open libraries

«Sayat Nova — Open Library» aquarelle, 2013

In the sublime film by Serguei Paradjanov, Sayat Nova, also known as The Color of Pomegranates, there is a scene after a torrential rain, where the young poet Sayat Nova carries thick tomes of illustrated manuscripts onto the church rooftop and spreads their pages out to dry under the sun. For a few seconds, one hears the fluttering of sheets, centuries of work unlocked, rustling in the wind.

This is the image that comes to mind when I think of the late Aaron Swartz, this bright young man who had engaged himself with such conviction in the free circulation of knowledge, open access and the freedom of the Internet. He had helped organize the Internet Blackout of last January in protest of the SOPA/PIPA bills being considered in Congress, bills that would have led to increased censorship of the web. In the act that led to his unjust prosecution under a nebulous law, he had downloaded millions of scholarly articles from the digital library JSTOR with the intention of making them freely accessible to the public, especially the developing world. A treasure trove of a library, whose legacy, he believed, belonged to all mankind.

I feel his spirit hovering over us who believe, reminding us of the vigorous will and impatience to understand and to change the structures of the world we live in.

Scenes from Budapest, Cogwheel Train

«A budapesti fogaskerekű — Budapest cogwheel train», mixed media 2012

The cogwheel train, with its toy-box red body, its bells and melodies, chugging up the hill on a winter’s night— one of my first impressions of Budapest.

In the years since, I have ridden the cogwheel through the seasons, spring, summer, fall, and winter, paced up and down its platforms, learnt each of its station names, saluted its conductors, walked alongside its cog tracks.

Even at home, unseen, the rumble of its passage is our grandfather’s clock, marking the passage of time. Its toy-like compartments mark the beginning and end of my trips to and from the city.

So bear me while I write a bit about this quaint hillside transport, its past and its role on New Years Day.

The snows had melted away a few days after Christmas, leaving the hills somewhat naked and forlorn. Along the cog tracks running behind the house, the ground had reverted back to the mottled brown of decomposing leaves, mute and humid underfoot. Evenings, only a few Christmas lights and the windows of the passing cogwheel would periodically illuminate the darkness— a series of rounded square windows framing muffled faces that ascended and descended with regularity behind a screen of stark trees.

But on the first morning of the New Year, I came to the window to find a fine filigree of frost lacing every twig, every branch, every leaf, every gate, every roof tile, every stone. And the air, it seemed a diaphanous white veil, through which one moved like a trembling young bride. From this hazy picture, the red and cream cogwheel emerged like a carriage from a fairytale. Its sliding doors opened with a whoosh just before our feet on the icy platform, and in we stepped.

It is a family tradition to take the cogwheel train up to the top of Széchenyi Hill for a little stroll in the forest on the first day of the year.

I imagine that at no other time, at no other moment, does the cogwheel ride resemble more its first journeys of the late 19th century than on a white winter’s day— snow and frost render almost invisible the houses that have multiplied in the past four decades on the hillsides, the canvas is once again blank. One is transported to those times when vineyards still covered the slopes, with only a scattering of villas, visited during the weekends by those living in the seething cauldron of Pest.

When Niklaus Riggenbach, a Swiss locomotive designer, built continental Europe’s second cog railway here in 1874, he replaced an hours-long horse-and-buggy service that had effectively limited expansion on the Buda hills with an open-window steam-powered train decked in green livery.

Even in the few decades following 1929, when the steam engines were replaced with electric trains and yellow passenger cars, there was nothing but a lone school among fruit orchards and grassy slopes near our station.

The present cogwheel trains are rarely ever filled to capacity. One begins to recognize faces, of passengers and conductors, one runs into neighbors. Once, on our way back home after midnight, well past the hour of the last train going up hill, we spied a darkened cogwheel heading towards a station we happened to be passing. Rushing to the platform, we waved to the conductor, who halted the train, and begged him to take us up. He opened the doors with a whoosh, and we took up seats in the dark. Up went the phantom train, with lights switching on midway, not stopping until it had reached our station, whereupon we thanked the conductor, bid him a good night and happy holidays, letting the cogwheel continue on its way.

villes d'eaux

«Hévíz», work in progress, 2012

Scenes from Budapest, Evening dances underground

«Danseurs en rond», aquarelle

As November draws to a close, wooden huts of motley wares mushroom across the squares of the city, giving shape to Christmas markets that will soon illuminate the darkness of Central European winters.

The wailing arabesques of fiddles cut through the late autumn air, surprise you at corners, mingle with the sweet aroma of roasted chestnuts. Night falls shortly after 4 o’clock, and all anyone would like to do after work is squirrel himself away in some cozy niche with warm company and mulled wine.

One such frosty evening, V took me down to the Gödör Klub on Erzsébet tér (management has since changed hands, and it is now called Akvárium), an underground pit in the middle of the city that hosts various nocturnal and cosmopolitan parties of music and dance. But that evening, Gödör had donned on the aura of one of Gogol’s country tales, becoming the “light burning somewhere at the end of the village as soon as evening comes on,” where “laughter and singing is heard in the distance, there is the twang of the balalaika and, at times, of the fiddle, talk and noise […] lads burst into the cottage with the fiddler, there is an uproar at once, fun begins, they set off dancing, and I could not tell you all the pranks that are played.”¹

In the dimness of candlelight and Christmas garlands, a music ensemble composed of contrabass, violins, the hurdy-gurdy, the zither, and the cimbalom, performed for a dance floor filled with men and women of all ages holding one other by the waist and shoulders, twirling madly about, now clockwise, now counter-clockwise. On the men were sleek polished leather boots that glinted softly and reached just below their knees and slim trousers topped with a billowing white shirt. On the women were flowing skirts that flared as they spun around, their heads tilted back, their eyes fixed on their partners.

The entire scene did not give one the impression of being too folkloric, but rather of something pulsing and vibrant, of a past woven seamlessly into the present.

When the couples’ dance had ended, the women parted to the edge of the floor and the men formed a circle to perform for the women a dance, the legényes from the Kalotaszeg region of Transylvania. The musicians took to their instruments and one by one, each of the men puffed into the circle, executing a series of improvised leg flourishes with his black leather boots, now tapping the ground with his heel and boot tip, now kicking the air and bending his knees to the melody of the fiddle. Like a marionette, he seemed to leap into the air in starts and spurts, his torso straight, his head level, with his limbs in autonomous animation. All the while, the women looked on sternly, amusingly, their hands on their hips, swaying also to the music, admiring, evaluating, reveling. How like life!

We took part in the next couple’s dance, but this part of the night with men in a circle, dancing, vying for the feminine gaze, was most memorable. I shall be sorry when I leave this city of underground dances whose folk roots flourish on modern dance floors.

¹ Nikolai Gogol, (Evenings in a Village near Dikanka, preface to Volume I, 1831)

A performance clip of a Kalotaszegi legényes

A Romantic Idea of Village and Country Life

«Romantic village life» 2012

In the winter, you could see its fairytale tower puffing out a ribbon of smoke from its little chimney. The last leaves fallen away from the surrounding trees, its faux half-timber façade stood visible upon a mound further up the street. It was the one house that appealed most to the romantic idea of a provincial life.

Some abodes in the village have wooden shutters painted pastel, not common in these parts; still others have rounded rosy roofs or roofs that slope steeply downward and then gently flare with charm; but this is no Rothenburg ob der Tauber, and the vast majority of homes here are an unremarkable collection of modern-day constructions one can find in any German suburbia.

So when evening falls, and the meadow is enveloped in shadow, I can peer out the window at the tower’s moonlit silhouette, and life in a village takes on sweet and poetic notes, like horses grazing under apple trees, like yoga in a farmhouse, like a one-track train station platform, like the only café in the village that doubles as tailor’s and delivery service and closes shop at noon on Saturdays. Like the bird sanctuary trail winding along the hill, the ringing church bells, the stream running behind the village hall.

But I won’t shed a tear leaving. That isn’t to say I have given up entirely on village life. Some villages have grannies who sit on public benches on the main square watching the world go by. Some have a warm summer street where all the dogs go for siestas. Some have cottages with bunches of hanging herbs. Some have old stone walls covered in brier. This village had none of those. Something important was lacking, but I won’t wait to find out what.

Onwards with the tramontane life and spring cleaning.

Songs of an Other

«If this is a dream...», work in progress, 2012

If this is a dream and he loves me,
May I never wake up
In the sweetness of the dawn,
May my soul fly away

— song from Smyrna, sung by Savina Yannatou

Idylle en Bohême

«On the Chimney», 2011

— What are you playing at?
— Why, at soldiers.

— Play at whatever you like, but not here.

— Where are we to play?

— On top of the chimney for all I care! but quietly!

— The chimney?
— The chimney!

...

Vaše podlomené zdraví
pivo upevní a spraví.

Feeling weak and pale.
Down a pint of ale!


— Jiří Menzel’s Postřižiny (Cutting It Short)

Chile Rising, Rafael Sotomayor

This month, Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines released a special on Chile’s student protests that rocked the country for much of the past year and continues into 2012. With a largely privatized education system described as “capitalism’s ideal laboratory,” the cost of education is high and the state of public schools and universities in Chile are dismal. The faces of the students filmed were so bright, beautiful and young. They were demanding free, quality education to the rhythms of Chilean singer Anita Tijoux’s Shock, the song-turned-anthem of the movement, whose chorus went,

La hora sonó, la hora sonó
No permitiremos más, más
tu doctrina del Shock¹

…

Rafael Sotomayor, a young Chilean man, had moved to Frankfurt am Main some years ago. We had met him as a street musician on the Römerberg, the central square in Frankfurt when the apples were ripe on trees and the sun still reflected upon the city’s skyscrapers.

It is common in Europe’s metropolises to walk past accordionists who churn out La Vie en rose, whether you are in Paris, Munich or Istanbul, or violinists who will interpret The Godfather on a tram in Warsaw or the underground in London. And it is the same in Frankfurt, the banking capital of the continent.

But Rafael Sotomayor was neither playing a famous melody nor any common instrument with his slender figures. In fact, we had not even spotted him by the fountain of Justice when the strange and rich undulating timbre halted my nightwatcher in his tracks. It seemed to warp time and space around us, drawing us into manifold resonances, successions of low rapid notes that caressed the ear, now as a soft reed brush, now as the tap of a fingertip. The air was already cooling, but a little party gravitated rapt around the seated young man tapping and waving his hands over what looked like upturned metal woks or alien saucers. A Japanese businessman, a couple from South America, a group of Indian tourists, we all stood still before the spectacle. The weekend bustle of the crowded square seemed to fade as the young man wrought his melodies.

The audience clapped heartily at the end of the performance, and the South American couple came eagerly to him, interrogating him about his strange UFOs, fingering his CDs. They were happy to speak a common tongue and listened intently as he explained how the instruments were a 21st century invention by two Swiss makers. They were called “hang,” from the Bernese word for hand, which was the only medium used to coax sound from the instruments— all handmade to this day by the same two individuals, whose artisanal production was dwarfed by growing demand. I can only liken the sound to the Indonesian gamelan, since the ensemble is composed of percussions, but it is a pale comparison.

Purses and wallets opened and CDs changed hands as Rafael Sotomayor bowed graciously and packed his instruments. The sun had set and the wind was rising.

The affable young musician told the crowd he would be playing in the city’s Königshalle (Emperor’s Hall) where kings and emperors used to be crowned, as well as at theatre and concert venues in and around the country. He also played in a band, The Art of Fusion, composed of musicians from Poland, Bolivia, Jamaica, Spain, India, as well other intermittent artists of diverse origins.

The crowd dispersed eventually, some still under the music’s spell.

It is time we should look him up again. “Chile Rising.” It seems to describe Rafael Sotomayor.


¹ The bell has tolled, the bell has tolled
We won’t allow it any more
Your doctrine of Shock

The song makes a direct reference to Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine, the name she gives to the free market economic policies of the “Chicago Boys” who had influenced Chile’s development under the dictatorship of Pinochet.

Listen:

Shock, Anita Tijoux
Skies over Germany solo piece, Rafael Sotomayor
Inner Voice, The Art of Fusion-Rafael Sotomayor

Please Mr Postman

«Boîtes aux lettres» 2012

So many days you passed me by
See the tear standing in my eye
You didn't stop to make me feel better
By leaving me a card or a letter

Please Mr. Postman, look and see
If there's a letter, a letter for me?

— Please Mr Postman, The Beatles

Catching up on correspondence

Scenes from Budapest, Bomo Art

«Hőlégballonok Budapest felett» Hot-air balloons over Budapest (via Bomo Art)

C'était l'époque où les crinolines, les cages d'acier avaient pris leurs proportions les plus extravagantes, et il me semble qu'elle émergeait d'une véritable montgolfière de soie blanche.

It was the age when crinolines, those cages of steel, had taken on the most extravagant proportions, and it seemed to me that she was emerging from a hot-air balloon of white silk.

— Pierre Loti, Prime jeunesse (1919, p 34)

Touching that Pierre Loti, indefatigable voyager and Orientalist, lover of Istanbul, would in his old age depict the outmoded women’s skirts of his youth as hot-air balloons, so that even in a drawing-room, one was still elsewhere, circumnavigating the world and time in 80 days.

Something in that picture reverberates in the little shop on Régiposta utca 14 (14 Old Post Office Street), home of Bomo Art stationery, in its leather-bound journals and exquisitely printed original paper sheets. Surannée, like the pomaded locks of Valentino, or the waltz in a tango; dépassé, like an English rose at the piano, or a gentleman’s monocle; surannée, like the perfume of parchment maps, the gentle folds of a silken bow; dépassé, like skating on a frozen lake in the snow.

Praxinoscope (via Bomo Art)

Spinning the praxinoscope in the shop round, a child hovers over its rotating mirrors to glimpse a neatly trimmed corseted lady walk up and down a flight of stairs. Kaleidoscopes wrapped in embossed prints of painted birds and animals, compasses and astrolabes, lilacs and lavender, line the shelves above her, by drawers full of watercolor postcards with calligraphic greetings.

But by far the most charming print adorning journals, boxes and gift card sets is of a painting of hot-air balloons hovering over Budapest, like women’s crinoline skirts spread full in a magnificent ballroom.

And the presider of the ball, a benevolent Baba Yaga with a bird’s nest of hair, will have her house on chicken legs carry you more swiftly than a wink to those long bygone days.

Scenes from Budapest, Párizsi Nagy Áruház

«Protests before Párizsi Nagy Áruház, Andrássy út 39», 2012
Signs: “There will be a Hungarian Republic”, “Enough!”, “Solidarity”, “Democracy”, “Orbán, get out!”

Nothing betrayed the commotion outside the Alexandra bookstore of the Párizsi Nagy Áruház to its visitors but the assistants who had halted their rounds and stood motionless by the upper-floor windows. Arms crossed, their faces illuminated by the dancing lights on the trees of Andrássy Avenue, they reflected the shadows of thousands passing beneath their gaze. And as the music and chants grew more distinct, one could not, even in the opulent interiors of Budapest's own “Parisian Department Store”, one simply could not escape the sense that something was in the air.

Monday evening of January 2, wave upon wave of protesters rolled down the elegant thoroughfare towards the State Opera, where the prime minister and his coterie were holding a gala in honor of the country's new constitution, passed by his party’s two-thirds majority in Parliament. The numbers of the opposition did not cease to grow into the night, and already by half past seven had congested quite a number of side streets, including the “Broadway” of Pest, Nagymező utca, as well as Liszt Ferenc tér.

The state television channel would later air footage of nearly-empty streets along with isolated skirmishes between young ruffians and the largely peaceful congregation, the former clad in black leather, and who had pushed themselves into the crowds to stir trouble and make Nazi salutes. But as I had seen it from above and later down in the streets, the procession was by and large solemn and grave, distancing themselves from the troublemakers with “Nazis haza!” (Nazis go home!).

What is a constitution that restrains the powers of the constitutional court, the speakers asked, that muzzles the free press, the judicial branch, the independence of the central bank? What is to be done with a prime minister who strips the country of the word “Republic” from its official name, invokes St Stephen and God to bless the Hungarians? Do “Heroes, Kings and Saints,” the exhibit Viktor Orbán opened at the Hungarian National gallery on the same day, impassion him more than the economic fears of Hungarian citizens today?

«Lotz-terem», 2012

In the Lotz-terem, the neo-Renaissance jewel of the Párizsi Nagy Áruház, where I was sitting at the start of the mobilization, a piano tinkled As Time Goes By. The artist of the hall’s vaulted ceiling, Károly Lotz, must have been dreaming of the Sistine Chapel when he painted the gilded frescoes in 1884. Between the arcades, in place of Michelangelo’s prophets and sibyls, he had depicted men and women hammering, measuring, drawing, cutting, building— in a fit of national glorification in crimson lake and cobalt blue. Sipping hot chocolate in such a place, one could feel the effervescence of those years of monarchy and empire.

The neo-Renaissance palace on Andrássy út 39 that was refashioned into a department store of Secessionist expression owed its conception to the wealth gleaned from such an empire, the very same that had erected the State Opera, its ceiling also signed by Lotz. On that evening, the audience of the prime minister’s gala and the visitors of the Lotz-terem Bookcafé were gazing up at the same inherent tension— burgeoning nationalism rendered in the cosmopolitan aesthetic of an imperial multiethnic constellation.

The Párizsi Nagy Áruház and its Lotz-terem did not offer the circumstances to contemplate such paintings after the Second World War, when it was converted for some years to a book storage warehouse, no doubt at the time the finest of its kind in the world.

L'Homme révolté

«L'homme révolté», 2010

«La lutte de l'homme contre le pouvoir est la lutte de la mémoire contre l'oubli.»

The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against oblivion.

— Milan Kundera, (Le Livre du rire et de l'oubli, p.14, Folio nº1831 / The Book of Laughter and Forgetting)

I remember one day, in a library in Bohemia, putting down Camus’ book and staring into the distance. The image that formed before me was that of Spartacus bound and struggling to free himself from his chains. A year later, in another country, I sketched a model who coincided with this image in my mind.

In support of the current struggle of the Egyptians and the Syrians, of all those past and present who have struggled for freedom.

And... in memory of Václav Havel, a man greater than his small country, face of the Velvet Revolution, who passed away yesterday at 75 in Prague. A man who strived “to live always in truth,” in his words, and whose legacy will be misunderstood, rejected, hijacked, by the powerful he deplored in his writings, in East and West alike...


Slavoj Žižek reviews Václav Havel: A Political Tragedy in Six Acts by John Keane
Read Pepe Escobar's Latin America's message to the Arab world

L’Idée d’Europe II – Printen

L.v.d.D. woodcut Printen mold, Cafe Van den Daele, 2011

When in 1890, Leo van den Daele of Ghent opened a patisserie on Büchelstraße in Aachen’s Old Town, he could not have imagined how emblematic the shop would become over a century later. Issued from a Belgian noble family, Van den Daele settled across the border with the idea of developing recipes for a series of sweet delicacies. But his reputation grew from the masterful Printen gingerbread figures he cast from woodcuts and metal engravings and that sold like hotcakes during the Christmas season.

The Fleming was only following the example of his countrymen, copper craftsmen from Dinant who four centuries earlier had preceded him as emigrants, carrying with them the tradition of engraved pastries to the former Free Imperial City.

In every room of the present-day café, in the hallways and stairwell, Van den Daele’s molds hang against a backdrop of red brocade and green satin, wooden panels and Flemish blue porcelain tiles.

The genesis of their forms coincides with the end of Medieval Europe and the dawn of Europe’s golden age of old master prints, issued from the same roots and ushered in by Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press around 1440. For the next few centuries, artists like Albrecht Dürer and Rembrandt earned greater renown in their lifetime from their widely disseminated prints rather than from their paintings. Not only did the printing press revolutionize art and letters, it shook up the old coordinates of Europe, transforming and universalizing its science, knowledge, communication, rendering the dream of widespread literacy possible. And from that moment on, information technology sped on the rails of exponential innovation, nothing less.

Six degrees of separation

«Castles on the Rhine», 2011

What does Burg Katz, a castle overlooking the Rhine, have to do with WikiLeaks? When its looming shadow materialized on the opposite shore before dawn, the passengers of the train thought: nothing. Nothing at all, except when one falls into the rabbit hole of links. The hourglass sand falls, the fern’s shadow crawls. And two names that would never have coincided in real life are on the web interconnected.

Like the legendary Rhine castle of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods) where the hero Siegfried meets his doom, Burg Katz was also set in flames, and must have been a formidable sight, a firebrand and its blazing reflection in the twilight. Its destroyer, Napoleon, was riding on a tide of victories in 1806, whose crest was Austerlitz. He bombarded what previous centuries of war between France and the German princes had hitherto spared. That was how the former abode of the Counts of Katzenelnbogen (the first cultivators of Germany's quintessential wine, the Riesling), became ruins until nearly a century later when it was rebuilt as the Burg Neukatzenelnbogen (the New Cat’s Elbow Castle). Decidedly a syllable too long, everyone hence called it Burg Katz, or Cat’s Castle.

But back to the rabbit hole. Burg Katz is the setting of one of comic book character Yoko Tsuno’s adventures, L’Orgue du Diable (The Devil’s Organ). The character is unusual in that she is the product of a Belgian writer’s imagination, who was inspired by a Parisian cabaret dancer and actress, Yoko Tani.

The Asian counterpart of Josephine Baker, Tani first drew the attention of international audiences for her role on the silver screen as a Vietnamese nightclub hostess in the American adaptation of Graham Greene’s The Quiet American.

Set in French Indochina, Greene’s novel foreshadows future American involvement and war in Vietnam. The eponymous American is the bright and idealistic but woefully ignorant Alden Pyle, who has had no real experience in Southeast Asia.

It has been observed that his character may have been based, at least in part, on US military counter-insurgency expert Edward Lansdale, who was stationed in Vietnam 1953-1957.

Lansdale happened to be the direct supervisor of Daniel Ellsberg, the whistleblower who released the Pentagon Papers, during the latter’s two years of service in Vietnam. On June 17, 2010, Mr Ellsberg appeared on Democracy Now! in front of Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales to defend the alleged actions of Pfc. Bradley Manning, arrested and thrown into solitary confinement for leaking, among other documents, a classified video of a US military helicopter gunning down unarmed Iraqi civilians, including two Reuters journalists, to (the final link) WikiLeaks.

So there you have it:

Burg Katz – Yoko Tsuno – Yoko Tani – The Quiet American – Edward Lansdale – Daniel Ellsberg – WikiLeaks

Six degrees of separation¹

Burg Katz also happens to overlook the Lorelei rock (see previous post). Curiouser and curiouser, further north of the Rhine is its rival, Burg Maus (Mouse Castle), built in the 14th century to secure the Elector of Trier’s borders against the Counts of Katzenelnbogen.

¹Thanks to Wikipedia

Legends of the Rhine — The Lorelei

«Lorelei», 2011

Ich weiß nicht was soll es bedeuten,
Daß ich so traurig bin;
Ein Märchen aus alten Zeiten,
Das kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn.

Die Luft ist kühl und es dunkelt,
Und ruhig fließt der Rhein;
Der Gipfel des Berges funkelt
Im Abendsonnenschein.

Die schönste Jungfrau sitzet
Dort oben wunderbar;
Ihr gold'nes Geschmeide blitzet,
Sie kämmt ihr goldenes Haar.

Sie kämmt es mit goldenem Kamme
Und singt ein Lied dabei;
Das hat eine wundersame,
Gewalt'ge Melodei.

Den Schiffer im kleinen Schiffe
Ergreift es mit wildem Weh;
Er schaut nicht die Felsenriffe,
Er schaut nur hinauf in die Höh'.


Ich glaube, die Wellen verschlingen
Am Ende Schiffer und Kahn;
Und das hat mit ihrem Singen
Die Lore-Ley getan.

— Heinrich Heine, Die Lore-Ley (1824)

I know not what it should imply,
That I am so forlorn;
A tale from times so long gone by
From my thoughts will not be torn.

The air is cool and it darkens,
And the Rhine does calmly flow;
The peak of the mountain sparkles
In the sinking sun's last glow.

The most beautiful maiden so
Alights, but wondrously up there.
It blazes, her golden bow,
She combs her golden hair.

She combs it with golden comb
And thereby sings a song;
A seeming wonder-tome
With a melodye violent-strong.

The seaman in his tiny yacht
It grasps with wilding woe,
He looks not at the rock-reefs
as he ought,
He looks only up from below.

I believe the swells do devour,
In the end, both skipper and skiff;
Smitten, in his final hour,
By the Lore-Ley with her riff.

— trans. Robert Clarke, 2001

Listen to the poem set to the haunting music of Liszt (1841),
interpreted by Joan Sutherland (1960),

or to the well-known melody by Silcher (1837), interpreted by Richard Tauber (1939)

Milonga on the rails

In the lonely outskirts west of the city, overlooking the rails to Frankfurt, lies a former train depot, covered in ivy. To reach it from the town center, one passes many a nondescript warehouse, many a faded or peeling sign, many a billboard plastered with articles one doesn’t need.

If one were to take the train to the north via Darmstadt on a blue Sunday evening, one perchance might be surprised by a glimpse of lights dancing from glasses, bottles and chandeliers in this same brick depot, and by the shadows of pairs in close embrace. One might even be struck by the notes of red on the walls, without realizing that they are the blooms of amaryllis perched on the windowsill.

One would watch the scene as in a silent film, oblivious to the notes of the bandoneon or the voice of Carlos Gardel, from that train to Frankfurt or Cologne. Inside the depot, the dancing pairs would feel a slight tremor of the passing locomotion, and those waiting at the bar might glance through the windowpanes and meet the fading eyes of a passenger peering curiously out into the night.

Welcome to Weststadt Bar, on special Sunday evenings, when a train depot transforms into a ballroom, and a milonga brings cars from Wiesbaden, Heidelberg, Mannheim, Frankfurt, Aschaffenburg, to such a forlorn part of Darmstadt. What is it that makes people drive hundreds of kilometers for a tango?

«Un ilôt de beauté parmi les décombres» (An island of beauty among the ruins), 2011 (watercolor and digital collage)

Listen to Anibal Troilo and Alberto Marino's Milonga Triste, 1946 version

of herb and forest spirals...

Walking around town one summer day, my friend and I stumbled upon a curious mound of rubble in the courtyard of a primary school. Upon closer inspection, I perceived that the pile was dirt contained by natural stones arranged in a spiral from which weeds had sprouted and flourished. My friend, a native, enlightened my notion by explaining that it was a Kräuterspirale, an herb spiral, that children had built as a school project. One finds these spirals in gardens, private and public, and they are quite popular here.

Its larger cousin, the Waldspirale (Forest Spiral), designed by (grownup) Austrian architect Hundertwasser (A hundred waters), right in Darmstadt's backyard!

The idea is that one can grow a variety of herbs from different climates in a relatively small space by placing them at different levels in the spiral. A whole herb community can thus be cultivated.

I later discovered that it was an Australian, Bill Mollison, who had come up with the idea, as part of his “permaculture design”. Some years ago, the word “permaculture” had so captivated my imagination that I was ready to set off for farms in Wales and Japan to study it (the word permaculture comes from permanent, or sustainable cultivation of the earth). In particular, I had read about a Japanese farmer by the name of Masanobu Fukuoka who had published a book in the seventies called One Straw Revolution. It was essentially a manual of techniques Mr Fukuoka had distilled from thirty years of “natural” farming— that is, farming that rejected industrial techniques of heavy machinery or the use of herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers. It was, in short, the antithesis of the so-called “green revolutions” that promoted modern industrial agricultural techniques in developing countries such as India in the 1960s.

At the dawn of its independence, an India suffering from famine turned to the United States for food aid. In 1960, 92% of the aid that the US provided to India was alimentary in nature. It was then that the Green Revolution was launched, supported by the American Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, and India was able to considerably increase its cereal production (from 70 million tons in 1954 to 220 million today). However, the price India paid was heavy: dried-up canals and underground waterbeds, soil salinization, soaring personal debt of farmers (more than 100,000 among them committed suicide in less than a decade), an alarming rise in cancer rates in the countryside. And that without mentioning the grave repercussions at the political and social level. Many considered the Green Revolution as a major factor that led to the secessionist revolt in Punjab in the 1980s, a movement during which Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh guards in 1984, following the assault by the Indian army of the Golden Temple, a Sikh sacred site, where the insurgents had taken refuge.¹

Back to Fukuoka… one of his most cherished projects was combatting desertification through “plant irrigation,” that is, by spreading the most water-hardy plants throughout the desert first, and then using their network of roots to accumulate and hold ground water. He envisioned forests eventually engulfing the desert, although not in his lifetime.

An herb spiral is similarly concerned with water irrigation in its distribution of plants at different levels. Below are instructions on how to build an herb spiral, taken from a gardening book found in a café in Heidelberg.

Plants in an herb spiral

The upper level of the herb spiral is ideal for Mediterranean plants such as oregano, lavender, winter savory, sage, rosemary and thyme. The middle level is good for culinary herbs from the continent, such as marjoram, hyssop, basil, chives, parsley and burnet. And finally, on the lowest level of the spiral are moisture-loving plants, such as peppermint, lemon balm and watercress.

Constructing the spiral

The spiral is made out of natural stones, like a dry wall. Draw out the spiral at the location desired with a spade or stick. For the first stones, dig a foundation about 10 cm deep. From this foundation, the next levels will be built. The maximum height of the spiral should be around 50-60 cm, with the sides sloping gradually until the edges.
The space between the stones should preferably be filled with rubble. This chalky and permeable material is ideal for herbs. The rubble should then be covered with about a 10cm thick layer of earth. A good mixture would be two parts garden soil and 1 part sand.
Fill the outermost sections of the spiral with good garden soil. At the end of the spiral, one can create a small pond that collects water. Just make a hollow and line with film or simply install a plastic tub inside.


⁽¹⁾ Mira Kamdar, “L’Inde résiste à la séduction de l’agroalimentaire américain,” Le Monde diplomatique, March 2010.

Kakania or k. & k.

There, in Kakania, that misunderstood State that has since vanished, which was in so many things a model, though all unacknowledged, there was speed too, of course; but not too much speed. Whenever one thought of that country from some place abroad, the memory that hovered before the eyes was of wide, white, prosperous roads dating from the age of foot-travellers and mail-coaches, roads leading in all directions like rivers of established order, streaking the countryside like ribbons of bright military twill, the paper-white arm of government holding the provinces in firm embrace. And what provinces! There were glaciers and the sea, the Carso and the cornfields of Bohemia, nights by the Adriatic restless with the chirping of cicadas, and Slovakian villages where the smoke rose from the chimneys as from upturned nostrils, the village curled up between two little hills as though the earth had parted its lips to warm its child between them. (…) Here one was in the centre of Europe, at the focal point of world's old axes; the words 'colony' and 'overseas' had the ring of something as yet utterly untried and remote. (…) The administration of this country was carried out in an enlightened, hardly perceptible manner (…) by the best bureaucracy in Europe, which could be accused of only one defect: it could not help regarding genius and enterprise of genius in private persons, unless privileged by high birth or State appointment, as ostentation, indeed presumption. (…)And besides, in Kakania it was only that a genius was always regarded as a lout, but never, as sometimes happened elsewhere, that a mere lout was regarded as a genius.

— Robert Musil, A Man Without Qualities (Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften), tr. by Wilkins/Kaiser

There is a lingering of a perfume from a world of yesterday, a world that has since vanished, concentrated in certain coffeehouses of the most emblematic cities of Mitteleuropa, Vienna-Prague-Budapest. By some curious will, it has wafted its way even to places it never originally occupied, to the far-flung Hessian city of Darmstadt, where it has revived the initials k. u. k. (pronounced “Ka und Ka”), or kaiserlich und königlich. Those initials that once gilded all the workings of the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy now grace the front of a conscious-looking café just behind the city’s transport hub, Luisenplatz.

Situated on Carree 1 with a view of Darmstadt’s Central Station, Café KuK seeks to recreate the Imperial and Royal of its initials to the letter. Its walls, painted the yellow of Schönbrunn, are adorned with framed prints of flowers and 19th century vistas, women in petticoats with gloved hands, purse and parasol. They hang in their prettiness above its wall-length mirrors. Among the ornaments, an engraving of Sissi l’impératrice in all her petulant grandeur. The sheltered interior is doubly warmed by numerous modest but bright chandeliers. Hot chocolate served in porcelain teacups as well as coffee with orange liqueur and whipped cream, known as the Maria Theresa, are the beverages of choice, especially on such overcast wintry days.

The café ignores Herr Musil, who was rather hard on everything that was k.k. or k. & k. Rather, its muse is a certain A. Polgar, urbanite and wit of Viennese society and lover of its cafés. His fond observations on coffeehouses (or rather, a certain Café Central), are sprinkled all across the menu’s pages, some of which I will reproduce here:

Das Kaffeehaus ist eine Weltanschauung, und zwar eine, deren innerster Inhalt es ist, die Welt nicht anzuschauen. Was sieht man da schon!

The coffeehouse is a worldview and one, to be sure, whose innermost essence is not to observe the world at all. What does one see in it anyway?

Die Bewohner des Kaffeehauses sind Menschen, die allein sein wollen, aber dazu Gesellschaft brauchen.

The inhabitants of coffeehouses are people who want to be alone, but need companionship for the purpose.

Teilhaftig der eigentlichen Reize dieses wunderlichen Kaffeehauses wird allein der, der dort nichts will als dort sein. Zwecklosigkeit heiligt den Aufenthalt.

The only person who partakes of the most essential charm of this splendid coffeehouse is he who wants nothing there but to be there. Purposelessness sanctifies the stay.

How true these notes are of KuK’s clientele, and of the café itself, we shall verify at present. For the most part, the patrons of this smug little corner in the city of science and art nouveau are those approaching or in their autumn years. They make their entrance in fur coats, felt hats, abundant scarves, canes or wheelchairs, and settle in their favorite spots after a drawn-out peeling ritual (although the felt hat is often kept on). Half arrive alone and sit alone, the other half join a table of senior friends. They ostensibly occupy themselves with their cake and Sudoku puzzles, chat discreetly with their neighbors, perhaps after a morning of aquatic exercises at the Jugendstilbad.

A silver-haired gentleman in tweed sits a table down from me, a glass of König Ludwig Weissbier in one hand and the Frankfurter Allgemeine in the other. He frequently peers over his paper and spectacles, shifting his eyes now right, now left, at the waitresses shuffling to and fro in black vests and long white aprons.

Of course, such a pretender to the atmosphere of Habsburg glory would not be complete without a choice selection of newspapers, international preferably, for its clientele. Indeed, by the entrance next to the coat racks and baby carriages, one finds fresh copies of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), Die Zeit, Die Süddeutsche Zeitung, Der Spiegel, and selections from the NY Times. Here, one can spend hours poring over its pages without the slightest disturbance. The service is brisk, but friendly, and never attempts to shoo away a client who dallies after long finishing his Hawelka-Becher sundae, despite the rarity of an unoccupied table.

Although we barely tipped the median age of the café dwellers, I would not say that Café KuK is unpleasant for young people. On the contrary, from half past two to half past four in the afternoon, there was never a dearth of company, such that one has only to observe the world of the café.

And although the charm of the antiquated is Café KuK’s aim, it nevertheless has evolved a progressive view of the meaning of k.&k.:

Kunde und König       Client and King
Kunst und Kultur       Art and Culture
Kaffee und Kuchen       Coffee and Cake
Kellner und Koch       Waiter and Chef

Some practical information:

Kaffeehaus KuK
Im Carree 1
64273 Darmstadt

Opening hours
Sommersaison
Monday - Saturday 09.00 - 22.00
Sundays & Holidays 10.00 - 22.00
Wintersaison
Monday - Saturday 09.00 - 21.00
Sundays & Holidays 10.00 - 21.00

Lunch served from 12.00

de "l'amour de voyage" au "Spießbürger calme de la forêt"

To the girl back then, traversing the lands of Europe was a grand affair of love and travel. Roses thrown from ship decks in dramatic farewells, trains departing in billowing smoke, platforms of waving handkerchiefs. Flushed cheeks, banner unfurled, the bare-breasted Marianne leading the people to their Destiny. An excess to occupy.


Bienvenue en province!

Now in this provincial corner of Europa, there is nothing to occupy but the well-cushioned seat in Hotel Waldesruh (Forest calm), like a good Spießbürger, at the edge of a foggy meadow.

adieu automne

«Martinsviertel», 2011 (watercolor)

Martinsviertel, a charming quarter of Darmstadt northeast of the city's green grounds, Herrngarten. The streets bear quaint names such as Pankratiusstraße (Pancras St), Gardistenstraße (Guardsmen St), Löffelstraße (Spoon St), Liebfrauenstraße (Our Lady St), all meandering around Kantplatz (Kant Square). A little more than three centuries ago, the philosopher from Königsberg wrote before his routine afternoon walk, "Sapere aude! Dare to know. Have the courage to use your reason," in his essay What is Enlightenment? Apparently, the only time he failed to accomplish his beloved daily ritual was when he was awaiting news of the French Revolution a few years later...

Painted in the early days of October.

In the afternoon, the children of the house come out and play with the big fat cat with white paws.