Tag: Ukraine

When things fall…

Catching up on some London Review of Books reading – with which I always seem to be in arrears, and which is not always my fault because continental Europe delivery from the island is somewhat tardy – I would very much commend Tom Stevenson’s excellent reportage (LRB Vol. 44 No. 7 · 7 April 2022) of the first weeks of the Ukraine war. Framed by his journey out of Poland, first to Lviv then Kyiv, and described with an observant eye for the landscape and the human elements of the catastrophe that has befallen this land, Stevenson doesn’t shy from the complexities of geo-politics and some of the more technical aspects pertaining to defense and military – strategy, equipment, etc.

With words familiar to me for reasons different but somehow the same – see this recent post – the title of Stevenson’s piece, “Things fall from the sky”, resonated, and came to be explained by this passage in which Stevenson describes his crossing into the eastern side of Kyiv:

[…] A two-chair barber shop in a corrugated metal shed at the side of the road had opened its doors under a sign that read: ‘Express haircuts: fast and quality. 60 hryvnia.’ Marina, the woman working there, was turning away the local babushkas: she only wanted to serve volunteers. She spoke Russian with a heavy Ukrainian accent. The barbershop had reopened one week into the invasion, she said, and it would stay open ‘until things start falling from the sky’. In fact, things were already falling from the sky. […]fragments of a Russian missile – shot down by Ukrainian air defences – had landed on a housing complex next to a nursery school. The crater at the foot of one of the tower blocks was about four metres across. […]

LRB Vol. 44 No. 7 · 7 April 2022

In my blog post that I refer to above, I was pondering – my thinking very much influenced by how it was that so very many clever people over a considerable amount of time failed to recognize Russia’s intentions – the Bruegel depiction of Icarus’ fall from the sky; an extraordinary event seemingly unattended by all and sundry, and here we have Stevenson’s Marina, representative of many of the inhabitants of Kyiv, trying as best she might to get on with her life but ever alert, waiting …

Tom Stevenson’s piece is dated 25th March. Since he wrote, the war has intensified, atrocities against civilians have been uncovered – in Bucha for instance. And, as I write now, both Mariupol and Kharkiv are devastated, as are any number of villages in the eastern and southern regions. Kyiv still stands and with it a nation and a legitimate government, and its allies – with ever more financial and military support (the latest package from the US: a mind-boggling $33 billion). The prospects of an end to warfare, even of a return to diplomacy, have evaporated I fear. But to whom does one talk? To Putin? I think not. I would welcome Stevenson’s reasoned voice again, even when anything said may quickly be overtaken by events.

April is the cruelest month…

…’tis indeed this year, 100 years after the publication of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land that famously so begins. And for some much more so than for others. Embedded below a wonderful recitation by Jeremy Irons and Eileen Atkins (for BBC Radio 4 presumably).

In this early Spring 2022, my thoughts continue to be preoccupied with the once, and now again, “bloodlands” at the heart of Europe, and hope, pray even, that they will not be so for evermore. Reading the opening verses of Eliot’s immortal work anew, I am not wrapped in the memories of the Countess Marie and the Austro-German provinces, but think this time instead of other fertile lands in the here and now, one that produces food for the world, that would in any normal Spring be awakening from the long, cold winter and now instead perhaps just abandoned, a muddied quagmire left by monster tanks and trucks and man.

I. The Burial of the Dead

  April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

  What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
                      Frisch weht der Wind
                      Der Heimat zu
                      Mein Irisch Kind,
                      Wo weilest du?
“You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
“They called me the hyacinth girl.”
—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Oed’ und leer das Meer.

[...]

The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot (1922)

The entire poem can be found all over the place of course. For instance, at the Poetry Foundation linked above and this annotated version at Bartleby. Audio files of Eliot’s own reading are here. And, this essay by Pericles Lewis (adapted from his Cambridge Introduction to Modernism) is informative.

Podcasting Ukraine

In the midst of a serious (and difficult in many respects) read of Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands (in German translation in my case), a just released Ezra Klein podcast popped up on my screen and lo and behold with the respected (and sometimes polarizing) Yale historian as guest. I usually listen to Ezra’s podcast via Apple or the NYT website, but the first is device dependent and the latter probably on subscription so here embedded is the Spotify version.

Ezra Klein in conversation with Timothy Snyder March 15 2022

Professionally, in the last weeks Ezra has found himself (and almost exclusively so) confronted with this heinous war of Vladimir Putin against the Ukrainian people. And, personally, he seems as moved to outrage as the most of us. It would be fair to say, foreign policy is not usually Ezra’s primary focus, but he is embracing it and probably learning along with his listeners. Also, I rather imagine, as a new second time father, Ezra is coming to terms not just with a present danger but one that will surely affect future generations.

This discussion with Snyder is only the most recent of a number of excellent podcasts released since the beginning of hostilities – including with other such qualified figures as Adam Tooze and Fiona Hill (who mentioned Bloodlands as a must read that offers some historical context to the current situation), and I expect there will be more to come.

Whether I will be able to find words to adequately describe the human and moral catastrophe with which one is faced in reading Bloodlands, I don’t know. What I do know is: Timothy Snyder would surely have not predicted, a dozen years after its publication, that – for all the wrong reasons – there would be a new readership for his book; people like me seeking some historical and cultural context for this war in the middle of Europe that is, at once, upon us and removed from us.

To every picture be there a poem

“Musee des Beaux Arts” – W. H. Auden (1938)

A subscription is probably required to access this interactive tour de force at The New York Times, but it is such a remarkably timely piece that I feel inclined to make mention of it here.

Elisa Gabbert does her own close reading and analysis for the Time’s “Close Reading” series of W.H. Auden’s 1938 poem “Musee des Beaux Arts“, an ekphrasis which is in turn, if not an analysis, the poet’s own particular appreciation of two narrative paintings from Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Firstly, The census at Bethlehem (1566) and then Landscape with The Fall of Icarus (1555). An appreciation of an appreciation if you will.

The census at Bethlehem (1566) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels, Belgium.

Or, in respect to the Icarus painting, even a couple more iterations of appreciations. For Bruegel also looks elsewhere for inspiration; finding it in the Roman poet Ovid’s Metamorphoses – itself an inspired narrative work with mythological and historical elements. Bruegel arranges his scene as Ovid does (compare just a few lines and the painting below); but he has the spectacular event met with indifference rather than astonishment. As if a boy falls from the heavens every day. Or was Bruegel inserting a temporal dimension suggesting that, in any precise moment, a lapse in attentiveness, a diversion, may mean that something is missed? And that something could be a boy falling from the sky or something much more real – like the darkening clouds of war for instance. (Like everywhere else in Europe, the low countries were permanently engulfed in one conflict or other during Bruegel’s lifetime.)

Beneath their flight,
the fisherman while casting his long rod,
or the tired shepherd leaning on his crook,
or the rough plowman as he raised his eyes,
astonished might observe them on the wing,
and worship them as Gods.

- Ovid's Metamorphoses (Book VIII) Eng. trans. Brooks More, 1922.
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (c. 1555) by Pieter Brueghel the Elder. Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique © Bridgeman Art Library / Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium

As Gabbert points out, neither the painting nor Auden’s poem overtly signal approaching disaster let alone impending war, yet dangers are lurking in both. In the painting, Icarus has indeed fallen; his flaying legs barely noticed by a folk going about their business or just not caring, nor by the viewer eagerly progressing from one master work to the next, not seeing what Auden saw. After all, unprompted, human nature will have it that we see what we want to see – or we don’t see at all.

Looking eastward from Germany in these day, one can see the result of a political culture that was too concerned with economic interests and chose to look away for too long.

We have a situation …

In the wake of the February 24th 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the ultimate rejection of reason (and of international law) which had been preceded by weeks of diplomatic initiative (and hectic) in response to the unpredictable and irrational arguments and demands of President Putin, the reality of a new situation now existing upon this continent has firmly taken hold in the hearts and minds of many here in Germany. A reality that has, in only a matter of days, seen this country abandon many of the principals – not always principled one has to say – which have guided its defense and security decision-making processes since (at least) the end of the Cold War and Reunification.

As one who has only lived in Germany during times of peace and relative economic and political stability – granted, often disturbed by, amongst other things: financial crises and economic fluctuations, contrary continental folk (EU) and even more contrary island folk (Brexit), populist politics, climate change, and during the last two years, the pandemic, but all seen as irritations of various degrees of magnitude that were all somehow manageable – I now find myself struggling with uncertainties and scenarios I had not previously entertained.

German angst is a stereotype of course, but even as such is strangely contagious. The abstract nature of distant conflicts can gain in nearness with every iteration of “just two flight hours from Berlin”. As though Kyiv was something other than two hours from Berlin last week, last year, in 2014 …

How often have I reacted with barely disguised annoyance at the prevalent rhetoric in Germany on any and all matters military, resplendent as they are in phrases such as “given our history…”, “never again …”, at the monumental hypocrisy of allowing an arms industry to arm the rest of the world but not themselves and of imposing sanctions against Russia’s territorial aggression whilst at the same time extending economic cooperation (and refusing to recognize the geopolitical implications!), and a willingness to accept the security afforded by the US presence at home but a reluctance to fulfill their role as ally abroad. And, sometimes my reaction took a milder turn; simply to accept that my socialization at the other end of the world (where “duck & cover” was an unknown exercise) made me less sensitive to “the near and constant dangers” – and hot air – of the Cold War, and my failure to accept the accompanying relief and good will at its end, and just quietly wondered aghast at the German “naivety”. In the last days that word has often been taken out of my mouth, as the belatedly self-reflective identification of a “certain naivety” has found wide echo in all corners of the political spectrum, the media and, seemingly, amongst the volk.

No, I didn’t want to be right about these things, and I didn’t want to write about these things – but maybe I will have to. Yes, there is some measure of guilt attached – too much time spent foraging about in this rarefied world that I have created for myself; a space that then seems, in times such as these, too constrained and inconsequential … or just plain too small.

Of late I have been watching (again!) the hit US political drama from the noughties, The West Wing. Years not so long gone one would think, but in terms of the radically changed (and changing) face of media delivery and consumption, seemingly from a distant epoch. (My viewing observations include: firstly, in style already dated perhaps, but not not necessarily in substance – the more things change, the more they stay the same; and, secondly, a veritable minefield of political incorrectness to be excavated – a playground for ‘woke’ warriors of whichever persuasion!) When all else fails and the proverbial shit hits the fan, Leo will say something along the lines of: “Excuse me, Mr. President, we have a situation”, and with Jed in tow, or vice versa, together they march – or à la Aaron Sorkin ‘walk & talk’ their way – to the closeted security of the “sit. room”. So, it may well be, when I need to have my say on any new and what CNN would refer to as developing situation, I’m to be found in my very own more domesticated version of the Sit(-ting) Room (accessible from the top menu).