Margotlog: The Phoenix - La Fenice
I vaguely remember when Venice's historic opera house burned in 1996, but now listening to John Berendt's The City of Falling Angels, I find the story brought to life with all the shock, mess, and drama one would expect to find from the world's wettest city, at the edge of the world's most beautiful but inefficient country.
John Berendt delighted me with an earlier book called In the Garden of Good and Evil, about another beautiful city peopled by spooky and eccentric characters--Savannah, Georgia. But where that book roused Savannah from a sleepy backwater to haunt us, this one pits Berendt's investigative myth-making against a place with its own ancient and well-cultivated panache.
The burning of La Fenice itself is spectacularly evoked, from sparks that spiral like rockets to collapsing floors that shake the surroundings, from green, blue, yellow, red flames that lick the night sky to ash that descends like grey rain. We have a front-row seat--the upper levels of a palazzo across the dried-up canal where a great glass-blower, Signor Aguso (?) stands watching for hours. If the wind had been blowing from another direction, he comments early in the account, the entire city of Venice would have burned.
The ineptitude of detection and control would be laughable if they weren't so pitiful. Fire alarms inside La Fenice, which was in the process of mammoth renovation, had been disabled. The canal just outside the opera house had been drained for dredging and repair. Thus in a city cut through by canals, fire-fighters had trouble drawing up enough water to douse the fire. Their hoses, outmoded and cracked, broke and had to be repaired. Finally a water-sucking helicopter began air-lifting water from the Grand Canal and dropping it with a whoosh onto the burning structure. By then it was too late: the interior of La Fenice, with its centuries-old carvings and paintings, its manuscript originals of Verdi's La Traviata (and other operas originally commissioned by La Fenice) --all were burned beyond recognition. Though the exterior of stone remained virtually untouched, the inside was gutted.
Berendt then leaves that story for many others--about a schism in the glass-blowing family across the lagoon in Murano, about another family fraught with conflict, but this one essentially Italo-American of rather antique vintage, the Curtises whose grandfather took up residence in a grand palazzo on the Grand Canal in the 1870s, hosted Henry James, Robert Browning, were painted by Sargeant and others, but whose contemporary threesome includes a brother who's turned his portion of the palazzo into "lift-off" central where he replays tapes of moon launches. Very very bizarre. And delightful to read about, or in my case, listen to before bed. You don't fall in love with a grande dame like Venice and find her easy, but under Berendt's persistent yet gentle attention, the city unveils some of its stories. I assume, like its name, the opera house will rise from its flames, and that Berendt with a chronicler's best instincts will end his story with the house once again hosting beautiful music. When I visited Venice last October, La Fenice was open for business. The next time I go back, I hope to sit in its reconstituted splendor and think about fire and water, and how in this spectacular case, they simply did not mix.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Margotlog: Downton Abbey and Barbara Tuchman's Guns of August
Margotlog: Downton Abbey and The Guns of August
Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August about the first month of World War I is a truly magisterial work. "Magisterial," suggesting pomp, command, wealth of resources, or in other words "magesty." Not only is her English prose brilliantly crafted, rich in variety and precision, but her command of the intricacies of this crucial first month entirely compelling. She knows the German, French, English and Belgian commanders and governments from the French Poincare, a deeply emotional but realistic leader, to the Belgian young King Albert who astonishes the world with his refusal to be bullied by the Germans, to the English field marshal Sir John French, a wishy-washy coward who wants nothing more than to protect his British divisions, and would have retreated at the crucial last moment for a French counteroffensive had not the imperturbable French commander Joffre reduced him to shame and tears. Let us also not forget the German Kaiser whose designs on world domination started the war and meddled to disastrous effects at the end of the first month.
Just by coincidence, as I've been listening to The Guns of August, I've also taken in episodes of the BBC Masterpiece Theater's Downton Abbey. This second season shows how the lengthening trench warfare of World War I affects a kindly but rather dim-witted family of British aristocracy. Yet, what The Guns of August is to historical writing, i.e. supreme, is not what Downton Abbey is to historical TV miniseries. Yet, I find myself more than amused by this wartime upstairs/downstairs drama. As Tuchman's German armies begin to be stymied toward the end of August--those invading France to the right of Paris have outrun their supply wagons and exhausted their troops, while those attempting to break through the French eastern defenses are held at bay--the aristocracy at Downton Abbey begins to rouse itself.
The abbey is turned into a convalescent hospital which gives the family's women a chance to take managerial, even commanding roles. We see younger daughter Edith become the soldiers' link to civilian life, writing letters for them, bringing them books to read, and arranging for musical and theatrical entertainment. She even convinces her aloof and beautiful oldest sister Mary to sing to the soldiers, part of Mary's melting into something like humanity. Ditto their mother who stops being a willowly wisp and develops organizational skills that suggest a change-over to feminism after the war.
The below stairs contingent, far more amusing in some ways than the upstairs one, also extend themselves to help soldiers who've been released from convalescence to wander the countryside, unable to find work and instead locating hunger. So far none of the upstairs folk have lost young men to the war, but that's not true for the downstairs. The nephew of the energetic and colloquial head cook has been shot as a deserter, which plunges her into shame. But she shakes this off as she begins helping the returned soldiers by establishing a soup kitchen.
Another returned soldier is elevated to sergeant so that he can order the men receiving care at Downton Abbey. Early in the series, we see him lift a match above the trench top and incur a desired wound. He is, by far, the nastiest Brit on the scene, whose ugliness is being slowly revealed. His mother, one of the older servants, is likewise sneaky and mean-spirited. We wonder how his cowardice will be revealed and what part she will play in it.
Tuchman concludes The Guns of August with assessments about the strengths and limitations of the combatants this first crucial month into what will become a four-year stalemate. She gives the French head commander Joffre top marks for his "sang-foid," that imperturability and confidence, which despite the long French retreat from the lost first battle of the frontiers, keeps him sure that his countrymen will turn and fight off their exhaustion and chase the Germans back. She recognizes the gifts of other French commanders--Gallieni, especially, in charge of Paris defense, who recognizes an opportunity to attack the Germans on their right flank and will not stop pressuring Joffre and the British until they agree.
But the Germans, she indicates, were too greedy, they pushed too far into France, leaving their soldiers and horses starving and strung out over too great an area. Likewise because they had determined to invade neutral Belgian, the Germans have had to leave several corps behind to hold that country, corps that should have been in their French lines. They also were fighting on two fronts--against the Russians and Austro-Hungarians in the east. As she says, the defeat of the Russians allowed the French to succeed in their counter-0ffensive. Finally, German cruelty to the civilian populations of France and Belgian, not to mention their depredations on world-renown sites like the library at Louven and soon the Rheims cathedral, turned world opinion against them, showed the British, and finally (though far too late in my opinion) the Americans that they too must defeat German imperialism. For to live under its rule would extinguish all the freedoms and history, art, culture and beauty that gave value to European life and all the countries it spawned.
A Minnesota footnote: Hatred, even justified hatred, can turn brutal. During the war, many states including Minnesota created anti-German offices that made life difficult if not impossible for many long-standing American citizens of German extraction. It was comparable, though of a different character, to the "Red-baiting" of Communists after World War II, i.e. the McCarthy era. Americans from time to time embark on a witch hung, said another great historian whose name escapes me. Since I am part-German, I too have struggled to defeat sweeping dislike of German culture and peoples. "But I understand," said my first German "host-mother," when I visited Nuremberg with my daughter in the early 1990s. "You must visit Dachau," she urged. "It is something we all, especially we Germans, dare not forget."
Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August about the first month of World War I is a truly magisterial work. "Magisterial," suggesting pomp, command, wealth of resources, or in other words "magesty." Not only is her English prose brilliantly crafted, rich in variety and precision, but her command of the intricacies of this crucial first month entirely compelling. She knows the German, French, English and Belgian commanders and governments from the French Poincare, a deeply emotional but realistic leader, to the Belgian young King Albert who astonishes the world with his refusal to be bullied by the Germans, to the English field marshal Sir John French, a wishy-washy coward who wants nothing more than to protect his British divisions, and would have retreated at the crucial last moment for a French counteroffensive had not the imperturbable French commander Joffre reduced him to shame and tears. Let us also not forget the German Kaiser whose designs on world domination started the war and meddled to disastrous effects at the end of the first month.
Just by coincidence, as I've been listening to The Guns of August, I've also taken in episodes of the BBC Masterpiece Theater's Downton Abbey. This second season shows how the lengthening trench warfare of World War I affects a kindly but rather dim-witted family of British aristocracy. Yet, what The Guns of August is to historical writing, i.e. supreme, is not what Downton Abbey is to historical TV miniseries. Yet, I find myself more than amused by this wartime upstairs/downstairs drama. As Tuchman's German armies begin to be stymied toward the end of August--those invading France to the right of Paris have outrun their supply wagons and exhausted their troops, while those attempting to break through the French eastern defenses are held at bay--the aristocracy at Downton Abbey begins to rouse itself.
The abbey is turned into a convalescent hospital which gives the family's women a chance to take managerial, even commanding roles. We see younger daughter Edith become the soldiers' link to civilian life, writing letters for them, bringing them books to read, and arranging for musical and theatrical entertainment. She even convinces her aloof and beautiful oldest sister Mary to sing to the soldiers, part of Mary's melting into something like humanity. Ditto their mother who stops being a willowly wisp and develops organizational skills that suggest a change-over to feminism after the war.
The below stairs contingent, far more amusing in some ways than the upstairs one, also extend themselves to help soldiers who've been released from convalescence to wander the countryside, unable to find work and instead locating hunger. So far none of the upstairs folk have lost young men to the war, but that's not true for the downstairs. The nephew of the energetic and colloquial head cook has been shot as a deserter, which plunges her into shame. But she shakes this off as she begins helping the returned soldiers by establishing a soup kitchen.
Another returned soldier is elevated to sergeant so that he can order the men receiving care at Downton Abbey. Early in the series, we see him lift a match above the trench top and incur a desired wound. He is, by far, the nastiest Brit on the scene, whose ugliness is being slowly revealed. His mother, one of the older servants, is likewise sneaky and mean-spirited. We wonder how his cowardice will be revealed and what part she will play in it.
Tuchman concludes The Guns of August with assessments about the strengths and limitations of the combatants this first crucial month into what will become a four-year stalemate. She gives the French head commander Joffre top marks for his "sang-foid," that imperturability and confidence, which despite the long French retreat from the lost first battle of the frontiers, keeps him sure that his countrymen will turn and fight off their exhaustion and chase the Germans back. She recognizes the gifts of other French commanders--Gallieni, especially, in charge of Paris defense, who recognizes an opportunity to attack the Germans on their right flank and will not stop pressuring Joffre and the British until they agree.
But the Germans, she indicates, were too greedy, they pushed too far into France, leaving their soldiers and horses starving and strung out over too great an area. Likewise because they had determined to invade neutral Belgian, the Germans have had to leave several corps behind to hold that country, corps that should have been in their French lines. They also were fighting on two fronts--against the Russians and Austro-Hungarians in the east. As she says, the defeat of the Russians allowed the French to succeed in their counter-0ffensive. Finally, German cruelty to the civilian populations of France and Belgian, not to mention their depredations on world-renown sites like the library at Louven and soon the Rheims cathedral, turned world opinion against them, showed the British, and finally (though far too late in my opinion) the Americans that they too must defeat German imperialism. For to live under its rule would extinguish all the freedoms and history, art, culture and beauty that gave value to European life and all the countries it spawned.
A Minnesota footnote: Hatred, even justified hatred, can turn brutal. During the war, many states including Minnesota created anti-German offices that made life difficult if not impossible for many long-standing American citizens of German extraction. It was comparable, though of a different character, to the "Red-baiting" of Communists after World War II, i.e. the McCarthy era. Americans from time to time embark on a witch hung, said another great historian whose name escapes me. Since I am part-German, I too have struggled to defeat sweeping dislike of German culture and peoples. "But I understand," said my first German "host-mother," when I visited Nuremberg with my daughter in the early 1990s. "You must visit Dachau," she urged. "It is something we all, especially we Germans, dare not forget."
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Margotlog: Frigate Birds and Cordia Trees
Margotlog: Frigate Birds and Cordia Trees
Castles of clouds, huge turrets and domes against brilliant blue--we stared into the towering white and found the scissor wings of frigate birds. They soared so high we sometimes lost them, then two or three would reappear, wheeling together, never flapping their wings, so perfectly constructed that they remained aloft with almost no effort at all.
When the fisherman returned each morning with their catch, we watched from a breakfast place on the harbor while frigate birds and pelicans and gulls fought over the guts. Diving straight down into the green-blue water, making waves with their plummeting, the huge black birds pierced their catch with their red beaks and lifted off, now rather slow and awkward, trailing guts which pelicans and gulls tried to gobble from the other ends.
Maybe we were too besotted with langor to care, but the language difference kept us in ignorance of many things. Even though I'd studied Spanish in high school and many individual Spanish words resembled Italian, it took many visits for us to figure things out. For instance, "cara quinze." A waiter leaned over us repeating the phrase and I stared at him in entire puzzlement. We'd been mixing English and Spanish rather comfortably, a phrase here, a word there, then all of a sudden, "cara quinze."
The question was, how often did movies change in the theater on the main square. Not that we intended to step next door from the Super Mercato and take in a film. The theater with its fly-spattered glass and littered entrance suggested a fetid interior, and we had come to Isla to be outside in the evenings, walking slowly along the harbor after dinner, after the tropical sun dropped into the ocean. We stared across the dark water to the necklace of lights draped along the mainland and were entirely happy. Neapolitan songs from years before came to mind, their rhythms undulating with the soft plash of waves.
I was a girl again walking the harbor in Charleston, an ice cream cone in one hand, my father's warm fingers in the other. We were singing together "Now neath the silver moon, oceans are flowing," from Santa Lucia. The immediacy of the past I'd left so far behind could not be matched by anything on the silver screen, but we were mildly curious as the gentle-mannered Mayan man paused beside our plates of huevos rancheros. "Cara quinze," he said, in answer to my question about the frequency of movies. "Cara quinze."
Most of the Islenos who worked in hotels and restaurants spoke enough English to understand and answer the usual questions, and we could nicely respond, "Gracias." But all sorts of phenomena they took for granted completely stumped us: like the trees, unlike anything we'd ever seen except for the huge rubber trees. With their boats of dark gleaming leaves, they spread enormous limbs across the sand, and eventually their air roots caught hold of the earth, giving the sense of an entire village gathered to support one enormous trunk.
Slowly with the aid of little books purchased here and there--their covers faded from waiting in sunny racks for years--we identified cordia trees with their small orange blossoms, and the traveller's palms, their fronds arranged in fans awaiting the appearance of celestial "Aida." We identified the Australian pines with their feathery branches, planted in the square and cropping up elsewhere, probably volunteers helped along by birds.
It turned out that the local people didn't have the same names for these trees as the ones we learned in books. There'd be a startling awareness as I said the name from the book, and they immediately replaced it with something "foreign." Who were the natives here?
Fran called his favorite bush which grew on the ocean side among the rocks, the "honey plant" because its tiny sprigs of white flowers had such an intense perfume it almost put us to sleep. We tracked it along the rocks, bending to inhale the fragrance and standing up, reeling with delight. Then after the hurricane, it almost disappeared. Fran was distraught: we searched hither and yon, under the wrecked palms and down on the huge rocks above the now mild ocean. Finally just south of the square on the rocks below Rocamar, we spied it again, though approaching was quite difficult, the rocks had sharp high edges, and this was not, after all, a public beach. No Isleno we ever asked, even showing them a sprig Fran had picked and stuck in his hat band, ever gave it a name. It was simply local, part of the scene where they worked and lived and probably struggled more than we could imagine, we with our gringo curiosity about what was an exotic escape from our exhausting dark and winter cold.
Finally, not far from the turquoise beach, one mystery was resolved. It was in the elegant restaurant named for another Maria, attached to a new colony of time-share apartments which had risen between one winter and the next. Here, facing the gentle lap, lap of the waves, we were served the best Cesar's salad either of us had ever eaten. It was made by a waiter who was not one of the Mayan natives, but like us something of an import--he from Mexico City. Tall and curly-haired--all the local people had straight Mayan hair and the most beautiful noses in the world--this waiter performed his magic over the salad bowl, and joked with us about words and names and dishes. "What does it mean, 'cara quinze?'" I finally asked him.
He looked mildly amused: "It's Spanish for every two weeks, you know cara, meaning every, and quinze meaning fifteen."
"Oh," I marveled, now completely unable to recall what the same expression would be in Italian, but finally grasping that the movie theater changed its offerings twice a month. In fact, the learning had far more to do with understanding how much we were outsiders than with allowing us to penetrate deeper into real Isleno life. Now, looking back, I suspect that we were meant to know any more than the filaments we slowly acquired. Isla had to protect her mystery from us, and we did not truly want her unveiled.
Castles of clouds, huge turrets and domes against brilliant blue--we stared into the towering white and found the scissor wings of frigate birds. They soared so high we sometimes lost them, then two or three would reappear, wheeling together, never flapping their wings, so perfectly constructed that they remained aloft with almost no effort at all.
When the fisherman returned each morning with their catch, we watched from a breakfast place on the harbor while frigate birds and pelicans and gulls fought over the guts. Diving straight down into the green-blue water, making waves with their plummeting, the huge black birds pierced their catch with their red beaks and lifted off, now rather slow and awkward, trailing guts which pelicans and gulls tried to gobble from the other ends.
Maybe we were too besotted with langor to care, but the language difference kept us in ignorance of many things. Even though I'd studied Spanish in high school and many individual Spanish words resembled Italian, it took many visits for us to figure things out. For instance, "cara quinze." A waiter leaned over us repeating the phrase and I stared at him in entire puzzlement. We'd been mixing English and Spanish rather comfortably, a phrase here, a word there, then all of a sudden, "cara quinze."
The question was, how often did movies change in the theater on the main square. Not that we intended to step next door from the Super Mercato and take in a film. The theater with its fly-spattered glass and littered entrance suggested a fetid interior, and we had come to Isla to be outside in the evenings, walking slowly along the harbor after dinner, after the tropical sun dropped into the ocean. We stared across the dark water to the necklace of lights draped along the mainland and were entirely happy. Neapolitan songs from years before came to mind, their rhythms undulating with the soft plash of waves.
I was a girl again walking the harbor in Charleston, an ice cream cone in one hand, my father's warm fingers in the other. We were singing together "Now neath the silver moon, oceans are flowing," from Santa Lucia. The immediacy of the past I'd left so far behind could not be matched by anything on the silver screen, but we were mildly curious as the gentle-mannered Mayan man paused beside our plates of huevos rancheros. "Cara quinze," he said, in answer to my question about the frequency of movies. "Cara quinze."
Most of the Islenos who worked in hotels and restaurants spoke enough English to understand and answer the usual questions, and we could nicely respond, "Gracias." But all sorts of phenomena they took for granted completely stumped us: like the trees, unlike anything we'd ever seen except for the huge rubber trees. With their boats of dark gleaming leaves, they spread enormous limbs across the sand, and eventually their air roots caught hold of the earth, giving the sense of an entire village gathered to support one enormous trunk.
Slowly with the aid of little books purchased here and there--their covers faded from waiting in sunny racks for years--we identified cordia trees with their small orange blossoms, and the traveller's palms, their fronds arranged in fans awaiting the appearance of celestial "Aida." We identified the Australian pines with their feathery branches, planted in the square and cropping up elsewhere, probably volunteers helped along by birds.
It turned out that the local people didn't have the same names for these trees as the ones we learned in books. There'd be a startling awareness as I said the name from the book, and they immediately replaced it with something "foreign." Who were the natives here?
Fran called his favorite bush which grew on the ocean side among the rocks, the "honey plant" because its tiny sprigs of white flowers had such an intense perfume it almost put us to sleep. We tracked it along the rocks, bending to inhale the fragrance and standing up, reeling with delight. Then after the hurricane, it almost disappeared. Fran was distraught: we searched hither and yon, under the wrecked palms and down on the huge rocks above the now mild ocean. Finally just south of the square on the rocks below Rocamar, we spied it again, though approaching was quite difficult, the rocks had sharp high edges, and this was not, after all, a public beach. No Isleno we ever asked, even showing them a sprig Fran had picked and stuck in his hat band, ever gave it a name. It was simply local, part of the scene where they worked and lived and probably struggled more than we could imagine, we with our gringo curiosity about what was an exotic escape from our exhausting dark and winter cold.
Finally, not far from the turquoise beach, one mystery was resolved. It was in the elegant restaurant named for another Maria, attached to a new colony of time-share apartments which had risen between one winter and the next. Here, facing the gentle lap, lap of the waves, we were served the best Cesar's salad either of us had ever eaten. It was made by a waiter who was not one of the Mayan natives, but like us something of an import--he from Mexico City. Tall and curly-haired--all the local people had straight Mayan hair and the most beautiful noses in the world--this waiter performed his magic over the salad bowl, and joked with us about words and names and dishes. "What does it mean, 'cara quinze?'" I finally asked him.
He looked mildly amused: "It's Spanish for every two weeks, you know cara, meaning every, and quinze meaning fifteen."
"Oh," I marveled, now completely unable to recall what the same expression would be in Italian, but finally grasping that the movie theater changed its offerings twice a month. In fact, the learning had far more to do with understanding how much we were outsiders than with allowing us to penetrate deeper into real Isleno life. Now, looking back, I suspect that we were meant to know any more than the filaments we slowly acquired. Isla had to protect her mystery from us, and we did not truly want her unveiled.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Margotlog: Maria's Kan Kin
Margotlog: Maria's Kan Kin
Leaving the little town at the harbor end of Isla, we walked past Tripod Dog and the Naval station, soon reaching the air strip with its overgrown margins of tired oleanders. Soon we were flanked by brushy woods of accacia trees in yellow bloom. We had left civilization behind.
The first few years, in the full strength of relative youth, we rented bicycles and rode past the air strip to the only outpost we knew of, Maria's Kan Kin (or was it Kin Kan?). The Isla bicycles had no gears, and we panted and pushed hard, going up the slight rise in that direction.
Beyond the accacia woods, we found Maria's sign by the road, once illuminated in neon, but now reduced to a painted name. Swooping down the steep gravel to Maria's flaking pink establishment, we parked, that first year of discovery, going on a hint from other visitors, that Maria's sported a fabled restaurant of French cuisine.
It was more than just a restaurant but a well-tended narrow garden beside attached cabanas, with deeply shaded entrances. Several, as we continued downhill, displayed second stories with high porches. The garden, large of hibiscus, fringed and deeply cut of orange, yellow, red, with rampant stamen jingling with seeds, chattered with life. And the flor di mayo trees, with their knobbed leafless branches, exhaled such heavy sweetness from their waxy pink or white flowers that we thought we'd swoon with enchantment.
Nothing else on Isla resembled the Kin Kan restaurant: Situated on a bluff above the turquoise bay, shaded by a palm thatched roofs, the tables were each graced with an exotic hibiscus, and the waiters, all serious men in white coats, served us like communicants partaking in a mass.
Where else on Isla could you order hearts of palm salad or Sole Meuniere--Fran's choice that first visit? Where else were the menus hand lettered with artistic care and slipped into large woven folders, whose fronts were decorated with straw flowers? What I ate is lost to time, but what I saw remains indelibly imprinted, for across the turquoise water rose a golden city, its turrets and gables shining in the sun. Though we knew it was Cancun, it was so transformed as to have left solidity behind and become a beckoning chimera. I stared and stared, a little giddy with white wine, and hoped never never to leave its promise of joy.
Every year after that we made it a point to spend one glorious long lunch at Maria's, always served by the serious men in spotless white jackets. Finally we decided to extend the stay to three days. Nothing could persuade us to remove for an entire week from town--there were too many vistas and sites to revive from past years. We had to say hello to the friendly waiters at Pegueno, the bar beside Posada; we had to visit the cemetery and lay a crumpled flower on Mundaca's moldering grave. We had to eat fresh coconut ice cream and feed butter to the lunch-time parrot. But for three days and nights, we could spare ourselves for Maria's. We would begin our visit there.
That year, our plane from Minneapolis suffered a long delay, and it was dark before we stepped off the ferry and looked for one of Isla's red taxis. The driver, newly arrived from the mainland, hardly knew what we meant, but he gamely followed the road and our pointing fingers. The sign was dark, of course--Hurricane Gilberto had taken out its wattage. But it loomed tall and white by the road, and down the Kin Kan hill, a dim light awaited us.
We had wanted simply a room with bath. In the morning, we discovered Paris was spread across the walls in faded, semi-precious form. There was the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, the banks of the Seine, painted and framed, real works in oil. That morning we also met Madame, the owner, a column in silk with a stately head of coiled white hair, and on her wrist a raucous blue and red macaw.
That visit we glimpsed her walking away from us down the path, or glancing down at us from a high screened porch--evidently where she lived in chambers above the garden. Nothing was cheap at Maria's Kan Kin, but Fran gamely paid for breakfast, while I stayed in the room and ate instant oatmeal and fruit. During those breakfasts--for we were the only guests those three days--the head waiter whispered that he had worked for Madame since a very young man, and now she was not well. With that stoic poise of the Mayan men, he looked grave, Fran reported. One afternoon, snoozing in our room, we heard French being spoken with sharp, ascending accusation. It was answered in deep-voiced, soothing Spanish.
The more we thought about it, the more it seemed to us that these waiters were more than just employees. Whether one-time lovers or something like indentured servants, they spent their lives on the premises, or so it seemed, for we found them there at all hours, and occasionally upstairs in Madame's abode.
The ways of need and devotion are strange. But so are the breaks. Twice we stayed at Maria's Kin Kan, enjoying the glory of the garden, and the quiet repose and the cuisine. But that was enough. A few years later, a new restaurant advertised that it was open for business. We puzzled its location, and on a whim, took a taxi beyond the woods toward our old haunt at Maria's. There stood the new restaurant, right next door to the Kin Kan, sturdy in a new palapa, with a slightly shewed view of the bay and the glimmering promise of Cancun. We ate a fine leisurely lunch there, served by the same group of serious, white-coated men as used to work for Maria's. They whispered a story about the old woman, but their English, now beyond a tourist menu of needs, faltered, and we only half understood. What was obvious was that they had deserted her. Or, perhaps, in a rage she had fired them. We never knew which. But though enticing for one visit, with a sense of clandestine naughty charm, the new restaurant lacked that "je ne sais quoi" of the smaller, more intimate, and more finely placed Maria's. That's when we understood that she, like us, had refined Isla's native charm with an outsider's grasp of its limitations, and for years, had poured herself into making an odd perfection created entirely of one woman's passion for blended cultural beauty.
Leaving the little town at the harbor end of Isla, we walked past Tripod Dog and the Naval station, soon reaching the air strip with its overgrown margins of tired oleanders. Soon we were flanked by brushy woods of accacia trees in yellow bloom. We had left civilization behind.
The first few years, in the full strength of relative youth, we rented bicycles and rode past the air strip to the only outpost we knew of, Maria's Kan Kin (or was it Kin Kan?). The Isla bicycles had no gears, and we panted and pushed hard, going up the slight rise in that direction.
Beyond the accacia woods, we found Maria's sign by the road, once illuminated in neon, but now reduced to a painted name. Swooping down the steep gravel to Maria's flaking pink establishment, we parked, that first year of discovery, going on a hint from other visitors, that Maria's sported a fabled restaurant of French cuisine.
It was more than just a restaurant but a well-tended narrow garden beside attached cabanas, with deeply shaded entrances. Several, as we continued downhill, displayed second stories with high porches. The garden, large of hibiscus, fringed and deeply cut of orange, yellow, red, with rampant stamen jingling with seeds, chattered with life. And the flor di mayo trees, with their knobbed leafless branches, exhaled such heavy sweetness from their waxy pink or white flowers that we thought we'd swoon with enchantment.
Nothing else on Isla resembled the Kin Kan restaurant: Situated on a bluff above the turquoise bay, shaded by a palm thatched roofs, the tables were each graced with an exotic hibiscus, and the waiters, all serious men in white coats, served us like communicants partaking in a mass.
Where else on Isla could you order hearts of palm salad or Sole Meuniere--Fran's choice that first visit? Where else were the menus hand lettered with artistic care and slipped into large woven folders, whose fronts were decorated with straw flowers? What I ate is lost to time, but what I saw remains indelibly imprinted, for across the turquoise water rose a golden city, its turrets and gables shining in the sun. Though we knew it was Cancun, it was so transformed as to have left solidity behind and become a beckoning chimera. I stared and stared, a little giddy with white wine, and hoped never never to leave its promise of joy.
Every year after that we made it a point to spend one glorious long lunch at Maria's, always served by the serious men in spotless white jackets. Finally we decided to extend the stay to three days. Nothing could persuade us to remove for an entire week from town--there were too many vistas and sites to revive from past years. We had to say hello to the friendly waiters at Pegueno, the bar beside Posada; we had to visit the cemetery and lay a crumpled flower on Mundaca's moldering grave. We had to eat fresh coconut ice cream and feed butter to the lunch-time parrot. But for three days and nights, we could spare ourselves for Maria's. We would begin our visit there.
That year, our plane from Minneapolis suffered a long delay, and it was dark before we stepped off the ferry and looked for one of Isla's red taxis. The driver, newly arrived from the mainland, hardly knew what we meant, but he gamely followed the road and our pointing fingers. The sign was dark, of course--Hurricane Gilberto had taken out its wattage. But it loomed tall and white by the road, and down the Kin Kan hill, a dim light awaited us.
We had wanted simply a room with bath. In the morning, we discovered Paris was spread across the walls in faded, semi-precious form. There was the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, the banks of the Seine, painted and framed, real works in oil. That morning we also met Madame, the owner, a column in silk with a stately head of coiled white hair, and on her wrist a raucous blue and red macaw.
That visit we glimpsed her walking away from us down the path, or glancing down at us from a high screened porch--evidently where she lived in chambers above the garden. Nothing was cheap at Maria's Kan Kin, but Fran gamely paid for breakfast, while I stayed in the room and ate instant oatmeal and fruit. During those breakfasts--for we were the only guests those three days--the head waiter whispered that he had worked for Madame since a very young man, and now she was not well. With that stoic poise of the Mayan men, he looked grave, Fran reported. One afternoon, snoozing in our room, we heard French being spoken with sharp, ascending accusation. It was answered in deep-voiced, soothing Spanish.
The more we thought about it, the more it seemed to us that these waiters were more than just employees. Whether one-time lovers or something like indentured servants, they spent their lives on the premises, or so it seemed, for we found them there at all hours, and occasionally upstairs in Madame's abode.
The ways of need and devotion are strange. But so are the breaks. Twice we stayed at Maria's Kin Kan, enjoying the glory of the garden, and the quiet repose and the cuisine. But that was enough. A few years later, a new restaurant advertised that it was open for business. We puzzled its location, and on a whim, took a taxi beyond the woods toward our old haunt at Maria's. There stood the new restaurant, right next door to the Kin Kan, sturdy in a new palapa, with a slightly shewed view of the bay and the glimmering promise of Cancun. We ate a fine leisurely lunch there, served by the same group of serious, white-coated men as used to work for Maria's. They whispered a story about the old woman, but their English, now beyond a tourist menu of needs, faltered, and we only half understood. What was obvious was that they had deserted her. Or, perhaps, in a rage she had fired them. We never knew which. But though enticing for one visit, with a sense of clandestine naughty charm, the new restaurant lacked that "je ne sais quoi" of the smaller, more intimate, and more finely placed Maria's. That's when we understood that she, like us, had refined Isla's native charm with an outsider's grasp of its limitations, and for years, had poured herself into making an odd perfection created entirely of one woman's passion for blended cultural beauty.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Margotlog: At the Russian Museum of Art
Margotlog: At the Russian Museum of Art
In the unexpected Minneapolis Museum of Russian Art, a show on the ground floor traces truly ancient cultures of the Ukraine--back 7000 years B.C.--using pottery, gold jewelry, and a huge stretch of the imagination. For one thing, it's hard for me, who's never been further east than Italy, to progress to the Black Sea, and its ports of Sebastapol and Costanta. Yes, I've heard of the Crimean War; in fact, one of my own favorite poems called "Florence Nightingale Receives a Visitor" describes in part what that innovator brought to the English hospitals in the midst of the mosques and chaos of the Crimean War. I've also become aware recently of Romanian immigrants to Italy, whom we call in the U.S. gypsies, but who call themselves the Rom or Roma. Seeing an Italian movie about a bidante or care-giver from Romania included some gorgeous scenes of the marshes around the Black Sea. So I have images and actual acquaintances from Romania. But trying to imagine myself back into the sweeps of peoples--Sythians, Samatians, and the most ancient Trypilians boggles the mind. Not to forget the Goths, who entered much later from what we call Sweden. My, my, my, the world has been trod and retrod by the most diverse peoples.
On the second floor, the museum has displayed the works of a contemporary Russian artist named Oleg Vassiliev. Living through the Soviet era as part of the Moscow underground, Vassiliev illustrated children's books for the public--delightful wolf with long red tongue and big tail, for instance--but in the summer he and an artistic friend left Moscow for creative explorations. My favorite series uses an image from a story by Chekhov, "The House with the Mezzanine." Largely in black and white, these metal-cut prints on paper, capture the nostalgia of an outmoded architecture suggesting the life within it, of gentle countryside rambles and long conversations (a few works depict such experiences), but it's the silhouette of the artist in modern trench coat, variously posed against images of the house with its front porches dark against the sky, that most evokes a lost richness of incident and imagination. One has to posit against these, Soviet Realist heroic workers and enormous bridges as vigorous but impersonal as steel blocks, to appreciate what has been lost.
Oddly, Vassiliev's work calls up the silhouette-art of younger African-American artist Kara Walker. In her huge wall-size compositions of silhouetted images from historical textbooks, the Ante-bellum South becomes viscious with a crazed-child intensity. What racism did to images of Ante-bellum black people--the Topsy and Aunt Gemima types, not to mention the lynched black men swaying from trees--not only reduces individual traits but the very possibility of human agency, which of course is what slavery intended. When white child shoves a sword into a vagina of a nearly lynched black figure, violence crosses over into insane play. The silhouettes or outlined figures intensify this effect.
Vassiliev achieves something of the same with his blackening of past images. but whereas he mourns the past with a trenchant nostalgia; Kara Walker portrays the visciousness of dehumanization by using figures meant originally to amuse viewers who considered themselves superior. These were challenging thoughts and rouse questions about how most effectively to counter institutionalized terror and repression. What with seeing the British play "Collaborators" earlier in the week, I'm rather dazed with all this deep thinking and the USSR and ancient Russia, now the Ukraine.
In the unexpected Minneapolis Museum of Russian Art, a show on the ground floor traces truly ancient cultures of the Ukraine--back 7000 years B.C.--using pottery, gold jewelry, and a huge stretch of the imagination. For one thing, it's hard for me, who's never been further east than Italy, to progress to the Black Sea, and its ports of Sebastapol and Costanta. Yes, I've heard of the Crimean War; in fact, one of my own favorite poems called "Florence Nightingale Receives a Visitor" describes in part what that innovator brought to the English hospitals in the midst of the mosques and chaos of the Crimean War. I've also become aware recently of Romanian immigrants to Italy, whom we call in the U.S. gypsies, but who call themselves the Rom or Roma. Seeing an Italian movie about a bidante or care-giver from Romania included some gorgeous scenes of the marshes around the Black Sea. So I have images and actual acquaintances from Romania. But trying to imagine myself back into the sweeps of peoples--Sythians, Samatians, and the most ancient Trypilians boggles the mind. Not to forget the Goths, who entered much later from what we call Sweden. My, my, my, the world has been trod and retrod by the most diverse peoples.
On the second floor, the museum has displayed the works of a contemporary Russian artist named Oleg Vassiliev. Living through the Soviet era as part of the Moscow underground, Vassiliev illustrated children's books for the public--delightful wolf with long red tongue and big tail, for instance--but in the summer he and an artistic friend left Moscow for creative explorations. My favorite series uses an image from a story by Chekhov, "The House with the Mezzanine." Largely in black and white, these metal-cut prints on paper, capture the nostalgia of an outmoded architecture suggesting the life within it, of gentle countryside rambles and long conversations (a few works depict such experiences), but it's the silhouette of the artist in modern trench coat, variously posed against images of the house with its front porches dark against the sky, that most evokes a lost richness of incident and imagination. One has to posit against these, Soviet Realist heroic workers and enormous bridges as vigorous but impersonal as steel blocks, to appreciate what has been lost.
Oddly, Vassiliev's work calls up the silhouette-art of younger African-American artist Kara Walker. In her huge wall-size compositions of silhouetted images from historical textbooks, the Ante-bellum South becomes viscious with a crazed-child intensity. What racism did to images of Ante-bellum black people--the Topsy and Aunt Gemima types, not to mention the lynched black men swaying from trees--not only reduces individual traits but the very possibility of human agency, which of course is what slavery intended. When white child shoves a sword into a vagina of a nearly lynched black figure, violence crosses over into insane play. The silhouettes or outlined figures intensify this effect.
Vassiliev achieves something of the same with his blackening of past images. but whereas he mourns the past with a trenchant nostalgia; Kara Walker portrays the visciousness of dehumanization by using figures meant originally to amuse viewers who considered themselves superior. These were challenging thoughts and rouse questions about how most effectively to counter institutionalized terror and repression. What with seeing the British play "Collaborators" earlier in the week, I'm rather dazed with all this deep thinking and the USSR and ancient Russia, now the Ukraine.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Margotlog: My Mother and January
Margotlog: My Mother and January
During the almost 14 years my mother lived alone after my father died, I often visited her in January, that month of deepest cold for us in Minnesota, but for her in Charleston, fickle in its flickering from warmish blue skies to humid grey chill. Once even ice on the bridges: far scarier driving than anything Minnesota had dished out!
She kept her Christmas tree standing, first as the floor model, then the last five years when she declined, as a little table tree bought for her by her "care-givers." The sparkle of little lights helped push back the long darkness. So did the TV. We would sit in front of the screen together, as she did every evening when she was alone. First eating dinner on a TV tray while she watched the six o'clock news, then later to watch various PBS programs she liked.
Those years from 1990-2003 were some of the busiest of my life. At home in Saint Paul, I rarely watched TV--too busy reading student writing or writing my own. But my visits to her were a kind of vacation. I brought along a book or two for the long flight and inevitable delay changing planes in Atlanta. But I expected to spend my evenings beside her or taking her out to dinner or to a concert.
She was really old, then. Born in 1908, she was entering her 81st year when my father died. Soon after her doctor put her on a version of a statin drug to lower cholesterol, and she followed suit with her own diet. Though never obese, she'd put on weight during my father's decline--eating out, eating especially the shrimp she loved. As the drug leached fat from her system, she developed wrinkles all over her face. This startled me when I first recognized the change. Though her trimmed-down body looked more youthful, her face had a witchy effect except for the sparkling blue eyes. It helped when she wore lipstick, for her lips were beautifully formed, one of her best features.
Like her German-American father who'd lived on alone in his huge North Dakota house for years after his wife died, my mother was temperamentally suited to solitude. She developed a schedule you could set a clock by, ate virtually the same thing for breakfast and lunch, then rotated her "diet" dinner menus throughout each week--if it was Tuesday, beef stir fry; if Friday, fish sticks and potatoes. Several parts of her habit kept her entertained and lively: her dog Cindy, a Scotty mix, who was devoted as only good dogs can be, but insisted on doggy behavior, even to the point of occasionally slipping the fence at the back of the property, and sending my mother "into dithers" until she found Cindy again.
January named after the Roman word for doorway: the opening of the year, but also, I like to think, named for Janus, whose two faces looked in different directions. January in Charleston with my mother had us looking back to the past of my high school yearbooks which I leafed through upstairs while my mother took her lengthy afternoon naps. Or sitting at the restaurant atop the Holiday Inn, Riverview, and staring across the peninsula of Charleston to the new "roller coaster" bridge. This entertained me with memories of driving the old narrow one, and of living across that second of Charleston's two rivers, in Mount Pleasant.
But we also looked forward a bit, in that we exchanged modest confessions about things happening in our current lives. One evening while we sat on her sofa before the TV, PBS presented Yoyo Ma, the great cellist, playing Bach's cello concertos. I was enthralled, but beside me, my mother voiced boredom. "Oh, I've seen that so many times already," she complained, startling me with the notion that PBS rotated shows over and over. It was the closest she ever came to showing me the inside of her life alone: she actually wanted to talk to me, she the silent to my father's gregarious exuberance; she the deflector to his constant display of emotion. "You know Elinor F. died," she said, as I turned from Bach to listen to her. Yes, I had heard this.
Elinor like my mother lived on alone for years after her husband, also a Citadel professor, had passed away. Elinor, like my mother, from the North, also loved parties and entertaining. "Elinor and I used to 'cuss and discuss,'" said my mother. It was the first time I'd ever heard that phrase. It was the first time I'd realized that my mother, like almost all women I knew, had bosom friends to whom she unburdened herself--about their Citadel compatriots, no doubt, but probably also about their solitary lives. It was the first, and perhaps the only time, I heard my mother hint that she had suffered a personal, emotional loss. She did not voice grief at my father's death. She did not complain about her solitude. But she did become more chatty with me, that evening, and on our regularly scheduled once-a-week phone calls. She wanted human companionship, which she would acquire, eight years into her solitude, when she developed shingles, lost hearing in one ear and became less able. For the five years of daily visits from the African-American women who became her care-givers, my mother had someone to talk to. I'm sure these women helped prolong her life. They certainly relieved me of much anxiety for her well-being.
During the almost 14 years my mother lived alone after my father died, I often visited her in January, that month of deepest cold for us in Minnesota, but for her in Charleston, fickle in its flickering from warmish blue skies to humid grey chill. Once even ice on the bridges: far scarier driving than anything Minnesota had dished out!
She kept her Christmas tree standing, first as the floor model, then the last five years when she declined, as a little table tree bought for her by her "care-givers." The sparkle of little lights helped push back the long darkness. So did the TV. We would sit in front of the screen together, as she did every evening when she was alone. First eating dinner on a TV tray while she watched the six o'clock news, then later to watch various PBS programs she liked.
Those years from 1990-2003 were some of the busiest of my life. At home in Saint Paul, I rarely watched TV--too busy reading student writing or writing my own. But my visits to her were a kind of vacation. I brought along a book or two for the long flight and inevitable delay changing planes in Atlanta. But I expected to spend my evenings beside her or taking her out to dinner or to a concert.
She was really old, then. Born in 1908, she was entering her 81st year when my father died. Soon after her doctor put her on a version of a statin drug to lower cholesterol, and she followed suit with her own diet. Though never obese, she'd put on weight during my father's decline--eating out, eating especially the shrimp she loved. As the drug leached fat from her system, she developed wrinkles all over her face. This startled me when I first recognized the change. Though her trimmed-down body looked more youthful, her face had a witchy effect except for the sparkling blue eyes. It helped when she wore lipstick, for her lips were beautifully formed, one of her best features.
Like her German-American father who'd lived on alone in his huge North Dakota house for years after his wife died, my mother was temperamentally suited to solitude. She developed a schedule you could set a clock by, ate virtually the same thing for breakfast and lunch, then rotated her "diet" dinner menus throughout each week--if it was Tuesday, beef stir fry; if Friday, fish sticks and potatoes. Several parts of her habit kept her entertained and lively: her dog Cindy, a Scotty mix, who was devoted as only good dogs can be, but insisted on doggy behavior, even to the point of occasionally slipping the fence at the back of the property, and sending my mother "into dithers" until she found Cindy again.
January named after the Roman word for doorway: the opening of the year, but also, I like to think, named for Janus, whose two faces looked in different directions. January in Charleston with my mother had us looking back to the past of my high school yearbooks which I leafed through upstairs while my mother took her lengthy afternoon naps. Or sitting at the restaurant atop the Holiday Inn, Riverview, and staring across the peninsula of Charleston to the new "roller coaster" bridge. This entertained me with memories of driving the old narrow one, and of living across that second of Charleston's two rivers, in Mount Pleasant.
But we also looked forward a bit, in that we exchanged modest confessions about things happening in our current lives. One evening while we sat on her sofa before the TV, PBS presented Yoyo Ma, the great cellist, playing Bach's cello concertos. I was enthralled, but beside me, my mother voiced boredom. "Oh, I've seen that so many times already," she complained, startling me with the notion that PBS rotated shows over and over. It was the closest she ever came to showing me the inside of her life alone: she actually wanted to talk to me, she the silent to my father's gregarious exuberance; she the deflector to his constant display of emotion. "You know Elinor F. died," she said, as I turned from Bach to listen to her. Yes, I had heard this.
Elinor like my mother lived on alone for years after her husband, also a Citadel professor, had passed away. Elinor, like my mother, from the North, also loved parties and entertaining. "Elinor and I used to 'cuss and discuss,'" said my mother. It was the first time I'd ever heard that phrase. It was the first time I'd realized that my mother, like almost all women I knew, had bosom friends to whom she unburdened herself--about their Citadel compatriots, no doubt, but probably also about their solitary lives. It was the first, and perhaps the only time, I heard my mother hint that she had suffered a personal, emotional loss. She did not voice grief at my father's death. She did not complain about her solitude. But she did become more chatty with me, that evening, and on our regularly scheduled once-a-week phone calls. She wanted human companionship, which she would acquire, eight years into her solitude, when she developed shingles, lost hearing in one ear and became less able. For the five years of daily visits from the African-American women who became her care-givers, my mother had someone to talk to. I'm sure these women helped prolong her life. They certainly relieved me of much anxiety for her well-being.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Margotlog: What Makes a Good General?
Margotlog: What Makes a Good General?
The more I listen to (well, read) about warfare, the more I'm learning about what makes a good general. Not a subject I'd ever have expected to fascinate me, but in the hands (well, voice) of a great historian, generalship becomes a highly lethal (or courageous, depending on your point of view) subset of leadership.
Case in point: Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August describes the opening months of World War I as diplomatic maneuvering (I'd say bullying and feinting) among the European powers, then once war is thought inevitable (there's great fear among some of losing face), the deployment of troops (and ships) along pre-determined plans.
Here a very interesting scenario unfolds among the Germans, Belgians, and French (with England eventually to be drawn in). Because the French lost Alsace-Lorraine to the Germans in the Franco Prussian war of 1870, their generalissimo Joffre organized his thinking about defense in an offensive way. Instead of considering that the Germans might well come through neutral Belgium and attending to fears from his other commanders that this indeed might take place, Joffre weighted manpower heavily on the eastern edge and, in fact, sent French troops initially into Alsace.
Meanwhile, King Albert of the Belgians, the premier commander of that small and supposedly neutral country, rallied his troops and citizens courageously against the invading force,. After initial victories, the Belgian forts could not withstand the huge "Big Bertha" mortars, which reduced the forts to rubble with the soldiers in them. This part of the story Tuchman recounts with one telling sentence: the Belgian troops in the forts often "went mad" as they waited for the next mortar to fall, knowing they'd be decimated.
According to Tuchman, the French high commander Joffre, stoic, silent, yet consumed by the notion that "elan," rather than superior force or insightful planning would win battles, fired general after general under him, for disagreeing, for caution, and of course for failure to win. As I listen to the war unfold, I expect to find that France's, i.e. Joffre's unwillingness to suspect that the German troops might mass in northwest France will cost France countless months and casualities.
This is a very interesting portrait of leadership, and reminds me of much smaller, everyday encounters where "fixed ideas" of someone at the top resist the cogent arguments of underlings. Likewise, where the "high command" puts forth one value, i.e. "elan," or spirit, heroism, etc., but follows quite another, i.e. "revanche," meaning in this case recapture of what has been previously lost, rather than attending to the reports of what is actually happening and acting accordingly.
Heaven forbid we should embark on another world war. The carnage is unbelievable, and the story of World War I has only begun. There are so many ways to suffer and die, and peacetime existence presents plenty, thank you very much. But we can learn a lot about leadership from studying the history of warfare, though several crucial differences affect the application of examples from the past: changing technology, and the differences in governments and cultures.
But humankind remains fundamentally recognizable: I applaud with Tuchman the Belgian heroic resistance to what was, after all, an enormous insult to their neutrality which had been guaranteed by all the major powers. That they took up a fight for which they were not prepared, and refused to allow Germany or France to tromp over their fairly new nation, knowing full well that their independence depended on that resistance, won the admiration of France and England at the time, and still rouses my own applause from almost a century later.
The more I listen to (well, read) about warfare, the more I'm learning about what makes a good general. Not a subject I'd ever have expected to fascinate me, but in the hands (well, voice) of a great historian, generalship becomes a highly lethal (or courageous, depending on your point of view) subset of leadership.
Case in point: Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August describes the opening months of World War I as diplomatic maneuvering (I'd say bullying and feinting) among the European powers, then once war is thought inevitable (there's great fear among some of losing face), the deployment of troops (and ships) along pre-determined plans.
Here a very interesting scenario unfolds among the Germans, Belgians, and French (with England eventually to be drawn in). Because the French lost Alsace-Lorraine to the Germans in the Franco Prussian war of 1870, their generalissimo Joffre organized his thinking about defense in an offensive way. Instead of considering that the Germans might well come through neutral Belgium and attending to fears from his other commanders that this indeed might take place, Joffre weighted manpower heavily on the eastern edge and, in fact, sent French troops initially into Alsace.
Meanwhile, King Albert of the Belgians, the premier commander of that small and supposedly neutral country, rallied his troops and citizens courageously against the invading force,. After initial victories, the Belgian forts could not withstand the huge "Big Bertha" mortars, which reduced the forts to rubble with the soldiers in them. This part of the story Tuchman recounts with one telling sentence: the Belgian troops in the forts often "went mad" as they waited for the next mortar to fall, knowing they'd be decimated.
According to Tuchman, the French high commander Joffre, stoic, silent, yet consumed by the notion that "elan," rather than superior force or insightful planning would win battles, fired general after general under him, for disagreeing, for caution, and of course for failure to win. As I listen to the war unfold, I expect to find that France's, i.e. Joffre's unwillingness to suspect that the German troops might mass in northwest France will cost France countless months and casualities.
This is a very interesting portrait of leadership, and reminds me of much smaller, everyday encounters where "fixed ideas" of someone at the top resist the cogent arguments of underlings. Likewise, where the "high command" puts forth one value, i.e. "elan," or spirit, heroism, etc., but follows quite another, i.e. "revanche," meaning in this case recapture of what has been previously lost, rather than attending to the reports of what is actually happening and acting accordingly.
Heaven forbid we should embark on another world war. The carnage is unbelievable, and the story of World War I has only begun. There are so many ways to suffer and die, and peacetime existence presents plenty, thank you very much. But we can learn a lot about leadership from studying the history of warfare, though several crucial differences affect the application of examples from the past: changing technology, and the differences in governments and cultures.
But humankind remains fundamentally recognizable: I applaud with Tuchman the Belgian heroic resistance to what was, after all, an enormous insult to their neutrality which had been guaranteed by all the major powers. That they took up a fight for which they were not prepared, and refused to allow Germany or France to tromp over their fairly new nation, knowing full well that their independence depended on that resistance, won the admiration of France and England at the time, and still rouses my own applause from almost a century later.
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