Missing the Dead

"... all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again, for that library where every book shall lie open to one another" -- John Donne, 'Meditation XVII', Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions.

So says Donne. Yet, sometimes, it is hard not to feel that the death of a great man or woman is a tearing out of a page in a book. The death of Roger Ebert and yes, Margaret Thatcher, reinforced this for me, but not as much as reading a collection of the letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. I have to admit that I half-expected his letters to be slightly embarrassing, a bit like encountering the unreconstructed opinions of the elderly. (And I was also ready to forgive him for them, out of the love I have for his fiction.) But in fact, the letters speak to me, and move me greatly, with their intensely felt warmth (towards his children and friends) and in their painstakingly well-constructed and well-thought out opinions. I should have expected this, of course. I found myself longing for a time when people wrote considered letters to each other, and also for a time of conviction, not hasty, cowardly judgements: Tolkien comes across as resolute in his opinions, calm and yet struggling with matters entirely human. To just give a taste of how surprising his opinions can be, however, let me excerpt a letter he wrote to his son, Christopher, on 29 November 1943:

My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs) – or to 'unconstitutional' Monarchy. I would arrest anybody who uses the word State (in any sense other than the inanimate realm of England and its inhabitants, a thing that has neither power, rights nor mind); and after a chance of recantation, execute them if they remained obstinate! If we could get back to personal names, it would do a lot of good. Government is an abstract noun meaning the art and process of governing and it should be an offence to write it with a capital G or so as to refer to people. If people were in the habit of referring to 'King George's council, Winston and his gang', it would go a long way to clearing thought, and reducing the frightful landslide into Theyocracy. 

Another surprising glimpse is of Tolkien as a young, career-minded don in Oxford: something which must have been a part of his life, but not really how one imagines Tolkien. There are also, for the Oxonian, lovely spine-tingling moments when he speaks of Oxford and its places -- which reassures me that one can still commune with the dead. This letter, again to this son Christopher, dated 30 Jan 1945, happily combines both, with a dose of comradeship with C. S. Lewis. Also proves that college administration never improves, through the ages:

 But I got to Magdalen, where after a brief shiver over 2 depressing elm-logs (elm won't burn) we decided to seek warmth and beer at the Mitre: we got both (pubs manage their business better than bursars: upon my word, I don't think the latter gentry would even hold down a Kiwi job in the R.A.F.!). A good many things happened then. My rest was rudely broken by a 'phone call on business from which quite incidentally I learned the startling news that Prof. H. C. Wyld died on Saturday. God rest his soul. But he leaves me a legacy of terrestrial trouble. For one thing I've got to make up mind what to do about the succession. Five years ago I'd have been thinking of how to get the Merton chair myself: my ambition was to get C.S.L. and myself into the 2 Merton Chairs. It would be marvellous to be both in the same college — and for me to be in a real college and shake off the dust of miserable Pembroke. But I think prob. not – even if there was a chance.

Which leads us back to Death. Reading Tolkien's letters made me miss him; it made me really wish he was still around. One realises what a huge, sucking vacuum the death of someone like him leaves. All the accumulated erudition, time-tested relationships, the meaning and significance of the deceased to each person who knew and interacted with him -- all of that is sunk when a person dies. And one is expected to just move on?

***

More excerpts from Tolkien's letters, because I absolutely cannot resist. Some glimpses of his reaction to Americans, who must have continually surprised him, first with their mannerisms and then their astonishing fervour for his work.  Quoting a fan's letter to Christopher, 25 October 1944:

'Dear Mr Tolkien, I have just finished reading your book The Hobbit for the 11th time and I want to tell you what I think of it. I think it is the most wonderful book I have ever read. It is beyond description ... Gee Whiz, I'm surprised that it's not more popular ... If you have written any other books, would you please send me their names?' 

John Barrow 12 yrs. West town School, West town, Pa.' 

[...]  

 It's nice to find that little American boys do really still say 'Gee Whiz'.

On 5 June 1955, in the New York Times Book Review, there was an account of Tolkien and his writings:

What, we asked Dr [sic] Tolkien, makes you tick? Dr T., who teaches at Oxford when he isn't writing novels, has this brisk reply: "I don't tick. I am not a machine. (If I did tick, I should have no views on it, and you had better ask the winder.)"

And for the geeks, from a letter of 4 November 1954, an instance (among innumerable others) of Tolkien taking his world very seriously, approaching it not as an inventor but as a chronicler and expert, this time on the objection that Gandalf's resurrection was 'cheating', and clarifying the powers and nature of wizards or the Istari:

Gandalf may be enhanced in power (that is, under the forms of this fable, in sanctity), but if still embodied he must still suffer care and anxiety, and the needs of flesh. He has no more (if no less) certitudes, or freedoms, than say a living theologian. In any case none of my 'angelic' persons are represented as knowing the future completely, or indeed at all where other wills are concerned. Hence their constant temptation to do, or try to do, what is for them wrong (and disastrous): to force lesser wills by power: by awe if not by actual fear, or physical constraint.

'The Paradise of Cities'

(Donato Bertelli's Map of Venice, 1566)

The Victorians -- John Ruskin comes to mind, in particular -- visited Venice because they enjoyed the characteristically Victorian blend of melancholy and moralising. For them, Venice was a warning to England, an example to be heeded. Ruskin, in the Stones of Venice (1851), saw it his task to

trace the lines of this image before it be for ever lost, and to record, as far as I may, the warning which seems to me to be uttered by every one of the fast-gaining waves, that beat, like passing bells, against the STONES OF VENICE.  

The sight of Venice's melancholy desolation, its unbearable beauty, and its ethereal, watery existence provoked especial thrill. To quote Ruskin again, Venice

is still left for our beholding in the final period of her decline: a ghost upon the sands of the sea, so weak—so quiet,—so bereft of all but her loveliness

Venice and its history were, to put it crudely, being consumed as a pornography of decline and ruin, much like the gawking that happens with photographs of a disused and decaying Detroit.

This nineteenth-century mindset is still very much with us and shapes much of Venetian tourism. It has been heightened by vague environmental awareness of the dangers and perils facing Venice. Tourism itself, and this is another commonplace, threatens the very soul of the city, even as it is utterly indispensable to the Venetian economy. Rising prices, lack of local communities are turning a living city into a dying museum, sending local, real Venetians fleeing. The point of going to Venice, even if it's for a day (an incredible, deplorable 70% of visitors to Venice are day trippers), is to see it before it inevitably sinks into oblivion -- physically and in spirit. Or so you'll hear.

Yet the impressions I received on this trip seemed to add up to something slightly more complex. Sure, in the melancholy of the sestiere (district) of Cannaregio where I stayed, with its decaying buildings and dark quiet, one could at times feel like the consummate connoisseur of decline. But Cannaregio was in fact incredibly lively, populated with locals and quality bars and restaurants. The city was well-run and efficient, overturning stereotypes of Italian misgovernment. Case in point: the waterbuses (vaporetti) were never late. (The only delay in my entire journey was due to Easyjet.) My landlord, a local Venetian, was extremely proud of Venice, its history, the history of the place he ran, the quarter he lives in -- and many Venetians I met were similarly proud, almost defiant. (Venetians seem to live as much in the past as in the present. Over an excellent espresso, my landlord openly lamented Napoleon's barbaric looting of Venice, in front of all the guests, who aside from myself and my companion, were all French.) The winged lion of St. Mark, prominently depicted in the Venetian flag -- which was everywhere -- seemed to represent this spirit of defiance: passant guardant and staring down doubters. Like the decline of the humanities, such predictions of demise, and the accompanying decrying, are often a sign of vitality and strength. I reckon Venice will last a long time yet.

(The Lion of St Mark, Vittore Carpaccio)

The relation to tourism is, to my mind, complex too. Venice was, after all, always a city of visiting merchants and migrants. (Hence the existence of places like the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, once the living quarters of the city's German merchants.) Comments about how Venetians were outnumbered by aliens went back a long way: at the end of the fifteenth century, the French ambassador Philippe de Commynes acidly remarked that 'most of their people are foreigners'.

(The Fondaco dei Tedeschi, just by the Rialto bridge.)

Yes, the day-trippers, who simply catch a glimpse of St Mark's Square and are then quickly evacuated back to the mainland are fools. But Venice has always cultivated extraordinary tourists, who fall in love with the city and proceed to champion its cause. One has only to note the number of funds and charities dedicated to rescuing and restoring Venice. It is through the eyes of famous tourists -- Ruskin, Byron, among countless others -- that we first view Venice, even if we outgrow their views and come to develop our own. And these distinguished visitors -- and also those less so -- have always been part of Venice's history. More so now than ever, it needs enlightened tourists, willing to defend it as if they were the inheritors of Venice themselves. I think again of Ruskin, who played a crucial part in Venice's conservation and restoration. His less famous piece on Venice was St Mark's Rest (1877-84), subtitled 'The history of Venice, written for the help of the few travellers who still care for her monuments'. I have no doubt such champions exist today, and will continue to do so.

Long may it live, defying the prophecies of ruin! 

Overmuch Study

I've been submerged under much reading, hence my absence from this space. (Furthermore, I often don't find it worthwhile to broadcast my opinions and emotions until I've thought them through quite a bit. This is an exception.) On the topic of study though, an old teacher of mine has reminded me of this passage from Robert Burton's incomparable Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), on 'overmuch study'. It deserves further circulation:

hard students are commonly troubled with gouts, catarrhs, rheums, cachexia, bradiopepsia, bad eyes, stone and colic, crudities, oppilations, vertigo, winds, consumptions, and all such diseases as come by overmuch sitting; they are most part lean, dry, ill-coloured, spend their fortunes, lose their wits, and many times their lives, and all through immoderate pains, and extraordinary studies. If you will not believe the truth of this, look upon great Tostatus and Thomas Aquinas's works, and tell me whether those men took pains?

That last line, I often think, hits just the right note. Burton should have taken some of his own advice though, and anyone who cares to peruse the Anatomy will understand.

(Funerary monument of Robert Burton, pseudonym 'Democritus Junior', Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford) 

Speaking of teachers, the spate of nostalgia-ridden posts on facebook (including my own) commemorating the Anglo-Chinese School's (ACS) Founder's Day has cheered me up, even if it's saddened me too. Like many thoroughly postmodernised trainees of the academy, I think I tend to react sceptically towards most claims of identity and in particular, institutional ones. But there is no denying that ACS is the one school in Singapore that seems to command such fierce and undying loyalty. (I expect angry letters in response to this claim.) We must surely be doing something right.

Happy Founder's Day, ACSians. The best is yet to be. 

Django Unchained and the Old World

SPOILERS ALERT: This post presumes knowledge of Django Unchained and includes spoilers.

*

Reviewers have commented on many aspects of Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained, like its violence and its take on race relations and slavery. (A lot of this commentary is remarkably juvenile, as if we were still at primary school debate levels. Is the violence excessive or not? Is it racist or not? Who gives a flying toss?) But I haven't seen much about the film's treatment of the Old World. 

Dr. King Schultz, phenomenally played by Christoph Waltz, is in a way, the foremost representative of the Old World and, by behaving in his own, eccentric way, a repudiation of America. He is glib, sophisticated and much better at the English language than its supposed native speakers -- who deem him 'fancypants'. He also seems to be a civilising, and therefore destabilising force. He despises slavery, treats Django as his equal and acts oblivious to the consternation he causes. In teaching Django how to read, for example, he is the crucial facilitator for a new understanding of the black race -- by blacks themselves and by whites. It is also significant that Schultz is German, of course, for the plot. (I shan't say more.) But as a German, Schultz is able to tell Django the story of Brünnhilde (corrupted to 'Broomhilda' in the New World!) and Siegfried. Schultz's reading of Django as a real-life Siegfried awakens a romantic impulse, animating the otherwise cynical Schultz to help Django rescue his wife. 

It is when Schultz, Django and Calvin Candie, the owner of a huge plantation and Mandingo fighting enthusiasts meet that Schultz's role as representative of the Old World is fully realised. We hear that Candie is a Francophile who prefers to be called Monsieur Candie. But Schultz is then warned not to speak French to him, lest he embarrasses Candie, because of course, the vulgar Francophile speaks no French. (Django senses this too, and he mocks Candie when addresses him, Frenchifying 'Candie' when he addresses him.) The ultimate irony hits when Schultz points out that Alexandre Dumas, whose Three Musketeers Candie admires, was in fact black. Schultz's presence serves to expose Candie's pretensions to civilisation (which includes an appeal to the false science of phrenology). Indeed, the civility and hospitality of Southern aristocracy -- built on slaves and ill-treatment of slaves -- is shown to be a sham. (Briefly: it is in this context that the gruesome violence of Mandingo fighting and other instances makes sense, thematically.)

Schultz dies, because his role is fulfilled. He isn't meant to impose the Old World on the New. Rather, he is meant, like purifying fire, to destroy one vision of the New World and usher in another. 

Food and Identity

I'm a big fan of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations series (now sadly concluded). For those who haven't heard of this great man, Bourdain's a chef turned world-roaming gastronomic picaro. I am sometimes incredulous about his success -- one can't quite believe that he gets paid (a lot) to do this: to turn up in various parts of the world, eat, face the camera and talk. But it works. Bourdain, like the best TV personalities (Jon Stewart comes to mind), trades on mensch-ness, an essential authenticity that says, 'I'm just a good guy'. His TV food-talk, unlike some of the aberrant varieties of food porn, is funny and evocative, with just the right level of lavish, fawning description liberally laced with profanity. I bring up Bourdain because watching him, one is always reminded of the importance of food -- real, earthy food of the people -- to community and cultures. He doesn't essentialise and simplify the cuisines of cultures and yet somehow often manages to penetrate the core of the place (and its people) he's visiting.

As a Singaporean, as I've mentioned before, I have an inalienable birthright: an entitlement to good food. Understanding Singaporean food is one way to understand Singapore -- as a story of ongoing cultural experimentation. Singapore is often introduced to foreigners as a gateway to Asia, or as Asia-lite. In Singapore, people are often told, one can get Malay, Chinese and Indian food. I've done this several times as well. This clever, neat story really obscures what's going on, which is a tale from deep history.

I'm most familar with the Chinese story, so I'll stick to that one. When the Chinese descended from the Southern China and started settling in parts of Southeast Asia and the Malay Archipelago -- way before the British and other colonists had come -- they probably thought they were simply feeding demand and more importantly, themselves. Much like today, China was hungry for resources, often local produce like rice, gambier, sago, tin and pepper. As they settled though, new forms of culture and ways of living came into being, evolving as the generations passed. The Peranakans (sometimes called Nyonya/Baba or Straits Chinese) are sometimes upheld as the prime example of this: offspring of mixed Chinese and indigenous parentage with distinctive dress, food and customs, mixing Malay and Chinese elements. The reality, however, is that all the Chinese who came to the Straits started to live differently, interacting with the indigenous Malays and then the British and the Indian labourers that came along. And so did everyone else. The food, again, is the evidence of this. Singaporean Chinese food is often unique to at least the Malay Archipelago, if not Singapore itself. The same can be said of Singaporean Indian and Malay food.

Imagine for a moment: a stall in a hawker centre in Singapore selling 'Indian-Muslim' food, usually with a signboard of green type against a white background, with the Islamic crescent at one side. It might sell these items: roti prata, mee goreng, roti john and Indian rojak. The first, a flaky, buttery fried pancake, cannot be found in quite the same form in India. The second, a plate of eerie red stir-fried noodles, uses Chinese-style noodles. The third is French bread coated in egg and mutton mince and fried -- and it bears an Englishman's name. The last is the Malay word for 'mixture' (but it's nothing like the rojak the Chinese sell, which is a salad): it is a collection of various fried dough fritters, but it also includes fried beancurd and cuttlefish. The place is run by a Muslim Indian, perhaps of Tamil descent. Just what is going on here? It's the story of nearly every dish in Singapore. Try it: point to something, think about its origins, and one often finds a story of cultural interaction. It won't be some timeless element of an ancient cuisine: more likely, it's a fairly recent invention. (Our food bloggers, like Dr. Leslie Tay of ieatishootipost, have done a great job -- and tremendous service -- uncovering these histories: like that of chilli crab.)

Truth is, in the restless world of globalised capitalism -- and in a ruthlessly globalised city like Singapore, very little stays the same for long. We shouldn't despair though, because Singapore was born under the sign of globalisation, as a critically placed port city riffing off larger trends, whether in trade or culture. We have been for a long time, even before the British came, a crucible of cultural experimentation, a forerunner of the globalised world. (In a long history of globalisation, Singapore, along with places like Macau and Penang, would feature very prominently as the ur-globalised cities.) To fully embrace Singapore as a cultural phenomenon one should celebrate continual change and more importantly, resist simplification. I've seen this many times overseas: the complexity of our identities often causes us to simplify the Singaporean condition, to reduce ourselves to something we think is more comprehensible, to explain ourselves by capitulating to seemingly more dominant cultures. For example: we speak English and Mandarin Chinese in our own way, and we shouldn't feel insecure about this, nor should we regard the ways in which the English, Americans or Beijingers speak it as somehow more authentic. This truth seems self-evident when we talk about Singaporean food. It is however, true of nearly all aspects of Singaporean life. And this, perhaps, is the closest I will ever come to trying to understand what being Singaporean means. 

City of Books

One of my favourite book haunts is Bras Basah Complex, on Victoria Street, near the National Library building in Singapore. Full of second-hand bookstores, I still go there whenever I'm back home. One of its Chinese names, in fact, is 书城(City of Books). I've spent many an afternoon there, inhaling the uniquely fusty scent that only old books have, searching and finding all manner of treasures. That last thing I bought there was a copy of the Cambridge edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, in almost perfect condition. For $5 (£2.50)! The most visible shop, Evernew Bookstore, still has a ludicrous three books for $5 (£2.50) offer. That whole stretch, of course, from Raffles City to Bugis, is one very close to home, and has a special place in my heart: I recall many days spent in the National Library, researching for my IB extended essay and then retiring for the day to the Hans downstairs for a cup of coffee with friends and teachers. 

What I didn't know was that the Complex merely brought together bookstores that had been operating on Bras Basah Road long before. Bras Basah Road was, in the postwar days, a hive of intellectual activity. (It is still a road with many historic landmarks today.) It played a crucial role in those heady days of anti-colonial fervour. Tan Kok Chiang, one of the first graduates of Nanyang University, recalls that bookstores such as Shanghai Book Store and Youth Book Store (still in Bras Basah today) were hangouts of the Chinese-educated student activists of those days. Tan claimed that while the English-educated students would go to Bras Basah to buy textbooks, more progressive (and radical) literature could be found there as well. That bit of history helps the present-day visitor to Bras Basah understand a strange sight: bookshops selling Mao's Red Book also sell used A-level textbooks. It wasn't just the Chinese-educated though. S Rajaratnam, one of the Singapore's Old Guard politicians and our first Foreign minister, used to haunt the Bras Basah bookstores as well. (I'm still hoping to find a book owned by someone famous.)

There is whole intellectual history to be written here: how postwar intellectuals in Singapore came by their knowledge, where they bought books, where they discussed their ideas and how they spread them. The mere physical process of buying and reading books demands a history that does justice to it,  not to mention the ideas themselves. I can't help but think that those were magnificent days, despite the threat of detention, the poverty and poor living conditions. To be young then, they all say, was very heaven. Today, sniffing cautiously about one of these bookstores, one can perhaps still get a whiff of 50s radicalism.

(The etymology of it all seems quite confused. Bras Basah is a misspelling of 'Beras Basah', meaning 'wet rice' in Malay. Apparently, before the land was filled in in that area, there was a lagoon that allowed boats carrying rice to come in. Wet rice would then need to be dried. Not sure if I buy this: as always, folk etymology needs a bit more research to back it up.)

Names

It is a technical matter, a small thing that I've never quite bothered to explain. Yet it is distinctive. It is instantly recognisable. My name is composed of four parts and does not conform to the Anglo-Saxon /Western model of First Name-Middle Name(s)-Surname. It is a historical phenomenon, the result of migrant Chinese adopting English names -- and limited to this part of the world. Take the name (I don't want to use mine here) of the President of Singapore: Tony Tan Keng Yam. The first two parts, 'Tony Tan', function the same way as a Western name would: David Cameron, James Joyce, John Doe, etc. But the surname, 'Tan', bridges the first part of the name with the Chinese second part. In Chinese names, say 'Hu Jintao', the surname comes first and the given name of one or two characters follows. Mr. Tony Tan's Chinese name is hence 'Tan Keng Yam' (陈庆炎). Some of us then, are given two set of names. And so in our four-part full names we manage to cunningly bridge East and West, like our island-city-nation-state has tried to do for a long time now.

But it's a completely different matters for Malays, of course, who often (but not always) don't use a family name. It's simply a personal name followed by a patronym, like the Icelandic. Take the name of the first President of Singapore, Yusof bin Ishak. He had no surname: 'bin Ishak' means 'son of Ishak'. For a woman, it'd be 'binti/binte' (often seen as 'bte'), meaning 'daughter of'.

Hence, academic citation conventions are potentially very insensitive to us non-Westerners. One ignorant of these rules would be tempted to cite Tony Tan and Yusof bin Ishak as:

Yam, Tony Tan Keng.
bin Ishak, Yusof.

And this is why, my friends, I sometimes place my two Chinese names in the middle, making my initials DWJL rather than DLWJ.

***

Addendum: a good point, raised by a reader. If one is faced with a three-part Chinese name, like our Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong, and one (for some imperialistic misguided reason) wishes to render this Given Name-Surname, then the correct procedure would be to take the last two as one part. Note that although it might seem that way, 'Loong' is not a middle name -- 'Hsien Loong' is a single given name. Hence 'Hsien Loong Lee' would be better than any other way of doing this. Of course, no one would ever dare try that on Mr. Lee.