Book Review: "Poems of Arab Andalusia" by Cola Franzen

Poems of Arab Andalusia (1989)
selected and translated by Cola Franzen (1923-)
from the Spanish collection Poemas Arábigoandaluces (1971) by Emilio García Gómez

92 pages

”In the year 711 a Berber army under Arab leadership crossed the straits of Gibraltar from Morocco in continuation of a series of raids which had been going on for some time. … Within a few years the entire [Iberian] peninsula lay at their feet.” Thus began (as quoted from the opening paragraph of Richard Fletcher’s Moorish Spain) almost 800 years of Islamic rule on the peninsula, until the Spanish Reconquest pushed the Moors from their final foothold, the Kingdom of Granada in the southern region known today as Andalusia.

During those centuries the Arabs established kingdoms in al-Andalus, as they referred to the peninsula, in which Christians and Jews could for the most part live in peace, if not necessarily complete equality, with their Islamic rulers. Though debate continues between historians who feel that this period of multiculturalism has been idealized and those who see it as a potential blueprint for our future, it is clear that a cultural exchange flourished that was to have long-term benefits for Western Europe. Through the connections that developed between members of the different religions at the time, Western Europe was introduced to the scientific advancements of Arabic scholars and re-introduced to works of ancient Greek writers and philosophers that had been lost for centuries. (I have included references to two histories of this period at the end of this review.)

The Arab kingdoms did not, however, simply pass along the cultural advances of their brothers in North Africa and the Middle East; they developed a rich and impressive cultural tradition of their own. Most famous are the architectural wonders of these kingdoms, the cathedrals, palaces and gardens, such as the Alhambra in Granada, the great mosque in Córdoba and the Giralda in Seville. Less well-known is the tremendous importance of poetry in the cultural life of the kingdoms of al-Andalus, particularly in the early centuries of Arab rule. Walking through the palace of Alhambra, one is surrounded by poetry, carved into walls at every turn; the walls are only silently beautiful though for anyone without knowledge of Arabic --- the beauty of the words, lost.

Poems of Arab Andalusia, goes some way to rectify this great loss, however, by collecting some six dozen or so poems from the Arabs of al-Andalus. The works, many only a few stanza long, have been translated by Cola Franzen from the Spanish, and, as Franzen states in the introduction, are selected from a larger collection translated from Arabic into Spanish by the Emilio García Gómez, and published in the book Poemas Arábigoandaluces; García Gómez had found the poems in Cairo in 1928, in an unpublished anthology created by Ibn Sa’id.

Franzen describes the poetry in this collection as having been written by “rulers of all sorts … and others simply known as poets.” The themes may be commonplace --- love found, love lost and inspiring beauty; in the delicate but powerful words of these poets, however, images are crafted that shimmer with life.

The Arabs who came to Andalusia found a lush, green land of high mountains and long river valleys; in these opening stanzas from his poem The Valley of Almería, Ibn Safr al-Marīnī (11th century) wonders at the beauty of his native land in the south-eastern part of Andalusia:

Valley of Almería!
God grant that I never see
myself deprived of you!
When I look on you I tremble
as an Indian sword trembles
at the moment of tempering.

And you, friend, here beside me,
enjoy this time, for there are delights
in this paradise not to be found
in the eternal one.

See how excited the river is?
Listen to its murmured applause
sounding beneath the dancing trees
that arch over it
wearing garlands of blossoms.

The branches sweep their sleeves
over the silvered surface of the river
then lift them up
scattering pearls.

Ṣafwān ibn Idrīs (of Murcia in the late 12th century) fairly burns the page with desire in his poem My Beautiful One, which concludes:

Once I went out with her when the
shelter of night and her cape
let me mingle the fire of my breath
with the fire of her flaming cheeks.

I clasped her as a miser clasps
his treasure, and bound her tightly
with the cords of my arms
lest she escape like a gazelle.

But my chastity did not permit me
to kiss her mouth
and my heart remained huddled
over its embers.

You may well marvel at one
who feels his entrails on fire
yet complains of thirst
while holding the quenching water
in his throat. 

And the torment of parting is laid bare in Leavetaking, by Ibn Jākh (of Badajoz in the 11th century), which closes with the lines:

Beneath the veils
tears crept like scorpions
over the fragrant roses
of their cheeks.

These scorpions do not harm
the cheek they mark.
They save their sting
for the heart of the sorrowful lover. 

The amazing poems of this collection are much like beautiful paintings: they can be enjoyed over an over again, each reading revealing new depths of meaning and emotion.

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Other reviews / information: Although I have not reviewed these books for this blog, I found them to provide fascinating histories of the period of the Moors in Spain.
Moorish Spain by Richard Fletcher
Ornament of the World by María Rosa Menocal

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Book Review: "The Angel Esmeralda" by Don DeLillo

The Angel Esmeralda (2011)  

Don DeLillo (1936-)

211 pages

[Standing on the highway overpass] I watched and listened, unaware of passing time, thinking of the order and discipline of the traffic, taken for granted, drivers maintaining a distance, fallible men and women, cars ahead, behind, to the sides, night driving, thoughts drifting. Why weren’t there accidents every few seconds on this one stretch of highway, even before morning rush? This is what I thought from my position on the bridge, the surging noise and sheer speed, the proximity of vehicles, the fundamental differences among drivers, sex, age, language, temperament, personal history … it seemed a wonder to me that they moved safely toward the mystery of their destinations.

from the story Hammer and Sickle

“[It] seemed a wonder to me that they moved safely toward the mystery of their destinations.” This idea lies at the heart of each of the nine short stories of this collection by Don DeLillo. Characters look out in wonder at the people around them --- both friends and strangers --- never quite able to come to an understanding of the lives they see, though feeling at times a deep connection lying just beyond comprehension. These same characters gaze also inward, at their own behaviors and attitudes, and find themselves driven by impulses whose origins they can only dimly fathom.

But the stories are not simple meditations on existence. DeLillo places each of his characters into a charged situation that challenges the order of the lives they have created for themselves, and then allows us to watch as they struggle to make sense of it. In the title story a nun in New York City who helps the poor finds herself joining them in contemplating the significance of a vision on a street corner that appears in the wake of a tragedy. In another story two friends walk the streets of their small university town inventing stories about the people they see, until one day they find themselves drawn deeply to an old man they repeatedly encounter and they begin to question the goal of their game. In a third a woman meets a stranger at an art exhibit and through an apathetic indifference allows him to drift into her life, until suddenly she finds things have gone farther than she had realized. In each of these stories the slow paced action on the surface contrasts with the increasing tumult and uncertainty of the characters thoughts as DeLillo forces them out of their routine, mindless existence and onto unexpected paths.

The stories are best read slowly, savoring DeLillo’s deliberate construction and wonderful phrasing. I found the staccato rhythms of his character’s thoughts and the questions that suddenly bubble up into their consciousness about their lives to be authentic representations of the way we pass through our world.

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Book Review: "Berlin Noir" by Philip Kerr

Berlin Noir (1993)
Philip Kerr (1956- )

836 pages

Is there a more fertile ground for a mystery writer than central Europe in the mid-20th century? The environment of secrecy and violence that existed in Germany in the 1930’s as the Nazi’s gained control of the government and then consolidated their power; the chaos of World War II as fighting raged on multiple fronts across the continent; and the cold war spy games that flourished as the wartime alliances broke down.

At the center of this “huge cauldron in which all historical eras [were] boiling and mingling” (to borrow from Octavio Paz) lay, both literally and figuratively, Berlin. The seat of Nazi power up to and through World War II, it also became a focal point for the machinations of the former allies as they suddenly turned into adversaries fighting to control the future of Europe.

A variety of writers have set their novels in this “cauldron,” and among them is Philip Kerr. In the novel March Violets, Kerr introduced his fictional detective Bernhard (Bernie) Gunther, and Gunther has returned in several subsequent novels by Kerr, the first three of which (in addition to March Violets, these include The Pale Criminal and A German Requiem) have since been collected into a single title, Berlin Noir.

Not content to simply play off the obvious advantages of a mid-20th century, central European setting for his detective novels, Kerr actively and plausibly engages Gunther with several high ranking Nazi political and security officials. Some will be familiar to readers with even a passing knowledge of the history of those times (such as Hermann Goering and Heinrich Himmler), while others are less well-known (Reinhard Heydrich, Arthur Nebe and the leader of the Gestapo, Heinrich Müller). By involving Gunther directly with the events and personalities of the day, Kerr gives the novels several layers of meaning for readers. On one level the stories stand alone as action-packed thrillers that are difficult to put down. But for readers who are interested in the historical background, the novels also provide a fascinating window into the world of that period through the eyes of Gunther as he navigates daily life in 1930’s and 1940’s Berlin and deals with some of the architects and effects of Nazi policy.

Kerr introduces Gunther as having become a private detective after serving for years as a policeman in Berlin. By the beginning of the first novel he has already left the police force, frustrated by the way many of his colleagues had lost their jobs or otherwise been sidelined by the new regime, and angered also by the brutal practices that the Nazi’s propagated through the security services. In these stories Gunther is a man disenfranchised by the events in his city and country, and someone whose unwillingness to hide his opinions often leads him into trouble with dangerous people both inside and outside the government; he knows how to play the game and get along, but struggles to bring himself to do it.

March Violets takes place against the backdrop of the 1936 Berlin Olympics. An industry tycoon’s daughter and son-in-law have been killed, and he hires Gunther to investigate the deaths. Gunther’s work on the case leads him into a crossfire of conflicting interests among high-level Nazi officials. As Gunther roams Berlin in search of answers to his questions in the case, Kerr highlights the political rivalries within the regime, the criminal behavior linked to government supported labor and cultural groups and the growing struggles of the Jewish population: historical fiction at its best, in the form of a crime drama.

The second novel of the collection, The Pale Criminal, is set in 1938, in the months leading up to Kristallnacht, the night during with a pogrom was carried out against Jews throughout Germany. A series of brutal rapes and ritual murders of fifteen to sixteen year old girls is occurring in Berlin, and Gunther is forced by a high-ranking Nazi official to rejoin the police force and from there lead the investigation into the murders. He soon finds himself on a trail that implicates powerful members of the Nazi regime itself in the crimes. As in the best crime dramas, not everything is as it seems, and even supporters cannot always be trusted to be revealing the whole truth.

The last of the three novels in the book, A German Requiem, takes place in 1947, as post-war relations between the Americans and the Soviets are deteriorating almost daily. The story opens in Berlin, with Gunther being hired by a former police colleague who is in jail in Vienna, accused of killing an American officer. Gunther follows the trail of clues to Vienna, where the balance of the story takes place. Reflecting the reality of the period, Gunter finds himself a pawn in a complexly layered and deadly serious struggle for control being played out by the American and Soviet occupation forces.

Kerr writes the stories very much in the traditional manner of crime and mystery novels. There is an extensive slang for the inhabitants of Gunther’s world --- police officers, petty criminals and gangsters --- which takes some getting used to: lighters are guns, for example, and spanners or chocoladies are prostitutes. Similes also fly fast and free throughout the novel --- one of my favorites: “Pipe-smokers are the grandmasters of fiddling and fidgeting, and as great a blight on our world as a missionary landing on Tahiti with a box full of brassieres.”

And the main character, Bernie Gunther, is a classically styled private eye in these novels, in line with other such literary detectives --- hard-boiled but with a soft-spot for a woman in trouble, self-deprecating but with a biting wit, smart and perceptive but not omniscient. Significantly however, Gunther also represents a foil to the Nazis around him and those who support the Nazis through their silence. He makes his dislike of the regime and its policies clear at every opportunity, even when talking to Nazi officials who must often remind him that despite their need for his services, their tolerance for his opinions has limits. Thus Gunther allows Kerr to, in the context of a detective novel, describe and comment on the tragedy of Nazi Germany.

In these novels are straight-forward detective stories for the reader who loves “noir,” but also a fascinating window into Nazi Germany in the 1930’s and central Europe in the early cold war years.

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Other reviews / information:
Before being brought together into the collection titled Berlin Noir, the three novels were published individually as:

• March Violets (1989)
• The Pale Criminal (1990)
• A German Requiem (1991)

There have been several additional novels in the series, including The One from the Other, A Quiet Flame, If the Dead Rise Not and Field Gray.


Rumors about Berlin Noir being turned into an HBO mini-series.

A review of another Philip Kerr novel appeared earlier in this blog: A Philosophical Investigation.

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Book Review: "The Lacuna" by Barbara Kingsolver

The Lacuna (2009)  

Barbara Kingsolver (1955-)

507 pages

The most important part of a story is the piece of it you don’t know.

Around this simple but often forgotten truth turns Barbara Kingsolver’s wonderful novel “The Lacuna”. Through a narrator who we come to know mainly indirectly, by way of his descriptions of the people and events of his life, Kingsolver introduces us to “piece[s we] don’t know” about some of the most colorful personalities and dramatic happenings of the mid-20th century.

The narrator, Harrison Shepherd, is a young teenager in 1929 when the novel opens, living with his mother on a small island off the eastern coast of Mexico. She has separated from her American husband (Shepherd’s father), who remains behind in Washington D.C.. Over two decades Shepherd lives for extended periods in both Mexico and the United States.

Kingsolver constructs the novel mostly through diary entries from Shepherd, in addition to some of his letters and a few newspaper articles. Thus the story is told nearly entirely from Shepherd’s point of view. A watchful, insightful and obsessive diarist, he represents for the reader a trusted documenter of the world he encounters, even if at the same time he remains a largely cryptic character, seldom writing about himself.

In Mexico he finds work as an older teenager with the painter Diego Rivera, eventually joining Rivera’s household staff as a cook. In this way he comes to know and become befriended by Rivera’s wife, the artist Frida Kahlo. Rivera and Kahlo were larger-than-life figures in the 1930’s and 40’s, who shocked the art world with their avant-garde painting styles. They also played a highly visible role in world politics by hosting Leon Trotsky, who was on the run from assassins working for Lenin’s secret police, and supporting communist groups agitating in Mexico.

Through Shepherd, Kingsolver reveals the lives and characters of Rivera and particularly Kahlo in ways that a biography could never do. With a few exceptions we don’t learn about where they went when, but rather how they were as people, what they thought about their world and how they lived their daily lives. Imagined details and conversations, certainly, but developed from Kingsolver’s research of documents, pictures and paintings in the historical record, and which bring the pair of artists to life in front of our eyes. When Shepherd documents his conversations and encounters with Frida Kahlo, the rendering is so vivid that as readers we find ourselves backing away from her bluster and empathizing with her vulnerabilities as though she were with us in the room. Kingsolver’s writing and method of telling the story make the intensity of many of the scenes deeply affecting.

Shepherd leaves Mexico for the United States in 1940, and Kingsolver turns her attention to the U.S., and the austerity and sacrifice of the war years, as well as the attacks on people’s humanity that were the Japanese internments and then the post-war witch hunt for communists. As in the earlier part of the novel we experience these events through Shepherd’s eyes, and what in a history book would be dry and distant becomes in Kingsolver’s hands palpable and close. Shepherd’s diaries and letters bring alive the depth of the sacrifices people made to support the war effort during World War II, and the sudden explosion of production and consumption of household goods in the years after the war. More disturbingly, we experience first-hand the insidious spread of the fear that grew out of the search for the perceived communist menace, turning neighbor on neighbor as many hundreds of innocent people saw their lives destroyed by allegations of being un-American.

Enhancing the story throughout is Kingsolver’s beautiful writing. It is almost a shame to give an example, because it robs a new reader of the joy of discovering it without warning and completely in context --- but just one here to convey the power of her writing: Shepherd has arrived at the Washington train station, in the dead of winter, having been sent by his mother from sunny, warm Mexico to attend school near his father; he comes out of the train station with his father, and “outdoors the sun was cold, shining without heat, like an electric bulb. Crowds hurried along, unconcerned their star had no fire.”

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Book Review: "American Visa" by Wang Ping

American Visa (1994)  

Wang Ping (1957-)

179 pages

The day after finishing the book American Visa by Wang Ping, I suddenly found myself transported straight back into the stories by an interview I heard on the radio. A psychology professor was discussing the different approaches to education and learning in Eastern versus Western cultures, and he stated that in Eastern cultures the focus is on the importance of struggling and overcoming obstacles as part of the learning process. Deep into the book I had just read the main character, Seaweed, comes to a shocking realization that precisely validates the professor’s observation.

Although the cover of the book describes it as a set of ‘Short Stories,” in reality Ping has written a series of connected vignettes on the life of a girl who grows up in China during the Cultural Revolution. Seaweed is fourteen in the first story, and living with her parents and one of her two sisters. The subsequent stories follow her from her parent’s home to a distant village deep in the Chinese heartland where she goes to learn to work like a peasant --- and hopes to earn the right to go to college. Eventually making it out of the village and into a university, she earns her degree and then moves to New York City, where she struggles both to make a life for herself, and to help her family back in China. (Wang Ping having been born in the same year as Seaweed, and having emigrated from China to the U.S., it is hard not to imagine that there is an autobiographical aspect to the stories.)

The first story sets the pattern for Seaweed’s experiences in these stories: she discovers something forbidden --- in this case a used tube of lipstick that has been lost in a hidden crevice where she hides her books --- and tries to make sense of it in the context of her life. The Cultural Revolution has made the lipstick (and her books) taboo, and she wonders to whom it had belonged and how it had been missed in the round-up of such things that had occurred. When she then rubs the lipstick across her hand to see the color, we feel with her the bright flash of red that contrasts so deeply with the grind of cooking, cleaning and school work that we have learned fill her days.

This vivid scene is characteristic of Ping’s writing throughout the stories. The tension in the family when the mother suffers an insult that Seaweed is expected to avenge makes the pages crackle with energy. The back breaking work and desperate living conditions that Seaweed experiences as an ‘educated youth’ working among the peasants in rural China highlight for the reader the intensity of her desire to attend university. And later, when she has settled in New York, we experience with her the confusing contrasts she finds between the difficulties of her life in the U.S. and those of her family back home.

Ping’s ability through her rich descriptions and pointed dialogue to place us directly into Seaweed’s struggles make these stories wonderful to read, and provide a western reader with a window into life during the Cultural Revolution as well as that of an immigrant trying to make it in a truly foreign land. We experience with Seaweed her sudden insights, staggering disappointments and profound frustrations; in short we experience what we look for when we read a story.

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Other reviews / information:
Link to the interview I mentioned above on approaches to learning in Eastern and Western cultures here.

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Book Review: "The Mule" by Juan Eslava Galan

The Mule (2003)  

Juan Eslava Galán (1948-)

290 pages


Soldiers and civilians caught up in the front lines battles of a war face a violent and horrific experience. In a civil war, and particularly one where the ideology dividing the sides does not lead to a clear geographic split, widespread confusion is added to the mix. The Spanish civil war (1936-39) was just such a brutal and chaotic event for the Spanish people, as the forces supporting the republican-style government in power fought against groups in the army and among the population that wanted to restore a more conservative, catholic, and for some, monarchical form of government. The war quickly split the country into separate areas of control, but these regions were based primarily on the side with which the army leadership in a particular area allied itself, and many supporters (civilian and military) of a particular side found themselves caught on the wrong side of the suddenly evolving dividing lines.

Juan Eslava Galán’s main character in The Mule embodies the confusion of those times. A corporal in the Nationalist (that is anti-republican) army, Juan Castro Pérez is the leader of a group of muleteers --- he and his team of soldiers care for a group of mules that they use to haul supplies to the soldiers at the front lines. Castro is a peasant from the Andalusian countryside, whose family carved out a hardscrabble existence before the war working for the wealthy land-owner in their small town. Despite the extreme poverty his family experienced, and in the face of many of his friends arguments supporting the pre-war republican government to counter what they found to be the oppression of the large peasant population in Spain by the wealthy few, Castro conforms to his family’s conservative views and supports the Nationalists in the war. When the war started, Castro found himself in Republican territory, and was called up into service with the Republican army. He eventually deserted, crossing the lines into Nationalist territory. Once able to prove that his support for the Nationalists was real (few on either side could be completely trusted about the true nature of their hearts), he joined the Nationalist army.

(A short note on names: Spaniards typically don’t have a middle name; thus, Juan Castro Peréz’s last name is Castro Peréz, the Castro coming from the first last-name of his father, and the Peréz from the first last-name of his mother, and he would typically be referred to as Castro by anyone not a close enough friend to call him Juan.)

As the novel opens, Castro discovers a mule wandering, apparently owner-less, near the front lines. He leads it back to his company’s team of mules, and a subplot of the story develops around his efforts to keep the presence of the additional mule off the official army lists, in the hopes that he will be able to take it back with him to his rural home, once the war ends.

Thus, in a war seen by the leaders and supporters of the two sides as a battle for the future political and cultural direction of the country, Castro’s simple hope is to survive the fighting and return home with the mule he has found. More generally, he and his team, all fellow peasants from simple backgrounds, go through the war experiencing extreme hardship and searching for simple pleasures as they struggle to survive not only the fighting itself, but also the day-to-day life on the front lines with poor food and little shelter. They carry on with a kind of stubbornly hopeful resignation that the war is simply their lot in life of the moment, an event they must try to make it through. They feel some basic level of support for the cause for which they are fighting, but feel little direct connection to or fervor for the larger goals.

In this wonderful story that is at some points tragic and others full of almost slapstick comedy, Eslava gives us a glimpse into the absurdity of the Spanish Civil war for many of those caught up in the heart of it.

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Other reviews / information: Although I haven’t seen it yet, the book has been made into a movie.

In my review of The Spanish Civil War there is a high-level summary of the history of the war.

I have review some other books related to the war, such as Waiting For Robert Capa, A Manuscript of Ashes and The Mexican Suitcase.

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Book Review: "Hypnotizing Maria" by Richard Bach

Hypnotizing Maria (2009) 

Richard Bach (1936-)

154 pages

In Hypnotizing Maria, Richard Bach returns to the themes of several of his earlier books: the joy of flying and the need to overcome our self-imposed limitations. Bach has flown planes all his life, from his time in the air force, to commercial flights and even barn storming, and his central character in this book is a pilot who has a similar background as Bach, and who spends most of the story flying his renovated military trainer on a cross-country trip. During the trip the pilot goes through a process of self-discovery, as Bach describes through him the view that we all box ourselves in with our expectations and assumptions of how the world is, and that actually the world we perceive is, to borrow from one of Bach’s most famous titles, an Illusion of our own creation.

The story opens with the pilot in flight, hearing a radio call from a woman in nearby Cessna; her husband has collapsed. She has never flown a plane and is calling out for help. He manages to calm her down and talk her through to a safe landing at a nearby airport before continuing on his way. The next morning he reads a news report, in which the woman says she was only able to land the plane because her unknown helper ‘hypnotized’ her into believing she could fly it. Her comment recalls for him a dramatic experience he had had when he was younger, of being hypnotized on stage by a traveling showman. The sudden recollection of that event, combined with a chance meeting at his next stop, leads the pilot to consider how apparent coincidences can change the direction of our lives, and how what we tell ourselves --- the suggestions we make to ourselves in everything we think and say --- can often lead us to create a world around ourselves that constrains our lives.

Although I very much enjoyed Illusions when I read it, so many years ago now, and also several other of Bach’s books that I read in the years that followed, I found this one a little too forced in terms of the presentation of his philosophy. In Illusions, the plot involves a pilot who meets a messiah who’s decided to ‘drop out of the messiah business’, and the philosophy that Bach proposes through the story develops slowly, in incremental steps like building blocks, as the ex-messiah talks to the pilot. In Hypnotizing Maria, I found the basic ideas intriguing --- the power of coincidences to change our lives and the limitations we can talk ourselves into --- but the story, for me, makes an abrupt leap to a larger philosophy that says that the entire world around us is in fact just a construct of our minds that we find so convincing that we no longer realize that we can simply step back outside of it any time we wish. We follow the pilot to this discovery through his thoughts and words, but it is not motivated so much as laid out for us on a platter.

Nonetheless, the opening pages of the book, in which the pilot guides the woman to safety, and the subsequent descriptions of flying and handling surprises in the air such as weather and malfunctions are told with a sure hand and make for a good story. And there is at least a kernel, and maybe more, of important truth to realize or remember in the ideas Bach presents here, as in his earlier work.

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Other reviews / information: An interview with Richard Bach on KBOO radio.

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