February and The Byronic Project

February is starting with the world covered in snow. It has been constantly snowing all week long and doesn't show signs of stopping yet, which is great because I currently spend my days curled up in bed. My obligatory post-exam period illness has caught up with me, so instead of going out to celebrate I am staying in and watching the snowflakes dance outside my window.
One twelfth of the year is already over. That doesn't sound like much, but considering how quickly this time has passed it is enormous. But I am very much looking forward to February, for several reasons.


First, I am participating in Alice's readalong of Charles Dickens's Bleak House which is going to be a lot of fun judging by her readalong of Wilkie Collins's Woman in White in ye olden days.

However I am a tiny little bit worried because the goal is to read the whole 800+ pages book in February, with posts on every Tuesday between the 4th and the 18th. This will require a lot of dedication (and time, considering my tortoise's reading pace), but I have been wanting to delve into Dickens's world again for quite some time now. And I have high hopes since a friend recently especially  recommended me Bleak House upon hearing that my two favourite Dickens novels are Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities.

Second, I am going abroad again! Next Friday I am leaving Austria to go to Spain for a week-long language holiday with my class. Valencia lies on the west coast, directly at the beach where it currently has 20 degrees, and is famous for its modern museums and its food, especially the delicious rice and seafood dish paella. To say I am looking forward to this week would be the understatement of the year!
And finally: I have figured out a list of books for my Byronic Project. Originally I wanted to include a lot more works which feature good Byronic heroes, but then I decided to limit the project to books which played an important role in the creation of the archetype, amongst other things due to time constraints. I would like to finish the project before the presentation of my paper in June. So the final choice of titles is this:

Paradise Lost by John Milton
Since the times of the French and American revolutions Satan has been considered the true hero of Milton's epic poem and the earliest traceable source for Byron's heroes. For the Romatics Satan is a rebel against God’s omnipotence which he regards as tyrannic, and in his hopeless rebellion against almightiness becomes a tragic character. He also displays other personality traits which will later become characteristics of the Byronic Hero: he is persuasive, passionate and charismatic, rallying the other Angels into war and, tempting Eve into tasting the Forbidden Fruit, he is also seductive.

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage by Lord Byron
The first real Byronic Hero is sketched out in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, a narrative poem published in 1812, when Lord Byron was only 24 years old. Childe is the medieval term for a young man waiting to become a knight, although Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage is a contemporary nineteenth century account of a young man’s travels and worldviews, based on Lord Byron’s own travels through Europe. The protagonist is the son of a wealthy family, disillusioned and bored by his pleasant life who seeks distraction and escape from society in foreign countries.The picture Byron draws of Harold is almost that of a completed Byronic Hero, charming, wealthy, beautiful, but also dark, immoral and flawed. Harold’s great flaw is his pride and arrogance; he feels superior to all other human beings but with this superiority comes a persistent loneliness and melancholy. Because he feels so superior to society he deliberately breaks its conventions and lives by his own principles, looking for excitement in scandalous behaviour.

Manfred by Lord Byron
The hero of this epic poem is supposed to be an especially good example of the Byronic hero. He is also the first who is haunted by guilt over a crime committed in his past, a pattern that would become very popular later (Mr Rochester, anyone?).

The Vampyre by John Polidori
This short story written by Lord Byron's private physician not only has its titular hero based off Byron himself, but also came into being together with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein during an especially cold and wet summer at Byron's villa in Switzerland. It was an enormous success and sparked the vampire craze that spread throughout Europe, leading to the creation of Dracula and thereby strongly influencing our notion of the vampire as an elegant and seductive but terrifying gentleman.
 
I am very excited to better acquaint myself with these fascinating characters!

Life, Byronic Heroes and Haruki Murakami

It's finally snowing

I can't believe it's been two weeks since I last posted something! Time has flown, mostly because the last weeks were packed with exams. Needless to say I didn't really have time to read or blog, my daily rhythm consisted more or less of school, lunch, study, repeat.
However, the worst is over now and the good thing is that not blogging for a while gave me the chance to really think about where I want to go to with this blog and with my reading in general.
And because my life has been rather boring apart from integral calculus and acid-base balance I have been pretty pensive on the whole, thinking about life and the future, but that is something for another day to discuss.

Concerning my reading a new project has appeared on the horizon, although I still have to work out the details. Ironically it was inspired by school. The Austrian school system requires every student to write a scientific paper and present it as part of our final exams and I chose to write about the Byronic Hero, his literary origins, characteristics, pervasiveness of popular culture and so on. It is an absolutely fascinating topic because the idea of these dark, passionate, world-weary, rebellious and attractive characters is as captivating to me as it has been to most since around the time of the French revolution, and also because supreme examples of Byronic Heroes can be found in many great books. Just think of Mr Rochester, Heathcliff, Sydney Carton! While I have thoroughly read some of the books I mention in my paper I have only skimmed others, especially those dealing with the roots of this archetype, which include for example Paradise Lost. This is why I am bringing the Byronic Project to life. Details should be up soon, hopefully.

On a different note I actually did read something during my study breaks, a rather special book even.
Haruki Murkami, whom I have loved ever since reading Norwegian Wood, published a new book in September.
Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage is supposedly his first book after Norwegian Wood that is not surrealistic and it sold more than a million copies during the first week of sales in Japan. As soon as I heard of it I googled the book and found out that the English translation will be published towards mid-2014... Can you imagine my surprise when I went by my local bookstore by chance and saw the German version already sitting there in the window display?
Of course I bought it immediately and I was not disappointed. Although it was far from flawless the book had this special Murakami feeling to it that I'd been missing since Norwegian Wood and I could barely put it down (which severely endangered my Chemistry mark). The story follows 36-year-old Tsukuru Tazaki who leads an ordinary, boring and anonymous life in Tokyo. In school he was part of a group of five friends who meant everything to each other and lived in total harmony completely in their own world, until one day the other four told Tsukuru that they never wanted to see him again. The reason? He should know. Sixteen years of loneliness follow. But when Tsukuru finally manages to connect to another person again and even sees a chance to win love, he has to deal with the pain of his past in order to reclaim the life that would have been his if not for that great tragedy. So he goes on a journey to visit his four old friends, to solve the mystery of his past and to finally discover himself before his time is over and it is too late.

This is ultimately a book about life, how we live it and about how we use the time given to us. It is about all the things that perish in the flow of time and, most importantly, about finding those which don't. A strange melancholy beauty that is so much Murakami's signature pervades the novel and at the end you really feel none the wiser about the great mystery of life, you only sense an elusive wisdom that cannot be put into words. There are several loose threads in the book which are never really resolved and often you have to accept vague allusions as the only conclusion you get, but that is another signature of Murakami.
His books are never easy and always very complex, but if they weren't they would only be half as beautiful.

January

I'll need a new hobby to fill all the time I currently spend
dreaming about this place

Obviously I am immensely susceptible to psychologic manipulation. From two days ago to now virtually nothing has changed in my life and yet my cosy laziness of then has been replaced with busy excitement, all because of the new year. I have finally realised that it really is January, and although the first day of 2014 is in fact just a day that is hardly different from the one before, everything feels different. I am thrilled for everything this year will bring: graduation, my entry into the world of adults on my 18th birthday and university. This morning I filled in my new calender and now the dates of my final exams are hanging on the wall in red ink. What a weird feeling!

It is a little intimidating, especially since I have no idea where in the world I will be next September. Cambridge is supposed to send me their answer during the next few days and of course I am excited, even though I try not to be. Rationally I know that it can only be a rejection because while my interviews were okay (but not great), my performance at their critical thinking test was underwhelming, to put it nicely. Overall I did my best, I just can't imagine that it was enough for Cambridge, there were almost 900 brilliant applicants for just 200 places. So in order to not be disappointed I am trying to crush my hopes, but you all know how obstinate hope can be.

On a brighter note, I have started reading again! When I was standing in front of my shelves yesterday a small book I have had there untouched for over a year basically jumped at me. The Frozen Deep was written as a play by Wilkie Collins for the annual Christmas performance at Charles Dickens's house in 1856 and later reworked into a short novel. It tells the story of Franklin's doomed Arctic expedition of 1845 and, although written by Collins, Dickens apparently altered it so much that critics claimed the play should be ascribed to him rather than to his friend. Having read both authors I am curious if I can notice their separate influences. However, the reason why I am really interested in it is that The Frozen Deep inspired Dickens to write A Tale of Two Cities by creating the character of Richard Wardour who later became Sydney Carton, the most tragic byronic hero of all time. So I am excited to see where this fascinating character originated and also because no, I can't get enough of Sydney Carton.

Hopefully I will finish this short book before the readathon on Saturday, which starts at 2 pm for me thanks to the time difference. I have had a few ideas as to what to read for it, but I'll probably decide spontaneously at my whim. Right now I am mostly concerned with hiding the last Christmas cookies so that I'll have something to snack on during the night!

To 2014!

The last classic I read was Emma, which I surprisingly loved (considering my former -let's call it- dislike of Jane Austen). That was in August.
This is why today, in contrast to the last few New Year's Eves, I have not been reading frantically in the hope of finishing all my books so that I could start the New Year without any old burden.
No, in fact I am starting 2014 very differently than any year before: for one thing I will be going out tonight, which I have never done on the 31st before. But what is more important in the long-term is that I have not signed up for any reading challenges in the new year. Yes, it made my heart ache, but I resisted temptation.
As much as I want to take part in many of the fantastic challenges floating around the blogging community, I know that I most likely won't be able to go through with them this year.
I will, however, definitely join the Classics Club Readathon on January 4! The only question is what I will read.

When I started blogging in 2011 I had read very little of value and knew nothing. Since then I became more educated and more acquainted with the classics, to the point that I felt I was reasonably well-read: I could talk about my favourite Dickens or Shakespeare, knew Wilkie Collins and Harper Lee and was ready to argue for the Inferno with anyone. Unfortunately, that was when life got in the way and interrupted my progress. Now I am standing in front of my shelves and don't know how to start again. To use an old metaphor, I feel as if I had a buffet full of delicious dishes in front of me and was paralysed because I wanted to eat them all and could not decide where to begin. Which is the right book to re-introduce me to my classics? A long Victorian novel stuffed with memorable characters? Something more modern? Or more ancient? A play? I don't know yet.
In addition, I feel a little intimidated because there are a lot of books that I would like to read, but after such a long break I somehow don't feel prepared for them. I am afraid that if I read them now I won't be able to appreciate them the way I would otherwise. There is The Bell Jar for example, or The Great Gatsby or David Copperfield, all of them books I have wanted to read for a long time, but I am afraid my reading them now will not do them justice.

So I am really starting 2014 without concrete plans. All I will do is wait and hope for the best.
Happy New Year!

Between the Years

It is my favourite time, these days that are somehow in between the years when it is still Christmas but the merry part of it is over and the past year is quickly fading. I cannot help wondering how on earth it is possible that this time is here again.

Yes, it is a cliché, but it really feels like yesterday that I was sitting here thinking about what 2013 would bring. Incredily, the whole year seems to have passed in the blink of an eye, although it was challenging, exciting, difficult and exhausting.
I stopped blogging in March, not because I made a conscious decision to do so, but because it simply did not fit the pace of my life at the time.
Looking back, I moved through the year at breakneck speed.

After the death of my grandfather ("the first grave that had opened in my road of life", as Dickens would say) I thought 2013 could only get worse. I was wrong. I can't remember any year that was as ambivalent as this.
For several weeks in spring I was ill before being invited as Vice-President to a Session of the Model European Parliament in Norwich, where I suddenly realised that there was one thing I wanted to study above all else: Politics. Consequently, my summer was spent almost entirely between college prospectuses.
I started my senior year at school and had my graduation ball, which is a very important event in Austria (all the girls wear white dresses and dance terribly complicated formal waltzes which we had to practise for six weeks). And finally, on the 10th of December 2013, something that I had both the sweetest dreams and the most horrible nightmares about happened: I had an interview at Clare College, Cambridge for Human Social and Political Science. It was a fantastic experience and I enjoyed it a lot, even though I was so nervous that I  once forgot what I was talking about in the middle of a sentence. By the way, I managed to talk about both To Kill a Mockingbird and Les Misérables during my interview for Politics.

Which brings me to the main content of this blog: reading. I did read a lot in 2013, but hardly anything I really enjoyed. For months I spent every free minute stuffing my brain with knowledge through academic reading about politics, International Relations, sociology etc., and although it was interesting I am now famished for real books. For literature. For the classics.
So, I am starting blogging again, but here and not at my old blog, because it is time for a fresh start.
But above all it is high time I started reading again!