On Foot to Constantinople

One thing leads to another and, as so often happens, one book leads to another. After a recent re-read of Mary Norris's delightful Greek to Me, I took her suggestion and began reading Patrick Leigh Fermor's A Time of Gifts.

In 1933, Fermor, an eighteen year old English student, decided to leave his studies behind and to walk from Holland to Constantinople. (The book was written over forty years later, based on the journals he'd kept.) 

The prose is lush and delightful--a wonderous travelogue of Europe between WWI and II. It's a bygone world, where a young man can travel on foot and be greeted by hospitality at every turn--from the inn keeper who gives him a room because he looks tired to the town jail that will provide a warm, unlocked cell and breakfast to the workhouse run by monks, with its communal dormitory and breakfast provided after a stint of woodchopping.

It reminds me a bit of Richard Halliburton's popular travel books--I was quite enamored of them when I was young -- but Fermor is a much better writer as well as being a deeper thinker.

I'm reading the book slowly, pausing to look online for pictures of some of the places he describes--the Dutch polders and landscapes, the picturesque towns, the castles along the Rhine . . .we followed some of that same route back in '70 on our motorcycle trip and I could see it as he must have done from the barge that gave him a lift--without so much traffic and rather idyllic. 

But it was 1933-- in Germany "the town was hung with National Socialist flags and the window of an outfitter's shop next door held a display of Party equipment: swastika armbands, daggers for the Hitler Youth, blouses for Hitler Maidens and brown shirts for grown up S.A. men..." There were pictures of the Fuhrer in various manly poses and the author recounts hearing a woman say, "What a beautiful man!" to which her companion agreed, adding that Hitler had wonderful eyes.

At the same time, Fermor encountered many who were openly opposed to the Nazi movement, "in different ways and for different reasons.  It was a time," he goes on to say, " when friendships and families were breaking up all over Germany."

How familiar this all sounds. I can only hope our country continues to move away from the cult of personality that is destroying the GOP as a rational (and necessary) conservative voice. But I digress . . .

Meanwhile I'll keep traveling by way of this book of riches, secure in the knowledge that I have the second part of the v0yage standing by. 

 

Between You and Me --Confessions of a Comma Queen

"Die heiresses! Die heiresses!" I repeated over and over as I moved around the living room, applying polish to the dusty, mildew-pocked furniture.

An odd mantra for house-cleaning? You bet. But I'd just come across a surefire way to remember how to pronounce diaeresis--those two dots that The New Yorker and other staid publication put over the second o in cooperate. (I never do, preferring to live dangerously and also because it's a pain to do on the laptop.)  

In the course of my teaching, occasionally someone will ask about this usage and I've been guilty of calling this mark "those two little dots" or "an umlaut" (incorrect unless you're writing German.) So I am delighted to add this bit of knowledge to my fund of trivia.

Yes, I've been reading another book about grammar and usage. Mary Norris's delightful Between You and Me is part grammar book and part memoir, including Norris's thirty some years at The New Yorker, as well as an early stint as a foot checker at a public pool and later as a milkmanwoman.

From tips on pencils, erasers, and pencil sharpeners to a discussion of hyphens, en dashes, and em dashes--including the hyphen in the title Moby-Dick, to a consideration of proposed gender-neutral pronouns (I hate the use of they for someone of indeterminate gender--they is plural, dammit! but rather like a proposal to use ey, em, or eir) to a hilarious chapter ("F**K THIS SH*T) on the proliferation of profanity in modern prose, the book is a gem. 

I loved it. Especially recommended for my fellow word nerds.

There's an excellent review HERE.

Greek to Me

A student in my current writing class (where I've been tediously pedantic about grammar and word usage) brought me this book, autographed by The Comma Queen herself. It's a wonderful read -- but not about punctuation. Rather, it's the tale of how Norris became infatuated with the Greek language, studied both classical and modern Greek, and traveled in Greece -- a kind of memoir, but with lots of discussion of the meaning of words -- in Greek and of Greek derivation. 

I love this stuff! The discussion of Athena's eyes (typically translated as grey/gray or gleaming) goes on for six pages -- what did the ancient Greeks mean by glaukos? Is it a color -- pale blue, grey-green, silvery, greenish-blue -- or is it an attribute -- clear-eyed, bright-eyed, steely. sharp-sighted?

I don't know why it is, but I find this fascinating. Probably because I'm something of a word nerd. Not enough to take on the study of ancient Greek but I'm so glad Norris did and shared what she learned . . . and saw and experienced in such an entertaining book.

Now I have to hunt down her book Between You and Me.