not native fruit

quicksand by nella larsen

I've completed my reading of Nella Larsen's Quicksand.   I thought her writing was simply superlative in Passing, and I haven't changed my opinion.  I found 'Quicksand' to be well written and very interesting from the autobiographical angle, especially her trip to Denmark; having visited relatives there myself, I thought she captured many aspects of Danish culture accurately, economically and well. 

I also found this novel revealing of Larsen's own personality, her sensitivity and volatility in particular, even more than in 'Passing,' and have realized that she must have intended to depict parts of herself in both Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry in 'Passing', as she must also have done with Helga Crane and Anne Grey in 'Quicksand.'  Unless, I'm going to discover more about some 'close friend' in "In Search of Nella Larsen" which I'm reading right now. However, I doubt that I will, as she did not seem to make close friends in her life.  She certainly seems to be one of the most alone women I've ever encountered in my reading!

I found the ending of Quicksand supremely tragic, and also I couldn't quite buy it.  But I'm wondering if the fate she assigns Helga Crane doesn't reflect her own fears for herself?  Having been raised 'white' for all intents and purposes, (although as a scapegoated, marginalized white so to speak), she must have felt alienated from much of black culture and perhaps frightened of certain aspects of it, that while not necessarily 'endorsed' by African-Americans was at least not totally unfamiliar to them as it would have been to her.  What a lonely character she was, in life - talk about Quicksand.

I might suggest an interesting companion piece to read along with Larsen's two novels, and that is a family memoir, "The Sweeter the Juice," written by Shirlee Taylor Haizlip about her mother who was the lightest child in an African-American family descended from the brother of Martha Washington (just to add a little historical interest), and who was essentially 'forced' to pass as white, experiencing heart-searing loss and feelings of abandonment throughout her life, while searching for her siblings.  Haizlip helped her mother, Margaret, at age 80, finally track down and reunite with at least one of her sisters.  Margaret experienced the 'opposite side of the coin' to Nella's experience, having looked white while being raised in a black family, yet finally finding herself set adrift in a white world.

This is a well-written book, and shows how the pain of segregation cut both ways.

Another book that is not judgemental about 'passing', but rather takes a more compassionate view, is Allyson Hobbs' 2014 book, "A Chosen Exile."  I highly recommend this one!

amber

“Loss is a magical preservative.  Time stops at the point of severance, and no subsequent impressions muddy the picture you have in mind.  The house, the garden, the country you have lost remain forever as you remember them.  Nostalgia – that most lyrical of feelings – crystallizes around these images like amber.  Arrested within it, the house, the past, is clear, vivid, made more beautiful by the medium in which it is held and by its stillness.

“Nostalgia is a source of poetry, and a form of fidelity.  It is also a species of melancholia, which used to be thought of as an illness.   As I walk the streets of Vancouver , I am pregnant with the images of Poland , pregnant and sick.  Nostalgia throws a film over everything around me, and directs my vision inward.  The largest presence within me is the welling up of absence, of what I have lost."  (115, Lost in Translation, a memoir, by Eva Hoffman)
*    *    *
I've always loved amber and I've always been nostalgic.  When I was fourteen, my relatives in Denmark sent me a large amber tear-drop with a dried insect inside.  At the time I thought it was a very odd gift.  My father told me 'those people do that when a girl reaches a certain age.'  Oh, yes, that explained it.  Not really, but many years later I read in a book that Freya, the sun goddess and goddess of compassion, sheds amber teardrops, which are found in the ground by humans.  The gift of an amber teardrop marks the healing gift in womankind.  I gratefully accept such a gift.

Amber has always felt like a significant color to me.  The leaded-glass doors in our parlor featured amber and deep green, and when I had my first home, I installed amber glass shades on our ring of hanging lights.  (Eventually I couldn't bear that color at night, and changed them.)  I wrote recently that I was enjoying someone's memoir because it was very 'amber-feeling.'  you can just imagine my sense of recognition when I went on to read eva hoffman's words a few days later.  I think she is so brilliant.  I'm surprised how much, as an American, I relate to her words, but then I do come from a vanishing people (on my mother's side), and from a place that has effectively vanished for me, so i suppose it only makes sense that i relate to her subject and her handling of it, I can recognize as masterful.

sewn sun

 

i knitted this blanket for a friend who doesn't need it now, and i decided to keep it because it inspires me every morning when I wake up and see it at the foot of my bed, as if the sun had come down to earth to greet me.  i find it very inspiring.  it lifts my spirits.  it's not perfect, as my friend says it's just part of the flawed beauty of the world.  to my mind, it turned out looking like a piece of old folk-art, and perhaps that is close to what it is, because it is new folk-art.  i have no training, just decided i wanted to knit something on the little birch sticks, something my danish ancestors might have knitted.  the center is from 'danish lace treasures' and is called 'judith' or something like that, and it has 'sheaf of wheat borders, an edging of 'leaf and acorn' and i did some simple braiding to cover up unsightly seams.  yes, it's not perfect, and i love it.

sephardic tolerance

i've been writing so much about my mother and her family and very little about my father.  well, until recently, i thought i knew all there was to know about my father's family.  but now there's been yet another major familial wake-up call.  my father's family were 'danish jews.'  I put scare-marks around those words, because technically they were lutherans, however, not really.

let me try to explain.  my father told me, when i was quite young, that 'my family are the ones they call the portugese.'  as for most americans, that meant nothing to me.  at age 8, i replied to him, 'you mean you like people from portugal?'  we just looked at each other for a few minutes, aware that we were not really communicating.  but can you imagine that i remember this moment?  i think partly because i'd never seen my dad so agitated.  we had been in a roomful of men who were shouting and laughing and carrying on, and my dad suddenly took me outside and said, 'karen, there's something i really want you to understand about me.  i know you're a little young, but i want you to know that my people are the ones they call the portugese.'

okay, fast forward 50 years, and i'm reading on-line at jewishgenweb that the Danish Jews were called 'the Portugese.' 

Various other memories surface: 'our family wore yellow stars even though we didn't 'have' to' during the Nazi occupation of Denmark.  My father pointing to a picture of the Rothschilds' mansion in Denmark, saying 'they are one of our best families in Denmark.'  My mother insisted on naming me Katherine, and when my Dad pronounced it 'katrin' she changed it to Karen, assuming that it is a Danish name so it would be more suitable, etc.  He told me 'Karen is not one of our names.  Anna and Lilian, names like that are ours.'  There was all of this 'ours' and 'theirs' - not in any kind of passionate way, just quietly, matter-of-fact. 

His account of 'going to (the Lutheran) church' was that 'we' only went for things like 'the naming ceremony about a week after the baby is born,' weddings, funerals and at around age 14, 'when the boy becomes a man, we have a ceremony and the boy is given the scripture.'  He told me, 'they call it confirmation, but really it's just coming of age.'  'The scripture' was the Psalms only.  After that ceremony, my father went to sea, and began the career that would last for the rest of his life. 

Well, well.  Some of my American Jewish friends are very excited about this story, others tell me that he wasn't in any way, shape or form a Jew.  He had chosen to be 'nothing' because he wasn't really a Christian either.  But he always made it clear to me that he wasn't 'against' the Christian faith.  And, when you think about it, after all, Jesus was a Jew, so perhaps that helped at least a little when Jewish family took up a modified form of being Christian.  This kind of 'adopted' Christianity has been going on among the Sephardim since the 1300's at least. 

Apparently, from what I can glean, King Christian IV invited Sephardic Jews from Germany and the Netherlands to come to Denmark to help him modernize the country, especially in the shift to a money-based economy.  I guess it was probably fish-based before that (lol). Anyway, all of that was okay.  They also allowed a smaller number of Ashkenazi Jews to enter, especially in the area of Copenhagen.  The Sephardic population was found scattered throughout the rural districts, such as Ribe Amt where my father's families are from.  Well, in the early 1800's, social pressure was placed on these Sephardic families to convert to Lutheranism in the interest of a more uniform society (sounds like the wishes of Castilian Spain, but without the blood-purity cant.)  Most Danish Jews converted at that time.  The rest moved to either Copenhagen, or to Aalborg where there was a synogogue in Jutland. 

Well!  I have finally come across an article that talks about the high level of tolerance exhibited by the Sephardic Jews, their willingness to blend with their surrounding cultures through intermarriage, adoption of religious tenets, etc, in contra-distinction to Ashkenazi Jews who favored separation and a more highly defined identity. Not only that, but I recognize my dear father in these few pages.  He taught me always to respect the religions of others, because whatever I might think of the religion, it was very very important to the people who believed in it.  That was one of the most important, personal, private, highly-charged things my father ever said to me on one of our wonderful walks together.

Anyway, here's the link to the article on The Special Character of Sephardi Tolerance.

rilke/niels lyhne/danishness?

In "Letters to the Poet As A Young Man" Rilke recommends that his student read the nineteenth-century Danish writer Jens Peter Jacobsen in order to meet the master of contemplative literature.  So, of course, I had to check Jacobsen out.  Our local library had in its possession his novel Niels Lyhne (pronounced Nils Lu-na), so I checked it out.  And as promised, it is one of the most precious, ruminative pieces of self-absorbed fiction anyone, even Marcel Proust, could ever desire.  It is absolutely beautiful, as well.  So attentive, so in tune with the silence of the contemplative life.  I've only just begun it, thumbed through and read a few paragraphs here and there, so I can't say much more about it just now.

I'm not sure if this is really something ethnically Danish, or if it's more symptomatic of the nineteenth century, generally.  The nature-writing is superb.  Not grandiose, as much American nature writing is, but homey.  Not ecstatic waterfalls, but cottage gardens. 

Sometimes I wonder if my contemporaries among the Danes 'rebelled' against this melodic sweetness and love of nature.  It still shows up in some of their films, like "Italian for Beginners," "Mifune," and others - urbane Danes rediscovering their rustic roots.  Maybe that phase of rebellion against the past is over, over there, because after all, over here there is a kind of revival of Bertram-style nature writing, for example, Thirteen Moons.  The pendulum appears to have swung yet again.  Thirteen Moons, by Charles Frazier is lyrical, descriptive, attentive, contemplative - all my favorite things, by the way. 

Sometimes I feel like my husband and I have not made such a great adjustment to 'modern times.'  We seem to be holdovers from the nineteenth century, and now we're living in the twenty-first.  Not sure if this 'backwardness' is related to being part native american and delaware moor, two cultures self-identified with the past, yet embedded in the present-day just like everyone else.  Sometimes we think it's the spot we live in, here in Berkeley, on the grounds of former native american settlements.

I've heard it said that many Danes are surprised and perhaps a bit discomfited that American Danes seem to be stuck in an image of 'danishness' that belongs to the nineteenth century.  That's when they left Denmark to emigrate to America, and Denmark has become 'frozen' for them as it was at that moment in the past.  Every year there are various festivals of Danishness that celebrate the 'Denmark that was.'  This disparity in self-image creates a rift with contemporary Danish Danes.  These are some of the strange facts of ethnicity.

For an example of sentimental, nature-loving, nineteenth-century Danish Lieder, try picking out the tune of "Vandring i Skoven" (music notated in a previous post, Wandering in the Forest.)

wandering in the forest

Vandring i Skoven, by H.C. Andersen (lyrics) and Henrik Rung (music)

Ionian

1             4        4  à                     1

0             0       2                             0

0   2       4  4    4         4-5   4 4      2   0-1    2    2     1   1     0

Min       sÆde Brud, min unge Viv, Min Kjaerlighed, mit Liv!

I           denne lyse, tause Nat, Hos Dig, min Verdens Skat,

Du        er saa frisk som BÆgens Hang, Som Nattergalens Sang,

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0             0       2                        0 -

0   2       4  4    4       4-5   4 4      2    0-1    2    2     1 1   0

Kom, Maanen skinner stor og klar, en stilhed Natten har,

Jeg er saa glad, saa salig glad, Duft, friske BÆgeblad!

Saa dyb som Nattens stille Ro, Her hvor Skov maerker gro,

4 à                               x      2   x      2       x        1

2                3       2          x      0  x      0        x        0

0-2  4  4   4      4 7  5    4         5       3  3      3        4        2

En Delighed, en Ensomhed, Min sÆde Brud, kom med!

Syng, Nattergal, lys maaneklar!  Jeg her al Rigdom har:

Hvor maleriske BÆge staa, og vi ved Maans’kin gaa:

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0   3                     2   2   0          0

0   5   5   5   5     4   x    0   0-1    2    2     1      1     0

I BÆgeskoven gaa vi to, der hvor Skovmaerker gro.

Min sÆde Brud, min unge Viv, min Kjaerlighed, mit Liv!

Min SÆde Brud, min unge Viv, Min Kjaerlighed, mit Liv!

My sweetest bride, my wife so young, my love, my life, come hither where the moonlight’s bright in the stillness of the night.  Oh, loveliness, Oh loveliness, my sweetest bride, do come!  In the beech wood we’ll walk, we two where woodruffs many grow. 

In this most bright and silent night, with you my dearest treasure, I am so glad, so full of bliss, do smell the leaves so fresh, sing nightingale, shine clearest moon!  All riches I do have: my sweetest bride, my wife so young, my love, my life.

Like the leafy beech you are so fresh, like the song of the nightingale, as deep and quiet as the night, where all the woodruffs grow; where beeches picturesque abound, we two in moonlight walk!  My sweetest bride, my wife so young, my love, my life.

nature and culture

I was perusing the obits, which I rarely do, and came across one for professor Doug Adams of the Pacific School of Religion at GTU.  His interest was the blending of theology and the arts.  One of his former students wrote: "'I probably would have been still stuck in a darkroom someplace doing documentary photography were it not for Doug Adams (who) taught (me) that a passion for the arts did not exclude (me) from a religious life.'  For his master's degree thesis, (the student) took a series of landscape photographs to examine the question that if the earth is God's body, how do different cultures treat God?  One of the pictures was of a strip mine."

We know which culture that was.

I've been reading about the Moorish culture, which was very much dedicated to horticulture: gardens and orchards, fountains and canals, and which brought agriculture to Spain in the eighth century C.E. So it would seem that older forms of Islamic culture had a loving, relational attitude towards nature, would 'cultivate' and 'care for' and 'husband' nature.

Orchards are important to many peoples.  It is said that abandoned Susquehanna Indian camps could always be identified by the old wild apple orchards in their vicinities in Pennsylvania, by the early explorers and settlers.  Also, my Danish relatives prized their gardens with fruit trees, where they would eat all their meals during the summer months.

I've visited India, where it would seem that the older versions of Hinduism still worship nature.  Rivers and trees, and sometimes even stones are seen as sacred at the least, and as embodiments of God at most.  Cows, too, are viewed as sacred, as are a wide variety of plants, including Bilwa and Tulsi.  They are adorned by flower garlands, daubed with sandal paste, and honored.

My whimsy tells me that the older forms of European Christianity 'sanctified' nature - as if she needed it - by dedicating the old sacred wells and fountains to various Christian saints. Kind of sweet, including nature in its otherworldly vision of salvation.   Fact tells us, however, that it also cut down the old sacred trees, which must have been very large and ancient.  Of course, by now they would have probably died of natural causes anyway, but it does seem sad to think of them being cut down because of raw ideology.

I think this photographer had a very good idea.  To judge a culture's view of God, by observing how it interacts with Nature.  Food for thought. 

the stork has landed

This just in from Denmark:

"The early arrival of the stork [from North Africa] carries with it the hope that chicks born on Danish soil could survive long enough to take wing for the first time in seven years.

"The first stork of the year has been spotted in Rudbøl in the marshes of western Jutland, the Danish Ornithological Society reports."

more dna ancestry: denmark and morocco

  I realize now that when I was a child my world-traveling, sea-faring Danish father thought I ought to know the truth about my ancestry, and he made various attempts to give me hints, kind of outside my mother's radar.  It was her decision not to tell me, and it was her ancestry that was 'the secret.'  He didn't want to go against her wishes, but I just know he thought it wasn't such a big deal, and he tried to give me some taste of what it was.

It's only through looking back that I can see it.  The way we used to sit for long periods of time - what's a long period of time to a child?  fifteen minutes?  it seemed longer - just looking at his pack of Camel cigarettes, first looking at the camel for a long time - he persuaded me to call it a dromedary - and at the pyramids (he told me he'd seen them), then turning the pack over and looking at the mosques, with their crescents and minarets and palm trees on the back.  Sometimes he'd ask me which side I liked better.  I loved the camel, but I often said I preferred the picture on the back.  Just basking in the sunshine of his gentle love and attention.  Enjoying ourselves together.

He also used to say he wanted to tell me a very special story about the stork.  He told me the stork was almost the national bird of Denmark, and every winter it would fly all the way to Africa and then in the Spring it would fly all the way back to Denmark, build its nest in unused farmhouse chimneys and bear its young.  I can still remember him saying to me, "It would fly aaaallllll they way to Africa, and then all the way back home to Denmark.  So you see, Africa and Denmark are connected."



(This is one heck of a stork's nest pictured here on an old ksar fortress in Morocco.)

baltic writer on writing

More from Suzanne Brøgger of Denmark, on writing:

"I begin each morning by practising yoga.  And after that - fasting on a lemon - I set about writing, which is only another form of yoga.  Writing is an excellent ritual for training the concentration, memory and observation.  It is an exercise of the capacity to dream and associate, and not least a training in truthfulness.  For I agree with Saul Bellow, that one knows immediately if a sentence has come from the right layer of one's consciousness.  If it has, it straight away begins to breed and flourish on the paper, in that it gives birth to and attracts to it a whole mass of other sentences.  If it is a lie, or you write from a shallow place in your consciousness, then sooner or later you go stale and can write no further.  Sometimes this morning ritual is a catharsis of tears and laughter.  In any case it is an extra dream dimension to everyday life, which allows a person the rare privilege of bathing twice in the same river.  Still I wouldn't attribute to 'writing' any greater importance than to baking bread, knitting a shawl, planting asparagus, or playing the piano."

I'd like to let this paragraph just stand here by itself, because it certainly warrants a singular attention, but I just have to mention what happened on Sunday evening, after I took that solitary contemplative walk through the neighborhood and then returned home.  When I turned back onto my street, I saw the emergency vehicle coming around the corner.  I'm sorry to say it was coming for my neighbor, G., who is only 54 years old.  Apparently he'd had a heart attack and they could not revive him.  I watched his wife cover her face with her hands, I watched them fruitlessly pounding on his chest when adrenaline and electric shock were not enough.  It was such an ordinary night.  A gentle, quiet Sunday evening.

It reminds me of the words of a Spanish-language poet, whose name I don't recall, who was read in translation at "Freight and Salvage," a local folk-music spot in Berkeley, on Saturday night.  I may be paraphrasing, but here is how I remember the lines:  "And those are the good men, the ones who love, and work, and who, on an ordinary day, lay themselves down under the ground."