The Bells (poem)

By Tracy

The Bells

... the silence, wanly prinkt 
with forms of lingering notes            
– Christopher Brennan

In Germany, there appear to have been few
instances of overt resistance to the [Nazi]
confiscation of church bells. – Kirrily Freeman

I tilt the window
and they pour in here
cascading, swallowing
till I can’t separate
sacred from secular –
how could it matter?
More than a marker
of time or collection
sanctus or death-knell
barely an interval
they take possession
with body and tongue.
Once they were named as
metallic resources.
Churches flew swastikas.
You can see photos
of the bell-graveyards
thousands awaiting
recasting for service
from all over Europe.
Now in TĂĽbingen
they ring out in order:
some are survivors,
missed requisition
by virtue of heritage –
others too recent
to carry that weight.

Tracy Ryan

New German crime fiction

By Tracy

I am three-quarters of the way through reading a new German crime title, Schreie im Nebel (lit. Screams or Cries in the Fog), by Tina Schlegel. It's her first crime novel, and is tagged as a "Bodensee Krimi" -- the Bodensee being what we call Lake Constance in English, and the novel's setting.

Apparently regional crime novels (Regionalkrimi or simply Regiokrimi) are big in Germany -- I happened on this one because it was newly out and available in my nearest bookshop. The Bodensee is in this region, so I thought it could be interesting.

Imagine my surprise on discovering that the main character, the detective Paul Sito, was a vegan.

I don't think I have ever come across a vegan protagonist in a novel before.

Not being a fan of novels about serial killing, especially when they're gory, I am nonetheless intrigued to see the way in which Schlegel has brought discourses about animal rights, violence and crime together in this story.

There's also the question of the way place is affected by the underlying (sometimes not so underlying) twentieth-century history of specific violence. Some aspects of this, though not with reference to Schlegel's book because it's just new, are addressed in the book of essays, Tatort Germany: The Curious Case of German-Language Crime Fiction, edited by Lynn M. Kutch and Todd Herzog.

Browsing through it, I discovered that Germany has a police-procedural crime fiction series that's been running since 1970 -- also called Tatort (which means "crime scene"). And I thought The Bill was long-running! The Bill, however, was largely focussed on one place, with only occasional forays elsewhere (as far as I ever saw) -- whereas the German series relies on regional difference in each story.

Vegan goulash with seitan and dumplings

By Tracy

Here in this part of Germany, it's not difficult to find vegan items in ordinary shops, and there is a wide range of seitan-based foods, as well as veganised versions of traditional noodles, dumplings etc (that is, made without the egg that might be in the traditional ones).

There are lots of vegan goulash recipes on the internet, but I thought I'd add my variation. Goulash is originally Hungarian but there are variations on it all over Europe.

Everything in this recipe could be made vegan from scratch -- I used all fresh vegetables, but pre-made seitan, packet-mix dumplings and spätzle. (Maybe before leaving Germany I will have to get a spätzle-maker like the one on this page, because there won't be any pre-made.) Having both dumplings and spätzle is doubling up a bit, but it was very cold on the day I made it, and as a French mother once said to me long ago, in a European winter, il faut des calories...

It's snowing again today, so that might be a good excuse for more vegan goulash.

Vegan Goulash

Ingredients

Oil for frying
Large onion, chopped
1 eggplant
4-6 medium tomatoes
6 large button mushrooms
Enough seitan for 3 people (!)
Spices for goulash (mine were a mix of: Paprika, chilli, cumin, marjoram, garlic, thyme, cloves, rosemary --20g total) -- the essential is the paprika
Other veg (I added potatoes and chunks of carrot)
Vegan cooking cream (different brands available depending where you live)
Fresh lemon

For dumplings: I used packet mix, but you can make them from scratch if you have time and patience. Half-&-half dumplings use half pre-cooked potato and half raw -- they are then dropped gently into boiling water and simmered for 20-30 minutes. You could also try the Vegan Society's recipe.)

In our case: vegan spätzle to serve -- you could also use rice...

Sauté chopped onion in oil and spices (being careful not to burn spices), then add cubed eggplant till it cooks very soft. Next add in chopped tomatoes (very small pieces if keeping skins on) and mushroom.

In a separate pan, fry the seitan to seal (it doesn't usually go mushy, but this makes sure it keeps texture) -- and add the spätzle when the seitan has browned. Dumplings simmering alongside, there.

Just before the meal is ready to serve, squeeze fresh lemon juice into the goulash mixture, and stir through a little vegan cooking cream (or use thinly to garnish) -- if you want super-spicy, don't use too much vegan cream!

I put the seitan and spätzle onto the plate as a base, then topped with the goulash.

Last step: eat. Served in this case with "lamb's lettuce", also known as corn salad.

Review

By Tracy


Terrific review in Stride magazine of John's two latest books, Firebreaks (Norton) and Drowning in Wheat (Picador).

John doesn't usually blog reviews but I am going to, because I am so pleased to see a reviewer "get" what a book is about (or two books!).

Pleasantries

 ‘Das Angenehme dieser Welt hab’ ich genossen’

                                    Hölderlin

Don’t rely on another time of year.

It is now. Moss on the rough bark

of a wingnut tree says ‘north, north’

and the supplanted dead on their side

of the Ammer chew over the thirst of roots:

their sublingual gasp, their spread; suction.

All that has been drawn – materia medica –

from the graveyard-made-botanical-garden

is filed away somewhere in this town,

seedbank of the Green movement,

the left wing struggling to lift from

its muddy tomb, flash its bright feathers.

            John Kinsella

Afterthought: a poem

Afterthought

A whole half-life has happened since you went.

Thirty-five years. Whose life was that? Mozart

had so much – it was more time than you got.

You stayed just long enough to reach “grown-up”

and that was it. It’s not about talent

wasted, or what you might have been: who gives

a shit about accomplishments? Not us,

not now. On the far side of the planet

from anything you saw or could have guessed,

looking up weather, I noticed the date

and thought of you. This is the way you ghost,

through numbers, intimations, other lives.

No Google search will ever turn you up

your relics are in hard copy, or lost.

Or in my poem. Thirty-five times round,

and I am sure I’m not alone to note

this, where you rise for an instant to cross

a scattered consciousness, then fall to rest.

Tracy Ryan 

Weiterschwingen -- Rilke, resonance and response

posted by Tracy

Rainer Maria Rilke

Love Song


How shall I still my soul so it won’t stir
against your soul? How shall I lift it over
you, elevate it toward other things?
Oh, I would like to leave it with whatever
is lost and wasted in some unfamiliar
dark, hidden spot that never rings
in answer when your deepest places do.
Yet everything that touches me and you
takes us together in the way a bow-
stroke draws a single voice out of two strings.
What is this instrument we’re stretched upon?
Who is the player that has us in his hands?
Such a sweet song.


(from New Poems, trans. Tracy Ryan)

A rejection of  "Order" in its relation to power and fascism, aesthetically & otherwise

Doing some background reading while working on Rilke's poems, I came across an article about his so-called Milanese letters, in which in 1926 he expressed an admiration for Mussolini and fascism. Deeply disturbing – so many great poems, but a dubious person -- as Clive James wrote, "no paragon of humanity", or elsewhere, more colloquially, "[i]n many respects Rilke was a prick". (As an aside I don't have time for here, James's wider-context comments provoked much discussion and disagreement.)

I have been thinking a lot about "Ordnung" or "order", here in Germany, immersed not in Rilke's country (he was born in Prague when it was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire) but in his language -- or one of his languages...  Even in the "Love Song" above, whose ironies have to be appreciated, there is a sense of wanting, if one is to have a relationship, a clear, clean, unmessy one -- seeking purity of self (a kind of Ordnung too) which seems afraid of empathy. While working on my translation I also wrote a kind of response -- ringing or singing further, a "weiterschwingen" to the "schwingen"... which seeks to reject this obsession with Ordnung and its relation to fascism.


Disordered (a poem in response)

“so mächtig und ungeduldig ist mein Verlangen nach Ordnung”
“so powerful and impatient is my desire for order”– Rilke, Milanese letters


Over and over the same thing
just a matter of innocent repeating
and all will be uniform

Never mind the ragged edges
that improbable moon
will soon be full again

trailing disorder but in a manner
wholly cyclical, so sickening
to find in nature and “human nature”

the justification of your own desire
though I cannot love chaos either –
these are two halves of the one

circle, each das halbe Leben, a face
beaming back at you what you project
and I reject the aesthetics of clockwork

too, the metrical turn – I want to happen
across words like a finishing, fallible
streak, one more minor disintegration

among the millions and who cares if we are
out of order so long as we can love each other
not fearing reverberation like strings on your

violin, nor longing for dark and silent spaces
but giving a big bright fiddler’s hickey to
whoever holds us and is playing us if he’s there


Tracy Ryan