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Since he was a little boy my middle son has been a serial enthusiast. Back then it was rocks, carnivorous plants, Dmitri Mendeleev and the periodic table, coins, electronics – one focus of interest after another. He wasn’t fickle or easily distracted by the next shiny thing. Rather, he is blessed to find the world filled with interesting things, and it would be a shame to neglect any of them. Guy Davenport might have been writing about Michael in his introductory note to The Hunter Gracchus (1996): “I am not writing for scholars or fellow critics, but for people who like to read, to look at pictures, and to know things.”  In our most recent telephone conversation, the topic was the Byzantine general Belisarius (c. 505-565 A.D.), who served under Emperor Justinian I. Belisarius reconquered much of the territory formerly part of the Western Roman Empire, including North Africa, that had been lost less than a century earlier to the barbarians. Belisarius is judged a military tactician of genius, rivalling Alexander and Julius Caeser. Michael is a first lieutenant, a cyber officer, in the Marine Corps, so the appeal is obvious. What we know of Belisarius’ life is a mingling of history, rumor and legend. Edward Gibbon’s account in Chap. 41 of his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire makes compelling reading. Here he describes the defeat of the Moors in 535:   “The formidable strength and artful conduct of Belisarius secured the neutrality of the Moorish princes, whose vanity aspired to receive in the emperor's name the ensigns of their regal dignity. They were astonished by the rapid event, and trembled in the presence of their conqueror. But his approaching departure soon relieved the apprehensions of a savage and superstitious people. . . . and when the Roman general hoisted sail in the port of Carthage, he heard the cries and almost beheld the flames of the desolated province. Yet he persisted in his resolution; and leaving only a part of his guards to reinforce the feeble garrisons, he entrusted the command of Africa to the eunuch Solomon, who proved himself not unworthy to be the successor of Belisarius.”   For amateur readers and non-scholars, history can be frustrating. How do we sift myth from reality when original sources are scarce and authorities disagree? Who do we trust? And what of those with no historical rigor who settle for complacent legend and contented ignorance? Maryann Corbett considers such things in her poem “Late Night Thoughts While Watching the History Channel” (which a friend of mine always calls the "Hitler Channel"):   “Is it by God’s mercy   that children are born not knowing   the long reach of old pain?   “That the five-year-old, led by the hand   past the graffiti, cannot fathom   his mother’s tightening grip,   “or why, when a box of nails   clatters to the tile like gunfire,   his father’s face contorts?   “So slow is the knitting of reasons,   the small mind’s patching of meaning from such ravel   “as a cousin’s offhand story,   or a yellowed clipping whose old news   flutters from a bottom drawer,   “or some bloodless snippet of history   dully intoned as you doze off, in the recliner—   “so slow that only now, in my seventh decade,   do I turn from these sepia stills,   this baritone voiceover, chanting   the pain of immigrant forebears,   my thought impaled on a memory:   “my twelve-year-old self, weeping   on Sundays fifty years ago   when my father drove us to mass   but stood outside, puffing his Chesterfields,   “doing what his father had done,   and his father’s father before him,   wordless to tell me why.”   History is more than academic. It overlaps the personal. We all dwell in history, even Americans. Not long before his death, my brother learned that our mother’s side of the family – the names are Hayes, McBride, Hendrickson – was once Roman Catholic. How did he learn this? Why hadn’t we known this before? What caused the severance? With his death, what he learned sinks again into the gloom. “The small mind’s patching of meaning from such ravel.”

Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Campo dei Fiori” by Czesław Miłosz appeared first on The American Scholar.

“I recall admiring the calmly expository flavor and simple, nonjudgemental humanity of profile stories Patrick Kurp contributed to the Gazette, years and years ago.”  After three decades, I’ve heard from a former newspaper colleague, a music writer, Mike Hochanadel. A retired photographer and newspaper alumnus, Marc Schultz, alerted me to Mike’s blog, “Hoke’s Jukebox” (“Quiet reflections on a loud life”) devoted to happenings in upstate New York, where I lived and worked for nineteen years.   Mike refers to the features I wrote for The Daily Gazette in Schenectady from 1994 to 1999. In particular, I wrote a weekly series about “hamlets,” mostly in Saratoga County. I use quotation marks because these are not places that officially exist, at least according to any government, including the post office. Often they were rural crossroads without signs, phantom places from the nineteenth century.   I would consult old maps, identify a promising defunct community, perhaps do a little research at the library and spend the day tramping around the hamlet. Usually, I would visit the cemetery, reading the stones that hadn’t been erased by acid rain, then knock on doors. Once I happened on a burial, in a grave dug by hand by the cemetery caretaker, a garrulous old man. Most people would talk to me, though often they were puzzled that anyone was curious about the place. Sometimes their families had lived there for generations. Other were newcomers. Slowly, over the course of the day, after many interviews, I formed an impression of the place. Then I drove back to the office and wrote my story. I remember Koons Corners and Porters Corners. All the stories are clipped and buried in a file cabinet. The novelist William Kennedy once asked if I was trying to be the Charles Kuralt of the Capital Region.   I used to tell journalism students that I worked in two media – words and people. I was seldom interested in most conventional journalistic beats – government, business, politics, courts – though I had to cover all those fields and I’m grateful for the experience. I just never had much interest in “news,” and still don’t. People interest me, as does the quality of the writing. Mike’s description of my prose above is pleasing to hear. I worked hard on my copy to avoid clichés but at the same time to avoid purple language. In other words, I tried to be concise and precise.     On this date, April 7, in 1891, Jules Renard wrote in his journal: “Style is the forgetting of all styles.”   [The quoted passage is from Renard’s Journal 1887-1910 (trans. Theo Cuffe, selected and introduced by Julian Barnes, riverrun, 2020).]

An army of activists The post Helina Metaferia appeared first on The American Scholar.