Containing multitudes

Twitterature? This is nothing new. For a start, there's the Digested Read, Digested; but above all else, didn't Basho get there first? More to the point (a very sharp one indeed) - the Imagists?

Perhaps what those clever University of Chicago students are bashing their heads against is the impossibility of thinking up anything truly new.

All Things '89

The current edition of Foreign Policy also has a concise article from Cameron Abadi that assesses the effects of reunification on the former East Germany. In what amounts to a vindication of Günter Grass's frequently cited status as the voice of Germany's conscience, Abadi refers to the writer's cautious approach at the time to the outcomes of immediate, rather than gradual, reunification. Given that most Easterners continue to travel West to ensure better and higher prospects, it would seem that East Germany is something like the ugly sister, if one may so term it. But what is alarming is how the East's beleaguered state of affairs is creating a vacuum that the far-right is more than happy to fill:

Today, Germany finds itself picking through the wreckage of the accident that Grass saw coming. East Germany's landscapes have not "bloomed," as Kohl promised. Instead, its economy is stagnant, its prospects are precarious, and its mood is foul. The region is trapped in a downward spiral of residential and commercial flight westward. East Germany's shrinking cities have proven a boon not only for the urban planners charged with managing their slow-motion collapse, but also for the extremist neo-Nazi groups and neo-Communist parties that have amply recruited from their stranded populations.

Familiar story? Visiting Berlin recently with the Rough Guide brought my attention to these issues in their reference to two distinct areas they recommended (distastefully, to my mind) as some sort of (strictly daytime) poverty tourism: Marzahn and Lichtenberg. How ironic it is that the infamous baby booming district of Prenzlauer Berg should have established itself in the East. And what a glorious district it is, too, although not beyond parody: my friend and I chuckled at some posters for 'Kinder yoga' on our walk around the area.

Der Spiegel is in much more of a melancholic mood, celebrating East German design here in an article which unequivocally yearns for a lost world. [There is also a website from Der Spiegel which collects all pieces written for the magazine's focus on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall.]

What's at the end of the rainbow?

Answer: many things to celebrate and commiserate, as this photo report from Foreign Policy shows.

[And what a beautiful advert! I hope those concerned who took this image don't mind much that I had to use it for this post. This, it goes without saying, is celebratory for many reasons: it's a positive image of two men kissing; it's for a multi-lingual and multi-cultural audience; and it happens to be in Berlin! Photo: JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP/Getty Images]

Excessive Bad Faith (It's Only Monday!)

An article here from Tablet on the roots and hopefully miserable demise of the BNP. It is certainly good to hear that Griffin is finding the small issue of gathering support for a caucus in the European parliament a tad difficult. One thing to remember about a - above all other things - xenophobic party is that it is constitutionally destined to fail: your potential ally is always your enemy, etc.

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Not unrelated is the news of the Conservative party's distancing from centre-right politics in Europe. What are they doing snuggling up with an avowedly homophobic Polish party and a Latvian party who, according to the Times, proudly commemorates its Waffen SS dead? The Conservative's success at forming this fringey caucus is underlined by some hand-wringing as well. For instance, the leader of the Conservative MEPs Timothy Kirkhope says the following:

We are satisfied that the position of the LNNK is nowhere near this – they get offended about being accused of this because, after all, they are a mainstream party of government in Latvia. [...] There was a commemoration of those who had served in the Waffen divisions of the Wehrmacht in the Second World War. The Labour Party has been churning this thing out over and over again. The truth of the matter is that attendance of the commemoration service for those who have died in wars is not just by members of LNNK it is by others attached to the EPP[the main centre right group] because the Baltic states were taken over and oppressed by the Russians and the situation was that the Germans conscripted a number of people to join the Waffen.

But how does this work? Either they did it or they didn't - commemorate, that is. And look at how our attention is being made to shift from the controversial matter at hand to an accusation that it all stems from party political dirty business anyway: 'The Labour Party has been churning this thing out over and over again.' I don't much care whether Latvians want to commemorate their Waffen SS dead, for the fact remains that the Waffen SS is connected to the Holocaust, and there is no place for hand-wringing amidst the historical facts.

Poland's oxymoronic Law and Justice Party also evades the irony radar of the Conservatives. In this instance we're being asked to swallow the fact that this party, by its very nature as indicated in the title, is committed to social justice and abhors discrimination. This is the same party whose leader recently made pope Benedict-like comments about homosexuality being the downfall of civilisation, and so on, whilst also claiming (once the Conservatives' back was turned) that for Europe to become stronger, it must become more Christian. To the exclusion of what, though?

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Here: a touch of surrealism, the gothic, and the downright strange from two of the creators of The League of Gentlemen: Psychoville.

Saturday things

Today's Guardian has an interview with Gordon Brown in the Weekend magazine section, which it then reports on in a main section front page story. Technically, is this news? They do this all the time: whether it's front page or not, they fill spaces in the main section with stories pertaining to interviews or editorial content elsewhere in the same edition. Creating the news agenda and reporting it. Having your cake and..

And why no update on the situation with the Roma in Belfast? I expected a letter or two. Perhaps they're preparing a focus report or something..

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Mahler is blogging. Universal Edition has a new blog dedicated to one of its biggest names. They're interviewing conductors on all things Mahlerian, and though I haven't seen the other two, Barenboim's contribution is incandescent. Amid spiralling cigar smoke and at one point a distant Nokia tune, the great man delivers some gems on Mahler interpretation, fidelity to the score, Bernstein's wild biographical extrapolations, and Toscanini's characteristically curt view on approaching the master's music. More of these interviews, please! (The two others intreviews are with Daniele Gatti and Franz-Welser Most. )

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John Berger donates his entire archive to the British Library for free. But not before the library's representative contributes to this season's haymaking. This is possibly the gentlest request any Marxist has made for such a fruitful exchange.

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I agree: registered fascists should never be allowed to teach this - or any - nation's schoolchildren. What are we thinking of? How can you have a debate about this? Either you are or you aren't a fascist: there's no midpoint or equivocations to be made. In which case, stay well clear of corrupting a generation. How can you teach the Holocaust or Rwanda in a school in which a member of a Holocaust-denying, racist party has been knowingly permitted to teach? And we accuse young people of wild inconsistency! I'm sure a large number of young people are possessed of the correct wisdom on this issue.

The rise and rise of hate crime?

The situation of Belfast's Roma community is very alarming indeed. The fact that they are under police protection in what reports have described as a secret location causes extra alarm. The message is that these racist thugs are dangerous enough to warrant such protections.

So what is being done to counter this rise in racism? Such attacks are increasing; they are not fleeting incidents. The very fact that, as reports suggest, pages from Mein Kampf were thrown into the homes of the Roma before the bottles, confirms that this racist violence isn't arbitrary: it is systematic, underpinned by either a spurious or studied reading of racist ideology. It doesn't matter: either way is pernicious. When violence is structured in this way, history has taught us that there is significant cause for worry. Isolated though these groups may be, evidently they have sufficient force to violently intimidate over one hundred people, a group whose numbers significantly outweigh that of the perpetrators themselves. But how can one hundred, almost certainly pacific, innocents answer to weapon-wielding thugs?

These racist thugs are holding not only an immigrant community to ransom, but that of an elected government. Social Development Minister Margaret Ritchie has said that the Roma can stay in the new location for a week. What good is this? If, as a number of the Roma are suggesting, it is safer back in Romania than it is in their new home of Northern Ireland, and they are better off returning there, those in charge of reversing this decision should act quickly to ensure that the racist thugs do not 'win' and the Roma go 'home'. If the Roma go 'home', then I am not sure how the authorities can live with the failure of following through strong condemnation with equally strong and structured action. Structured action means that both the police and government work together to root out systemic violence in their society. This can only be done by following verbal condemnation with unwavering prosecution and punishment. This is real, everyday, and historical, forms of justice combined.

The BBC's report of these incidents carried a video in which a few Belfastians were interviewed about the attacks. One older, apparently drunk but sober enough to speak on camera, gentleman begun his response by claiming the attacks were provoked by the Roma. The reporter attempted to confirm this by asking the gentleman to expand on what he'd said. The man cut his own rambling response short by tapping the reporter on the elbow and walking away saying something like: 'Look, what I'm trying to say is that they shouldn't be here.' And there the video ends. I was perturbed by this frankness, uttered in hushed tones and without any qualification. This dogma seems to be instinctive in people - people not necessarily racist or violent - who believe in the separation, segregation, and distance of and from the Other. My growing alarm and fear is that such instincts are gathering momentum through violent action, and where unequivocal condemnation is lacking in the citizens not committing the crimes themselves and who are normally considered to be decent, friendly, generous, and law-abiding. Such citizens are equivocal only to the extent of thinking up reasons for the violence instead of condemning them outright by saying that whatever problems people have, violence and intimidation towards a group of people or an individual on the basis of difference is never justified. People who fail to do this are ignorant - or actively choose to be ignorant - of history.

The historical record is there for all to see; but a not insignificant number of people turn away, intent on allowing it to be repeated.

The old question

Astonishment amongst the ruins

There are still traces of ancient pigment around her eyes.

Charmingly, Lord Elgin stole one for his mansion and damaged another.

There are plaster casts of fragments currently owned by countries other than Greece.

Welcome to the new Acropolis Museum of Athens, where history is literally framed for the viewer.

Phantom Readers and Listeners

As the classical music lover grows older, his/her tastes mature. The youthful passion for overwhelming climaxes is supplanted years later by a yearning for an exquisitely well-defined phrase and line that transforms the notes on the page into something vital, organic, teeming with life itself. As the classical music industry seems to be marching towards just one company in the aptly named Universal Music, and along with this growing homogeneity a depressingly low number of recording projects materialise onto disc or are even mooted, the music lover's curiosity for the treasures of the back catalogue increases daily.

It just so happens that this new-found interest in the massive back catalogue of classical music fits neatly with another keenness to buy secondhand. One of my favourite bookshops recently reopened after an excessively long period because of the compulsory purchase of a previous site. This was made all the longer because of the protracted development on the new premises. That's a long time for a new passion to develop. I've always bought secondhand CDs from this shop, but now, when possible, I'd make it a matter of principle. Why buy vintage recordings from a chain that has a barely concealed contempt for classical music when you can buy surprising finds and treasures from a local bookseller? A bookseller, I should add, who lives locally and has served a city's book and music-loving public for ten to twenty years.

It's not as if the range in the chain store is anything to get excited about: the CDs and DVDs (which are always far too expensive) are, like everything else, thrown onto soulless, untidy shelves. They are even erratically priced. Many an occasion there has been when I've come across two or even three copies of the same recording with at least two different - and wildly diverging - prices on them. These stores have no sense of local pride, either: the store of which I speak is in a city with has one of the oldest professional symphony orchestras and concert-giving societies in the world, but is there a permanent installation of recordings recognising this prestigious fact? Of course not.

So much for retail therapy these days. Give me the lived-in books and CDs from the kind and loyal bookseller, whose knowledge and expertise modulates to the needs and interests of every customer. And this at practically rock-bottom prices; prices that enable the bookseller to eke out a living that makes his/her business and life just about sustainable.

The secondhand bookshop allows the music lover to navigate the back catalogue by surprise, and more uniquely than anywhere else, usually on the back of a fellow music lover's whim and passion. (Though given that the CDs were in a secondhand shop, this passion appears to have faded somewhat. I wonder why the previous owner of a CD I recently picked up didn't like the performance given of Brahms' First Piano Concerto by Krystian Zimerman with Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic? By the way, this is an amazing recording: with the softest playing, it feels like you're moved by a natural element.) The life of the secondhand book or CD proves how divergent individual tastes can be. They're not products; they're living and breathing objects of the life of another individual - a life presumably well-lived.

And speaking of living and breathing (especially breathing): I bought a copy of a collection of Jewish short stories from the same secondhand bookshop a couple of weeks ago, and found myself sneezing as I read it. Gradually, during one of the longest - and the only unfinished - story, Heine's startlingly prophetic 'The Rabbi of Bacherach', I realised that the previous owner must have been as much of a heavy smoker as s/he was a reader. As I was reading I imagined the former reader smoking relentlessly, probably along with one or two gin and tonics or full-bodied reds, leafing through this collection of centuries - millennia, even - of Jewish writing (or short stories written by Jewish writers). What a journey through time and space; one in which I felt connected to my community of fellow readers.

Lost in translation

Is there an English translation copy of Saturn and Melancholy by Saxl, Klibansky, and Panofsky anywhere in the world?!

A Question (before the day Europe might go mad)

If Cameron's Conservative Party is progressive, then why is he forming alliances with anti-gay, anti-German, climate change-denying parties in Europe?