Trier and environs

This week I travel to the Saarland. I’ll be working with friends who are also locals, because my German is pretty bad. This is when we delve into what people know about their local landscapes, foodways, folklore and other things. The Saarland is a special region. I’m visiting it and hopefully also Aachen to try to understand the role Charlemagne and his heirs and then the Holy Roman Empire played in the lives of Jews. When they came, why they came… and what locals understand of any of this. Do they remember the importance of their Jewish neighbours, once upon a  time? I’ve already played with maps and I know just how important this region was. It’s not talked about a lot, but it was so important that France and Germany have fought over it. Most Jewish histories talk about the French side of the border, of Nancy and Metz. The German side is just as important.

I’m worried about just one thing. Very worried. I know I’m going to make Dreyfus jokes and I should not. The Australian Attorney-General is Mark Dreyfus and his father conducted me in a school choir once upon a time and, as an historian of France I’ve read up on the whole Dreyfus Affair and one of my favourite French writers wrote the  ‘J’accuse’ letter, and the whole Dreyfus name comes from that border area, some of which is now in France and some now in Germany… and… I will try so very hard not to make Dreyfus jokes. Those jokes would be wrong in so very many ways. and yet I’m already tempted

Heinrich Heine University

Heinrich Heine University in Dusseldorf is my home this week. I checked the time, and earlier today (if you read this post when it’s planned to go up) I will be working with a group of MA students on my personal take (in one of my short stories) on the Australian Gothic.  Earlier in the week, I’ll give a seminar on understanding the Australian Gothic. Everything else at the rime I’m writing is research, mostly on the memory of the Middle Ages. It takes more than a few days to even begin to understand a subject that big. Every town I visit will give me a different view, and simply going to Germany will open new horizons. By training, I’m a book research person, but the older I get the more i need to actually walk the streets in order to understand what the primary sources tell me.

This is only the first week in Dusseldorf. It’s so far a quiet week because I need to slow down every few days and give me feeble body a chance to catch up. I want to do everything, but my body won’t let me. This is one of the times when I let it complain in peace.

Also, I will have notes to write up. This is where I admit a terrible truth. I intend to take those notes next year (after I’m finished the current project) and turn them into a book. I am confronting a whole bunch of really tough emotional things as a Jewish Australian, as the descendant of a Jewish German, as an historian who tried to avoid German history because it was too damn emotionally difficult. I will write down what I face and all the mistakes I make facing it. I will write down the history I learn and anything special or amazing that I discover. And, in the process, I will learn more about why some people hate Jews for existing and why others see us as human beings. It’s not going to be easy, but it will be worth it.

Speyer, Germany

I’m doing research in Speyer. It’s partly for a novel, which I’ll tell you about in a moment. It’s also partly because I really, really want to know how Jews are remembered in regional culture and into Jewish life in Speyer, Mainz, Worms from the 11th-18th centuries. These three towns gave us the set of Jewish cultures that are dominant in the world right now. Ashkenazi Judaism comes from Germany (Ashkenaz) and it spread from there. We know that some of the early Jews in that region came from Italy and of them, one of the most important families had a family tradition that they were forced to Rome when the Second Temple fell. That strong link between Jerusalem and Jews over a thousand years later explains some of the traditions my family possess. That bit’s easy, and well-studied. Also well-studied are the expulsions and the massacres and the Jew-hate. The Holocaust didn’t begin everything… it was the worst by an impossible amount, not the only.

I don’t want to explore the hate. We carry too much hate with us right now and there is more to human life than hate. I’ll learn more about the lost cultures of the Jews of Speyer and Mainz and Worms, and how their work gave so many people so much. I’ll do that because I have German ancestry right up to about 1830. I need to know more, even if it isn’t quite the right part of Germany. Jews were important to Speyer, and so I want to know how Speyer sees its Jews. This is the other side of the coin to Reading. How are the Middle Ages remembered? How are the Jews of Speyer remembered? This is contemporary history. In our time, now, how do people interpret their own past, before the modern horrors changed everything?

And the novel? I can’t writ it until next year, after my current big research project is finished. I will be gathering material for it, however. I want to know the lives of the Medieval Jews and the Early Modern Jews in Speyer. I will create a town in the same future as my novel Poison and Light, and it will be a novel with two groups of Jews (from Speyer) and one group of Christians (from St Ives). At the moment that’s what it will be. Novels often change as the research opens more pathways. I’m writing this novel.

Glasgow

It suddenly feels passing strange to be writing this from winter in Canberra. One country from afar has a kind of logic, but a second?

I’m in Glasgow for the World Science Fiction Convention. I believe I have a workshop to give. Also so many people to see and things to do.Not much of it is tourist-y. Most of it is, in fact science fictional.

One thing I do not want to miss are the Govan Stones. I want to photograph them and ponder the really interesting relationship between the Strathclyde rulers and their friends from the north. Or from Dublin. Or from the north via Dublin. I also want to put Govan in its place as part of the Arthurian material. I know the literary side: now I get to see the Stones. The Stones are probably too young for Arthur (if he existed) but from the oldest to the youngest they cover the time when the early Arthurian stories were disseminated. These aren’t the stories most people talk about, but much earlier and rather more interesting.

My week in Glasgow is all about people. If I pass this test of my health, then I can dream of going back to Scotland and seeing more. I suspect that seeing friends entails eating interesting food. So many of my fiends are foodies. Food and friends and much, much, much science fiction and fantasy. And so many of my friends are writers, so there will be talking shop.

Cambridgeshire

Right now (when this post is released) I”m in Cambridgeshire. I’m staying with some friends from the science fiction community. They live in the middle of the fenland. Mostly my time with them is time out with friends, but we’re also going to see some things. By ‘some things’ I mean an old church that’s associated with one of my favourite Medieval historians: Henry of Huntingdon. Also museums. Also…fenland. I am learning to understand the fens. I’m also revising the research from a novel I never wrote because I ended up in hospital having a major heart operation. The novel that emerged from that dramatic year was The Year of the Fruit Cake. I had planned to write a novel set in the late seventeenth century. I won’t pick up that exact same novel, not with so much change din my life, but St Ives and its surrounds may be part of another novel.

I’ll spend my weekend with one of my fellow History Girls, Rosemary Hayes. She’s promised me some of my favourite places, including Lavenham in Essex and a rather brilliant museum of rural life. If all goes well (and our plans are not firm yet) while you read this, I’ll be at one of those places, or maybe at the house Lucy M Boston wrote into the Green Knowe stories. This is somewhere I’ve wanted to visit and to photograph since I first read a Green Knowe book when I was a child. Ironically, visiting it would be work-related… but still very, very special.

Reading and Bristol

By the time you read this, I will be in Bristol. I’m spending a couple of days with Catherine Butler, who is the most wonderful person. We will talk literature: she’s both an academic and a fiction writer and knows enormous amounts of fascinating stuff. My first encounter with her was when she answered questions for my book History and Fiction.  That’s today, at your end. At my end I’m still in Canberra!

Between Bristol and Canberra, came Reading. I will have met several friends, and also some new people with overlapping research interests. With luck, I will have seen The Importance of Being Earnest, acted in a place where Oscar Wilde’s prison is visible… and it will be work-related. That place is a ruined abbey. I’ll be in Reading mostly to create a photographic essay about how the town depicts its Middle Ages. Photographs. Lots of them. I’m happy to share a couple with you when i return, but only if you’re interested.

If you want to know about any of the places I go to or want to know more about the writers and science fiction folks I see along the way, let me know on each of these posts.  Comment madly. Tell me what you know and love. tell me what you’d like to know more about. When I return I’ll read all your comments. If you tell me what you’re interested in, I’ll report on those parts of my journey when I get back. A series of posts to match a series of posts! If everyone is silent, then what I write about on my return will be a complete surprise.

Like ships that pass in the night…

I needed my time off. My thesis is much advanced, but life has been really curiously strange recently and so it’s not yet finished. It’s far closer to being finished, and I do appreciate your patience. I’m going to ask you to be patient a bit longer before I return to regular blogging. I’m traveling for a bit. I’ll report back when I’m home, I promise. In the meantime, since I won’t have regular access to my computer, I thought I’d work through my itinerary and put up posts for the whole trip, tonight. Every Monday you’ll hear where I am and some of what I intend to do there.

This is something new for me. But this voyage i something new for me. I’ve been ill for so long and this is a giant test of whether I can keep the illnesses in abeyance and return to normal life. If i do well while I’m away, then I can do well when I return. I don’t want to share trials and tribulations, so I’m going to tell you about what I’m doing when I cannot blog. Pretend you’re with me….

Jewish King Arthurs

In 1999 I daringly went to a conference (GrailQuest ‘99) and my two worlds collided as they never had before. I went for the Medieval Arthurian stuff (of which I’ve long had a strongly academic interest and about which I’ve written my fair share), but I wasn’t confident enough after all those years outside academic research and didn’t offer a paper. I was more active in the fiction side, and met many people who became long-term friends. I asked a question from the floor of an academic panel and everyone looked across and asked me a question back. They listened, and one of my favourite Aussie writers of the matters of Arthur took me aside and we talked about the subject for a fair while. The write-up of the conference published my answer. I was also asked for a non-academic version of my answer. This is the one I’m giving you this week.

A Jewish King Arthur?

OK, let me admit it up front. As far as I know King Arthur was not Jewish, not in any piece of medieval literature. I have seen him written up as a fairy, as a warlord, as the leader of a very fancy court, but never Jewish. But while he was definitely not Jewish, Jews wrote about him. How do I know the authors were are Jewish? Well, one work is in Hebrew and another in Yiddish. This is a fairly strong indication.

It is hard to say if any other Medieval Arthurian works are Jewish. Most are blatantly Christian. There is, for example, a wonderful prose romance (just amazingly long) where the Grail becomes a very religious object (which it may not have been originally, but that is another story): this is a decidedly Christian affair. And there are some named authors who belong to one court or another and are more likely to be not Jewish. Most Medieval literature is, naturally, by that prolific author anonymous.

One author is borderline. I have seen it argued that Chretien de Troyes (who first introduced the grail into Arthurian romance) was Jewish. He was one of France’s great poets, so I have always wanted it to be proven that he was, indeed Jewish, but the likelihood is that he was not. He may well have Jewish relatives though, or at least Jewish friends – his place of birth was an important Jewish centre, after all -so there is some consolation. Since Chretien as good as invented the verse novel known as the Medieval romance, even a vaguely possible Jewish link is a nice thing.

Most literature written in most medieval languages, sadly, has to be assumed to be Christian unless there is positive proof to the contrary. We are talking, you see, about a Christian society.

But because we are talking about Christian countries in the Christian corner of the world, we can be 100% certain that anything written in Hebrew or Yiddish is very, very unlikely to be written by a Christian. Hebrew was known by scholars of all sorts, but the one Hebrew Arthurian manuscript we have is purely and wholly and gloriously Jewish. There was no reason for clerics to write German texts down in Hebrew characters unless it was for a Jewish audience, so any Christian reader of a Yiddish Arthurian manuscript would have to be the rather bizarre combination of a scholar whose native tongue was German and who preferred to read a translation into a dialect of their vernacular language written in an odd script. Unlikely, I suspect, especially when there is a lovely German version of the same story (Wigalois). So the likelihood is nicely strong for the writer of Widuwilt (the Yiddish tale) to have been Jewish, and probably the copyists and, almost definitely most of the listeners. It was written originally to be declaimed or sung, so most of the audience were listeners rather than readers.

So we are back to the works themselves. What are they? Do we have any idea why they were written? What is their history?

The Hebrew tale is popularly known as the Melekh Artus, and was written in 1279 by a poor soul in the midst of a very trying time. We know this because he wrote it in his introduction: he was translating the Arthurian tales to cheer himself up, and justified it at great length, citing Rabbinic authority. The author/translator was from northern Italy and bits of Italian have crept in. As he was Jewish, bits of Christianity have crept out. Wherever his source has a mass, he omits it, and he translates concepts into Jewish equivalents. I am not sure that Saints and Tsaddikim are analogous, and I really like the thought of the Holy Grail becoming a dish used to give food to the poor.

Either the text is unfinished or the copyist ran our of steam, because the one manuscript of this amazing text is, alas, incomplete. Very incomplete. It is held in the Vatican, and has been edited and translated and yes, Canberra has a copy (at the National Library). Its literary value is very low, I must admit, and the French sources that were used are much more entertaining (except for the brilliant apologia at the beginning, which is well worth reading) but it is most definitely a Jewish (Italian) version of the Arthurian tales.

The other work is later and exists in several versions in several manuscripts and editions. It was not written down until the very close of the Middle Ages, but made up for this shocking lapse by being popular for centuries. Widuwilt only features Arthur as an aside. It is actually about Gawain and his son. It is from the German that the tale reached Yiddish, hardly surprisingly, from an Old French original. The hero has a different name I the German, though. Unfortunately, we have an early example of Jewish humour (maybe written by an ancestor of Sylvia Deutsch?). Apparently Gawain was not really paying attention when his wife bore him a son (he was just about to desert the poor lady, in point of fact) and so, when she asked him what Gawain wanted to call the baby, Gawain answered “Whatever you want”, so he was called “Whatever you want” or “Widuwilt”. Apart from this, most of the tale follows the German original according to my sources (which is just as well, because the French and the German are relatively available, but the Yiddish is not so none of these comments imply a sighting of the original!) except for some adventures added at the end.

It seems to be a lovely adventure romance, with all the Christian bits left intact (yes, Arthur holds court at Easter, rather than at Pesach!) and lots of good fighting. While the Hebrew tale was a bit more serious (as befitting a scholar suffering form melancholy) Widuwilt is simple entertainment, and very suited to a Spielmann and his audience.

Now for the $64,000 question: why am I interested in these works? Like the writer of the Melekh Artus, it is for sound and moral reasons, although I won’t go so far as to cite Rabbinic authority..

One thing that these Medieval Jews had in common with us was the fact that they were a minority group in a society so very Christian that it took that Christianity for granted. You ask most Australians and they will say that Australia is not a Christian society, that it is secular. Yet Christian holidays, Christian imagery and Christian concepts weigh down the very air we breathe. The relationship between Christianity and society was different in Italy in 1279 to Australia seven hundred years later, and Jews definitely have different status, different acceptance, different problems. But we are still not quite mainstream. We are still outside the norm.

Even in the more restrictive atmosphere of Medieval Europe, Jews could reach out and make sense of the fullness of the outside culture. Unless you translate a romance or read it in its original language, you cannot make any sense of the people who write and read in that style. Widuwilt is evidence that some Jews were enjoying Arthurian romances, and actively coming to terms with all those elements of Western European vernacular culture.

The fact that only two works have been translated or interpreted into Jewish languages, one unfinished and apparently for private use, shows that Jews had very different concerns to Christians. But it also show that there was overlap and a meeting of interests. Not only is this interesting in its own right, but it gives us a neat tool for use in understanding our own society, for understanding the culture we share with others, and those elements that are specifically Jewish.

As Australians we often use the dread phrase “cultural cringe”. It can apply just as much to being Jewish Australians as to being Australians in general. We are neither solely religious nor simple recipients of wider Australian culture. We don’t take the whole of our identity from Chaim Potok, nor from Mary Grant Bruce. King Arthur teaches us that. If there is a Jewish view of King Arthur and even a Jewish grail, then there is a Jewish view of everything.

Learning Needs a Joyful Reason

I just started learning Italian on Duolingo. Because I’ve already studied French and Spanish (I would not go so far as to say I’ve learned them) I have something of a leg up: Italian doesn’t seem terribly different in many ways from those other two Romance languages, and I know enough about language learning to notice where my weak spots are and work on them (prepositions, how I hate thee). I’m slugging away. I not only like the language, I’m enjoying the process of learning it. My goal is to learn enough to be able to embarrass myself if/when I go to Italy. I wrote an entire book set in Italy; it seems to me I should go and see it for myself. So I’ve got a reason. That helps.

But not all reasons are helpful. Because I’m contemplating self-publishing some of my backlist, I was counseled that I should work on promotion: viz, a newsletter. Which has led me to learning of the sort that makes me want to lie down and howl. I researched newsletter management software–the stuff that will keep your mailing list and provide templates for newsletters. Based on cost, the size of my current mailing list, and various reviews, I signed up for a trial of one. I’ve done newsletters before at the museum where I worked. I was not fearful.

Silly me.

Let’s dive right in, right? I click the button labeled “CREATE YOUR NEWSLETTER.” Before you can design a template or write anything, you have to make the underpinnings of the program talk to the underpinnings of your website.  I created my website more than a decade ago, my recollection of the process is fuzzy at best, and I don’t go wandering the basement looking at the wiring for fun, because I just don’t. But I dig in. Shortly I find myself mired in the sort of technical backstage stuff in which I have no training, outdated information, and zero interest. 

After two hours of trying to fix the SPF and DKIM on my website so that the newsletter manager will accept it as a “sender”–each time coming up with a new and different way to not quite do it, and each time being terrified I would break my perfectly functional website–I gave up, cancelled my trial, and tried not to throw a tantrum.

Today, filled with renewed optimism (who am I kidding?) I will seek out a different newsletter manager and see what I can make of it. But there is nothing about this kind of learning that gives me joy. The best I can expect (aside from a working newsletter) is a kind of bitter triumph of the HAH! TAKE THAT variety. 

Part of the problem is simply that this is a kind of learning that doesn’t come easy for me. And an equal part is that my reason for doing it is of the hold-your-nose-and-just-do-it variety which provides no joy. When I think of  learning Italian, I think of wandering in a city I don’t know, asking directions, having adventures, ordering food and drink and making fun of how dreadful my Italian is, but trying anyway. It’s a joyful imagining. That’s my payoff.

The payoff for figuring out newsletter software is (theoretically anyway) being able to create a newsletter* and send it out with relative ease. That’s it. I appreciate the benefit that will provide. But there’s no joy in the process, and no prospective joy in that benefit, and at this point in my life I suspect I kind of need some joy to grease the wheels and make it easier to persevere.

If y’all will excuse me, I’m going to practice Italian for a while.
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*The thought of sending out a newsletter makes me feel rather… squishy? Awkward? Send out regular bulletins about ME! What’s going on with ME! And my work! I have no problem writing ab out what’s going on with me and my work in a “you can read this if you want to” venue like Facebook or Threads, but there, I can just throw something up and people can read it if they want to. When you send a newsletter out you’re assuming that someone will want to see it (yes, I know: you send newsletters to people who have already indicated an interest). It just feels colossally pushy to me. Which may, in fact, be what is required for a self-published author. And yet.

Stuff

One of the side effects of the digital version of enshittification is that stuff you thought was yours disappears – and not just stuff you stored electronically, like ebooks and music, but tangible goods, like appliances and cars.

Cory Doctorow had a particularly good piece on that this week. It’s not just that electric vehicles are “computers on wheels” as he says and therefore the manufacturers can stick in things you don’t want and can’t remove, but there’s the definite possibility that if the car maker goes broke, the fancy, expensive vehicle you bought will be bricked.

It’s bad enough to pay for ebooks and then learn that we were only paying for limited access to those books when the company decides to delete them, but think about paying $50,000 for a car that suddenly doesn’t work anymore because the company failed or screwed up.

One of things about buying stuff is the assumption that if you take good care of it, you will have it for a long time. Disasters might happen – these days that’s also a likely risk – but barring that, your stuff is your stuff for a reasonable life span as long as you pay attention.

I still have mass market paperbacks I bought in college and, let’s face it, mass market paperbacks were not meant to last.

Having ebooks disappear is particularly annoying, because those of us who read a lot buy books and then don’t get around to reading them for years. Not to mention that we re-read as well.

But really, very few people I know are in a financial position to buy an expensive car and have it bricked a year later because the manufacturer did something wrong. Also, I spent enough years practicing law to suspect that if you bought the car with a loan from your credit union, you might still be on the hook for the loan on the dead car.

The lender could repossess the car, but bricked it might be worth less than you owe.

The only solution is to only buy things that cannot be bricked or twiddled (to use another Doctorow word). There are two problems with that.

The first is that it’s getting harder to do that. If you want an electric car – and if you have to have a car, that’s the way to go – you will be giving up some control to the manufacturer no matter how much you pay. And this can happen with anything remotely computerized in your life.

The second problem is the basic problem of stuff. Continue reading “Stuff”