Upping the Dante

When I first encountered Dante's Divine Comedy, it wasn't through Alghieri's verse. It was via those amazing 19th century engravings by Gustave Doré.

I was in a Grade Twelve "English Seminar" class (the kind where you assigned yourself your own projects), and I did a class presentation on Doré's vision of The Divine Comedy because I had just discovered them and I was fascinated. Being an adolescent, I was especially drawn to the gruesome tortures Dante invented for everyone he didn't like. (Isn't revenge the next greatest teen dream after sex?) Some guy from the university was observing the class that day and asked me at the end how Dante's paradise would differ from a modern conception of heaven. I didn't have much time to think (did I mention I was an adolescent?), so I blurted out the first thing that came to me. I had just been learning about how filthy life was in medieval times, or indeed, any time before the anti-septic twentieth century came along and this had made a great impression. (Hygiene, another teen obsession -- or it should be...) I told him how clean Dante's heaven is and how smelly and vile the Inferno is, with many of the punishments relying on disgust in addition to agony.

"After a life spent walking through all kinds of waste, both human and animal, a sparkling Paradise must have looked very, very good to Dante," I said to our class visitor, although probably not in so many words. I was seventeen at the time, after all.

Of course, as revolting as it is, Hell is way more interesting. At least, Dante's version is.Anyone remember Rod Steiger's Night Gallery? One of my favourite stories in this TV anthology features a slightly miscast John Astin as a hippy who suddenly finds himself in a sort of Limbo waiting room when he gets bumped off in a motorcycle accident. Upon learning he's destined for damnation, he has visions of Doré's renditions of the Inferno, and although sobered by the prospect, you can tell he's intrigued. He gets sent to a rec room where he'd unable to turn off the ragtime music on the Victrola and a pleasant elderly couple relentlessly show him vacation slides. When he complains, the devil himself shows up to assure him that this is indeed his own special hell and that there's a room exactly like it "upstairs" where it's someone's idea of paradise. We leave John Astin sobbing: "Noooo.... Bummer! BUMMER!"

Elder daughter has been struggling with this week's essay, meditating on heaven, hell and purgatory while everyone else has somehow found the time to celebrate the end of mid-terms. Yep, I remember this. One guy was expressing his joy on his drum kit upstairs (no, no, no -- a real drum kit). I listened to him in the background while elder daughter slumped over her computer monitor and we discuss reciprocal love and lust and why Francesca and Paolo find themselves whirling in a fiendish wind in the upper levels of hell. At least they're in the upper reaches of the Inferno, one circle closer to purgatory and heaven than the gluttons who only love themselves.And at least they're together.

Noise, filth, hopes to be abandoned, lessons to be learned, and always that feeling that others are having a way better time than you are. Sounds like the Divine Comedy to me. But I don't point that out to daughter. It wouldn't fit in her thesis.

Out of time and slinking off to bed...

Damn. I've been working on something, but it won't be ready by midnight and I'm getting tired. I'm cheating with this James Bondian slinker by Anjulie, who is from Oakville, Ontario (not far from Toronto):
I'm so ashamed of myself...

In need of re-animation

Oh gawd. I've just spent a frantic hour proof-reading elder daughter's essay via Skype and Microsoft Word. She doesn't ask me to do this often --- and may never do so again. I was using the rather marvelous "Track Changes" tool on Word, the one that notes your changes and deletions in red while preserving the original uncorrected text in the right margin. Ever tried it? It's fab! So I saved it, went to attach it and discovered I'd lost it. After searching files for it only to be told I couldn't open it, I had to do it all over again, this time carefully renaming the file and saving it to my desktop where I could see the damn thing to attach it.

Thank goodness someone else posted something rather wonderful on my Facebook page today. These are videos from the RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce), and they're called "RSA Animates". I rather wish all lectures could be this way, or that I could take notes like this, but I would need to be both artistically competent and prescient and I'm neither. If you can spare a few minutes, just look at this:

Isn't that great? Here's another from an American professor (with a Sicilian background which apparently hasn't slowed him down -- watch this to see what I mean):

If you just close your eyes and listen, it's interesting enough, but by golly, it's much easier to follow and remember with the visual accompaniment, doncha think?

Cloak encounters (of the cape kind)

I have an Irish cape that buttons jauntily below my left clavicle. It was perfect for winters in Victoria which are cold, damp, and I guess, rather Irish. It also worked well for pregnancy, especially since mine were of the winter variety, leading to spring babies. During the decade I had children in tow needing clothes, snacks and amusement, I stopped wearing the cape because I couldn't get my pack-sack on over it.

With both girls in school, however, I realized I had the perfect garment for the Hades transition from crisp autumn to the deep-freeze that drives Ottawa pedestrians into parkas.

Donning the cape in the city that was still fairly new to me at the time, I realized I had the opposite of an invisibility cloak.

I had a Talking Cape.

People would approach me and speak to me. I hadn't noticed this effect before, because Victorians strike up conversations with strangers: on the bus, in the park, waiting for the elevator. In Ottawa, it was brief and was invariably on the topic of the cape: where did I get it, what country is it from, etc. Still, it was human contact. Or at least attention. One morning, I was at the bus-stop when a car containing four women drew up to the traffic light. I could see all four jabbering animatedly, gesturing toward me. By that time, I recognized it as The Cape Effect (at least, I hope so; I may have been drooling again) and wanted to say to them: "You know I'm standing about five feet away from you, don't you?"

This autumn's cloak encounters have included a gaudily-clad taxi driver with wildly curly hair who was convinced my cape was South American (we had a discussion of how Celtic culture may have swept through Spain en route to the British Isles), and a man who commented on my "blanket" at the crosswalk. (I think English was his second language.) A homeless man who frequents the Bay with a cat perched across his shoulders told me he liked my style.

When winter winds blow and I hang the cape back in the basement, I fade back into a non-entity. Now, each year, I have another reason to look forward to the autumn. Not only will the trees billow forth in brilliance, but for a few sweet weeks, I will exist somewhere else besides my own mind.

Art therapy

So, last night I was lying in a foetal position on my bed. It was 6:15 and we had to leave the house in an hour to attend a ballet at the National Arts Centre. I didn't want to go. I was exhausted, foot-sore, periodical, miserable. The performance in question was Éonnagata. All I knew about it was that it featured Robert Lepage, a man who personifies the terms "enigmatic" and "eccentric". I knew he's famous for ground-breaking works and for being an artistic visionary and that he's extremely well-known in his native Québec. I knew him from his participation in one of my absolute favourite movies Jésus de Montréal in which he plays an enigmatic and eccentric actor who asks to perform the "to be or not to be" soliloquy from Hamlet in a passion play -- and does without a flicker of irony. Lying there, all I could think of was The Great Gonzo tap-dancing in oatmeal on The Muppet Show, bellowing, "Art! Art!" I was way too tired for this.

Well, I managed to pull myself together and plod out into the night with the Resident Fan Boy and younger daughter. And by golly, I'm glad I did!

Éonnagata is the story of Le Chevalier D'Éon, born (take a deep breath) Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Timothée d'Éon de Beaumont in 1728. The ambiguity of her/his name carried on throughout his/her life. S/he spent the first part of it as a man and the second part as a woman.

The story is told in ballet/acrobatics/martial arts/ by three actors/dancers/performers: the ballet dancer Sylvie Guillem, the independent dancer/choreographer Russell Maliphant (actually born in Ottawa, but associated with British dance) and Lepage who is kind of Canada's answer to Jonathan Miller. If you look these people up, you'll understand we were watching a kind of "dream team" cast.

The music moves from soundscapes to Rococo to driving drums. All three performers dress in sort of tunics which suggest breasts on the men and tights which suggests a bulge on Ms Guillem. The Resident Fan Boy told me he had some difficulty distinguishing between them, but I didn't and I found this delightful. Sylvie Guillem, who is a superb dancer, moved with feminine grace and form, and I found the two men who moved with equal grace, unmistakeably male in their movement. There was another bonus in being able to watch three mature artists at work: Guillem is 45, Malifant is 49, and Lepage is nearly 53. The only times I felt pulled out of the story, which follows the Chevalier's life as set out in a brief poetic narrative at the beginning of the piece, were in the sections where Robert Lepage is dressed as a woman. He's taller and broader than the other two who are similarly built, so these moments had a "Dame Edna Everage" quality.

No matter. I was mesmerized. I also noticed that younger daughter, who stimmed and fidgeted quite a bit at the National Ballet's evening of short works two weeks earlier, was quite relaxed through the ninety-minute ballet, only stirring toward the end. After applauding enthusiastically, I asked younger daughter what she thought. "It was very good," she said gravely. The Resident Fan Boy informed me that it was like counting sheep.

Philistine.

As a matter of fact, some of my days at university were like that....

Oh, oh, oh. Tired. Too tired. This day has left too little of me and too much to do.

When a "UVic" in Catalonia (this is important, the speaker in the video says "Spain" but some Catalan posters took issue) did a widely-viewed "lip-dub", Sean Slavin, of my alma mater The University of Victoria in British Columbia, decided to see what could emerge, mainly because many viewers had apparently confused the two universities.

What follows is what he and about a thousand volunteers came up with last September. When I watch it, I'm nearly undone by an avalanche of memories, but I think someone who hasn't been a student here, taught here, met one's spouse here can still enjoy this on its own. (Hang on for the "Rick Roll"):

Brighten your house as you are able...

I think I must have been in Grade Six. I was standing at the edge of the schoolyard at View Royal Elementary in Victoria at the close of a school day, looking east toward the bridge that crossed an errant offshoot of Portage Inlet, where Helmcken Road ducked under the railway trestle and climbed the hill.

That's when it hit me, a vision in my mind's eye, glowing softly in multi-coloured lights from a long way away.

Christmas is coming.

When I was a kid, November 12th was the day the Christmas decorations went up in the stores, including those marvelous complex window displays with mechanical manikins. (Does anybody do these anymore?)

For many years I struggled and managed to cling to that magical tingle of anticipation that set in the day after Remembrance Day. Sadly, I discovered it's easier to believe in the magic when you're not the one waving the wand. Gradually, the decorations appeared earlier and earlier until the fake Christmas trees and wreaths festooned the stores in late October, and as I grew older, the responsibility of making Christmas happen shift more on to my shoulders. When my children arrived, thump! Christmas lay across my back like Santa's sack.

However, I did see the lights glowing behind their eyes. Today, younger daughter shudders and shivers without explaining why. Does she hear distant music and see something shining just out of reach?

I'd better make sure it's not just her imagination.

As the eleventh hour approaches

November 11th, 2000: The Resident Fan Boy eagerly got us out of the house and down to the War Memorial for our very first Remembrance Day in Ottawa. On a finger-chilling morning, I calculated the costs of standing with two little girls, one with special needs, for two hours and vetoed the idea. Disappointed, the RFB retreated with us to Dunn's Deli a few blocks up Elgin Street as streams of poppy-wearing people flowed past us in the opposite direction.

We tucked into our blintzes and sandwiches as those around us chatted cheerfully and smoked. (This was in the days just before smoking was banned in eateries in Ottawa.)

As the eleventh hour approached, I comforted myself with the fact that the televisions in the deli were tuned to the ceremony taking place just a few blocks away. Then I noticed the increasing quiet. Fifty voices, twenty voices, half a dozen voices. At eleven, the silence was complete, save for two women talking intently at a window table, who suddenly noticed how well they could hear each other, shrugged in embarrassment and held their peace.

Only in Ottawa, I thought.

What's the time? Time for me to shut up...

A book for the eve of Remembrance Day

I was ten years old when I saw the play The Diary of Anne Frank on television. My mother explained beforehand that Anne had hidden from the Nazis with her family, but was discovered and sent to a concentration camp. I could tell by the way she said this that this was a sinister thing, but wondered what could be so dreadful about a camp where they made you think hard.

The play must have made a deep impression because for Christmas, my father gave me a copy of Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girland my mother gave my very first diary. Anne wrote her entries as personal letters addressed to "Dear Kitti"; I decided to address my diary to "Aurora", because when I was ten, I thought that was the most beautiful name in the world.

This past October, during our visit to Halifax to see elder daughter at her university, we dropped into the bookstore while waiting for her to emerge from her morning class. I saw Anne Frank: the book, the life, the aftermath on the shelf and leafed through it, thinking: Oh dear, yet another book about Anne Frank. (I've read a good portion of them.) I bought it, of course.

The book is not so much a series of chapters as a collection of essays. The earlier essays are concerned with Anne's place in history: her stature as a writer(was she an ordinary girl living under extraordinary circumstances, or an extraordinary girl living in increasingly unbearable times?); an examination of what actually happened before and after the Frank family's period of hiding, and how new revelations about the diary still receive heavy media attention. Later chapters examine the diary as a literary work, the initial struggle to publish it, and how it was edited -- surprisingly, largely by Anne herself, who planned to submit it for publication after the war. The book continues and concludes with the fierce feud over the dramatization, how the diary figures in Holocaust-denial literature, the outreach work of both the Anne Frank-Fonds in Basel, Switzerland and the Anne Frank Foundation in Amsterdam, and the varying degrees of success with which the diary is studied in American schools.

Here's the thing: I resisted this book initially because I thought: What more could I possibly learn? I had the same reaction before watching the documentary Shoah. The answer was the same: when you're dealing with an enormity -- and genocide has to be the best example of enormity there is -- it's impossible to learn it all. For one thing, your brain tends to shut off in the face of the horror. Anne Frank and her diary are sort of an entry, providing something that is imaginable as a link (if we dare to look further) into the unimaginable.

Things I didn't know before reading this book:

1) Holland was second only to Poland in the percentage of its Jewish population slaughtered (more than three quarters), due in part to the accuracy and efficiency of Dutch records.

2) Not all of the entries in Anne's diary are addressed to the imaginary "Kitti"; this was a device Anne herself came up with as she re-wrote and edited much of her diary in preparation for eventual publication.

3) There are three versions of the diary: the "a" version is the original; the "b" version are Anne's revisions, and the "c" version is the one most of us have read, that which Otto Frank, Anne's father and the sole survivor, put together from versions "a" and "b".

4) The strange, strange story of the creation of the Broadway play and the bitter fights surrounding it.

Francine Prose is very critical of the play and even more critical of the 1959 film starring Millie Perkins. She acknowledges, though, that both brought more readers to the diary and for many, like me, a first introduction to the Holocaust.

I must admit, I have never cared for the film either. There have been some recent interpretations of the Anne Frank story on television that begin to do some justice to the story. For one thing, Anne's caustic views of the Van Daans,whose real names were Hermann and August Van Pels, and Dussel the dentist who was actually Eric Pfeffer, may not have been that fair. Certainly there are those who remembered and loved them who object to their portrayal, particularly in the play and the movie. Prose doesn't mention recent productions such as The Attic (a rather good 1986 mini-series based on the memories of Miep Gies, one of the refugees' faithful supporters), The Diary of Anne Frank (an English 2009 interpretation that clearly tries to portray the protagonists as they were, rather just how Anne depicted them), and my personal favourite Anne Frank, from 2001 which tells the story from well before the family's retreat into hiding, then takes us unflinchingly to the transit camp at Westerbork, to Auschwitz, and to Bergen-Belsen where Anne finally died, mere weeks before the liberation of the camp.

Is it possible to enjoy a book that touches on the Holocaust? Perhaps not. However, this book is a palatable experience without being cloying or sentimental, and it is certainly fascinating reading.

Yet another winter project: properly reading autobiographies by relatives

Captain Of The Queens by Captain Harry Grattridge

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Captain Harry Grattidge is my first cousin three times removed. I mean, he really is deceased; he died in 1979, but blood relations are forever, even if you never knew them. You don't stop being your parents' children; your grandmother is still your grandmother after she's popped her clogs. So even this long-dead distant cousin whom I never met remains connected to me.

I first encountered Harry Grattidge about seven years ago while embarking on my umpteenth viewing of the classic Titanic flick A Night to Remember when I suddenly noticed his name in the opening credits. "Special thanks to Commodore Harry Grattidge, OBE...."

Grattidge? Wait a minute, that's a family name. And it's not a common one...

Some quick googling led me to a couple of Grattidge family web sites and I started to learn about Harry, not to mention a host of other members of my great-great-grandmother's family. I am now in touch with Grattidge cousins across the world.

Harry is one of the closest things I have to a celebrity in my family tree (although I do have a noted designer and a few people in line for the British throne). During his long career at sea, which started when sailing ships still had actual sails, he managed to knock up against history several times: at Yalta as master of the Franconia, aboard the doomed Lancastria, and, as the title of his autobiography tells us, as the captain of the huge liners the Queen Elizabeth and the Queen Mary. He even claimed to be the officer who unwittingly ferried three assassins ashore just before they murdered Arch-Duke Ferdinand on June 28th, 1914. He was, in many ways, the ideal consultant for the making of A Night to Remember in 1957: not only had he served on the Carpathia (sometime after her rescue of the Titanic survivors), he knew Carpathia's captain Arthur Rostron, and of course was utterly familiar with everything to do with a luxury ocean liner. In this shot, he's chatting with Joseph Boxhall, the Fourth Officer of the Titanic while actor Kenneth More, who portrayed Second Officer Lightoller in the film, listens in with William MacQuitty, the producer of the film who erroneously identifies Harry as "Commodore of the White Star Line". (He was Commodore of Cunard, of course.)

The term "autobiography" may be a misnomer. It was "as told to" one Richard Collier in 1956, three years after Harry's retirement and became popular enough to become one of those Reader's Digest's Condensed Books. The trouble is, I'm not sure how much is Harry's voice and how much that of his ghost writer. I imagine the more lyrical passages are the work of Collier and I suspect something like the following is pure Harry:

I asked Lana Turner [on a cruise for her fourth honeymoon] how she was enjoying the trip.
"Very much," she said coyly "but being a bride seems -- well, a little new and strange."
I thought that was one of the most feminine things I've ever heard a woman say.

I rather think Harry deserved a swift kick to the shins for that gratuitous remark.

His own marriage was, from those in a better position to know, an unqualified disaster. He mentions neither his estranged wife nor his two sons.

He doesn't say a great deal about his parents or siblings either, so as a family historian, I have to be grateful for a thumbnail portrait of his father, my great-great-great-uncle, in which I learn that he loved bridge at his club and reading Sherlock Holmes, while leaving family disciplinary matters to his wife. Harry also only makes passing references to his brother and sister, failing to tell us that his brother died in service during the First World War.

He does, however (or rather, the ghost writer does) paint a delightfully detailed portrait of what it was like for a boy to grow up in the Stafford of the late nineteenth/early twentieth century.

Mostly, though, Grattidge's audience would have been eager for the details of his brushes with the famous and powerful, so Harry lets loose with stories about Ivor Novello, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Winston Churchill and many others who would have been more familiar to 1950s readers. Here he is with Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery:

Captain of the Queens is an enjoyable, if dated, read, and as a family historian, I'm delighted to own a copy (which I obtained easily and cheaply from either AbeBooks or Alibris). I am lucky enough to be related to at least half a dozen people who got around to getting their lives into a book. Up until now, I've treated these autobiographies as text books, merely paying attention to the passages that aid me in my family history research, but this winter I am determined to settle down and read these books properly.

As a sort of postscript, I meant to post this yesterday, so imagine my surprise when checking in at John Reid's informative genealogy blog Anglo-Celtic Connections and discovering he's posted a link to a podcast about the Lancastria this morning! There's serendipity! The lecture doesn't mention Harry, but I see The Lancastria Association of Scotland has posted Harry's account of the worst British maritime disaster ever (far worse than the Titanic) online.




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