Current The Monk, by Matthew Lewis (a chapter a week) Half Life, by Shelley Jackson Directed by Douglas Camfield, by Michael Seely The Happier Dead, by Ivo Stourton
Last books finished Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card CBT Workbook, by Stephanie Fitzgerald A Modern Utopia, by H. G. Wells Mythos, by Stephen Fry Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction, 1950 to 1985, eds. Andrew Nette and Iain McIntyre The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century, by Amia Srinivasan True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee, by Abraham Riesman
Next books Queen of the States, by Josephine Saxton Monstress, Volume 6: The Vow, by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda
The heat had started in the small hours of the morning, swiftly building up. Around ten o’clock, it had fully erupted into being, just after Turks and Greeks on each side of the Green Line had finished their morning coffees. Now it was past noon and the air was stiff, difficult to breathe. The roads were cracked in places, the tar melting in rivulets, the colour of charred wood. A car somewhere revved its engine, its rubber tyres struggling on the sticky asphalt. Then, silence.
A novel set in Cyprus and London, by well-known Turkish writer Elif Shafak, telling several parallel stories of forbidden love and tragic death from the points of view of the protagonists and also from the perspective of the fig tree in their garden, both on the smaller island and a shoot from it that is planted in the London garden. I confess that because I am already familiar with the history and current situation of Cyprus, I was not very surprised by any of it, and I found the imagery frankly a bit clunky (eg the parallel between the fig tree, buried for its own protection, and the corpses of civilians killed in 1974, thrown down a well to protect their killers). But if the novel brings the island’s story to a new generation of readers who aren’t as familiar with it, that’s fine by me. You can get it here.
Reading it did make me dig into the archives and find the original Green Line map of Nicosia as drawn by a British officer, Major-General Peter Young, in 1963, and compare it with the current situation (ie since 1974) on OpenStreetMaps. It’s striking that in the city centre, very little has changed at all, and there’s not a lot of difference in the nearer suburbs either. Further out, of course, is a different matter.
I used to have fantasies of some day opening a long-shut cupboard in the Green Zone to find a bunch of tapes of lost Doctor Who stories, abandoned by some luckless TV technician in 1974, but in fact now that I’ve established that the Green Zone in Nicosia is still basically where it was when established in 1963, I accept that this is never going to happen, especially not to me.
Second paragraph of third story (“Missy’s Magical Mystery Mission”, by Jacqueline Rayner):
And so Daphne (‘Mrs N’ to her clients, although she wasn’t married), scrubbed Tivone of Enfis’s bathroom, steam-cleaned his oubliette and de-crumbed his toaster, hoping all the while her cheerful chat, homemade oat and raisin cookies and occasional casual mentions of how every person was worthy of rights and respect would make his heart shine, just a little bit. In return, Tivone of Enfis gave Mrs N a Festival of Snowtide bonus and a personalised bolo-card, included her in Team Tivone awaydays, and had refrained from having any of her relatives killed (although admittedly she didn’t have many relatives and if they’d shown any signs of seditious behaviour they’d have been for the chop, however well their sister / aunt / second-cousin-once-removed dusted his ornaments).
Six short stories about different incarnations of the Master, by Peter Anghelides (Delgado!Master), Mark Wright (Pratt/Beevors!Master), Jac Rayner (Missy), Mike Tucker (Ainley!Master), Beverley Sanford (Simm!Master) and Matthew Sweet (Dhawan!Master). I thought they were all pretty good; I expect that Matthew Sweet’s Soviet-era riff on a well-known novel, “The Master and Margarita”, will sail over some people’s heads but I enjoyed it too. Recommended. You can get it here.
The Pilgrimage of S. Silvia of Aquitania to the Holy Places (circa 385 A.D.), trans. John H. Bernard, with an appendix by Sir Charles William Wilson. Online here. The Pilgrimage of Etheria, trans. M. L. McClure and C. L. Feltoe. Online here. The Pilgrimage of Egeria: A New Translation, by Anne McGowan and Paul F. Bradshaw. You can get it here.
Second section of third chapter in the original Latin (as given here):
Hac sic ergo iubente Christo Deo nostro adiuta orationibus sanctorum, qui comitabantur, et sic cum grandi labore, quia pedibus me ascendere necesse erat (quia prorsus nec in sella ascendi poterat, tamen ipse labor non sentiebatur, ex ea parte autem non sentiebatur labor, quia desiderium, quod habebam, iubente Deo videbam compleri): hora ergo quarta pervenimus in summitatem illam montis Dei sancti Sina, ubi data est lex, in eo id est locum, ubi descendit maiestas Domini in ea die, qua mons fumigabat.
Second paragraph of third chapter, as given by McGowan and Bradshaw (who put footnote references at the start of the sections to which they refer, rather than the end):
2 So, by the will of Christ our God and helped by the prayers of the holy ones who were accompanying [us], and with great labor, it was necessary for me to ascend on foot because it was not possible to ascend in the saddle (however, the labor itself was not felt, but the labor was partly not felt because I saw the desire that I had being fulfilled by God’s will), at the fourth hour then we arrived at the summit of the holy mountain of God, Sinai, where the Law was given, that is, at the place where the glory of the Lord descended on that day when the mountain smoked. 2 The reference to the necessity to go on foot indicates that Egeria generally rode during her journeys, presumably on a donkey or mule, or possibly on a camel across desert regions; see also 7.7; 11.4; 14.1. For “the fourth hour,” see the Preface, p. vii, on the Roman divisions of the day. “When the mountain smoked” is a reference to Ex 19:18.
Same passage as given by McClure and Felton:
By this way, then, at the bidding of Christ our God, and helped by the prayers of the holy men who accompanied us, we arrived at the fourth hour, at the summit of Sinai, the holy mountain of God, where the law was given, that is, at the place where the Glory of the Lord descended on the day when the mountain smoked.1 Thus the toil was great, for I had to go up on foot, the ascent being impossible in the saddle, and yet I did not feel the toil, on the side of the ascent, I say, the toil, because I realized that the desire which I had was being fulfilled at God’s bidding. 1 Exod. xix. 18.
Same passage as given by Bernard:
And so, Christ our God commanding us, we were encouraged by the prayers of the holy men who accompanied us; and although the labour was great – for I had to ascend on foot, because the ascent could not be made in a chair – yet I did not feel it. To that extent the labour was not felt, because I saw that the desire which I had was being fulfilled by the command of God. At the fourth hour we arrived at that peak of Sinai, the holy Mount of God, where the law was given, i.e., at that place where the majesty of God descended on the day when the mountain smoked.18 18 Exod. xix. 18.
Egeria is one of the really fascinating characters of late antiquity. She seems to have been an independent woman of means, from southern Gaul or possibly northern Spain, who went on a long journey to the Holy Land some time in the late fourth century – staying in Jerusalem for three years! – and wrote a detailed account to her lady friends back home, which survives in one eleventh-century manuscript (there are a couple of fragments elsewhere). The start and end of the document are lost, as are a couple of bits in the middle, but basically it’s in two halves: her journeys around Egypt, Palestine and Anatolia, and her description of Christian rituals in and around Jerusalem.
I mean, this is just extraordinary, isn’t it? Here we are in the not-quite-yet-fallen Roman Empire, and a single woman (if rich enough) can safely travel (well, with the occasional military escort) from one end of the Mediterranean to the other, to practice a religion which was actually illegal only a few decades earlier. It’s a fairly dry travelogue – no banter or hassle, just going from holy place to holy place to talk to the holy men and sometimes holy women – but the mind boggles that it was possible at all. There is only one other named living person, an old friend who she meets at the shrine of Thecla:
Nam inveni ibi aliquam amicissimam mihi, et cui omnes in oriente testimonium ferebant vitae ipsius, sancta diaconissa nomine Marthana, quam ego apud Ierusolimam noveram, ubi illa gratia orationis ascenderat; haec autem monasteria apotactitum seu virginum regebat. Quae me cum vidisset, quod gaudium illius vel meum esse potuerit, nunquid vel scribere possum?
For I found there someone very dear to me, and to whose way of life everyone in the east bore witness, a holy deaconess by the name of Marthana, whom I had known at Jerusalem, where she had gone up for the sake of prayer; she was governing cells of apotactitae or virgins. When she had seen me, surely I cannot write down what her joy and mine could have been? (McGowan and Bradshaw)
I was also fascinated by the second part, about the rituals of Jerusalem – and again, bear in mind that Christianity had only emerged a few decades previously as an official and powerful cult; this is all pretty new stuff, rather than ritual hallowed by millennia of tradition. The birth of Christ is celebrated on the Epiphany. Lent is a period of fasting which ends before Easter. Different churches in the Greater Jerusalem area all get their turn during the eight day period of the major feasts. I found the language arrangements particularly interesting:
Et quoniam in ea prouincia pars populi et grece et siriste nouit, pars etiam alia per se grece, aliqua etiam pars tantum siriste, itaque quoniam episcopus, licet siriste nouerit, tamen semper grece loquitur et nunquam siriste: itaque ergo stat semper presbyter, qui episcopo grece dicente siriste interpretatur, ut omnes audiant [ut omnes audiant] quae exponuntur.
Lectiones etiam, quecumque in ecclesia leguntur, quia necesse est grece legi, semper stat, qui siriste interpretatur propter populum, ut semper discant. Sane quicumque hic latini sunt, id est qui nec siriste nec grece nouerunt, ne contristentur, et ipsis exponitur eis, quia sunt alii fratres et sorores grecolatini, qui latine exponunt eis.
And because in that province some of the people know both Greek and Syriac, others Greek alone, and others only Syriac, and because the bishop, though he may know Syriac, however always speaks Greek and never Syriac, therefore a presbyter always stands by, who, when the bishop is speaking in Greek, translates into Syriac so that everyone may hear what is being explained.
The readings also that are read in church, because they must be read in Greek, someone always stands there to translate into Syriac for the sake of the people, so that they may always learn. Indeed, those who are Latin here, that is, who know neither Syriac nor Greek, lest they be disheartened, also have things explained to them, because there are other brothers and sisters who are bilingual who explain to them in Latin. (McGowan and Bradshaw)
Egeria herself would have been a Latin speaker; I wonder what the real balance of Syriac/Aramaic to Greek as native language was among the worshippers, beziehungsweise the inhabitants, of Jerusalem at the time.
I probably didn’t get as much out of this as someone who was really into the subject of early Christianity would do. I still found the narrative a breath of fresh air. We tend to think of early Christianity as being the dry-as-dust Church Fathers arguing with each other. This is a genteel lady wandering around the countryside and taking notes for her friends back home. It’s a wholly different perspective.
All three translations are worth looking at, but I think the most recent (McGowan and Bradshaw) is the best, and also has the most up-to-date speculation about the author. John Bernard’s St Silvia appears to have been someone else entirely, and McClure adn Feltoe have gone for a less documented spelling of her name.
I latched onto Egeria following a totally different train of thought. John Bernard, her early translator into English, also had a minor role in Irish history as leader of the Southern Unionists at the moment when their cause became utterly lost; he was Protestant Archbishop of Dublin and then Provost of Trinity College. While doing my PhD I went through his papers searching in vain for insights into his attitude to science. His notes on the fourth-century pilgrim would have been a more entertaining read.
Last week I had a work trip to Switzerland and Montenegro. (For unrelated reasons; the two appointments just happened to fall on adjacent days.) The last time I was in any German-speaking country was in February 2020, changing planes on the way to and from Gallifrey One; the last time I was in the former Yugoslavia was a year before that.
And gosh, it was quite a morale booster to feel that travel to other language zones is now possible again. Of course, I live in Flanders and work in Brussels, and in 2020 we went to my sister in Burgundy and on to Geneva, so French and Dutch have been constants in my life; but I also speak German fluently, and my Serbian / Croatian / Bosnian / Montenegrin is at advanced tourist level, so this was my first chance to speak those languages in a long time.
Speaking a familiar but different language is like changing gear mentally, or perhaps like driving a very different car, where the controls may be in a completely different place to where you normally find them. I joke that on some days when I go to work, I will have spoken three languages before I sit down at my desk (to family and train conductors); and on other days, I may not have spoken to anyone at all!
I’ve had the opposite side of the coin this week. When I went to hospital with COVID in November, they picked up a lump on my larynx, and after various backs and forths they removed it surgically (with a LASER) on Monday. Nothing alarming; a granuloma probably caused by acid reflux. My first time under a general anæsthetic, and that eerie experience of feeling the bathwater of consciousness draining away. (But where does it drain to?)
I’m fine – hardly even any physical discomfort (does the larynx even have pain sensors?) but the kicker is that I have to rest my voice until tomorrow, so I’m on my third day of enforced silence. I had to skip the British embassy reception for the Queen’s Jubilee last night, and a much anticipated conference today – not a lot of point in going to such events if you can’t talk to people. And for work I have been typing frantically into the chat during Zoom meetings, rather like a hybrid panel at a science fiction convention, but less fun.
Looking around for wisdom on this topic, I found a blog post by Hannah Little (hi, Hannah!) about the theories of why the human larynx is located lower in the throat that its equivalent in other primates. She cites an hypothesis of Mark Jones that the lowered larynx reduces the amount of lung compression needed to achieve speaking pressure, creating the ability to be louder and have lower resonances. That was in 2010 and doesn’t seem to have been published yet, but I find it convincing.
On the plus side, I took an extended lunch break yesterday to visit B. She was able to talk a little when she was two, but has not said a word for the last twenty-two years. She is still very capable of communicating – she was glad to see us, and also made it clear when she thought that our walk in the park was over. As ever, I need to improve my selfie game. And I am looking forward to talking again for myself tomorrow.
