From Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader:
"Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end."
The photos above show the wives (unless any husbands are there too? Mr Merkel aka Joachim Sauer?) visiting the Quirinale – in the Salone dei Corrazzieri built in the early 17th century by Carlo Maderno and decorated by a team led by Agostino Tassi.
She’s also twittering – the question is does she have some switched-on staff or is she doing this herself? Also, how many other G8 wives are blogging? Anyone know if Michelle blogs?
One recent Tweet from Sarah that intrigued me – mainly because I knew Villa Wolkonsky and its grounds well in the 1980s – was that bee hives have been installed and the honey is going to be collected soon!
I have 5 minutes break at the British Embassy in Rome: much excitement here about the Embassy bee hives and their imminent harvest of honey.
I presume she’s referring to the residence at Villa Wolkonsky not the main Embassy at Porta Pia whose grounds are not that big? Anyhow, good for them – there are obviously a few busy bees among the staff!
Youssef Ziedan’s Azazeel (or Azazil) – to give it its original title – won the 2009 International Prize for Arabic Fiction and will be published as Beelzebub by Atlantic Books in 2010.
The availability of money for the translation – courtesy of IPAF – is a major boost to opening the doors to this rich literary field. The first IPAF winner Bahaa Taher’s Sunset Oasis is to be published by Sceptre in the UK in September having been translated into English by Humphrey Davies.
Azazeel is set in fifth century Upper Egypt , Alexandria and northern Syria and the novel unfolds during a critical point in Christian history. Focusing on the period following the Roman Empire ’s adoption of the ‘new’ religion, it highlights the conflicts arising amongst the fathers of the Church on the one hand, and between the ‘new’ believers and receding paganism on the other.
Professor Youssef Ziedan is highly qualified to write on the subject. He is director of the Manuscript Centre and Museum affiliated to the Bibliotheca Alexandrina and a highly respected Egyptian scholar specializing in Arabic and Islamic studies. A university professor, public lecturer, columnist and prolific author (with over 50 works of non-fiction and criticism), he has worked as a consultant in the field of Arabic heritage preservation and conservation in a number of international institutions: UNESCO, ESCWA and the Arab League. He has also directed a number of projects aimed at the preservation of Arabic manuscripts – the cataloguing, editing and publishing of these historic texts is something he is devoted to and they, in turn, influence and inform his fiction.
Azazeel is his second novel, following The Shadow of the Serpent (2006).
In an interview with The National (an English language newspaper owned by Abu Dhabi Media Company) Ziedan responds to criticism that the subject-matter will be difficult to understand by stating that “The novel wasn’t written for the average reader”.
I wanted the reader to participate in the novel, to get involved, to be as confused as I got; then to set out through the novel on the middle path between reality and imagination, pouring on to the text a lot of his own reality, and his own imagination, until finally invisibly connecting with the hero, seeing his reflection in him. I did not want to present an entertaining story or tale, I wanted to present him with a provocative text that would interact with the readers on a deep level. And that is how I ended up using this technique that has been described as a “bracketed imagination”.
Other critics have suggested that he has mimicked The Da Vinci Code in an Egyptian setting. His answer is forthright:
I have no response to this, because its proponents have read neither this novel nor that, or are ignorant of the essential difference between an adventure novel based on historical fabrication like The Da Vinci Code, and a philosophical novel written with blood, sweat and tears like Azazeel.
But his fiercest opponents have been Coptic clerics who accuse the author of trying to insult the Church and calling into question the tenets of their Christian faith.
“Any Christian cleric reading Azazel as a chronicle of the history of the Coptic Church or a treatise on theology, would undoubtedly feel angry and agonised. But it should be clear that the book is a literary work inspired by an important epoch in the Egyptian history, marking the shift from the ancient Egyptian religion to Christianity.”
Namnam likened the Coptic reaction to Azazeel to the “inquisition logic” of the Middle Ages. But a LA Times blogger has highlighted the inherent dangers facing an Egyptian author brave enough to adopt a stance of this nature.
Suzan Abrams, writing in her blog last March, notes that
Church elders turned hot under their collars defending a history held private to their present congregation and ancient records. Ziedan’s story is said to have rebellously challenged their authority as the heirs of St. Mark the Apostle and the Church’s exclusive claim to Egyptian history between the end of paganism and the arrival of Islam in 640AD. They decided that the author intended to destroy “authentic Christian doctrine”.
However, Ziedan claims that his intention was quite the opposite: he sees the novel as “not against Christianity but against violence, especially violence in the name of the sacred”.
An excerpt of Beelzebub translated by Nancy Roberts is available to subscribers of Banipal.
How can a man who inspires such embarrassing headlines around the world still lead his country? But it’s more than gaffes and spectacularly ill-chosen words (in particular his remarks about Obama and telling homeless victims of the earthquake earlier this year that they should treat it like a “camping weekend”). His business interests dominate Italian life in an unacceptable way: they include banks, magazines and newspapers, insurance companies, television stations and a football club.
“He’s like a Roman emperor who gave the people games even if he couldn’t give them bread: he’s always got a smile, he always wants to please. This man is a showman and a shaman, and he’s shameless and he’s a salesman,” says Dennis McShane, former minister of Europe.
However, Lucia Annunziata, Berlusconi’s sworn political enemy, admits that Forza Italia’s macho and sexist attitudes have paradoxically resulted in more women than ever becoming involved in Italian politics – many more hold office in Berlusconi’s government than their wishy-washy left-wing counterparts. She says that there are more women than ever before in his party, and “they look good and they are funny, and people think that he has changed the Parliament for good”.
The above Youtube clip shows Lucia Annunziata’s famous 2006 clash (in mid election campaign) with Berlusconi on RAI television: even the comments show the extent to which this is still a deeply divisive subject (they continue to appear regularly every few hours!).
But although grassroots support in Italy still seems strong, the evidence against Berlusconi is mounting (the latest escort girl scandal may prove a turning point). The Economist has long been an outspoken critic: in 2001 it claimed that Berlusconi was unfit to lead. Having lost his libel suit against the magazine, Berlusconi re-christened it the “E-Communist”! Thankfully The Economist continues to speak out clearly and voice its fears for Italy’s future.
Most seriously, a recent study (2009, Freedom House) revealed – conclusively, not anecdotedly as has been widely alleged for years – that press freedom in Italy has now been compromised and ranks as “partly free” (as shown on the map here). This places the Italian press in the same category as Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Ukraine and Turkey – among others.
Press freedom suffered in a number of Free media environments in 2008, as Israel, Italy, and Hong Kong all slipped into the Partly Free category [...] as a result of threats to media independence and diversity. All three had already been placed in the lower ranks of the Free category, but their move into Partly Free illustrates that even democracies sometimes resort to placing restrictions on media freedom.
The study continues to note that in Western Europe, which “consistently boasted the highest level of press freedom worldwide”,
Italy slipped back into the Partly Free range thanks to the increased use of courts and libel laws to limit free speech, heightened physical and extralegal intimidation by both organized crime and far-right groups, and concerns over media ownership and influence. The return of media magnate Silvio Berlusconi to the premiership reawakened fears about the concentration of state-owned and private outlets under a single leader.
This seems to me to be most damning legacy of Berlusconi’s government and one that Italians ignore at their peril.
The chapel that for centuries was regarded as the “private” chapel of the popes and their household, or “famiglia”, has finally undergone a major restoration and will be opened by Pope Benedict XVI on 4 July. “This chapel is the core of the Catholic Church’s identity, to an even greater extent than the Sistine Chapel”, explains the Director of the Vatican Museums Antonio Paolucci.
Since Paul III (previously Cardinal Alessandro Farnese) commissioned Antonio da Sangallo to build the chapel in 1537-42 and Michelangelo to decorate it (1542-50) with frescoes (the last he ever completed) showing the Conversion of Saul and the Crucifixion of St Peter, it has been focus for alterations and “improvements” by numerous popes (including the addition of the notorious drapes, or mutandoni – large pants – concealing St Peter’s nudity and the nails in his hands and feet).
Starting with Gregory XIII Buoncampagni (see the Buoncompagni dragon above) who commissioned Lorenzo Sabatini and Federico Zuccari to complete the decorations, 25 years after Michelangelo’s last works, and ending with Paul VI Montini who altered the position of the altar in the 1970s.
The restoration of the chapel has cost 3.2 milion euros, a sum provided by the largely American membership of the Patrons of the Arts in the Vatican Museums, and has taken 5 years. Headed by the art historian Arnold Nesselrath, the team of restorers would have willingly returned Michelangelo’s Crucifixion to its original state. As the Vatican’s own chief restorer Maurizio De Luca admits:
“Those nails are like three cockroaches. I believe that when something is ugly, it should be removed.”
But the Vatican has expressly forbidden any changes.
Peter’s fierce expression is firmly focused on the door into the chapel, as if to warn future occupants of his temporal seat on earth that they will be under strict control, or angrily questioning whether the pope and the church hierarchy (namely the cardinals who would have been allowed into this sanctuary of sanctuaries) were worthy of his martyrdom.
Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that the chapel will ever be open to the public. There are currently no plans to include it among the other areas of the Vatican and Vatican Museums that can now be visited – even though the Sistine Chapel is linked to the Pauline Chapel through the Aula Regia. However, the Vatican has promised a degree of “elasticity” in granting special permits to academics, researchers and other specialists. I rather wish my visit to Rome had been a couple of weeks later, as I would love to see the chapel.
When I recently met Antonio Forcellino in Rome he told me about this 3-part documentary. If you skip the toe-curlingly melodramatic intro to Chapter 1 – i.e. the first minute or so (just slide the cursor along to 1.15) – it paints a fascinating picture of the period. Then click on Chapters 2 and 3. It interests me for two reasons: first because my Ph.D. focused on the first half of the 16th century and I also came across the group of the “Spirituali”, Cardinal Pole and Vittoria Colonna in my research, and second because the English translation of Forcellino’s life of Michelangelo is due to be published by Polity Press next month – watch this space.
Antonio Forcellino has written another book on this period – 1545. It focuses on Michelangelo’s commission to paint the frescoes for the Cappella Paolina, built between 1537 and 1542 by Antonio Sangallo at the bequest of Pope Paul III (Farnese). Michelangelo’s frescoes show The Conversion of Saul and The Crucifixion of St Peter and – as in the Sistine Chapel – his nudes were the cause of much opprobrium and consternation.
I’m working on Forcellino’s second book, a life of Raphael, and the few days I spent in Rome were dedicated to retracing Raphael’s Roman commissions – Villa Farnesina, the Vatican Stanze, the paintings in the newly restored Borghese Gallery, not to mention La Fornarina in Palazzo Barberini. It was a wonderful chance to refresh the memory – it’s been quite a while since I was in Rome - and enjoy such masterpieces.
There was a fascinating programme on radio this morning about George Eliot’s new biography by Brenda Maddox, with interviews with Brenda and also with the historian and biographer Kathryn Hughes – whose own (better biography?) George Eliot: the Last Victorian (1999) won the James Tait Black award – and the novelist Zoe Heller.
In the first interview Brenda Maddox focused a bit too much on the more superficial and slightly seamy sides of Eliot’s life, including her ugliness and sexual frustration. Do we really want to speculate on whether she had sex with “toy boy” husband John Cross whom she married at the age of 60? The incident when he leapt out of the window on their honeymoon in Venice and was rescued (against his will) by a gondolier was bizarre, almost gothic, leading to gossip and speculation about the nature of their relationship.
However, in the latter part of the programme, Kathryn Hughes and Zoe Heller turned the discussion to Eliot’s extraordinary achievements – both as a journalist and a writer.
A surprise came at the end, however, when Kathyrn Hughes provocatively remarked that, if she were alive today, George Eliot – who now would probably call herself Mary Anne (or should that be Marian) Evans – would refuse to take part in the Orange Prize (the winner will be announced this evening, but clips of the authors reading from their works are here).
“She would have considered it a nonsense!” says Hughes. “She would have found the whole idea quite ridiculous and slightly demeaning.”
Instead, she would want her writing to be judged against a full cast of writers rather than one restricted by gender. Ouch! That’ll enliven the discussion about the merits of a prize open solely to female writers!
On a less contentious note, but none the less interesting, Jenni Murray asked both Kathryn Hughes and Zoe Heller to name three “must read” novels from the Victorian era – this time choosing from both male and female authors!
Here are their choices – perhaps not wildly adventurous or unexpected!
Zoe Heller chose Our Mutual Friend, Middlemarch and Bleak House
while Kathryn Hughes went for Silas Marner, Great Expectations and Jane Eyre.
Hughes went on to say the Silas Marner was her special “Desert Island” book, much shorter than Eliot’s other books, and with something “fairytale-ish” and charming about it: “When the world seems very very bleak, I just retire to a corner and re-read Silas Marner, and I feel happy again!”
Well that’s a big question that I won’t even try to answer now, but it’s the lead-in to what promises to be a fascinating panel discussion at the Birkbeck Institute on Saturday 6th June: Talking Books “Novel History”.
As one of the editors of Solander, the biannual magazine published by the Historical Novel Society, and above all as a keen reader of historical fiction, the topic is music to my ears or inspiration for my fingers:
As historical fiction enjoys a huge commercial renaissance, this debate will explore how far the changes in the last forty years of historiography means that novelists willing to spend real time in the archives and libraries are now producing a new kind of historical fiction, more accurate and thus more truthful about the past, than the work of their predecessors.
“More accurate … more truthful”? Which predecessors? Perhaps they’ve jumped back a decade or so and gone back to the infamous “bodice-rippers” or historical romances of the 1970s and 80s? Well, truthful is not an adjective I’d apply to many of those books.
Earlier still, Mary Renault may have relied over heavily on Robert Graves as a source, but no one could accuse Georgette Heyer of inaccuracy and her attention to period detail is meticulous. However, references books aside – and Georgette Heyer used plenty of those – it is certainly true that the historical novelists of the 90s and Noughties are more likely to have done serious archive research. But as any fiction writer knows, research is a double-edged weapon: Margaret Elphinstone, whose research process encompasses every imaginable source – from libraries and archives to Icelandic farms, kayaking in Canada, and tide charts around the Isle of Man - told me once that, having found out the facts and the endless detail, you then had to lay it all aside and write a story!
The panellists on Saturday 6th June include Sarah Dunant, Hilary Mantel, John Sutherland and Joanna Burke. So if you’re lucky enough to be able to book a place, let me know what direction the discussion takes? And what conclusions, if any, the panel reaches? It’ll be a fascinating afternoon.
I caught up the other day with an article that appeared in last Saturday’s Guardian. (N.B. It always takes me most of the week to work through the weekend papers, which is why I only buy papers on Saturdays – Guardian, Telegraph and FT - while I can afford it, because the price keeps rising – currently £5.50!)
But back to the article: written by Ian Jack, it’s entitled “The age of the gifted amateur has returned”, with the telling subtitle “The woes of publishing make it easy to forget that Fielding, TS Eliot and others were part-timers”.
In view of my post yesterday about Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, the description might equally have applied to him, gifted certainly and amateur, almost definitely.
Jack’s basic premise is that
We are in the twilight years of a certain kind of paid employment: the business of inking words on paper, to be read by a large audience that is largely unknown to the author. The crisis in newspapers is especially acute. But neither is book publishing immune. Advances against royalties are tumbling, staff have been cut, publishers take far fewer risks. The recession offers only a small part of the explanation. The fact is that generations are now growing up with the idea that words should be read electronically for free – a new human right – which has grave consequences for the people paid to compose and edit them.
Jack equates the rise of reading and the expanding middle classes with the establishment of the “triangular foundations of the modern book trade – author, publisher, bookseller”. He goes on to note that
A bestselling author could make a small fortune for his publisher: Byron for John Murray, Dickens for Chapman & Hall, the word of God for William Collins, who bought a country house and a steam yacht by selling 300,000 bibles a year.
The moment of “giving up the day job” is often regarded as the lodestone of success in a writer’s career, but this is to ignore the reality of most writers, both past and present, who have had to keep themselves afloat with other paid employment, sometimes in academe or publishing, or sometimes in some completely extraneous job.
Jack notes – and, well yes, here I am publishing on the web – that “we can all be authors now and publish ourselves on the web.”
What you might call the moral and aesthetic case for writing – to think, imagine and describe and then communicate the result to an audience – can be satisfied online. It just doesn’t make any money. The age of the gifted amateur is surely about to return.
So, is this a good thing? I think that it definitely is – literary endeavour will be stronger and more genuine, the more flexible and open it is to outsiders. This is particularly true of translation and translated literature: if we close down the potential openings for translated works, we will certainly be the poorer, culturally speaking.
The chapel that for centuries was regarded as the “private” chapel of the popes and their household, or “famiglia”, has finally undergone a major restoration and will be opened by Pope Benedict XVI on 4 July. “This chapel is the core of the Catholic Church’s identity, to an even greater extent than the Sistine Chapel”, explains the Director of the 
