Ezekiel's Daughter

It honestly surprised me to see a novel of this time (1940) have characters which can express the need for penance for the killings they have done in battle.  The same character who wonders about future penance is Catholic but also expects his new Spanish Republic to be Communist.  Given that, he wonders to himself what type of secular penance will be given to soldiers still experiencing their guilt over what they did during wartime.  Much of that chapter sounds like what we would call PTSD.

It is true that in some respects it is a novel of its time. One of the female characters is a 19-year-old Maria very young and very much in love with Robert Jordan--who she has just met. On the other hand, Hemingway gives us Pilar, Marie's protector, who is very much an adult and very much all woman. She is the one person who can be trusted by Robert Jordan. Both women are weakened by love, something that never seems to weaken the men in the novel.

The novel mocks bureaucracy in both war and in government. There are some very humorous events and the novel and there were often times that I laughed out loud at the guerrilla's bands repartee.

The novel does have the short choppy sentences that every high school teacher tells you to look for in Hemingway but it also has long involved phrasing with detailed descriptions.  Completely different than the phrasing of Fitzgerald (slipped into The Great Gatsby movie). I wondered how some of the language in "For Whom.." would be written now.  It is full of "fake" obscenities. Most of the novel is from Jordan's POV.  We are told that he is a Spanish professor back in America so the language of the book is English, translated Spanish, and Spanish, and an odd type of translated Spanish where he uses thee and thou to represent the intimate form of the word YOU.  And then there are the odd places where men say "Obscenity you"

I have the feeling that I was more patient "hearing" this unabridged novel than I would be reading it.  I gritted my teeth through some of the love scenes between 'Roberto' and Maria.  They were sweet but I tired of hearing Maria beg to stay with Robert in EVERY situation--including blowing the bridge up.  The actor or voice over artist doing the reading was quite good.  He established a voice style for each character without intruding by acting the book.

oh, one more oddity for me was hearing the character Robert Jordan rail against his father for killing himself.  Really, Mr. Hemingway?

History is such a delight at times, which is why I went and found Jack Weatherford’s book on Genghis Khan after reading the latter one about the women in the family.  After this, no more.  His other books are on other topics.  (He spent over six years of research on Genghis Khan.  I can understand why there are two books.)

Notes that delighted me:

“As long as men kidnapped women, there would be feuding on the steppes.  Genghis Khan’s first new law reportedly forbade the kidnapping of women.”

“Based upon his own experiences over the disruptions that surrounded question of the legitimacy of children, he declared all children legitimate….”

“…he forbade the selling of women into marriage.”

“…virtually every religion from Buddhism to Christianity and Manichaenism to Islam had found converts among the steppe people.  In probably the first law of its kind anywhere in the world, Genghis Khan decreed complete and total religious freedom for everyone.  Although he continued to worship the spirits of his homeland, he did not permit them to be used as a national cult.”

“Unlike many civilizations—and most particularly western Europe, where monarchs ruled by the will of God and reigned above the law—Genghis Khan made it clear that his Great Law applied as strictly to the rulers as to everyone else.”

There’s more, so it’s a pity to read “His descendants proved able to abide by this rule for only about fifty years after his death before they discarded it.”

They had an abhorrence of blood, so torture was against Mongol law.  

The distaste for spilled blood showed up when they fought European nobles who had a code that extolled hand-to-hand combat.   The Mongols were perfect archers and fought at a distance.  They used retreat as a method of drawing their enemy out into an area where they could wipe them out.  They didn’t take prisoners to use as hostages.  After Genghis Khan fought a few battles where he conquered a city and then turned it back over to the nobles, he found that the nobles revolted as soon as he left.  After that, he had the city emptied; he separated the people into craftsmen (valuable), peasants (used as cannon fodder), and nobles (killed straight off).

This is one of the few books that made military techniques interesting to read.  I am not one of those buffs who pour over military manuals.   But the author is in love with his subject.

“Warriors everywhere have been taught to die for their leader, but Genghis Khan never asked his men to die for him. …Unlike other generals who easily ordered hundreds of thousands… to their death, Genghis Khan would never willingly sacrifice a single one….The Mongols did not find honor in fighting; they found honor in winning.”

These are people who were aware of their propaganda and played it up.  They drove the peasants of the small towns ahead of them so that they clogged the roads and the soldiers opposing them could not get through.  They diverted rivers to flood cities that they besieged.  In one case, they captured an envoy, dressed in his clothes and convinced the town to send the troops away. 

Even after Khan died, the Mongol empire grew—despite his incompetent sons.  At its height, the four corners of the empire were Poland, Egypt, Java and Japan.  When they tried to expand militarily into Europe, the wet climate stymied them.  In Egypt, they ran into soldiers that they themselves had trained in other wars.  In Japan, they conquered land, but they did not have the navy that could support the army.  Java—same problem.  They didn’t have a navy.   Everything else from Russia to China to Persia to India was theirs.  They had influence in Europe who was hungry for their technology, fabric and spices, but they didn’t rule there.  What broke the empire up was the plague.  Travel stopped and communication and trade supported the empire. 

Oh, and I guess I see why China “claims” Tibet.  The Mongols brought Tibet into the Chinese empire.  In fact, one of the earlier Dali Lamas was a descendent of Genghis Khan.  Since the Chinese of the time detested the Mongols and their Tibetan monks, you would think that they would want to cut Tibet loose.  It appears that China wants to keep the property and eject the property owners.

Genghis Khan was such a powerful name that as late as 1937, communist Russia and China were killing scholars on the subject.  It’s only recently that native Mongols have been able to research and write about their history.   I am only too glad that browsing the library bumped me into the professor’s two books.

1

I have it often now, the feeling of having a double consciousness.  And I first noticed it when I was caught flatfooted.  For a moment, I  saw through my own experience.  I was listening to NPR Sunday and the morning puzzle.  The answer to one question depended on a synonym for red.  The answer was “flushed”. 

“Nonsense,” I thought.  Flushed doesn’t mean red! Then I did a double-take.  Oh!  Depends on your complexion doesn’t it?   Now, I find it difficult to listen to those morning quizzes without seeing the cultural/physiological references.  Not as simple as “cup and saucer” as “Good Times” simplistically described it years ago.  I remember sneering when I heard that as an example of a cultural reference that only middle class people would know.   I don’t expect to know the Beetles references but “flushed” threw me.

2

The second case of frisson was reading “Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean: How a generation of swashbuckling Jews carved out an empire in the New World in their quest for treasure, religious freedom—and Revenge”

So it begins with the Jews kicked out of Spain at the same time as Columbus sails.  The author plays around with the notion that Columbus had Jewish ancestors but he has more documentation that he had Jewish navigators and some Jews in the crew.  The person who helped convince Isabella to be a patron was a converso.   The author gives the reader an overview of the Jewish exile at the time.  They could not be citizens of any Christian country.  Therefore, they were the prey of all.   There were Jews in the land of Israel, but in general, the crusades and the ascent of Islam had prevented many Jews from remaining in the land.    There was an “idyllic” time when Spain was home to Moors, Jews and Christians.  Ferdinand and Isabella changed all that in their purge of Islam from Spain.  After the Moors were purged, the King and Queen turned on the Jews.  When Spain said convert or die, they tore children from their parents’ arms and baptized them.  You either left or converted.  If you converted, you couldn’t immigrate—less you revert.  Even if you converted, people might still turn you in as a traitor to the faith and you were burned.  Some went to Portugal, a country that wanted Jewish money and navigational ability.  Later, Spain took over Portugal and started burning the conversos of Portugal.  Some were accepted by Holland for the same reason that Portugal took them in.  Some managed to get to Jamaica where they started convincing the English to invite the local pirates in to protect the colony.  (There is lots of summarizing here).   I can’t help but feel for fellow Jews driven from one country to the next and denied citizenship anywhere until Cromwell offers –a few—citizenship in GB.  The desperate desire for citizenship is explained when a few do get British citizenship.  When Spain shows up and starts to cart off British Jews to burn, GB says “ahem” and notes that burning their citizens will be looked upon as an act of war. 

The sandpaper feeling comes when you remember what a monster Columbus really was.  Where are the natives of Hispaniola, after all?  The Jews who escaped to the New World are not allowed to farm—even though some try.  They were bought there to trade.  And trade they do, in sugar, in rum—oh this sounds familiar—and slaves.  Farming was taken away from them, the author points out.  As soon as Spain and Portugal realize that sugar is more profitable than searching for gold, the Inquisition is brought in to clear out the Jews.  Even the English merchants in Jamaica begged Cromwell and later King Charles to relieve from “these descendants of the Crucifiers of our Lord.”  Only their continued usefulness to Great Britain against Spain saved them.   The author doesn’t hide the trafficking in slaves but that isn’t the focus of his book.   I don’t know if the trafficking in slaves ended when GB left the slave trading business.  Certainly, the end of the book is more interested in the pirates harassing Spanish ships (hence the “revenge” in the title).   There are mentions here and there of masters who freed their own slaves when the slaves asked to become Jews.  The British describe these Jews of Jamaica as Black because they are a mixture of North African, Spanish, and Portuguese leavened with West Africans.  Looking at photos online, it would be easy to say that they are “Black”.  Louisiana’s old laws would call them so.

3

So here I am, sister to both the oppressor and the oppressed.  A familiar feeling when American and Black let along American, Jewish, and Black.   As a result, my writing is so mixed.  I expect readers to have a passing knowledge of the Hebrew bible, the Christian bible and a little bit of Black history.  In one story, I expected the reader to know the major Hindu gods and recognize the name of a major African-American college.  Every human being has a mixed or stratified history.  But years and willful forgetfulness separate some readers from the raids, the midnight purges, and rapes that created them.  They know what the word “flushed” means but dozens of other words escape them and those words will never be clues on Sunday morning.

My complaining would have more weight if I wrote more fiction.  Lately, I come up with conversations that I wished to write, but no real story.    I am doing a lot of reading.

I am still listening to/reading John LeCarre’s “The Mission Song”.

“Still reading” is sometimes a reproach and sometimes celebration. Am I still reading because the book is difficult to get through? Or because I don’t want to let go of beautiful prose and characters that I’ve come to love?  

No surprise here: I love LeCarre’s character Salvo and his lover Hannah. However, I’ve arrived at the section of the book where you cringe at the character’s actions. Salvo decides to ambush-meet his supervisor and you clutch your chair’s armrest in fear. Salvo makes a phone call to his ex-wife’s boss and you want to slap him. ‘Brother! Have you forgotten that you’re Black? These people have no loyalty to you. They only accepted your humanity in the last hundred years.’ So I listen for a while and turn the CD off. I can’t take it. The reviews on amazon.com mention the humor in the story and it’s there. But right now, all I see is the train wreck a’coming.

Speaking of listening—versus reading. I bought this for my trip to Houston. I always loved to rent CDs for long drives. That audio rental place has closed, but I found LeCarre’s novel on the sale rack at a bookstore. I was initially disappointed to see that LeCarre himself would not be reading the book. He’s a great reader of his own work. He does all of the accents and you can hear the class differences in his pronunciation. The actor that they hired is just as good. It’s been wonderful. I have only 1 ½ CD’S remaining. Pray for the very naïve Salvo. After all, he’s never read a LeCarre novel.