At anchor off St Kilda
Wind: North to northeast, F6-7 Strong breeze to near gale
Weather: Overcast, mild
Another windy night, I was glad to be on board, but we are well sheltered
here from the northerly winds and experienced no problems. The wind is
expected to go more into the west today which will mean Sylph's anchorage
will be more exposed but the strong wind and gale warnings are past so we
should be OK.
I have been doing a little reading, as always, and feel the need to share
some of it – after all I have no one to talk to about one of my favourite
pastimes. The last few books I have read: a biography of Queen Elizabeth I
by Anne Somerset, “The Jewish War” by Josephus, “Ecce Homo” by Friedrich
Nietzsche and now I am almost finished “A Room of One's Own” by Virginia
Woolf.
“Elizabeth I”: I find this is an interesting period in English history,
arguably a critical time which enabled the country to later be in a position
where it could become the major world power. The biography written by Anne
Somerset flows well, has a good balance between personal detail and
historical events and is relatively easy to read. I did not appreciate just
how vain Elizabeth was, and what a great procrastinator. Indeed it seems her
ability to stall, for sometimes she procrastinated endlessly as part of a
deliberate policy, particularly when it came to the questions of marriage
and her successor, a policy she saw as necessary to her survival, at other
times it seems a personal weakness, which largely allowed England to stay
out of wars and gain some much needed strength in a complex and difficult
world. A world in which all the major powers sought to increase their
dominion as the natural scheme of things, except it seems Elizabeth, perhaps
her feminine disposition. I could go on endlessly about such a book and its
contents but will say no more for if you are interested you might read it.
Josephus, “The Jewish War”: Again this period of history interests me (of
course, otherwise why else would I read it?), namely because this period was
the ground out of which that most profound movement, Christianity,
germinated. I like to understand things, and I believe we can only
understand ideas more fully by trying to understand the context in which
they arose. The book actually makes no mention of Jesus but certainly gives
a good feel for the political turmoil and unrest in which he must have grown
up. How much of Josephus can be taken at face value is hard to judge, he was
a Jew who it seems was a military leader in the Jewish rebellion against
Rome who turned traitor, though the way he paints himself is interesting. He
writes about himself in the third person, and while he must be glorifying
his own achievements he also seems boastful of some of the most deceitful
acts. As most people would know the famous Jewish Temple was destroyed by
the Romans in 70AD, what I did not know is that the Roman military leader,
Titus, only reluctantly destroyed what he saw as one of the world’s greatest
pieces of architecture and a respected sacred site because of the Jews total
recalcitrance. At least that is the way Josephus presents it. And certainly
Josephus does not paint the Jews in a very glowing light, with infighting
and barbarous behaviour occurring amongst the various factions. On the other
hand he gives great praise to the courage and determination of the Jews in
the face of a highly organised and disciplined army. But then I guess the
Jews thought God was on their side and would not allow the Temple to be
taken. An interesting footnote to this that I have learned from other
reading is that the destruction of the Temple is what has given modern
Judaism much of its flavour. Basically the Sadducee sect revolved around the
Temple and with the Temple's destruction was itself effectively destroyed,
while the Pharisees, a sect much criticised by Jesus in the New Testament,
practised their rituals as part and parcel of their daily life, almost to
the point of obsession, so when the Temple was destroyed their way of life
was not. I think it was this obsessiveness that Jesus was largely
criticising, his point being that the Pharisees were too concerned with the
outward observance of the rituals and not their underlying meaning. Enough
of religion.
Ecce Homo: moving to a strange piece from one of the world's craziest
philosophers. Nietzsche actually went insane shortly after writing this
short “autobiography”. My interest in Nietzsche was aroused when a fellow
traveller quoted him to me back in 2002. I had never heard of him before
then. She was French so was translating from French to English thus:
“To live the moment, to save us loving all that exists, denying the
existence between happy and unhappy events, to relieve us of this
“decherements” that temporality of the free arbiter fatally introduce in us:
remorse attached to an indeterminate vision of the past (“If I would do in
other way”), hesitations concerning the future (“must I do a different
choice?”). Relieving us of the weight of the past and of the future, we’ll
get the serenity of the moment, here and now, because there’s nothing more.”
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900), Ecce homo (As translated by Teresa,
friend from Le Reunion)
OK, the translation leaves something to be desired, I will not criticise it
as Teresa's English is brilliant compared to my French, but since then I
have searched for it. In my travels I found a Nietzsche omnibus lying in the
ruins under a pile of ash in the remnants of the city of Plymouth on the
Caribbean island of Montserrat, a city destroyed by a volcano a few years
before my arrival there. It was an impressive sight, boulders the size of
houses strewn about the place, and sulphur fumes still strong in the
nostrils. But I digress. The omnibus did not contain Ecce Homo but it did
have “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”, perhaps Nietzsche's best known work, another
very strange piece. More recently I found a copy of Ecce Homo and looked for
these lines but with no success. I tried to read the book with an open mind
but fear Nietzsche defeats me, as does the spelling of his name. Again I
could rabbit on endlessly about the man and some of his work, but suffice to
say that I believe he is the Emperor with no clothes. He has some
challenging ideas but in the end is too shrill for my taste, and no real
artist no matter what he claims.
Unlike Virginia Woolf, now she can write and boy is she smart! Here is just
one sentence amongst many from “A Room of One's Own” which captivated me:
“For I wanted to see how Mary Carmichael set to work to catch those
unrecorded gestures, those unsaid or half-said words, which form themselves,
no more palpably than the shadows of moths on the ceiling, when women are
alone, unlit by the capricious and coloured light of the other sex.”
What an effective metaphor, is it original I wonder? As I reread this
sentence sitting alone on my page it loses something of its power removed
from the context of her writing, but I can offer you a glimpse of what I
like in her. The only other book I have read of hers is “To The Lighthouse”,
a few years back now. I can't say I was totally enamoured with it but after
reading this essay and perhaps having a better understanding of her
perspective will give something else of hers a go.
So enough of books, this afternoon I am going to get a bit of balance in my
life and go to watch a footy match with my brother Mark and one of his
mates, maybe even eat a meat pie loaded with tomato sauce to complete the
fair dinkum Aussie culture experience.
All is well.
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