and time can become plastic and language itself diverted from the everyday course of straightforward communication. There is a strong poem, which Humpty Dumpty kindly explains to Alice, that sums up the possibilities of the dreaming world. It is called “Jabberwocky” and it begins:
Twas brillig, and the slithy tovesDid gyre and gimble in the wabe.All mimsy were the borogoves,And the mome raths outgrabe.
“Slithy” is both slimy and lithe, to gyre is to gyrate, to gimble is both to gambol like a lamb and to turn like a gimlet or corkscrew. Humpty Dumpty calls these “portmanteau words”, because, like portmanteaux, several things can be crammed into them. James Joyce saw the possibilities of this Jabberwocky language and, in his great novel Finnegans Wake, which presents an adult, not a child’s dream, he used the technique. What, with Carroll, began as a joke ends, in Joyce, as the most serious attempt ever made to show how the dreaming mind operates.
But we leave it to the psychologists and literary critics to find in the Alice books great profundities and profound ambiguities. The Freudians have seen sexual symbols in them, which Carroll’s innocent conscious mind could not be aware of, and the Marxists have seen images of social tyranny and revolt. We are wisest if we become children again and use the books to recapture a lost innocence. We must learn to identify ourselves with a girl in a Victorian frock whose hair is long and golden and whose manner has the self-assurance of a product of the Victorian ruling class.
To be honest, Alice is not a very nice little girl. She is far too sharp and bossy and proud. She lacks humility, but – and this is an aspect of the British imperialist spirit – she also lacks fear. It requires great courage, at the trial of the Knave of Hearts, with the Queen shouting “Off with her head!”, for her to cry: “You’re nothing but a pack of cards!” and to see the chaos of the mass pasteboard that, a minute ago, was an imperialist society whirling about her head. She is transported to mad colonial territories and retains something of her sanity. She is very British and very Victorian, but she is also admirably and universally human.
Listen to The NBC University Theater version of Alice in Wonderland, from 1948.
This abridged version of the article by the British novelist Anthony Burgess in the Unesco Courier (June 1982) was published online at the UNESCO website under a creative commons license: CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
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creative writing / literatureMaking it as a script writer in Hollywood is not easy. There is a whole support industry for creating stories, classes on almost every corner in Tinseltown. One of the more dedicated teachers of the craft is professor Ken Dancyger of New York University. We spoke to him about his work as a teacher of writing, and about the realities of the business.
Historyradio.org: When did this notion of a “script guru” become common? What sets such a person apart from, let’s say, a professor of literature?
Professor Dancyger: The “script guru ” for me started with Syd Field. I remember going to see him in Toronto along with 400 others and being outraged by his ideas about scripts. He made me define where I stand on the vital issues about how to write a strong script. At that point I myself had written, alone or with partners, 10 scripts. The first secured me a Hollywood agent, the second sold to Canadian television. I seemed on my way.
A script guru is very different from a Professor of Literature. A Professor of Literature is well-read and has an area of interest. He or she may or may not be a novelist. Script guru is much closer to the popular arts i.e. the media. Certainly the guru may borrow ideas from literary critics such as Northrop Frye but his or her knowledge base is strongly rooted in the hundred plus history of Film. The earliest writers about script were often playwrights and so ideas about plays, their structure, was much more likely to influence Script gurus than Academic Professors of Literature.
Historyradio.org: They must get their ideas from somewhere? Do you read a lot of academic literature, and then translate this into practical advice? Or have you done the empirical work yourself?
Professor Dancyger: I read a lot of history as well as literature and see many plays and of course I see every film I can, always with an eye to what makes the work compelling. The scripts I’ve written, the writers I’ve worked with, the classes I’ve taught are all laboratories where I define and refine my ideas about storytelling and what constitutes a strong screenplay.
Historyradio.org: If you were to give a little praise to one of your colleagues or competitors, who would that be, and why?
Professor Dancyger: I like David Howard from USC and Judith Weston who teaches acting for Film and Television. David is very good on character-driven stories and Judith is excellent on character arcs and their importance. Both have written strong books.
Historyradio.org: The late Syd Field was famous for his 3 act-theory. Robert McKee also presents a lot of rules about what constitutes a good script. What is your main dictum on how movie scripts should be constructed?
Professor Dancyger: My approach is as follows: In a feature length screenplay a character changes. What is the issue (crisis) when we meet the main character? How does the character change by the resolution or end of the screenplay? Who/what changes him (relationships and plot)? Next what will the dramatic arc (plot) be? Every genre has a different dramatic arc. What genre is your story? Genre is pliable in terms of how it is used. What tone will you use? (light, realistic,dark). Will you alter any genre expectations? (How you begin or end, the nature of relationships). Screenplay that succeed often surprise is in our expectations. Will your screenplay defy our expectations?
Historyradio.org: Can you really create a norm for what a good script is? If you look at prose, some writers excel on plot construction, like Agatha Christie, others on their poetic qualities? Wouldn’t the same thing be true for a movie script?
Professor Dancyger: There is a norm for expectations of what a script will be. This is based on how particular story forms have been used over time. Writers differ, some are strong on plot, others on character, yet others on dialogue. Robert Towne is very good on dialogue, David Rayfiel is very good at story construction, Francis Coppola is very good at tone. Each is unusually gifted in their area but few writers are good at every thing.
Historyradio.org: What is the best way of breaking into the hollywood script business? Do you just email your script to someone? Or do you need to know a lot of people in order to make it?
Professor Dancyger: Working in the business at all levels is the way into a career. Schools help as you can make a good short film that will get you attention. At that point the door may well open for you. Have a well written feature film script written. That too will help.
At the moment CONTENT is king in Film and Television. The opportunities are abundant. It remains tough but this is a good time for writers.
I have seen European writers and directors go from a nominated foreign film to a Hollywood opportunity. This is the competition students who graduate from Film Schools face.
Historyradio.org: When your script has been bought, it may be reworked by someone else, might it not? So the end result doesn’t really have to look anything like you originally intended? Isn’t this frustrating?
Professor Dancyger: The realities of the industry is that many voices will impact your script, in both Film and Television. It might be frustrating but my advice is get over it. Its the way of this world..
Historyradio.org: When I was a student, my professor told me a story about the Irish Nobel laureate, Samuel Beckett, and how he was rejected many times, only to become famous as a mature man. At what point should one give up, and simply accept the fact that perhaps one’s talent isn’t sufficient for a career in Hollywood?
Professor Dancyger: Persistence is more valuable a trait for a writer than in many fields. There is no one path. Everyone has talent, not everyone is persistent.
Historyradio.org: You must have read thousands of scripts, what would you say is the most common mistake that young or novice writers make?
Professor Dancyger: The most common mistakes early writers make are, in order:
Excessive reliance on dialogue.
Not understanding how much change in the main character has to take place in the Feature film and how many barriers to the main character’s goal need to be overcome in the course of the screen story.
That plot an external pressure on the main character, needs to be deployed and that it should have surprising twists and turns.
Tone is how your unique voice underlies the story.
Genre or story form matters and given its plasticity it can make your story seem fresher.
Historyradio.org: What is the best movie script of all time, and why?
Professor Dancyger: The best movie script of all time is a tough nut. I have many favorites:
Casey Robinson’ NOW VOYAGER for story construction
Billy Wilder’s SUNSET BOULEVARD for character and dialogue
Samuel Raphelson’s SHOP AROUND THE CORNER for sheer pleasure
Federico Fellini’s 8/1/2 for creativity
Elem Klimov’s COME AND SEE for daring and passion
I could go on but will stop…
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historyIf you look at the statistics, Agatha Christie is the best-selling novelist of all time. Her books have sold billions of copies, and some of the movie-versions have won academy awards. That Christie was a genius, I think is undisputed. The numbers speak for themselves. But I think the nature of her genius has been misrepresented.
If you look at her characters, they are not very original. Some say: “Well you cannot show me the exact source in which Christie says that she was inspired by others?” But that is besides the point. Even if she were not, the characters are still not original.
In 1920, Christie published The Mysterious Affair at Styles, her first novel and her first Poirot story. Poirot was a Belgian first world war refugee detective with a Watson-like side-kick, Captain Hastings. In 1910, however, a major writer at the time, A.E.W. Mason(1865-1948), a man whom everybody knew, published the novel At the Villa Rose, a novel featuring the French immigrant detective, Inspector Hannaud. There are huge similarties between the two, but also some differences. In addition to this, another famous female writer at the time, Marie Belloc Lowndes (1868 – 1947), created the detective inspector Popeau and Frank Howell Evans (1867–1931), a Welsh writer, created Monsieur Jules Poiret (yes, you read correctly). All of these detectives were french speaking refugee detectives, some even with similar names as Poirot.
Let us now move on to Miss Marple, Agatha Christie’s second iconic character. In the US they have a now forgotten crime fiction queen, Anna Katharine Green (1846-1935). In 1897, when Agatha Christie was seven years old, Green published the novel The Affair Next Door in which she introduced her spinster detective Miss Amelia Butterworth. She was featured in three novels, and Green was a best-selling writer in her own day, writing 40 novels in total and many short stories. Like Christie she was a great plotter. In some ways, Miss Marple is Amelia Butterworth solving Chestertonian crime puzzles in a rural idyll.
I could mention similar precursors to Tommy & Tuppence. But why is Agatha Christie then not exposed as a plagiarist? It is because her talent is undisputed, and lay elsewhere. She composed stories brilliantly. And it is actually the composition of the stories that make them so great. Her characters were sometimes a little flat. It is the puzzle and the way it is presented throughout the narrative that captivates the reader, not her analyses of motives. The motives for crimes are in fact bizarre sometimes, even contrived. Psychological complexity was almost sacrificed at the alter of these other elements. When you read an Agatha Christie crime story, you are rarely left with any feelings of disillusionment or misgivings about the world. Even if it is a piece of crime fiction.
So, can any writer who just took elements from his or her contemporary age and molded them into best-selling dramas be a genius? Yes. Just look at the other name at the top of the list of the best-selling writers of all time: William Shakespeare. In fact, almost every writer does this to some extent.
by Michael Henrik Wynn
Note: a few incorrect facts were edited on 24/11-2024.
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