Imaginary Places.

In my workroom I have posted a photograph of the place I was born. It was taken in 1986, the year of my birth. ‘The past is a foreign country’, goes the opening sentence in the novel "The Go-Between", ‘they do things differently there.’ When I look at the photograph I invert this idea, it makes my present foreign, and the past is home, albeit a lost home in a lost country and a lost time.

I have just revisited Sarajevo, my lost home, country and time, after an absence of almost half my life. It was an eerie experience. I felt as if I was being claimed, or informed that the facts of my faraway life were illusion, and that this was the reality. Then I went to visit the place I had lived and stood outside it, neither daring nor wishing to announce myself to its owners. I was overwhelmed. My memory, feeding on black and white images, where monochromatic and since the colors of my memory had seeped away, my eyes were now assaulted by a riot of colors. The vividness of the red tiled roofs, the greens, and grays of the vegetation and the unimaginable variety of the blues of the water the whole universe in glorious Technicolor.

Bosnia is a region built, claimed, and re-claimed by many foreigners. I who have been away so long qualified for the title. I too have a history to reclaim.

It may be that exiles or emigrants or expatriates, are haunted by some sense of loss, some urge to reclaim, to look back, even at the risk of being mutated into pillars of salt. If we do look back, we must also do so in the knowledge that it will give rise to profound uncertainties. Our physical alienation almost inevitably means that we will not be able to reclaim precisely the thing that was lost. In short, we will create fictions, imaginary places of our minds.

Writing this now, looking out the window on to a garden that is similar to the one I remember, I am re-thinking this. I am preoccupied, as I was on the flight and drive back, with the task to make clear in my mind that, in spite of my ambition to unlock the gates of lost time so that the past reappears as it had been, what I am actually doing is a story of memory and about memory, so that my Sarajevo is just that: ‘my’ Sarajevo, a version, and no more than one version of all the hundreds of possible versions. I tried to make it as imaginatively true as I could, but imaginative truth is simultaneously honorable and suspect, and I know that ‘my’ Sarajevo may be one to which I (who am no longer what I was, and who by leaving never became what perhaps I was meant to be) was willing to admit I belonged.

It may be argued that memory is a place from which we have all emigrated, that its loss is part of our common humanity.

The loop-de-loop Festina Lente pedestrian bridge in front of the Academy of Fine Art. Credit Todd Heisler/NYT

Christmas Back Where I Had Never Been.

From earliest memory, many of us have carried a picture of Christmas Past, each brushstroke detailed and framed by a lifetime of reading, listening, and longing. Today, with bags full of expectations, I am coming close to realizing that dream.

Many years ago the late John McNulty wrote a travel sketch for "The New Yorker" with the beguiling title, "Back Where I had Never Been." This Christmas, in London, I will travel back where I have never been.

Let Them Eat . . .

It is rather well known that the origins of many English phrases are completely unknown. Nevertheless, many people would claim, and with some conviction, that the quote “let them eat cake” is attributed to none other than the high priestess of opulence, Marie-Antoinette (1755-93), the Queen consort of Louis XVI. She is supposed to have said this when she was told that the French populace had no bread to eat.

The original French is ‘Qu’ils mangent de la brioche’, i.e. ‘Let them eat brioche’.  The usual interpretation of the phrase is that Marie-Antoinette understood little about the plight of the poor and cared even less.

There are two problems with that interpretation:

1. There’s no evidence of any kind that Marie-Antoinette ever uttered those word or anything like them and

2. The phrase, in as much as it can be shown to be associated with the French nobility, can be interpreted in other ways, for example, it could have either ironic or even a genuine attempt to offer cake to the poor as an alternative to the bread that they couldn’t afford.

As to the origin of the expression, two notable contemporaries of Marie-Antoinette – Louis XVIII and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, attribute the phrase to source other than her. In Louis XVIII’s memoir Relation d’un voyage a Bruxelles et d Coblentz, 1791, he states that the phrase ‘Que ne mangent-ils de la croûte de pâté?’ was used by Marie-Thérèse (1638-83), the wife of Louis XIV. That account was published almost a century after Marie-Thérèse’s death though, so it must be treated with some caution.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s 12-volume autobiographical work Confessions, was written in 1770. In Book 6, which was written around 1767, he recalls:

At length I recollected the thoughtless saying of a great princess, who, on being informed that the country people had no bread, replied, “Then let them eat pastry!”

Marie-Antoinette arrived at Versailles from her native Austria in 1770, two or three years after Rousseau had written the above passage. Whoever the ‘great princess’ was – possibly Marie-Thérèse, it wasn’t Marie-Antoinette.

Her reputation as an indulgent socialite is difficult to shake, but it appears to be unwarranted and is a reminder that history is written by the victors. She was known to have said “It is quite certain that in seeing the people who treat us so well despite their own misfortune, we are more obliged than ever to work hard for their happiness”.

In honor of Elizabeth II a scrumptious Victoria Sponge.  Let us eat cake!

The Invisibility of Holy Land Christians.

As a child growing up, I would occasionally hear about the ultimate in Christian travel—the Holy Land tour.  And the tour would be followed up by a slide show showing where its members had gone. The slides featured ancient stone buildings, panoramic views of Jerusalem, and sunglass-wearing tourists standing atop of the Mount of Olives with the golden Dome of the Rock in the background. But I don’t remember anyone ever talking about the Christians living there. There were pictures of churches, sure, but did anyone actually go to church there?

This empty space in the Christian imagination opened up for me again when recently I read about the controversial comments made by Senator Ted Cruz at the In Defense of Christians (IDC) conference in Washington, D.C., which was organized to raise awareness of the ongoing genocide of Christians that has been unleashed by radical Muslim groups such as ISIS or more properly DAIISH.  “If you will not stand with Israel and the Jews, then I will not stand with you,” Cruz said. But the conference wasn’t about Israel. It was about the ongoing slaughter of Middle Eastern Christians. When Cruz announced that he would not stand with them because they did not stand with Israel, he essentially consigned these people and their families and flocks to slaughter because they did not share his politics on the most controversial state in their region.

I was similarly struck when the Arabic letter nun (“N”) for Nasrani (“Nazarenes”) began to take over the profile pictures of many friends on social media. The West had learned that Iraqi Christians were being targeted by ISIS and that this letter was being painted on their homes to mark them out for extermination.

And yet while I wondered at people waking up to the fact that there are Christians in Iraq (or, increasingly, were), I wondered why my fellow Christians here don’t seem to realize that the whole Middle East is home to Christians.  At roughly 18 million strong, Christians constitute 5 percent of the total Middle Eastern population (though no one is sure of the real number), a little less than the population of Florida. Ten percent of Syrians and Egyptians are Christian. Forty-one percent of Lebanese are Christian. Americans are used to thinking of the Middle East as Muslims surrounding an island of Jews that it rarely occurs to them that there might be Christians in the birthplace of Christianity.

I had a good friend of Lebanese ancestry. People sometimes asked me if that meant he was Muslim. He was not. He was an Orthodox Christian. His father was an Orthodox Christian and his father was an Orthodox Christian. And so on. They were actually not really sure how far back their Christianity went, but the family originally came from Antioch (which is now in Turkey and was a major Syrian capital in the Roman Empire). I once asked when the family became Christian. The answer: “When Jesus rose from the dead.” There’s a good chance that that’s correct.

When the Apostles made their missionary journeys to the uttermost parts of the earth, history doesn’t say that they skipped the rest of the Middle East and headed straight for Europe. No, they immediately began founding Christian Communities right in their own neighborhood. Two major Syrian cities—Antioch and Damascus—figure quite large in early Christian history. They are mentioned in the New Testament and are still home to Christians.

Granted, when many American Christians think of “the Holy Land,” they don’t usually think beyond the borders of Israel. But Jesus went beyond those borders (e.g., to Tyre and Sidon, both Lebanese cities, as well as to Egypt in his youth), and the Apostles certainly did. And who can forget the Hebrew heritage in Egypt? Or that Abraham was from what is today Iraq? The Middle East is the very cradle of Christianity and its Jewish inheritance.

But even if we have a hard time wrapping our heads around the presence of Christians in the Middle East, we can look for them right here in America. The most numerous ethnic group of Middle Eastern people—those identifying as “Arabs”— number 1.7 million.  Of those, 63 percent are Christians. (Muslims account for only 24 percent of Arab Americans.) The average Arab in America is a Christian.

So why is the Middle Eastern Christian voice so unheard and so unknown in America?  It may be that their local spokesmen are not very well-organized. It may be, as some say, that they are “too Christian for the Left and too foreign for the Right.” And it may also be because of moments like Senator Cruz gave us at the IDC conference, where he effectively announced that he did not care that they were being slaughtered because they didn’t share his position on Israel—“speaking truth to the powerless,” one commentator put it.

But their voice needs to be heard, and it needs to be heard now. American Christians’ inability to see Middle Eastern Christians for who they are—not just fellow Christians, but human beings who are suffering and dying—contributes to the marginalization of some of the most persecuted people in the world, hastening their erasure from history.

Will we notice before the last Christian liturgy is held in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, that comes miraculously every Easter, is no longer greeted by “Christ is risen”?  Or will this generation witness the end of Christianity in the place where it began?

That glorious 12th.

The ides of August for those red feathered bullets of nature. The day when the great moorlands of Scotland resonate with the squelch of the landed gentry, moneyed bankers and the 'me, me too' each anxious to pay as much as £10,000 per day to bag that most treasured of trophies, the Red Grouse.

I, however, headed up to Charles’ place.  I won't lie; I am a terrible townie, I've a tortured relationship with the great outdoors, at times it's just not for me. Whilst everyone is tramping through the sodden heather soaked to the skin I shall be curled up in a reading nook with a book waiting on the chime of the dinner gong.  I will perhaps take a small constitutional round to the paddock and join everyone on the moor.

I have packed my; brown Hunter wellies,  brown cords and a truly ancient Brora sweater, all in muted tones  of course, as  grouse, like most Scots, are easily startled  by an over abundance of colour and pattern. 

Note the expression on Kate's face. That is my normal reaction to an invite to "That Glorious 12th". 

I do hope the sun tips her hat to your end-of-summer plans. xoxo

A hanging stillness.

 

I persuaded Clive to take me on a camel trek.  Apart from our guide, there was no one else.  We slept under the stars. I wanted to experience the emptiness of the desert and hear what it sounded like. It is a sort of hanging stillness unlike any I had ever felt. 

We walked along the crests of the magnificent dunes and looked out over the endless landscapes. I felt as if we had traveled beyond our world.

The Israelites fleeing Pharaoh required forty years for that which our plane accomplished in less than two hours.  If one had spent weary decades wandering through sterile wadis and scalding plains of baking sand and gravel, then the eastern region of the Mediterranean might have seemed an oasis by comparison.  But to the modern traveler it can be a letdown. 

“It is a hopeless, dreary, heartbroken land, with no dreamy blue mist to soften the perspective.  The naked hills appeared to have committed some terrible sin for which they had been stoned to death”, wrote Mark Twain.

A hundredfifty-some years later I saw nothing to amend that assessment.  For thirty centuries, “Cut down all the trees!” was every general’s order at the beginning of every siege.  From the British to the Crusaders, before them Pompey and Josephus told us that Titus axed every remaining tree within ten miles of Jerusalem.  And if any survived the armies, there were the locusts to denude them and goats that climbed into the topmost branches to crop their leaves.

Until you see the region, Charles told me, you cannot truly understand the many passages of the Scripture, Old and New, in which the commonness and troublesomeness of stones are drawn upon for metaphor.  And the Arabs, too, have a legend that explains the stones, Charles continued.  “When Allah made the world, he put all the stones that were to be used across the entire earth into two bags and gave them to an angel to distribute over the land.  While the angel was flying over this region, one bag broke.”

Arabs, Lebanese, Djebel Druses, Syrians, Kurds and Armenians, native-born Jews and European settlers, Turks, Persians and Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Palestianians, a thousand Bedouin tribes, and Colonial interests, all of these, and more, wanted something that usually involved taking land from someone else.

The sad fact is that each war begins in hope: hope of restoring lost honor, hope of redressing injustices and reclaiming tarnished glory, hope of a brave new world.  Each war ends with the black seeds of the next war sown: honor newly lost, injustice freshly inflicted, a world more broken than before. Always someone steps forward, ready to water and weed and harvest those black seeds.  The rationales warp, twist and shift.  The closer war comes, the simpler the choices.  Are you a warrior or a coward?  Are you with us or against us?  I thought that we had learned some enduring lessons from the stupendous carnage of war.  I honestly believed we had finally learned to value peace and progress and prosperity.

I wish I could argue that, but already the twenty-first century does not provide much evidence to deploy.   You can see why God must weep; how sad to grant free will and see it used so poorly.  Observing human history has turned out to be a terrible exercise in monotony. 

---

A model train, clickety-clack.

“What is worn under your kilt, sir?” asked the lassie.

“Why, nothin’s worn under me kilt, lassie.  Everything is in fine working order.”

Ahhhhhhh the anticipation of stepping on board a grand and majestic train and wondering being on board this charming anachronism-a private luxury train-will be like.

Inside, passengers settle in for the evening, enjoying perfect touches of comfort and luxury, echoing that of a romantic, bygone era.  The new journey commences, the heart flutters momentarily and one is not sure what to expect. 

The Royal Scotsman is a touring train that winds its way through the Highlands at a leisurely pace and stops for side trips off the train.  The trip combines the idiosyncrasies of train travel with the pleasures to be found in the Scottish countryside.

Inaugurated in 1985 as a joint venture The Royal Scotsman is a well-heeled train buff’s dream come true.  Originally the day-cars were beautifully restored antiques.  The dining car was the oldest operating in the world and the varnished teak and mahogany saloon car was built as a family car in 1912.  Decorative details-crystal sconces, silver saltcellars, fabrics of tapestry, polished brass fittings and fold-down sinks, framed antique etchings-conveyed a Belle Epoque sense of privilege.  The carriage leases ran for five years and it was a success – the train won the Queen's Award for Export. After the initial five-year period the decision was taken to purchase outright a different set of carriages, designed to the owner’s specifications. Ten Pullman carriages were bought and transformed by a specialist woodworking company in Bournemouth. This second rake of carriages replaced the first in May 1990.

Choose your journey; they all depart from Edinburgh.  The romantic landscapes that appear beyond the windows are soft and lovely-gold and russet moors alive with deer, silvery lakes, pastures of black faced sheep, small farms, rural villages, and patches of bright purple heather everywhere.

The weather is capricious in Scotland which makes for an ever-changing backdrop.  Thick gray clouds that open up to patches of blue sky give way to brilliant sunshine, which turns to a smooth pearl-grey sheet of clouds, which yields to rain, all in a morning.

Enchanting as the countryside is, it would probably not make the days on board engrossing.  What keeps the journey from becoming tedious, if not claustrophobic, and makes the journey so appealing, is the full schedule of off-train excursions to towns, distilleries, and houses of note made interesting by the guide with lilting brogue and an irrepressible enthusiasm for his native land.  He is the motherload of Scottish history, anecdotes, myths, and colloquialisms.  When glancing through the memory book signed by passengers at the end of the trip, it is the crew that is praised again and again.

Though most of the passengers enjoy after-dinner drinks and conversation on the train, be intrepid and venture out onto the country lanes to raise a wee dram or two of single malt whisky-Glenlivet, Glenfiddich, Glenfarclas, and Laphroaig-with the locals.  Pubs offer a distinct change from the rarefied atmosphere of the train and a chance to talk to the local Scots, if only about their preferences in malt whisky. Invariably some crew members appear, out of their uniforms and in their blue jeans, and in the spirit of democracy we imbibe or shoot pool side by side until the bartender’s hearty, “Drink oop, drink oop, bar’s closing’.”

By the last night of the trip a sense of camaraderie has developed.  And as the candle burns down, and talk turns to future trips, most feel the happy nostalgia of partners in a shared experience that has lasted just long enough.

Case Notes.

Someone asked if I was an expat living in Europe.  Alas no, I'm someone who wishes she was an American. I am, horrors, a wannabe.

I have a theory that all of the optimists sailed off to the Colonies hellbent on the pursuit of life, liberty and the perfect pair of elasticated pants whilst my forbears stood torn-faced on the doc muttering, "Abandon the button at your peril".

I dream of riding the trains across this vast continent, with a dog called “Boomer” by my side, slipping Patsy Cline’s interpretation of "Sweet Dreams" into the CD player, rolling up the sleeves of my checked shirt and swillin' mineral water out of a brown paper bag.  Not big or clever, but I'm dreaming, remember?

So if anyone wants to adopt me I'm fully house trained & don't cost much to feed...

A Call to Silence…

… led to an infinity of little hours.

Brousing through Charles’ library I found a ‘slim’ volume titled “An Infinity of Little Hours”.  As I began reading I recalled what my father had written on the last page of his journal, “There have been times in my life when I wondered whether I couldn’t make a good monk.”

The subtitle explains the content: Five Young Men and Their Trial of Faith in the Western World’s Most Austere Monastic Order. The order is the Carthusians; the monastery in question is Parkminster, the only Carthusian house, or charterhouse, in present-day England (check out the high-tech Website); and the five young men are novices—three Americans, an Irishman, and a German—who entered in 1960. Early in the book the author writes that of the five only one became a fully professed Carthusian following the mandatory five-year trial period. This injects an element of suspense into the reading: Who will it be and why? Or conversely who will fail to make the grade and why?

The Carthusians are the Navy Seals of monasticism, except that once fully professed, they are enlisted forever. They effectively live in individual hermitages around a central courtyard and only emerge in silence two or three times a day for mass, prayer, and occasional meals taken in community. Their “major work,” according to the author, is Night Office, said between 11 pm and 2 am. The Monks feel “the special responsibility of being awake when everyone else is asleep.”  Which means, of course, that they don’t get as much sleep as you or I. Once a week, they take a walk together, known as spatiamentum, promenading two by two through the countryside and changing partners on command every five minutes so that they do not become too attached. They are never to make eye contact with one another. Carthusians do not minister to the surrounding community; they do no missionary work; Carthusians pray. Their motto is Soli Deo, God alone. They wear hair shirts. They take cold-water baths (or did until recent changes). From September 14 (The Exaltation of the Cross) until Easter, except Sundays and feast days, they undertake “the great monastic fast,” one meal a day and a pretty sparse meal at that. For lent, they also give up dairy products. 

The author is a woman, Nancy Klein Maguire. Given that women cannot enter a Carthusian monastery under any circumstances, you’d think Maguire must have had three strikes against her before even starting to write. But she had an ace up her sleeve: her husband is a former Carthusian novice attached to Parkminster. In fact, if you put two and two together, it seems that she is married to one of the four 1960 novices who didn’t make the cut. Dave, or Dom Philip, as he is known in the book, “had weighed the difficulty of solitude before he came to the Charterhouse. He had not weighed the difficulty of the other monks.” What drives Dom Philip out finally is the horrible singing of his fellow monks in choir. In Maguire’s on-line biography, her husband is described as “an ex-Carthusian monk, who hadn’t minded hair shirts, sleepless nights, 48-hour fasts, and total solitude, but who couldn’t tolerate the monks singing off pitch during the Divine Office.”

Maguire’s description of life in a charterhouse is so vivid, you can feel the cold damp of the cell and the rude comfort of a coarse sheet and blanket on a lonely bed. You can feel the hunger pangs from mid-September until Easter. You can feel the terrible loneliness. I was not cut out to be a Navy Seal, and now I know that I was not cut out to be a Carthusian.

So what was is it that attracted Dad?  It is the silence, the chance to bring the rest of life to stillness and “know that I am God.”   When we discussed the book at table Charles said; “good vocations come from good homes”. The thought kept going through my mind. One may have every quality and every virtue necessary for monastic life, yet if there is a lack of stability that has affected the candidate's life the fellow will have a rough time of it and most likely will not persevere.

Happy New Year

---

“He has sent me…

…to proclaim release to the captives

and recovery of sight to the blind

to set free those who are oppressed

to announce the year of the Lord’s favor…

Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

(Isaiah 61:1 and Luke 4:18)

I received this image as a Christmas greeting from a friend.

The image represents a small crib made out of olive tree, three wise men from the East, and one wise man from Bethlehem. The wise man from Bethlehem, Tawfiq Salsaa carved the crib. At first sight it is just like any other crib of olive tree that are sold by hundreds in the shops of Bethlehem. Nevertheless, there is a small difference. The wise men cannot pay their homage to the Child, because a wall – more precisely: the Wall – separates them from Bethlehem.

At least in our thoughts, and to the extent of a prayer, let us be together with those who, caught between radicalizing doctrines, still keep hope in their hearts. 

Sretan Bozic. Peaceful Holidays.

---

Sleeper to the Most Serene Republic.

Imagine the anticipation of stepping on board a train, all aglow, as the brisk winter’s evening has just fallen.

Budapest, the neglected beauty on the Danube, is a city of friendly people, opulent buildings, golden domes, thermal baths and opera.  A foreign city robs you of your prejudices about different neighborhoods—you look at everything with fresh virgin eyes.

Keleti pályaudvar, Budapest's Eastern railway station, does not rank among the world's greatest termini. It has neither the presence of Grand Central Station, New York, the imperial thrust of Milan's homage to the Roman Empire, nor the glamour of London's St. Pancras. Yet, not withstanding its deja vue look it conjures up a spirit of bygone era adventure.

For it is from here that Hungary connects with the outside world. Daily the trains depart for Moscow, for Bucharest and the Black Sea, for Thessalonika and the warmth of the Greek isles, for Prague, Warsaw, Berlin, stretching still further to the Baltic States and onwards into Scandinavia. And it is from here, around five-thirty each afternoon that the overnight train for Venice departs.

I departed Budapest thinking of these two quotes by Thomas Szasz: “The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget” and “Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.”

Although designated 'Inter City', complete with 'Wagons-Lits' and 'Dining Car', this is no express. For the first two to three hours it meanders slowly southwards, a stopping train for the resorts of the Balaton, Hungary's 'sea' and the largest inland lake in Europe. But what spectacular scenery as the sun dips down over a sheer expanse of water.

As night falls the train passes over the border and into Croatia.  Gone midnight and we are in Zagreb. Student backpackers, mostly Italian, homeward bound, jostle the corridors and gangways seeking seats. In the early hours we reach Ljubljana. Then a peace descend and the train slides into Italy, on to Mestre, and finally to its destination, the Queen of the Adriatic, Venice.

A brief ride on the Vaporetto delivers me to my home away from home in the Sestiere Dorsoduro.  Sandwiched between two side canals and affording direct views onto the Grand Canal, and rarest of all a courtyard garden. A shady bower, vine hung, edges the water, the quiet disturbed by no more than the splash of a gondola oar and the chirping of sparrows. Perfect. Whilst behind the palazzo a lawned area, surrounded with perennial borders and palms, provides all the seclusion one could possibly require.

I ask for nothing more. A short walk and I am at the Gallerie dell' Accademia renewing a friendship with Bellini. A step further and I am at the magnificently restored Ca' Rezzonico, it too with a shady garden, home to the English painter Robert Browning and one time studio of the American portraitist John Singer Sargent. Two steps on and once more I am in heaven, for is there anything more wondrous, more uplifting than the Scuola S. Rocco with its accumulated works of Tintoretto? I think not.

Natural Wonders.

One of my most satisfying emotions is enjoying somebody the same way I enjoy a sunset.  People are just as beautiful, like a sunset, if I accept them as they are.  Perhaps we admire a sunset just for that reason, not being able to control it. 

When I admire a sunset I do not say: “Please a softer orange in the right corner and a little more violet on the horizon and a bit more rose for the clouds.”  This I do not do.  I do not try to control a sunset.  I just look at it in admiration.

The ABC’s of Christmas music.

“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” 

                                                                        ~Elvis Costello?

Goodness gracious, is it that time already?  Never too early to jump back into the shark-infested waters, as my mother always said (may not be true).

Soon it will be Christmas.

Thank heavens for the BostonGlobe.  Talk about news you can use!

What should we listen to?

Should? Hello?

What we should listen to is, apparently, prescribed by the condition that soon it will be Christmas. That's the whole thing right there.  Perhaps I'm not a nominally Christian female over 20 who cares enough that soon it will be Christmas?

Oh, wait.  This is in a newspaper. 

Well, I guess you have to write to your audience.

“Historically, Christmas...

If I said that I didn't like where this was going, I'd be lying...but only because of who I am.  I'm ten kinds of strapped in and prepared for the least-researched sentence ever.

...has been an immensely prolific time for composers, especially (and obviously) for those writing for the Christian church.”

I submit that the sense of “historically” being invoked here is not really anything as broad as the word itself suggests.  Historically, here, means during the 18th century.

There was actually a relatively short period of time, in a pretty small part of the world, during which most composers were employed by Christian churches.

But, now, see: perhaps that's exactly what this article is after: breaking the Christmas concert paradigm.

“But this trove of musical riches is astonishingly easy to lose sight of, even in so artistically sophisticated a place as Boston.”

Wow, okay.  I can't imagine that this sort of self-congratulatory onanism is going to live up to my optimistic projection.

“The sophistication of Boston's cultural patrons is matched only by their class and dignity.

It can seem as though holiday offerings are confined to endless renditions of the “Hallelujah” chorus and an all-too-small group of holiday favorites.”

The construction "it can seem" is so unbelievably rhetorically weak that I'm rather put off.  Instead of invoking a familiar sensation, "it can seem" could be used to justify any number of terrible sentences. 

“How to break out of this rut?”

By continuing to employ a string of weak grammatical constructions?

“One strategy is to explore a Christmas distant in time and space from our own,…”

Does the rabbit-creature have a garrote made of stars?

...and this is an experience that early music ensembles are especially skilled at providing.”

I'm gonna go ahead and write this off as a segue to talking about specific groups in Boston this season.

“There’s a reason we hear ‘Messiah’ and ‘Nutcracker’ every year — because they’re so great,” said Scott Metcalfe, Blue Heron’s music director.

Really?  We're not just lazy or indoctrinated by a false nostalgia!

“But doing these sort of alternative, 15th-century Christmases, there’s no sense that they have a holiday anything like ours.”

Translation: the artistic director of an early music ensemble speculates that, based on available evidence, Christmas in 15th century Burgundy was different than Christmas today.

“For us, there is a desire to pull the curtain open and say, wait a minute, there may be other things out there. Let’s look at them, let’s enjoy them.’ Anne Azéma, the Camerata’s artistic director, said of the impulse behind them: “It came out of a desire to remove oneself from the Christmas routine.”

By putting on a Christmas concert?

By “routine,” she meant “a canon that was developed in the late 19th century in America — a mixture of German-Scandinavian-English music which created this sort of postcard idea of all things that we think now as Christmas.”

Oh.  Well, good, then, within the limited scope of expanding that notion to include slightly more European countries over a slightly longer period of time.

That includes the caroling tradition, popular songs about chestnuts and angels, Messiah (this would be the perfect place to throw in the fact that Messiah is an Easter Oratorio that was somehow appropriated by Christmas), and other time-honored entries.

Since I have a blog, I'd like to take this opportunity to mention that the only thing I dislike more then forcefed Christmas music is the people who feed it.

I'm sorry, you were saying something about Christmas concerts?

“It’s wonderful material,...

Is that a nice way of calling it "not music?"

...some of it at least,

Ha.

...but it’s become so overfamiliar that its impact is often lost.”

If I was still an academic postmodernist ass I'd call it "overdetermined" - but I quit being that, so I won't.

“In a way, caught among all these things, you tend to forget that Christmas has been happening for quite a while,” she continued.

Like basically since Halloween! Every year!

“For us, there is a desire to pull the curtain open and say, wait a minute, there may be other things out there. Let’s look at them, let’s enjoy them.”

First, this the second time in three quotes you've used the "pull the curtain" analogy.  I will refrain from speculating about that.

Second, I like "look at" as a metaphor for "listen to."  

Third, this:

“These are, nevertheless, holiday concerts, which means that an audience, no matter how adventurous, is going to want something that resonates with their own experience, even if the music is unfamiliar.”

This is where I stopped reading, but only partly because the rationalization-to-description ratio became untenable.

'this  the season...

To go to Lwów

~ Adam Zagajewski (to my parents) translated by Renata Gorczynski

To go to Lwów. Which station

for Lwów, if not in a dream, at dawn, when dew 

gleams on a suitcase, when express

trains and bullet trains are being born. To leave 

in haste for Lwów, night or day, in September 

or in March. But only if Lwów exists,

if it is to be found within the frontiers and not just 

in my new passport, if lances of trees

—of poplar and ash—still breathe aloud 

like Indians, and if streams mumble

their dark Esperanto, and grass snakes like soft signs 

in the Russian language disappear

into thickets. To pack and set off, to leave 

without a trace, at noon, to vanish

like fainting maidens. And burdocks, green 

armies of burdocks, and below, under the canvas

of a Venetian café, the snails converse

about eternity. But the cathedral rises,

you remember, so straight, as straight

as Sunday and white napkins and a bucket 

full of raspberries standing on the floor, and 

my desire which wasn’t born yet,

only gardens and weeds and the amber

of Queen Anne cherries, and indecent Fredro. 

There was always too much of Lwów, no one could 

comprehend its boroughs, hear

the murmur of each stone scorched

by the sun, at night the Orthodox church’s silence was unlike

that of the cathedral, the Jesuits

baptized plants, leaf by leaf, but they grew,

grew so mindlessly, and joy hovered 

everywhere, in hallways and in coffee mills 

revolving by themselves, in blue 

teapots, in starch, which was the first 

formalist, in drops of rain and in the thorns

of roses. Frozen forsythia yellowed by the window. 

The bells pealed and the air vibrated, the cornets

of nuns sailed like schooners near 

the theater, there was so much of the world that

it had to do encores over and over,

the audience was in frenzy and didn’t want

to leave the house. My aunts couldn’t have known 

yet that I’d resurrect them, 

and lived so trustfully; so singly; 

servants, clean and ironed, ran for 

fresh cream, inside the houses 

a bit of anger and great expectation, Brzozowski

came as a visiting lecturer, one of my 

uncles kept writing a poem entitled Why,

dedicated to the Almighty, and there was too much 

of Lwów, it brimmed the container, 

it burst glasses, overflowed 

each pond, lake, smoked through every 

chimney, turned into fire, storm, 

laughed with lightning, grew meek, 

returned home, read the New Testament,

slept on a sofa beside the Carpathian rug,

there was too much of Lwów, and now 

there isn’t any, it grew relentlessly

and the scissors cut it, chilly gardeners 

as always in May, without mercy, 

without love, ah, wait till warm June

comes with soft ferns, boundless

fields of summer, i.e., the reality.

But scissors cut it, along the line and through 

the fiber, tailors, gardeners, censors

cut the body and the wreaths, pruning shears worked 

diligently, as in a child’s cutout

along the dotted line of a roe deer or a swan. 

Scissors, penknives, and razor blades scratched,

cut, and shortened the voluptuous dresses

of prelates, of squares and houses, and trees

fell soundlessly, as in a jungle,

and the cathedral trembled, people bade goodbye 

without handkerchiefs, no tears, such a dry

mouth, I won’t see you anymore, so much death

awaits you, why must every city

become Jerusalem and every man a Jew,

and now in a hurry just

pack, always, each day,

and go breathless, go to Lwów, after all

it exists, quiet and pure as

a peach. It is everywhere.

In the Land of the Lion of Judah.

The King of Kings, the Power of the Trinity, the Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the Elected One of God, the Defender of the Faith - these were the titles of Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia.  He was also the 225th descendant of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon.

Ethiopia is old beyond imagination.  According to official Ethiopian history, the Queen of Sheba had heard King Solomon praised many times and went to Jerusalem to visit him. Solomon greeted her in splendid style, she admired him and was converted to the true God.  But a few months later, when she announced her departure, Solomon, who was as lusty as he was wise, was stirred with desire. He invited the queen to feast with him all day long and served her only with thirst-making dishes: salt-fish, hot spices. In the evening she asked his permission to go to bed and made him promise that he would respect her virtue. "I swear to you that I shall not take you by force," said the king, "but swear to me in return that you will take nothing from my palace." She promised, but could not sleep. Tortured by thirst, she drank a cup of water, and the king - who slept with one eye open - pointed out that she had broken her oath. Nine months later, back in Ethiopia, she gave birth to a son, Menelek.

It is a charming story, but the dividing line between reality and legend in Ethiopia is very hazy. Historians maintain that the Queen of Sheba ruled over the Yemen and not Ethiopia, and claim that her son Menelek was invented by a thirteenth-century monk, in a book called The Glory of the Kings, in order to legitimize a Solomonite dynasty which wanted to seize the throne. One thing, however, is certain: while more and more Europeans and North Americans followed the sun in winter to Kenya or North Africa, the mountainous kingdom of Ethiopia remained virtually untouched by tourism.

Yet it offers a stunning range of natural beauty: mountains like impregnable for tresses-the mean altitude in Ethiopia is over 6,000 feet; mysterious gorges; silver lakes which are the haunt of ibis, flamingos and marabous; marvelous churches built in the rocks; and timeless villages hidden in eucalyptus forests. A country of living legends which merge into the history of this 2,500-year-old African empire.

The first time you meet an Ethiopian, you begin to understand how it is that these people have had so much success in the Olympic marathon. Tall and incredibly lean, they walk tirelessly, barefoot, head erect, their hands gripping the ends of a pole they carry across their shoulders.

They are very proud of their beauty and explain obligingly:  "When God decided to create man, he made a clay model and baked it in the oven. But he took it out too soon; it was pale and he threw it away to the North where it gave birth to the white race. At the second attempt, the statuette was overdone: he cast it to the South where the black race sprang up. The third time, everything went perfectly: the figure came out golden. God put it in Ethiopia and the Ethiopians were born."

Aksum, the site of the ancient capital, is a good place to begin to get to know Ethiopia.  At Aksum is the church of Our Lady of Sion, which women are not allowed to enter. When Queen Elizabeth visited Ethiopia, Emperor Haile Selassie took her to Aksum but the priests would not let her into the church. The monasteries are also forbidden to both women and female animals. The most beautiful of them, Debre Damo, is situated forty-five miles from Aksum. The home of 150 monks, it is lodged high in a cliff face, and in the flanks of the cliff are small caves where hermit monks live and meditate, receiving their supplies of bread, water, and sometimes meat from the end of a rope.

To gain access to Debre Damo, one must negotiate with the porter monk-negotiate meaning in Ethiopian to pay up. After he has satisfied himself that the visitor is male (a few women have attempted to get in wearing trousers), the monk will throw down a leather rope and haul one up the steep fifteen yards of rock face to the entrance.

Aksum abounds in gigantic necropolises, monolithic steles sixty-five feet high. Once the capital of a great empire, in the 4th century the city was converted to Christianity, today the official state religion. From top to bottom the steles are decorated with carvings representing the facades of the palaces of Aksum.

An hour away by plane from Aksum is Lalibela, the most spectacular site in Ethiopia. In the 13th century, when King Lalibela learned that Jerusalem had fallen into the hands of the infidels, he decided to build a "New Jerusalem" in a spot so inaccessible that "no Muslim would be able to sully it." What remains of this second Jerusalem-10,000 feet up in the mountains - is a group of eleven monolithic churches carved out of one great block of pink sandstone, a stream called the Jordan and a few olive trees.


The churches comprise a fabulous subterranean city, rich in vaulted passageways and tiny courtyards illuminated by shafts of light. At the end of a tunnel stands a green bowl where the faithful are baptized in the Feast of the Epiphany. The passages wind up and down, past wells, altars, sculptures, paintings, colonnades and the skeletons of a monk and a nun who three centuries ago lived together in one of the cavities that were dug out of the rock.

Less than an hour's flight from Lalibela is Gonder, a city of fortified castles and splendid churches, which was the capital of Ethiopia in the 16th century when the Christians, with the help of the Portuguese, defeated the Muslims who for eight centuries had cut them off from the Christian world. 

The church of Debra Berhan Selassie is entirely covered with paintings, executed with such a sense of wonder and such simple candor that they delight the most blase of visitors: the angel Gabriel is shown with immense black eyes, ogres with drumsticks between their teeth, the saints offering their tears for the birds to drink. In all these paintings, the good are painted full face and the bad in profile. This is because it was believed that painting full face might help the figure depicted to appear in real life and the painter wanted to deny that chance to the wicked.

Four miles from Gonder is the village of Falasha. It seems at first sight like many other Ethiopian villages: round huts with thatched roofs, the smell of burning eucalyptus at mealtimes, black women with their hair arranged in a mass of tiny plaits. Yet they have stars of David embroidered on their dresses. The Falashas are Jews. When they were first discovered and told of the existence of other, white Jews, they laughed in disbelief, for they thought themselves to be the only survivors of Israel, and maintained that they had come to Ethiopia 3,000 years ago with the inevitable Queen of Sheba. Historians today believe that they were driven out of Egypt by the armies of Alexander the Great. They practise an archaic form of Judaism, knowing the first five books of Moses, but not the Talmud. There are about 20,000 of them and they live by making pottery.

The countryside around Gonder is breathtakingly beautiful, more beautiful than the famous Blue Nile 'and its waterfalls; but the source of the Blue Nile, Lake Tana, is a miracle of light and purity.

Exotically colored birds follow the papyrus boats which go out to the islands in the lake, where monasteries and churches took refuge in the 15th century. There you will find trees with fantastic tentacle-like branches, chattering monkeys, unknown flowers and little wooden churches.

Two hours' flight from' Lake Tana is Addis Ababa, with its Hilton Hotel and undulating panorama of tile roofs. The most interesting place in Addis Ababa is the "Mercato," the biggest market in Africa, where there is a roaring trade in silver crosses of every period and style. Before leaving Ethiopia, it is worth visiting Harer, in the east of the country, where Rimbaud lived several years as a trader. Harer is a Muslim stronghold, built between the 7th and the 9th centuries, and only discovered by Europeans in the 1880's. Set on a hilltop surrounded by orchards, it is a jumble of rough-paved alleys with wooden forts, ancient gateways and hidden market stalls crammed with every kind of spice. The women, their foreheads adorned with African marigolds, wear silk Turkish-style trousers. The men chew tchat green leaves which induce euphoria. Apart and proud, the Hassi, Somali nomads, put bunches of herbs in their hair, which they smear with red mud. They wear rings round their necks and never venture out without a spear.

Homer wrote of Ethiopia' that it stood at the edge of the world, and in the splendid isolation of the magnificent mountain landscapes and the unchanging rhythm of life of its remote, hidden villages, one might say the same today and hope for it’s future.