Getting to Know T.E. Lawrence “of Arabia” (1888-1935)

The book Selected Letters of T.E. Lawrence, discussed here, is more revealing of his character than is his most famous work, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

He also wrote and published The Mint during his subsequent service as an ordinary airman in the newly-formed British Air Force (1918). TEL preferred to be known upon entering the military service, first as “A/c (aircraftman) Ross,” then, finally, T.E. Shaw. (He had been in the diplomatic service, not the military,  during his Arabian days).

He lived like a monk in many respects. He abstained from sex, engaged in self-flagellation (he had at least one male friend flagellate him, during a limited period), deprived himself of all comforts except for recorded classical music and endless reading, drove himself in his work beyond the capabilities of most men, denied his own talents to others, engaged constantly in self-deprecation and tended toward depression, often contemplating death.

After his Arabian days, which lasted around two years, he continued government service as an aide to Winston Churchill. As Secretary of State for the Colonies (1921-1922) Churchill played a large role in determining the fate of the territories that had been detached from the Ottoman Empire after World War I. The photograph to the left shows him during the Cairo Conference (1921), walking with T. E. Lawrence. The conference was concerend with establishing the government, ethnic composition, and political boundaries of Iraq and other portions of the Middle East. ([Source].

Left to right: Winston Churchill, Gertrude Bell and T.E. Lawrence in Egypt, after World War I. Bell and Lawrence helped to create the Hashemite dynasty in Jordan and define the outline of the modern state of Iraq.

Before entering any government service, TEL was an accomplished archaeologist, specializing in ancient crusader castles in the Middle East. He had a wide-ranging knowledge of artifacts and history, grounded originally in his education at Oxford University. He retained throughout his life the friendship and admiration of many of his classmates and fellow scholars, and inspired others to his friendship including many powerful and otherwise famous figures such as: George Bernard Shaw (no relation) and, especially, his wife Charlotte Shaw; Lady Astor, Ezra Pound, Noël Coward, Sir Edward Elgar, E. M. Forster, Robert Graves, Mr. & Mrs. Thomas Hardy (his correspondence was only with Florence Hardy), E.T. Leeds, Eric Kennington, King Hussein of the Hejaz, Sir Hugh Trenchard, Lord George Lloyd, and Gertrude Bell.

His origins were difficult. He was one of five boys born to his unmarried parents. His parents were lovers and his father left his wife to live with his new family. His parents never married and, through this and other circumstances, TEL’s family name was always uncertain—hence his changing his last name at least twice, and finally, legally, to Shaw.

Lawrence’s mother, Sarah Junner Lawrence seemed to TEL as controlling and unpleasant to be with, but he was conscientious, in his many letters to her, in buttressing her seemingly low self-confidence as she worked in China as a missionary for many years. The above link will show the origins and makeup of the Lawrence family.

After his Arabian and Foreign Office service he joined the Air Force as a common airman, wanting to be as anonymous as possible and wanting to be in touch with “real work.” He was bounced from the Air Force because of the unavoidable publicity forever following him, so he then joined the Army which he hated. He finally was reinstated in the Air Force where he designed and tested “flying boats,” creating a whole new tool of warfare.

Above is a portrait of “Colonel T.E. Lawrence,” 1919, by Augustus John. “Colonel” was a working rank granted to him while working as a diplomatic and intelligence officer, despite his not being in the military. And, it gave him status with the Arab leaders he was working with in the British effort to defeat the Ottoman Turks.

All through his military service he wrote and received many letters to and from notables of all kinds, and ordinary servicemen he had befriended over the years. He occasionally socialized with Lady Astor, the G.B. Shaws and other luminaries, always dressed as a common soldier or airman.

As his many years in the air force drew toward a close, and as he contemplated doing very little afterward, he felt more and more oppressed by the volume of letters he received, feeling a moral obligation to answer them—and answer them he did with great depth, humor and insight. But this conscientiousness took an enormous toll on him, about which he constantly complained. As he was leaving the military service he sent out postcards to all his correspondents that he would not be writing much any more.

After mustering out of the Air force in his mid-forties, feeling quite old and used up, “as a leaf fallen from a tree,” he retired to an unplumbed cottage he had purchased years before, and occasionally rode his motorcycle, when he could afford the petrol expense. He was an avid MC rider through his service days. Here he is with George Brough, the manufacturer of his bike.

He died following a crash on his motorcycle while avoiding hitting two bicyclists on the country road he was speeding down.

It took a massacre…

…to fully reveal that which the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan repeatedly told his government, to no avail, and at the cost of his job.

Craig John Murray was the British ambassador to Uzbekistan from 2002-2004. While serving in that nations’ capital, Tashkent, he accused the administration of Uzbekistan President Islom Abdug‘aniyevich Karimov of human rights abuses. Murray repeatedly complained to the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office that intelligence linking the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan to al-Qaeda, suspected of being gained through torture, was unreliable, immoral, and illegal. He described this as “selling our souls for dross”. Murray was subsequently removed from his ambassadorial post on October 14, 2004. [Source]

Craig Murray has chronicled his saga in the book Murder in Samarkand, which I have recently read and which has prompted this article.

Murray’s main point is that the USA, from 11 September 2001, was so intent on fighting “the war on terror” that its government tolerated the kind of official behavior in Uzbekistan which it declaimed against under Saddam Hussein’s Iraq—that is, repression, torture and atrocities on its own people. Further, the then government of the United Kingdom fully supported the USA position and was complicit in consciously ignoring violations of human rights, under the United Nations Charter including, especially, the use of torture to gain “intelligence.”

The British government has denied this, to date.

REPORT OF THE UN COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS, February 2003—Mission to Uzbekistan: Civil and Political Rights, Including the Questions of Torture and Detention and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. [Please click on the report's title, above, to access it in MS Word and PDF format)].

Karshi-Khanabad is an airbase in south-eastern Uzbekistan. Between 2001 and 2005 the United States Air Force used the base, also known as K2 and “Stronghold Freedom”, for support missions against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. [Source]

The USA ended its official relationship with Uzbekistan in late 2005 when it “closed its air base in Uzbekistan that was used for Afghanistan operations, a shutdown ordered by Uzbek President Islam Karimov after the United States joined calls for an international inquiry into the authoritarian leader’s handling of the Andijan uprising.” [Source]

The Andijan massacre occurred when Uzbek Interior Ministry and National Security Service troops fired into a crowd of protesters in Andijan, Uzbekistan on 13 May 2005. Estimates of those killed on 13 May range from between 187, the official count of the government, and 5,000 people, with most outside reports estimating several hundred dead. A defector from Uzbekistan’s secret service alleged that 1,500 were killed.

Calls from Western governments for an international investigation prompted a major shift in Uzbek foreign policy favoring closer relations with Asian nations. The Uzbek government ordered the closing of the United States air base in Karshi-Khanabad and improved ties with the People’s Republic of China, India, and Russia, all of which supported the regime’s response in Andijan. [Source]

The unrest in the Ferghana Region has a lot to do with its minority Tajik population which were then (possibly still are) repressed and labeled, at various times, as Islamic extremists. Some observers claim that the repression drove some Tajiks toward extreme Islamism. But there is no doubt that at least a small fraction of Tajik-Uzbeks belong to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

The region’s ethnic politics are complicated by the fact that the Soviet Union purposefully changed the borders of the “Soviet Republics” of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, as you can see from this tortuous border around the Ferghana Valley.

[Source of Map. Please click on the image for clearer detail.]

For a variety of reasons the designers of the Soviet “national delimitation” in Central Asia discriminated against the Tajiks, having deprived the newly formed republic of Tajikistan of the two most important centers of Tajik urban culture, Bukhara and Samarkand, as well as regions of Fergana, Surhandarya and Khwrazm which were awarded to Uzbekistan. The majority of population in Uzbekistan are Tajiks. In the words of William Beeman, professor of anthropology at Brown University: “The Tajik situation in some ways resembles that of post-colonial Africa. Tajiks have been given an impossible piece of territory with disparate population and have been forced to make a nation out of it.”

The majority of Tajiks live outside border of what is known as Tajikistan today.The largest number of Tajiks are living in Uzbekistan, where the majority of Tajiks are forced to be registered as Uzbeks (the Tajiks on the official Uzbeki data, make about 4% of the population of this republic), but the real number of Tajiks living in Uzbekistan believed to be over 50 percent (11-14 millions) of the population.“ [Source]

I offer, in closing, these observations and sources regarding the Republic of Uzbekistan:

[Image Source]

…(N)on-governmental human rights watchdogs, such as IHF, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, as well as United States Department of State and Council of the European Union define Uzbekistan as “an authoritarian state with limited civil rights” and express profound concern about “wide-scale violation of virtually all basic human rights.” According to the reports, the most widespread violations are torture, arbitrary arrests, and various restrictions of freedoms: of religion, of speech and press, of free association and assembly. The reports maintain that the violations are most often committed against members of religious organizations, independent journalists, human rights activists and political activists, including members of the banned opposition parties. In 2005, Uzbekistan was included into Freedom House’s “The Worst of the Worst: The World’s Most Repressive Societies. [Source].

Press Service of the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan

Governmental Portal of the Republic of Uzbekistan

President Visits Ferghana Region

Dictator of the Month, December 2006

US slams Uzbek election as unfree, unfair and laughable [January 12, 2000]

Back in the USSR

Been away so long I hardly knew the place
Gee, it’s good to be back home
Leave it till tomorrow to unpack my case
Honey disconnect the phone
I’m back in the USSR
You don’t know how lucky you are, boy
Back in the US
Back in the US
Back in the USSR
(Lyrics by John Lennon & Paul McCartney)
© SONY BEATLES LTD; SONY/ATV TUNES LLC

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) dissolved 25 December 1991, almost 18 years ago. There were 15 “republics” in the union. What, now, are the names of these countries? How are they doing?

I asked myself these questions as I prepared to write an article on Uzbekistan, a former republic of the USSR.

As for how the fifteen, individually, are “doing,” the answer has to be, in part: “compared to what?” I chose to compare a few demographic statistics with The World as the reference point. As I have so often in these pages, I went to the The World Factbook of the Central Intelligence Agency of the USA.

I chose seven demographic measures:

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita

Life expectancy at birth for females

Life expectancy at birth for males

Net migration per 1000 population (number of immigrants minus number of emigrants)

Infant mortality (usually within 30 days of birth) per 1000 live births

Fertility rate (number of births per year, per the number of all women)

The live birth rate per thousand population, minus the death rate per 1000

I arrayed these seven measures by country and compared each characteristic to that of the world, whether more, or less, favorable.

[Please click on the image for clearer detail]

For the specific data in each country and the world, click here

I then gave a score to each country by subtracting the number of negative results, compared to world averages or ratios, from the number of positive results (a positive number shows a positive comparison to the world, and the converse for negative number):

Countries Scoring “+3″: Belarus, Kyrgyzstan

Countries Scoring “+1″: Armenia, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Uzbekistan

Countries Scoring “-1″: Turkmenistan

Countries Scoring “-3″: Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Ukraine

So what makes Belarus and Kyrgyzstan so special—at least with respect to world averages and ratios? (One must keep in mind that probably none of the readers of this article would care to live in an area where these demographics are at or near World averages and ratios; and, that the data aggregation agency, in this case the CIA, is at the mercy of the quality of data collection and reporting in each country).

Belarus
Despite low fertility and high overall death rate, Belarus has high GDP per capita, low infant mortality, high life expectancy at birth for both females and males, and more people are entering the country than leaving it. So, the overall population is growing. It does seem counter-intuitive for the population to be growing despite low fertility and high death rate, but perhaps there is still some in-migration of ethnic Belarusians from the other former republics who were dispersed during the Soviet era.

“Since 1996, Belarus has been negotiating with Russia to unify into a single state called the Union of Russia and Belarus.” [Source]

In looking at the nature of Belarus’s government before and since the dissolution of the USSR (see under the “Belarus” link, above), there is much room to doubt the accuracy of information coming from, essentially, a totalitarian state in existence for 70 years.

Kyrgyzstan
More people leave Kyrgyzstan than enter it, as residents, and GDP per capita is low, but all the life and health data are high. “Kyrgyzstan has undergone a pronounced change in its ethnic composition since independence [1991]. The percentage of ethnic Kyrgyz increased from around 50% in 1979 to nearly 70% in 2007, while the percentage of European ethnic groups (Russians, Ukrainians and Germans) as well as Tatars dropped from 35% to about 10%. The Kyrgyz have historically been semi-nomadic herders, living in round tents called yurts and tending sheep, horses and yaks. This nomadic tradition continues to function seasonally as herding families return to the high mountain pasture in the summer.” [Source]

Nine countries are scored “+1.” Rather than list and discuss them individually, I will present what they have in common.

Statue of Lenin, founder of the USSR, in Tiraspol, Moldova [Source]

The life expectancy at birth for females is higher than The World average.

Other than for Kazakhstan and Russia, the life expectancy at birth for males is higher than the world average. Russia is lowest at 59.3 years, compared to the world average at 64.5 years. It is remarkable that the life of expectancy at birth for females in Russia is 73.2 years, almost a 14 years more than for males.

All, except Russia, have more people leaving than entering the country as residents. Note, again, that there has been a general migration of expatriates toward their countries of origin after the dissolution of the USSR.

The infant death rate for all 15 countries is lower than the world average. The three Baltic countries (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) are lowest in this measure, by far (a good thing), between 6.5 and 8.8 deaths per thousand births. The world average is 40.9. Armenia, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan are highest, at 20.2, 23.4 and 25.7 infant deaths per thousand births, respectively.

The fertility rate of all 15 countries is well under the World average of 2.6 children per woman. A country needs around 2.1 live births per woman in order to maintain the country’s population at a given level.

Except for Uzbekistan, the difference between the birth rate and the death rate (BR minus DR) is lower than the world average of 11.8 per thousand population (not good). Russia is lowest at a difference of (negative) 5.0 per thousand people.

Turkmenistan (“-1″)
The only three positive factors for this country are life expectancy for males and females, and the birth rate minus the death rate. “The former Communist Party, now known as the Democratic Party of Turkmenistan, has been the only one effectively permitted to operate. Political gatherings are illegal unless government sanctioned. Turkmenistan is among the twenty countries in the world with the highest perceived level of corruption …” [Source]

Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Ukraine at “-3” score
The GDP per capita of all three countries is below the World average of $10,400, with Tajikistan by far the lowest at $1,800. Life expectancy for males born today is less than the World average, for all three. Except for Ukraine (at 8.9) the infant death rate is above the world average of 40.9 deaths per thousand live births. The fertility rate for Azerbaijan and Tajikistan is well above the World average, but Ukraine is among the lowest countries at 1.3 births per woman. Similarly, the birth rate far exceeds the death rate in Azerbaijan and Tajikistan, but Ukraine is the lowest of all fifteen countries in this measure at (negative) 6.2; that is, the there are 6.2 more people dying than being born, per thousand population, in the current year.

1 Armenia 2 Azerbaijan 3 Belarus 4 Estonia 5 Georgia 6 Kazakhstan 7 Kyrgyzstan 8 Latvia

9 Lithuania 10 Moldova 11 Russia 12 Tajikistan 13 Turkmenistan 14 Ukraine 15 Uzbekistan

There is hard living almost everywhere in the former USSR. Look at the averages of these seven measures for the 27 countries of the European Union vs. those of Russia, the largest country, by far, of the former SSRs, and the most dominant, politically and economically:

European Union GDP per capita: $33,700 Life expectancy, female: 82.0 Life expectancy, male: 75.5 Net migration: 1.5 Infant death rate: 5.7 Fertility rate: 1.5 Birth rate minus death rate: -0.4

Russia GDP per capita: $16,100 Life expectancy, female: 73.2 Life expectancy, male: 59.3 Net migration: 0.3 Infant death rate: 10.6 Fertility rate: 1.4 Birth rate minus death rate: -5.0

I have been to two countries of the former USSR: Estonia and Latvia. Despite the obvious enthusiasm of the people for their freedom from totalitarianism, and the resultant social and economic progress, the ravages of the Soviet rule are still quite apparent.

With all respect to the poetry of Messrs. Lennon and McCartney, let’s not go back to the USSR.

Political Correctness and the “Cult of Personality”

Image Source [Please click on the image]

The phrase “politically correct,” or “PC,” didn’t begin in the 1960s in the USA. It was first publicly used by a British Ministry of Information official during the First World War. It later appeared in Mao Zedung’s “Little Red Book” in the early 1960s and was adopted, originally tongue-in-cheek, by the radical left in the USA. In Marxist–Leninist and Trotskyist vocabulary, “correct” was the common term denoting the “appropriate party line” and the ideologically “correct line.” [Source]

What brings me to discuss this today is my current reading of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward:

Solzhenitsyn’s novels are autobiographical, presenting a vivid account of a man maintaining his freedom against the vicious repressions of an authoritarian regime. Clearly a novelist in the 19th-century tradition, he is often considered Russia’s greatest 20th-century novelist.

His difficulties with the authorities began on Feb. 8, 1945, when he was arrested for having written critical remarks about Joseph Stalin in a letter to a friend that was intercepted by the censors. Sentenced without a trial to 8 years of hard labor, he remained until 1953 in a number of labor camps, one of which was a research institute where he worked as a mathematician. In 1952 he contracted cancer of the skin, and was treated in a hospital in Tashkent (the setting for Cancer Ward). Pronounced cured, he completed his sentence a year later and, although still in exile, was able to teach mathematics and to begin writing. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1970 “for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature.” [Source]

There are many reviews of Cancer Ward on the Internet, so it would be superfluous to offer my own review here, except to talk about one of the characters who exemplified the totalitarian state that was the USSR:

Bureaucracy and the nature of power in Stalin’s state is represented by Pavel Nikolayevich Rusanov, a “personnel officer.” The corrupt power of Stalin’s regime is shown through his dual desires to be a “worker” but also achieve a “special pension.” At the end, Rusanov’s wife drops rubbish from her car window, symbolising the carelessness with which the regime treated the country. [Source]

I pause here to give some background for the ensuing comments on political correctness. It is important to know the period in which the action of Cancer Ward takes place. Here are the leaders of the USSR, in date order:

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 26 Oct 1917 – 21 Jan 1924
Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin, 3 Apr 1922 – 5 Mar 1953
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, 7 Sep 1953 – 14 Oct 1964
Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, 14 Oct 1964 – 10 Nov 1982
Yuriy Vladimirovich Andropov, 12 Nov 1982 – 9 Feb 1984
Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko, 13 Feb 1984 – 10 Mar 1985
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, 11 Mar 1985 – 24 Aug 1991

Please note the hiatus of top leadership between March and September, 1953. After Stalin died there was a political struggle among several pretenders to Stalin’s throne. Stalin held the top post in several functions and, after his death, there was a dispersion of these duties to several people so no one could claim to be Stalin’s sole heir, until Khrushchev finally gained the support necessary.

Khrushchev began a gradual change in the legacy of Stalin and, suddenly, in a 1956 speech “On the Personality Cult and its Consequences” to the closed session of the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party, he denounced Stalin’s dictatorial rule and cult of personality. He also attacked the crimes committed by Stalin’s closest associates.

This speech destroyed the legitimacy of Khrushchev’s remaining Stalinist rivals, solidifying his domestic power. He began to ease many restrictions, and freed millions of political prisoners from the “Gulag”–penal labor camps spread across the Soviet Union. (Read Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago).

This “thaw” in the political, cultural and economic life of the Soviet Union included some openness and contact with other nations and new social and economic policies, helping living standards to rise and promoting a higher level of economic growth. Censorship was also relaxed. Some subtle criticism of Soviet society was tolerated, and artists were allowed to produce some works that didn’t have government-approved political content–but there were still limits an artist or writer could not go beyond without reprisal.

The novel Cancer Ward is set in a hospital in Soviet Uzbekistan in 1955, before and during the period when the changes to Stalin’s policies and apparatus were culminating. One of the patients in the cancer ward was Pavel Nikolayevich Rusanov, as mentioned above. While in the hospital he learns from a newspaper, and from his visiting wife and daughter, that the Soviet regime is changing: prisoners are being released from the Gulag, having been officially “rehabilitated.”

One of these prisoners, Rusanov fears, is a man, a former friend and compatriot, whom he falsely denounced to achieve some advantage in the factory where they both worked. Here are some excerpts to show the disorientation and fear the new rules of political correctness engendered in him:

Now times had changed, things were bewildering, unhealthy, the finest civic actions of earlier days were now shameful. Would he now have to fear for his own skin?

[Rusanov mentally reviewing the past] The nature of Rusanov’s work had been…that of personnel records administrator. It was a job that went by different names…but the substance of it was always the same. Only ignoramuses and uninformed outsiders were unaware what subtle, meticulous work it was, what talent it required. It was a form of poetry not yet mastered by the poets themselves. As every man goes through life he fills in a number of forms for the record, each containing a number of questions. A man’s answer to a question on one form becomes a little thread, permanently connecting him to the local centre of personnel records administration. There are thus hundreds of little threads radiating from from every man, millions of threads in all…They are not visible, they are not material, but every man is constantly aware of their existence. The point is that a so-called completely clean record was almost unattainable, an ideal, like absolute truth. Something negative or suspicious can always be noted down against any man alive. Everyone is guilty of something or has something to conceal. All one has to do is look hard enough to find out what it is.

…The poetic side of [Rusanov's] work lay in holding a man in the hollow of [his] hand without even starting to pile on the pressure. (Emphasis added)

[Later, Rusanov talking with his daughter, Alla, a well-placed writer who has recently visited Moscow and who is visiting him in the hospital] ‘Listen,’ her father said quietly, do you remember. I asked you to find something out? That strange expression–you come across it sometimes in speeches or articles–”the cult of personality”–are those words an illusion to…?’ [He means Stalin]

‘I’m afraid they are, Father…I’m afraid they are. At the Writers’ Congress, for example, the phrase was used several times. And the trouble is, nobody explains what it means, though everyone puts on a face as if they understand.’

‘But it’s pure blasphemy! How dare they, eh?’

[Alla] ‘…Generally speaking, you have to be flexible, you have to be responsive to the demand of the times. This may annoy you Father, but whether we like it or not we have to attune ourselves to each new period as it comes! I saw a lot in Moscow. I spent quite a lot of time in literary circles–do you imagine it’s easy for writers to readjust their attitudes over the last two years? Ve-ry complicated! But what an experienced crowd they are! What tact! You can learn a lot from them!’

Well, this is enough, I hope, to elicit your interest in the book, and to provide some food for thought about the potential power of government to shape our lives.

Will Rusanov be cured of his neck tumor? Will his old “friend,” released from the Gulag, visit him? Will Oleg (the main character) find love and happiness with one of the two hospital workers he is romancing? Will Oleg be returned to the Gulag after he is cured (if he is cured)?

Don’t ask me… read the book!

Addendum: If you have an interest in the current debate regarding how to finance and array medical care in the USA, you should certainly read at least Part Two, Chapter 9, “The Old Doctor” in this book. Take your time with it; it is poetically written (and, apparently, faithfully translated)

Civil Society Must Succeed Where Governments Have Failed

The headline for today’s column is an idea I took away from a peace conference, held two days ago in Stockholm, a paraphrase of what I heard from journalist and academic, Dr. Carmen Sammut, from Malta.

The conference and its workshops, press conferences and reception lasted the whole day and evening of September 21, “an auspicious day,” but I was able to attend only the morning session, which was sufficient for the purposes of this weekly blog article.

Anna Lindh, inspiration for The Anna Lindh Foundation, a co-sponsor of the conference

Many non-governmental organizations (NGOs), alliances and voluntary organizations had a role to play in this gathering of journalists, diplomats, academics and others under the heading Restore Trust, Build Bridges.

The label “auspicious” was given this gathering by one of the speakers due to the convergence around the date, September 21, of these of these events and traditions:

The autumnal equinox

The International Day of Peace has been established by the United Nations for this date

The celebration of Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year)

The end of Ramadan, in the Muslim faith

The Feast Day of Saint Matthew

In that the conflict most referenced during the morning’s session was that centering in Jerusalem, a holy city for the three faiths referenced above, the observation was apt. At least one other conflict was referenced, the one centered in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Another important point was made: those who are directly affected in local conflicts, and who support peaceful settlement, are more numerous than those who seek combat to resolve disputes. Their voices are poorly heard, however, under the noise and visual presentations of “mayhem” that capture the attention of the various news media. The three speakers representing the press told us of efforts by The Euro-Mediterranean Media Task Force to promote a proper balance between the immediate facts on the ground in a local area, and the larger picture including those who are relatively quiet (or inadequately reported on), the oft-referenced “grass roots.” Evidence of such grass roots peace efforts is found in the Blue and White Peace movement in Israel, promoting a two-state solution. A similar movement of Jews in the USA was cited, as well.

The keynote speaker in the morning session was André Azoulay, President of the Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranean Foundation for the Dialogue Between Cultures. Among many observations based in his extensive and high-level experience in both Arab and Jewish cultures, he cited the hopeful note and presence of the new U.S. President, Barack Obama, and the latter’s presentation at Egypt’s Cairo University, June 4, 2009. Mr. Azoulay dwelt a bit on Mr. Obama’s use of quotations from the Quran and his opening remarks in Arabic, showing “respect” and “humility” to his hosts, considering it “a major historical point”. This positive impression was buttressed by the later remarks of communications consultant, journalist and columnist Ramzi E. Khoury, a Jordanian by birth.

So, I have cited three major points from just the morning portion of a full-day and evening conference. I consider my time well-spent if I can come away with just one new idea or insight from a full day’s meeting.

China’s “New Cultural Revolution”

This was the title given to a presentation I attended, September 10, at the regular meeting of my Rotary club, the only English speaking Rotary club in Stockholm.

Dr. Tony Fang was the presenter. He is Associate Professor of International Business at Stockholm University, born in China and a resident of Sweden for many years.

To put the title and the substance of Dr. Fang’s presentation into perspective, one needs to review the first “cultural revolution” in China:

“The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution”, or simply Cultural Revolution, was a period of social and political upheaval in the People’s Republic of China between 1966 and 1976, resulting in nation-wide chaos and economic disarray.

It was launched by Mao Zedong, the chairman of the Communist Party of China, on May 16, 1966, who alleged that “liberal bourgeois” elements were permeating the party and society at large, and wanted to restore Capitalism. He insisted that these elements be removed through post-revolutionary class struggle by mobilizing the thoughts and actions of China’s youth, who formed Red Guards groups around the country. The movement subsequently spread into the military, urban workers, and the party leadership itself. Although Mao himself officially declared the Cultural Revolution to have ended in 1969, today it is widely believed that the power struggles and political instability between 1969 and the arrest of the Gang of Four as well as the death of Mao in 1976 were also part of the Revolution.

After Mao’s death, the forces within Communist Party of China that were antagonistic to the Cultural Revolution gained prominence. The political, economic, and educational reforms associated with the Cultural Revolution were terminated. The Cultural Revolution has been treated officially as a negative phenomenon ever since. The people involved in instituting the policies of the Cultural Revolution were persecuted. In its official historical judgement of the Cultural Revolution in 1981, the Party assigned chief responsibility to Mao Zedong, but also laid significant blame on Lin Biao and the Gang of Four. [Source]

During the 33 years since Chairman Mao’s death in 1976, Chinese leaders started their country on a bumpy road toward embracing many of the values in the West that Mao reviled and forbade. Deng Xiaoping (1904-1997) was the key person in this transformation:

Inheriting a country wrought with social and institutional woes left over from the Cultural Revolution and other mass political movements of the Mao era, Deng became the core of the “second generation” of Chinese leadership. He is called “the architect” of a new brand of socialist thinking, having developed Socialism with Chinese characteristics and led Chinese economic reform through a synthesis of theories that became known as the “socialist market economy”. Deng opened China to foreign investment, the global market, and limited private competition. He is generally credited with advancing China into becoming one of the fastest growing economies in the world and vastly raising the standard of living. [Source]

Dr. Fang offered these eight points toward understanding the China of today, as compared with, just a short while ago, the China that most of us may remember:

1. Changing symbols, heroes and rituals: Mao is no longer the national hero, now perceived more as an honored ancestor or quasi-religious icon (my interpretation). The term “comrade” has changed to mean partners in a homosexual relationship. Television programs hold competitions similar to “Idol” to elevate winners to cultural icons. Dr. Fang quotes Deng Xiaoping as saying “to become rich is glorious.”
2. Professionalism There is developing, among major enterprises, a strong service orientation.
3. Respect for knowledge
4. Self-expression
5. Direct and assertive communication
6. Individualism/individualization
7. Technology-driven
8. Emerging online civil society

Dr. Fang points out that in emulating many of the perceived values of the West, Chinese have not yet developed the inherent sense of social boundaries. As a result, certain “Western” behaviors in Chinese are perceived as excessive or out-of-bounds by Westerners. Dr. Fang asserts that there is a learning curve in this realm and that time and experience will bring the necessary corrections and definitions of proper boundaries.

I often go to the CIA World Factbook to get the most recently available information for any country in the world. Here are a few current demographics for China:

Population 1,338,612,968
Age structure 0-14 years: 19.8%, 15-64 years: 72.1%, 65 years and over: 8.1%
Median age 34.1 years
Population growth rate 0.655%
Urbanization urban population: 43% of total population
Rate of urbanization 2.7% annual rate of change
Sex ratio total population: 1.06 males/female
Life expectancy at birth total population: 73.47 years
Total fertility rate 1.79 children born/woman
Ethnic groups Han Chinese 91.5%; Zhuang, Manchu, Hui, Miao, Uyghur, Tujia, Yi, Mongol, Tibetan, Buyi, Dong, Yao, Korean and other, 8.5%
Religions Daoist (Taoist), Buddhist, Christian 3%-4%; Muslim 1%-2%. Note: [China is] officially atheist.
Languages Standard Chinese or Mandarin (based on the Beijing dialect), Yue (Cantonese), Wu (Shanghainese), Minbei (Fuzhou), Minnan (Hokkien-Taiwanese), Xiang, Gan, Hakka dialects, minority languages
Literacy (age 15 and over can read and write): total population: 90.9%

Please click on the map to enlarge it

In ending his presentation, Dr. Fang characterized modern China as “embracing paradox, dynamics and change.” This is buttressed by the statement of Robert Poole, vice president, China Operations, at the US-China Business Council in Beijing: “Change is a constant companion to those of us in the China business environment, as the results of 30 years of reform unfold and a dynamic economy emerges.” The China Business Review, March-April, 2009.

Cascading Connections, Centering on the Poet Rainer Maria Rilke

As regular readers of this blog will know, Eva and I visited Prague as tourists for five days in late July this year. This was time enough to sample only a small part what this great city has to offer.

I knew already that Prague and the country of which it is the capital, the Czech Republic (formerly Bohemia, for the most part), were home to two great composers: Bedřich Smetana (1824-1884) and Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904). What I had failed to remember, if ever fully knew, was that two great writers also called Prague home: Franz Kafka (1883-1924) and Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926).

Before I go further in this vein, here is a little about the relationship between Bohemia and the Czech Republic to orient us historically:

Bohemia…is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western two-thirds of the traditional Czech Lands, currently the Czech Republic. In a broader meaning, it often refers to the entire Czech territory, including Moravia and Czech Silesia, especially in historical contexts, such as the Kingdom of Bohemia.

Bohemia has an area of 52,750 km² and 6.25 million of the Czech Republic’s 10.3 million inhabitants. It is bordered by Germany to the southwest, west, and northwest, Poland to the north-east, the Czech historical region of Moravia to the east, and Austria to the south. Bohemia’s borders are marked with mountain ranges such as the Bohemian Forest, the Ore Mountains, and the Krkonoše within the Sudeten mountains. [Source: Wikipedia]

The remainder of the present-day Czech Republic is within the area known historically as Moravia:

Moravia occupies most of the eastern third of the Czech Republic including the South Moravian Region and the Zlín Region, as well as parts of the Moravian-Silesian, Olomouc, Pardubice, Vysočina and South Bohemian regions.

In the north, Moravia borders Poland and Czech Silesia; in the east, Slovakia; in the south, Lower Austria; and in the west, Bohemia. Its northern boundary is formed by the Sudetes mountains which become the Carpathians in the east. The meandering Dyje flows through the border country with Austria and there is a protected area on both sides of the border in the area around Hardegg. [Source: Wikipedia]

Relation of Bohemia and Moravia in the Czech Republic and the countries of Austria, Germany, Poland and Slovakia (from 1918 until 1993, the Czech Republic and Slovakia were one country: Czechoslovakia).

Now to the “Cascading Connections.”

My father loved the writings of the German philosopher-poets Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805), and especially the poetry of Rilke. At home he would recite snippets of their poetry in German when feeling expansive. As a college student at Berkeley in the mid 1930s, he joined the German Club in order to advance his studies in the German language and culture. He spoke Hochdeutsch, although there are no known German antecedents in our family. (Dad was in no way enamored of the rise of Hitler’s National Socialism in Germany at the time—quite the opposite).

So, at a young age I was introduced to the name of Rilke, but never knew him even though I never forgot his name and his influence on Dad.

Fast forward more than a half-century to 2009, Stockholm, where I now live. A writer friend, knowing I have an interest in writing poetry (an interest that happened upon me only within in the last dozen years) recommended to me Rilke’s “Letters to a Young Poet.” I found them, entire, on the Internet. I began reading the ten letters, some of them emanating from Sweden where Rilke went to recover from the pressures of life in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire, including Bohemia. I hadn’t yet finished my reading of the letters when I arrived Prague and saw Rilke’s name and image in various locations in the city, especially those catering to tourists. This is when I felt I had come full circle with Rilke.

I miss my father ever more as I age. He and I had conversations I could have, and can have, with no one else due, in part, that he consciously educated me, not always successfully, to his ways and thoughts. We were different in important ways, yet much the same in intellectual interests and abilities. This blog is, in large part, an attempt to cover the historical and literary ground that my father urged me to travel but did only in small part during his lifetime. I was bound for the world of science and business and had little time for strictly intellectual pursuits that brought along no short-term material rewards.

So, in ending this essay I will show Dad, in absentia, and you, dear reader, that I have read Rilke, in translation to be sure, by sharing some excerpts, below, from his “letters” as evidence.

I hope you will find Rilke’s advice to the young poet as soulful and valuable as I do.
———————————————————-
Letter One, Paris
February 17, 1903

Nothing touches a work of art so little as words of criticism…most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsayable than all other things are works of art…

Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.

I can’t give you any advice but this: to go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows; at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create. Accept that answer, just as it is given to you, without trying to interpret it…

Letter Two, Viareggio, near Pisa (Italy)
April 5, 1903

…ultimately, and precisely in the deepest and most important matters, we are unspeakably alone; and many things must happen, many things must go right, a whole constellation of events must be fulfilled, for one human being to successfully advise or help another…

Irony: Don’t let yourself be controlled by it, especially during uncreative moments.

Letter Three, Viareggio, near Pisa (Italy)
April 23, 1903

Read as little as possible of literary criticism – such things are either partisan opinions, which have become petrified and meaningless, hardened and empty of life, or else they are just clever word-games, in which one view wins today, and tomorrow the opposite view…Always trust yourself and your own feeling, as opposed to argumentations, discussions, or introductions of that sort; if it turns out that you are wrong, then the natural growth of your inner life will eventually guide you to other insights. Allow your judgments their own silent, undisturbed development, which, like all progress, must come from deep within and cannot be forced or hastened. Everything is gestation and then birthing. To let each impression and each embryo of a feeling come to completion, entirely in itself, in the dark, in the unsayable, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one’s own understanding, and with deep humility and patience to wait for the hour when a new clarity is born: this alone is what it means to live as an artist: in understanding as in creating.

In this there is no measuring with time, a year doesn’t matter, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn’t force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and vast. I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything!

Letter Four, Worpswede, near Bremen
July 16, 1903

…have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer…

Perhaps above them all there is a great motherhood, in the form of a communal yearning. The beauty of the girl, a being who (as you so beautifully say) “has not yet achieved anything,” is motherhood that has a presentiment of itself and begins to prepare, becomes anxious, yearns. And the mother’s beauty is motherhood that serves, and in the old woman there is a great remembering. And in the man too there is motherhood, it seems to me, physical and mental; his engendering is also a kind of birthing, and it is birthing when he creates out of his innermost fullness. And perhaps the sexes are more akin than people think, and the great renewal of the world will perhaps consist in one phenomenon: that man and woman, freed from all mistaken feelings and aversions, will seek each other not as opposites but as brother and sister, as neighbors, and will unite as human beings, in order to bear in common, simply, earnestly, and patiently, the heavy sex that has been laid upon them…

But everything that may someday be possible for many people, the solitary man can now, already, prepare and build with his own hands, which make fewer mistakes. Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away, you write, and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast. And if what is near you is far away, then your vastness is already among the stars and is very great; be happy about your growth, in which of course you can’t take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don’t torment them with your doubts and don’t frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn’t be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn’t necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust. Avoid providing material for the drama that is always stretched tight between parents and children; it uses up much of the children’s strength and wastes the love of the elders, which acts and warms even if it doesn’t comprehend. Don’t ask for any advice from them and don’t expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like and inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.

Letter Seven, Rome
May 14, 1904

…love is difficult. For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation. That is why young people, who are beginners in everything, are not yet capable of love: it is something they must learn. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered around their solitary, anxious, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. But learning-time is always a long, secluded time ahead and far on into life, is—; solitude, a heightened and deepened kind of aloneness for the person who loves. Loving does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person (for what would a union be of two people who are unclarified, unfinished, and still incoherent?), it is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world in himself for the sake of another person; it is a great, demanding claim on him, something that chooses him and calls him to vast distances. Only in this sense, as the task of working on themselves (“to hearken and to hammer day and night”), may young people use the love that is given to them. Merging and surrendering and every kind of communion is not for them (who must still, for a long, long time, save and gather themselves); it is the ultimate, is perhaps that for which human lives are as yet barely large enough.

But this is what young people are so often and so disastrously wrong in doing they (who by their very nature are impatient) fling themselves at each other when love takes hold of them, they scatter themselves, just as they are, in all their messiness, disorder, bewilderment. . .

And what can happen then? What can life do with this heap of half-broken things that they call their communion and that they would like to call their happiness, if that were possible, and their future? And so each of them loses himself for the sake of the other person, and loses the other, and many others who still wanted to come. And loses the vast distances and possibilities, gives up the approaching and fleeing of gentle, prescient Things in exchange for an unfruitful confusion, out of which nothing more can come; nothing but a bit of disgust, disappointment, and poverty, and the escape into one of the many conventions that have been put up in great numbers like public shelters on this most dangerous road. No area of human experience is so extensively provided with conventions as this one is: there are live-preservers of the most varied invention, boats and water wings; society has been able to create refuges of very sort, for since it preferred to take love-life as an amusement, it also had to give it an easy form, cheap, safe, and sure, as public amusements are…

Women, in whom life lingers and dwells more immediately, more fruitfully, and more confidently, must surely have become riper and more human in their depths than light, easygoing man, who is not pulled down beneath the surface of life by the weight of any bodily fruit and who, arrogant and hasty, undervalues what he thinks he loves. This humanity of woman, carried in her womb through all her suffering and humiliation, will come to light when she has stripped off the conventions of mere femaleness in the transformations of her outward status, and those men who do not yet feel it approaching will be astonished by it. Someday (and even now, especially in the countries of northern Europe, trustworthy signs are already speaking and shining), someday there will be girls and women whose name will no longer mean the mere opposite of the male, but something in itself, something that makes one think not of any complement and limit, but only life and reality: the female human being.

This advance (at first very much against the will of the outdistanced men) will transform the love experience, which is now filled with error, will change it from the ground up, and reshape it into a relationship that is meant to be between one human being and another, no longer one that flows from man to woman. And this more human love (which will fulfill itself with infinite consideration and gentleness, and kindness and clarity in binding and releasing) will resemble what we are now preparing painfully and with great struggle: the love that consists in this: the two solitudes protect and border and greet each other.

Letter Eight, Borgeby gard, Fladie, Sweden
August 12, 1904

…The only sadnesses that are dangerous and unhealthy are the ones that we carry around in public in order to drown them out with the noise; like diseases that are treated superficially and foolishly, they just withdraw and after a short interval break out again all the more terribly; and gather inside us and are life, are life that is unlived, rejected, lost, life that we can die of…And that is why it is so important to be solitary and attentive when one is sad: because the seemingly uneventful and motionless moment when our future steps into us is so much closer to life than that other loud and accidental point of time when it happens to us as if from outside. The quieter we are, the more patient and open we are in our sadnesses, the more deeply and serenely the new presence can enter us, and the more we can make it our own, the more it becomes our fate; and later on, when it “happens” (that is, steps forth out of us to other people), we will feel related and close to it in our innermost being.

Don’t observe yourself too closely. Don’t be too quick to draw conclusions from what happens to you; simply let it happen. Otherwise it will be too easy for you to look with blame (that is: morally) at your past, which naturally has a share in everything that now meets you. But whatever errors, wishes, and yearnings of your boyhood are operating in you now are not what you remember and condemn.

Shibumi

…(A)n ineffable quality…great refinement underlying commonplace appearances.

Thus, on page 74 of my paperback copy of the book Shibumi, does the author, Trevanian (1931-2003), through the character General Kishikawa Takashi, begin to describe to young Nicholai Alexandrovitch Hel the nature of this ‘quality.’

It is a statement so correct that it does not have to be bold, so poignant it does not have to be pretty, so true it does not have to be real. Shibumi is understanding, rather than knowledge. Eloquent silence. In demeanor, it is modesty without pudency [prudishness]. In art where the spirit of shibumi takes the form of sabi [celebration of that which is old and faded], it is elegant simplicity, articulate brevity. In philosophy, where shibumi emerges as wabi [cultivated simplicity and poverty], it is spiritual tranquility that is not passive; it is being without the angst of becoming. And in the personality of man it is…how does one say it? Authority without domination? Something like that.

I have read this book at least a half-dozen times since its publication 30 years ago, and have given many copies away to friends and relatives. I feel now, after having just again read it, that I should memorialize it here so that it may not be necessary to read it again.

One cannot successfully characterize a book with so many historical references, vivid characters and deliberate stereotypes of nationalities, among its other, including ‘ineffable,’ facets and qualities. The author is man of strong opinions and may offend some who read the book, but one cannot be bored with it.

Trevanian dedicated the book to the four characters who helped shape the main player in this story, Nicholai Alexandrovitch Hel. The four are based on real people with, presumably, different names and identities:

General Kishikawa Takashi, trapped by culture, custom and circumstance into becoming the Governor of Japanese occupied Shanghai just prior to World War Two. Kishikawa-san becomes foster father to Nicholai Hel.

Otake-san, Seventh Dan Gô Master, mentor to Nicholas Hel in the board game of Gô, of which life is its shadow. As part of Otake-san’s instruction in life he tells Nicholas: “Do not fall into the error of the artisan who boasts of twenty years experience in his craft while in fact he has had only one year of experience—twenty times.”

Maurice de Lhandes, “The Gnome,” an invaluable ally, and friend, to Nicholas in his years as a professional assassin. De Lhandes has access to the darkest secrets of governments which he sells to those whom he can trust not to reveal his identity and location.

Le Cagot, a Falstaffian character, a Basque, who is Nicholas’s companion and fellow spelunker, or caver, after retirement from his former profession. Le Cagot is, among other attributes, a hero of the Basque resistance to the Spanish government.

The ‘retired’ Nicholas Hel has a female companion, as well, who is a gently compelling character.

In the spirit of shibumi I will say little more here.

I will now put away my old friend, having drunk from his pages sufficiently, and, without yearning, anticipate the day when it will seem as natural as the rain to deliver it into the hands of a young visitor to my home.

kareeda ni
karasu no tomari keri
aki no kure

[on dead branches
crows remain perched
at autumn's end]

—Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694)

———–
Shibumi is published by Ballantine Books, New York. Copyright © 1979 by Trevanian. ISBN 0-345-31180-9

Sending Messages into the Future

[This week's article is by my friend Eric Gandy, a long-time resident of Stockholm, born in England].

The American photographer Edward Weston said “a photograph is a message you send into the future.” We are dependent on messages sent by previous generations to learn about eras and events we did not experience first hand, or are beyond the reach of living memory. History can be described as an accumulation of thousands of messages from the past.

Some of these messages may be sent unintentionally, such as the information embodied in artifacts or documents that have survived over the centuries, when discovered and interpreted by archaeologists or genealogists. What picture of the past do these unintentional messages send to present and future generations? The senders have no ulterior motive behind these unintentional messages, but despite this they often paint a picture which is not “true” in an objective sense. Just think about the messages sent in photo albums handed on to the next generation, often by grandparents. Photo albums usually portray happy families celebrating holidays, birthdays, weddings, parties and the like. The family photographer does not deliberately set out to influence the memories of grandchildren, but seldom gives a true picture of the ups and downs, the tears and frustrations of everyday family life.

Other messages to the future are sent deliberately with an intention of manipulating the thinking and ideas of future generations. The winners write the history books. In his book Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell wrote, “He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.” Or as Winston Churchill said, “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it”. The many official histories commissioned from embedded journalists or paid-off academics bear witness to how widespread is what Michel Foucault called “historical revisionism” in a series of lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-76, entitled Society Must be Defended. This is often described as “setting the picture straight”, giving biased views of past events to justify past or current policies. In this perspective, unintentional messages from the past seem more reliable, if not wholly objective.

For events during our lifetime we can rely on our own memory, a rather deceptive messenger affected by the passage of time but still preferable to doctored official histories. What we remember, and choose to forget, can often be affected by personal or political considerations. In Alfred and Emily, the novel about an alternative life story for her parents, Doris Lessing describes a visit she made in the 1980s to the farm in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, where she grew up. There she met an angry man who now lived on the farm. Doris explained that she had lived there as a child and pointed out where their house had been situated, on top of a hill. In her autobiography Under my Skin she described the exertions of the oxen as they pulled water barrels up the steep hill to douse the thatched roof, to prevent it catching on fire. She said to the man, “The people who came after us cut the top of this hill off. A good fifteen or twenty feet.” “No one has cut off the hill”, he said. Doris also pointed out where a big tree, the mawonga [moringa] tree, had grown. “We’ll never get off the farm,” she reports her parents saying, “and they’ll bury us under the mawonga tree.” “There was never any tree”, said the man, “It is the wrong name”. “Interesting, watching history being unmade, the past forsworn,” was Doris’s comment.

Each year produces volume after volume of historical books purporting to explain things in the past, books which often top the bestseller lists and are made into popular films and TV series. The authors of these history books contribute to our collective memory. But this approach to history is like trying to look back thousands of years using a gigantic telescope, looking at the past from today’s perspective and values. It is all the more interesting, then, to study the messages, unintentional and intentional, sent to us from the past.

When did all this sending messages to the future start? Who were the first historians? Where does the idea of writing down what you see, that is, eye-witness accounts, come from? And why did they do it?

In the past, messages were often sent by travelers who wrote about what they saw, heard and experienced on their journeys, most often in a journal or in letters to family back home. British missionaries in Africa, for example, sent letters to be read out by the preacher on Sundays to their congregations in England, describing their work in converting the natives and asking for more funds. The missionaries’ picture of Africa was thus spread amongst church groups in England with some authority. In some cases the messages were not so systematic or deliberately planned for a wider audience. This was the case for example with the letters sent by Mary Wortley, traveling with her husband through the war-torn Balkans in the early 18th century on a diplomatic mission, winding up in Constantinople. Somehow Mary Wortley Montagu’s letters survived for us to read today in Life on the Golden Horn in which she describes her adventures in the mysterious culture of Ottoman palaces, bath houses and royal courts. Ships’ captains were another source of information, as they often kept notes of curious or interesting things seen on their journeys to recount on returning home or to help find their way home again. In other cases the purpose of traveling was to collect and record specific types of information, for example by scientific explorers or industrial spies.

Herodotus is regarded as the great pioneer of historical writing based on first-hand experience, with his account of the war between the Persians and the Greeks in A.D. 490-479, The Histories. Little is known about the person Herodotus or his background. He was a traveler and observer, who saw history-telling as a way of understanding the universe, as it was then known. But he also used this knowledge to analyse moral and philosophical questions. At that time, most stories and messages were passed on orally.

Herodotus explains why he set out to write about what he saw:

Here are presented the results of the enquiry carried out by Herodotus of Halicarnassus. The purpose is to prevent the traces of human events from being erased by time, and to preserve the fame of the important and remarkable achievements produced by both Greeks and non-Greeks, among the matters covered is, in particular, the cause of the hostilities between the Greeks and non-Greeks.

Millennia later, Herodotus became the inspiration for Ryzard Kapuscinski, the Polish journalist and traveler, who had Herodotus’s Histories as his traveling companion. In his book Travels with Herodotus, Kapuscinski describes how Herodotus was “obsessed by memory, fearful on its behalf. He felt that memory is something defective, fragile, impermanent–illusory, even.” But “man does not obsess about memory today as he once did because he lives surrounded by stockpiles of it”.

Kapuscinski worked in the same way as Herodotus did, describing his approach as “crossing the border”. “I could only move forward” was how Kapuscinski expressed it, and he did this in the spirit of Herodotus:

In the world of Herodotus, the only real repository of memory is the individual. In order to find out that which has been remembered, one must reach this person. If he lives far away, one has to go to him, to set out on a journey. And after finally encountering him, one must sit down and listen to what he has to say–to listen, remember, perhaps write it down…So Herodotus wanders the world, meets people, listens to what they tell him.

And that is what Kapuscinski did too. From the mid-1950s to his death in 2007, he sent many messages to the future based on traveling, asking questions, listening to people and writing down his observations. The message is often of transition, the crossing of borders. He deliberately crossed many boundaries, because they were there. The fantastic story in The Emperor, Downfall of an Autocrat is based on secret interviews with servants in the palace of Haile Selassie including his pillow bearer and purse holder. Other of his books books include: Imperium, about the death of the Soviet Union; The Soccer War on the emergence of the third world; Shah of Shahs, a recounting of the downfall of the last Shah of Iran; and, Another Day of Life on the last days of the Portuguese colonial power in Angola.

Just like Edward Weston and Herodotus, Kapuscinski saw it as his mission to send messages to the future to help us understand the past.

What messages are you and I sending to future generations?

———-
Eric Gandy
Stockholm

The Black Sea

This is about an area of the world that remains, for those of us oriented primarily toward North America and Europe, a historically complicated and geographically confusing melange of ancient empires initially forged by warrior kings and their hordes on horseback, a parade of vast “-stans” marching eastward that are little understood and imperfectly located, wide-ranging and centuries-long religious and cultural and commercial conflicts, and names that are difficult to be immediately grasped, much less to remember.

The stimulus for writing this overview comes from my reading of a fascinating book: The Black Sea: A History, by Charles King.

From The Black Sea.

…[W]riting the history of nations is…about silencing voices. It [draws] lines around people, excising connections among human communities and reading onto the messy past the lineaments of pure identities and immutable boundaries…This book asks the reader to listen to some of [the] still voices from the past. It is about how…the Black Sea has more often been a bridge than a barrier, linking religious communities, linguistic groups, empires and, later, nations and states into a region as real as any other in Europe or Eurasia. [p.12]

[Map source]

From this beginning the book shows us the flow of history in the region of the Black Sea, sweeping from south to north and back, and similarly east to west, but mostly from the east. The Empires of the Middle East, up to and including the Ottoman Turks, pushed north to control the sea and its assets: seafood, ports, shipping lanes, peoples. Many people of the North and West, especially Imperial Russia, pushed back and sought to overtake. Over time, as western European countries exerted powerful diplomatic, commercial and military power, the lake became neutralized. Throughout all centuries there were recurring waves of conquerors, and continuing influxes of migrants, usually pastoral people fleeing the east.

But all this took millennia. The lands adjacent to the sea were populated and, in varying degrees, controlled by:

Median Empire (Medes) 728BCE – 559 BCE Achaemenid (Persian) Empire (550 BCE – 330 BCE) Scythians (750 BCE – 250 BCE) Macedonian Empire (808 BCE – 168 BCE) Seleucid Empire (312 – 63 BCE) Parthian Empire (250 BCE – 226 CE) Cimmerians (714 BCE – 55 BCE) Sarmatians (ca. 250 BCE – ca. 250 CE) Dacians (82 BCE – 271 CE) Ostrogoths: (250 CE – 375 CE) Huns (360 CE – 480 CE) Avar Empire: (522 CE? – 580? CE)

Sassanid Empire (226 CE – 651 CE) Khazars (ca. 500 CE – 965 CE) Bulgars (482 CE – 972 CE) Seljuk Empire (1037 CE – 1194 CE) Mongol Empire (1206 CE – 1368 CE) Byzantine Empire (330 CE – 1453 CE) Trebizond Empire (1204 CE – 1461 CE) Russian Empire (1721 CE – 1917 CE) Ottoman Empire (1299 CE – 1923 CE) The Caliphate (632 CE – present?) Tatars: (ca. 1150 CE – present) Circassians (ca. 1600 CE – present)

One can get an idea, and some direct perception, of the movement and, importantly, the admixture of peoples over time from this visual presentation of the Middle East empires and nations.

To this day small and large ethnic and religious groupings of ancient peoples continue to exist throughout Europe and Asia in this region, even if their individual genetic heritages may have been infused with those of neighboring and invading tribes over the millennia. This is what makes the notion of country or nation so difficult in this area. Up until recently, for instance, to be “Greek” was not necessarily even to be ethnically or genetically Greek, but to belong to the Eastern Orthodox religion, no matter where one lived.

Please click on all images

The geography and physical characteristics of the Sea and its tributaries are also important, of course. Here are the major rivers supplying the fresh water, the top layer of this great sea:

Bzyb Çoruh Danube Dnieper Dniester Don Kizil Irmak

Kodori Kuban Rioni Sakarya Southern Bug Yeşil Irmak

And, yes, you read it right that the top layer of the Black Sea is fresh, while the bottom (and dead) layer is colder salt water from the Mediterranean Sea, flowing through the Bosporus.

Another important feature of the sea is that is two or, perhaps, three seas in one.

Image Source

As you can see from the above, there are two counter-clockwise surface currents in the left and right portions of the lake which make navigation between them sometimes difficult. The Sea of Azov is a smaller and distinct body, as well.

There are two types of sea currents in the Black Sea: the surface currents, caused by the cyclonic pattern of the winds, and the double currents in the Bosporus Strait and Kerch Strait, caused by the exchange of waters with adjacent seas. The surface currents form two closed circles. The width of the western circle, opposite the Danube Delta, reaches 100 km and decreases towards the south. The velocity of the current is about 0.5 km per hour. The width of the eastern circle varies between 50 and 100 km, and the velocity is 1 km per hour. Source

[Image source, Encyclopedia Britannica]

A salient aspect of the larger region within which the Black Sea is located, is a great prairie stretching from China through Southern Europe through which the “Golden Horde” and other eastern pastoral people gained access to the west. These prairies are called “steppes” and are celebrated in stories and music, presaging the “old west” legends of the prairie in North America.

The Black Sea: A History is rich in detail and overview, and I will follow through on a list of books, people and subjects for further study, including:

Trajan’s Column (image to the right)

Pompey the Great, Emperor of the Roman Republic

City of Miletus in Anatolia

Greek historian Herodotus

Constantine VII

The Travel of Anacharsis the Younger in Greece by Abbé Jean-Jacques Barthélemy

Mithridates VI Eupator

The Council of Nicea

Fall of Constantinople

Marco Polo

Doge of Venice

Volga-Don Canal

In addition, I have now gained an interest in looking also at the great salt water sea (or lake) to the east, The Caspian Sea, and a further look at the nature and history of the Steppes of Central Asia.

What great dividends from the purchase of a single book!

Many thanks, and my admiration of the author’s scholarship and writing skills, to Charles King.