Eleanor Catton and the politicians

Eleanor Catton, New Zealand writer, winner of the Booker Mann prize for her novel, Luminaries, said that she is uncomfortable being seen as ambassador for New Zealand, which she says is dominated by neo-liberal, profit obsessed, shallow and money hungry politicians who do not care about culture. She was taken to task for her comments, but nobody said that the price you pay for democracy is that 'culture' in the sense of elitist high 'culture' is not considered to be high priority for people who elect politicians to office. We are very fortunate that we have a number of politicians who indeed do care greatly about the kind of culture she is referring to. Chris Finlayson, the Attorney General and one of the most senior members of the cabinet is a very cultured man, and many of the Parliamentarians are cultured in the sense Catton understands the term, but as a democracy reflects the interests of its citizens, it is inevitable that many are no more cultured than the people who elected them. Totalitarian regimes impose culture. Stalinist Russia produced wonderful cinema, ballets, even some literature, but the price for that was that everything disapproved of by the regime was brutally oppressed, and artists, composers, writers were silenced, some exiled, a number murdered. I don't know in what sense Catton saw herself as an ambassador for New Zealand. She is a successful writer, a New Zealander, and her subjects are New Zealand subjects. I don't think that politics feature in her writing. You don't have to agree with neo-liberal, profit obsessed political goals, but the majority of the people thought that these objectives are preferable to the alternatives. As a writer and a New Zealand citizen, Catton is welcome to advocate policies that foster the arts, and I may think that a greater investment in arts may be justifies by its contribution to the improvement of the quality of the lives of people, but I don't want to have 'culture' imposed on me at any cost because it is good for me. Fiona Kidman, who has been around much longer that Catton, and has dealt with politicians of many stripes over many years, thought that Catton, instead of grizzling generally, should use her influence make a difference on issues that can be tackled by immediate political lobbying, such as payments to authors for their public lending rights, or funding endowments such as the Katherine Mansfield Fellowship, which is under threat for inadequate funding. 

Closure in Holocaust films

I attended a fascinating talk by Giacomo Lichtner on The Pursuit of Closure: Mourning in Holocaust Cinema. How can one tell a Holocaust narrative in a meaningful way. You can seek to explore the lessons of the Holocaust, and for some the lessons of the Holocaust are simple: 'The Nazis tried to exterminate the Jews', moral arguments about 'Man's inhumanity to man' distorts the memory of the historical reality of the Holocaust. An other way of approaching the narrative is as an account of mourning, an account of loss. But the scope of the loss is almost beyond the scope of the narrative. And there is the third way, depicting the Holocaust through the memoirs of survivors, a tribute to remembrance. The great problem with survivor narratives is that these focus on the survivors who are willing to talk, yet the real story is that of murder, of death, of the horror of those who cannot speak, the story of the dead and the mute. Film makers face all these problems with the additional problem that the narrative has to have some kind of satisfying ending, a happy ending, the triumph of suffering over evil, or whatever uplifting fate of survival is told, or the grim horror and death that must not be forgotten. Holocaust in films, and Holocaust in real life have no closure. Happy endings, or the dramatization of horror are not closure. Only saying kaddish for those who had been killed is an acceptable closure.

Holocaust remembrance – some thoughts

This year a week of Holocaust Remembrance started with a talk by Prof. Robert Gordon from Cambridge University on the subject of 'Luck and the Holocaust'. He considered 'how the Holocaust and its cultural legacies reshaped the way [people] think about some of the most fundamental questions of human experience.' He focused in particular on the nature of luck and chance operate in our world. The lecture displayed brilliant erudition. It brought together ideas from Shakespeare, Machiavelli, Perec, Holocaust survivor testimonies, but I wonder whether this academic perambulation had any use in understanding the Holocaust, particularly in the future, when the experience of Holocaust survivors will only be a distant memory. Talking of 'luck' in the Holocaust context is obscene. True, as a narrative device, almost all survivor testimonies describes surviving a matter of luck, but this is a means of stressing not the survivor's luck, but the tragedy of those who did not survivor, the absences, the losses. The memoirs are useful tools on shedding light on the terrible personal experiences. As historical accounts they are of limited use. Memory, particularly traumatic memory cannot be trusted. To understand the Holocaust in historical terms we need to look at the political forces that made it possible, and indeed, acceptable, in cultural terms we need to look at the whole questions of assimilation and particularism, at nationalism, irredentism and cosmopolitanism, modernism, and the age long deeply ingrained anti-Semitism. Luck doesn't enter into any of these. I get the impression that such academic games devalue the historical truth. This does not deny that the lecture was entertaining, challenging, thought provoking, but luck had nothing to do with the Holocaust.

Coup or just a friendly house arrest in Yemen?

Considering the prominence of news items about Yemen I know shockingly little about that country. Yet to gain an understanding of what is going on I have to learn Yemen and its role in world history. You can't understand the turmoil in the Balkans over the years without an understanding of the longings of Serbs and Bulgarians, or for that matter, Hungarians, for past glories. So what are the past glories that define Yemen in this age? In Biblical times it was the home of the Queen of Sheba, renowned for its fabulous wealth. During the second and third centuries of the Common Era it came under the rule of the Himyars, who were influenced by Judaism. Further to the West, the religion of Jesus, Paul and his followers was gradually evolving into the diverse faiths that became Christianity. Around the year 380 CE the Himyarite king converted to Judaism. The period witnessed a lot of disorder and turmoil. The Arabian Peninsula was the meeting place and scene of conflict between the competing empires of Christian Byzantium and Zoroastrian Persia. Judaism may have been an attempt to maintain neutrality, essential for good trade relations and prosperity. In Mohammed's time in the Sixth Century Yemen was the most advanced region of Arabia. With the spread of Islam Yemen became part of the Islamic world. Great empires flourished in Yemen under various dynasties until ultimately the country succumbed to the Ottomans in 1538. After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire southern Yemen came under British rule and the country was divided. More recently there were attempts to unify the two parts of Yemen, but regional and tribal animosity continued to influence Yemen politics and alliances. Yemen is now one of the world's poorest countries, hard, almost impossible to govern, with large parts of the developed land separated by vast tracts of desert. Tribal animosities and ungovernable lands make the country an ideal haven for dissidents. But to understand the current Yemen we have to realise that Yemen had a proud history that was largely destroyed and forgotten, but a history that can be built on in coming years, only however if the rival powers don't consign the country to the incorrigible bad lands. Learning and understanding are the key to solving difficult problems. Perhaps one day it will again attain greatness as a land of prosperous merchants and scholars.

Islamic fundamentalism as a threat to Western civilization

At the turn of the twentieth century anarchists were seen as the main threat to the social and political order of the world. From the assassination of Tsar Nicholas II in 1881 to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, anarchists murdered numerous prominent political leaders. A generation later Anarchism was subsumed in various left-wing political movements, but the threat of political assassination receded into the past. It is to be hoped that the same will happen to radical political Islam and self interest combined with common sense will prevail. I can't wait!

The Armenian genocide

Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviet army on January 27, 1945. The UN mandated this date to be an International Holocaust Memorial Day. The Armenian Massacre started on April 24, 1915, one handred years ago this year. Over a million Armenians were killed, but this mass murder is not remembered as well as the Holocaust. Turkey, a long standing ally of the Western powers wants this shameful incident in its past buried, and the world succumbed to Turkish pressure. A bill, passed in 20017 by the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs condemning the Ottoman Empire for genocide was 'eroded' after the White House warned that the passing of this bill would restrict cooperation between the US and Turkey. Imagine if the condemnation, or even the mention of the Holocaust would be forbidden, the memory of the Holocaust would be erased, because some powerful allies of the Western world refused to confront their past crimes. Franz Werfel, the Austrian Jewish writers, understood the significance of the Armenian massacre as a precedent for Hitler's attack on Poland, and ultimately his program for the annihilation of the Jewish people. Considering his plans for a ruthless war against Poland, Hitler issued orders to his 'death head formations' to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men women and children of Polish derivation and language. He implied that he would be remembered as Genghis Khan was remembered, not as someone who led millions of women and children to slaughter, but as the founder of a powerful state.¹ As to mass murder, he said 'Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians'. Franz Werfel, ahead of his time, understood this and published a powerful novel in 1933, Forty Days of Musa Dagh, based on a real incident that took place in 1915. The book became a best seller, was widely read and reminded Europe of an event that the new Turkish regime would have rather swept well under the carpet. The book played a role in organizing the Jewish resistance under Nazi rule. It was passed from hand to hand in Jewish ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe, and it became an example and a symbol for the Jewish underground throughout Europe.² Perhaps by remembering Musa Dagh we can do our bit to perpetuate the memory of the Holocaust and deny Holocaust deniers their platform for falsifying history.

1 http://www.armenian-genocide.org/hitler.html

2J ewish response to The Forty Days of Musa Dagh http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_response_to_The_Forty_Days_of_Musa_Dagh

The real face of a terrorist.

It transpires now that the murderers of Jews in the kosher supermarket and the office of Je Suis Charlie Hesbo were not ideological fanatics, but ordinary criminals who had previously served time for drug trafficking. They were paid $24,000 for the killing, they were hired assassins, they were provided with Kalashnikov rifles and rocket launchers. I am sure that the big question French authorities are investigating is how these men could walk around Paris with a Kalashnikov rifle and a rocket launcher without anyone noticing their unusually large and misshapen bags. Where would you buy such weapons in Paris? There was obviously a degree of laxness in the French security service. As to the killers, lets not grant them the honour of calling them terrorists. Describe them what they really are, criminals.

Shame on you Mr. Netanyahu

It is shameful, Mr. Benyamin Netanyahu, that you used the murder of French Jews in a Paris kosher supermarket for political advantage. They were French civilian victims of misguided Islamic terrorists. Using this tragedy to terrify French Jews is quite wrong. It is good to know that if Jews in France live in fear they have Israel as a country to go to, but it would be better to strengthen both their French and Jewish identity, and to reassure them that they have a proud tradition and heritage in France. If need be, take a leaf out of the late Rabbi Kahane's book and organize self-defence groups that would stand up to the threat of Muslim thugs. It is time that Jews should hold their head up with confidence wherever they live and not cower in fear. If anything, it is this that is the message of Zionism. And you, Mr. Netanyahu, I hope that your use of shameless political opportunism will lead to your political obscurity. 

Paris and Maiduguri

The shocking events in Paris, the murder of journalists, cartoonists, in the editorial office of Je Suis Charlie Hebdo, and then the murder of four in a kosher supermarket was widely discussed front page news for some days. At about the same time the news of an explosive belt strapped to a ten year old girl that was exploded in a market in Maiduguri, North-East Nigeria, killing at least 16 was relegated to a brief article further back. We know a good deal about Paris, about Islamists, about French tradition of liberty, free speech. We know very little about Maiduguri. A city of over a million, the capital of North-East Nigeria, a university centre. We also know little about the perpetrators of this atrocity, Boko Haram. We know that they had abducted 200 school girls, most of whom disappeared without trace. But we don't know what drives Boko Haram, It hasn't been around very long. It was founded in 2002. Its founder was Muhammed Yusuf, and it appealed to the impoverished Muslim underclass of the territory that was once the Bornu Empire before the British took it over. Over recent years Boku Haram murdered an estimated 5000 people. But what sort of mentality would condone using a ten year old girl as a walking suicide bomb. This is surely not part of the teaching of the Prophet. Abducting children is more akin to the practices of Joseph Kony, founder of the Lord's Resistance Army that spread from Uganda to South Sudan then to the Congo. Kony's teachings were a mixture of tribal mysticism. He was certainly no Islamic fundamentalist. The Simbas of the Congo, a leftist rebel group inspired by Maoist ideals were similarly renowned for indiscriminate brutal murder and the abduction of children. So is the underlying issue in Maiduguri Islam or a deep seated African indifference to human life? Is the conflict in France one between the ideals of the Humanist tradition of liberal Europe and its perversion that the cause justifies the means? Does it say that freedom has its price? The price is that to attain individual freedom you have to compromise traditional values of exclusivity, and accept that tolerance extended to you is accorded to others. Let's not talk about Islamic fundamentalism as the root cause of the conflict. Let us see that it is cherished Western European values of freedom that are under attack, not just by extreme Islamists, but by all those who over the generations, put cause ahead of individual rights, African dictators, religious fanatics, the Stalins, the Hitlers, the Ceausescus. 

Murder in Paris and the corruption of language

I had difficulty with putting my thoughts about the murders in Paris into words. To describe the murderers as 'terrorists' would be misleading. Yet they were not ordinary criminals, ordinary murderers either. The perpetrator of the Sydney attack was crazy, a meschugah. He had delusions, he had grievances, a chip on his shoulder. It was a tragedy that he had a gun and could kill, but it seems that he acted alone. The Paris murderers were different. The three men were part of a network with associates, and were radicalised by irresponsible hate speeches by religious leaders who were prepared to put other people in harm's was while sheltering behind a general tolerance of extremes of religious expression. They were also bumblers, schlemiels, who knew whom they set out to kill, but had to go knocking on doors to find them. This is not how well prepared terrorists work. They wanted to be killed, be martyrs, but to be martyrs they would have had to die for a cause. Murdering people attending an editorial meeting, because the killers and they hate inspired leaders took exception to cartoons published in the satirical magazine is not a cause. Some said that the attack was response to provokation, but drawing a cartoon which expresses an obvious truth is not provocation. As to the comment of the eminent Maori broadcaster and political wannabe, Derek Fox, that it was 'Utu', what was it 'Utu' for, who was the injured party? Throw in a Maori word and you can completely devalue the meaning of language. And who provoked whom, what was the rationale behind the murder in a kosher supermarket. Buying kosher meat is not a slight on the Prophet. Let's not call such killers 'terrorists', fighters in a cause. They are cold-blooded murderers. They came from Algiers, from Morocco, enjoyed the tolerant acceptance of French society, almost certainly benefited from the largess of French tax payers, received a French education, probably received welfare benefits, and had the arrogance to exploit and abuse French democracy. They went to Yemen not to learn from great Islamic scholars, but to learn how to kill, how to use a gun. To understand their action and what happened in Paris we have to use plain simple language and not camouflage the atrocity behind words that have no meaning in the context. Murder is murder, killers are criminals.

Douglas Lilburn, Lili Kraus and post-war New Zealand
When I took up writing again I wanted to write about the encounter of New Zealanders with the world of the European refugees who came to New Zealand. In an interview Douglas Lilburn mentioned that hearing Lili Kraus inspired him to write his string trio. Lili Kraus survived the war in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in very difficult circumstances. After the war she remembered that she had met Mrs. Nash, the wife of the Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister at a function in London. Walter Nash, an impulsive politician, but known for his personal interst in people, invited Lili Kraus to come to New Zealand and offered her citizenship. In the event she went to what was then the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia. There was already a colony of well known European musicians there. This turned out to be a bad move. After the war Lili Kraus remembered the offer of Walter Nash, and lived in New Zealand  for some time She gave hundreds of concerts. She also taught at the Cambridge Summer Music Course, and Douglas Lilburn, at the time a very promising young composer, met her there. It was Douglas remembering the playing of Lili Kraus that was the inspiration for my story, Beethoven in Tirau This story was broadcast over National Radio. The link to it is below:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B20wnKDgcC_CdHZHLXBQOFh3TFU/view

Not only was I interested in the encounter between New Zealand colonial culture and European middle class culture. I was also interested in the interaction between fact and fiction. In this story I used real incidents in the life of Lili Kraus, but the story of the main character is pure fiction. But there are parallels between his story and that of Douglas Lilburn, who grew up on a farm in Rangitikei, lived a solitary life and was a truly cultured man.

Franz Lehar, Richard Strauss and Adolf Hitler

I listened to the broadcast of the new Metropolitan Opera production of Lehar's Merry Widow. Lehar's Merry Widow was Hitler's favourite opera. Nebich, such luck. By the time Hitler came to power Lehar was 63 years old, and his operetta, The Merry Widow had its first performance 28 years before, in 1905. It is a charming, gemütlich, work, full of melodies that are easy to sing and whistle. It reflects the happy, prosperous, era of the last years of the reign of Emperor Franz Josef, a golden creative bourgeois dominated age. But the age had a dark underside of poverty, resentment, exclusion, and anger. Hitler was the product of that underside. Lehar and Hitler would not have run into each other, certainly would not have had anything in common, had Hitler not become the most powerful politician of Europe. Lehar basked in the honour and adulation that the German Reich showered on him. He was a man in his twilight years, of course he liked being appreciated. He was a band master before he became a spectacularly successful composer. Band masters are not called upon to be courageous. Lehar did not have the courage to speak up for his persecuted Jewish friends, librettists, singers. He survived Hitler and the Third Reich, died shortly after. Was he full of remorse and regret? Who knows. He was an old man, a relic of a bygone era, a misfit in the post-war Europe. Richard Strauss, another of Hitler's favourites, though possibly as a conductor rather than a composer of operas on decadent subjects by Jewish librettists. He was six years older than Lehar, a much more serious composer. He was also blamed for collaborating with the Nazis and not standing up for his principles. But you can hear his regrets, his remorse in his last works that he wrote in his late seventies and eighties. Some of these reflect a profound sense of sadness and disillusionment. He had contempt for the Nazis but worked with them because, as he said, he hoped to do some good and prevent worse misfortunes.  

The question of relevance

When I sold my book shop fifteen years ago and faced the unlikely prospect of having nothing to do for the rest of my life, I was given a fountain pen to encourage me to write. I had written before, had a poem and a short story published in the Listener, not to mention my pieces in Ako Pai, the Teachers' College magazine, but really I had no time for writing or even thinking about it when I ran a business. Free of that, this was my chance. I knew what I wanted to write about. Write what you know is the mantra of writing schools. I wanted to write about the encounter between sophisticated European immigrants and the people of colonial New Zealand. I wrote a few stories that were OK. Not brilliant, but OK. I went to at least three creative writing courses, and my fellow prospective writers and tutors liked what I wrote. I had one story, Beethoven in Tirau, based on something the composer Douglas Lilburn said, broadcast over Radio NZ, All this was very encouraging. But I was not satisfied. These stories were all lies, just something I made up. I was happier with an account of Richard Fuchs, a forgotten German Jewish composer, whose large body of unperformed and ignored works I came across in the Turnbull Library. I was looking for something else, but a sentence in the files of the correspondence of the Chamber Music Society jumped out at me and told me that this was my story, the story I wanted to tell. My account of Richard Fuchs took wings, his music came to be performed by the NZ Symphony Orchestra, by leading chamber music groups and singers, and even by students of his old Alma Mater, the Hochschule für Musik in Karlsruhe. This was satisfaction indeed. But there in my bucket list are my stories, that perhaps with some cutting, chiselling, polishing and recasting I could turn into successful stories. I keep coming back to them in my waking moments in the middle of the night. But I always come up against the glaringly obvious. They are about a world in the distant past, deal with issues that no longer touch people. They are old people's stories, of no relevance to people a generation, not to mention two or three generations younger than I. Who reads Graham Green, now, or Somerset Maugham? Even the new John Le Carre reads like a strenuous effort to stay current and relevant, without the immediacy and power of the Spy who came in from the cold or the Smiley novels. The challenge is to give immediacy to memories of times gone by.