Because great music deserves to be shared

PLEASE. LISTEN. TO THIS. PURE. AWESOMENESS.

And do buy Pentatonix's album, PTX Vol. 2 if you haven't! It's really worth it, and very difficult to stop listening to. Compared to their first album, I think Vol. 2 really shows a strong sense of musical maturity and direction. The originals are very solid while the covers are groundbreaking - I was especially impressed by "Valentine", because their cover is just SO much better than the original (which was honestly quite disappointing). This is certainly one of PTX's many strengths: taking an actually rather ordinary song and digging out its potential/revitalising it through a very refreshing reinterpretation.

"Run To You" will definitely please the choral fans with the lush chords and harmonies. The Eric Whitacre influence is certainly very strong in this one. I also really enjoyed Mitch's catchy sliding falsetto chorus in "Love Again" and the constant switching between major/minor tonality; very clever, especially when they switch to major on 'novocaine' and 'morning sun'.

In short, it's an amazing album. Go get it.

An extract from Cedric Watts' foreword to the OUP edition of Heart of Darkness

Critics who allege that Conrad is imperialistic may themselves be practising ideological and temporal imperialism. They assail the text for failing to endorse their own present-day beliefs or prejudices; and thereby they seek to subordinate the literary work to their own systems. ... A literary work may have a diversity of political implications and consequences, but it is not a political manifesto. It is an imaginative work which offers a voluntary and hypothetical experience. ... Awareness of the tentacular complexity of 'Heart of Darkness' may alert to us a current critical tendency: the reductive treatment of past texts in the attempt to vindicate the political gestures of the present ... Naturally readers discuss political aspects of literary texts; but to use political criteria as a 'master-discourse', as the final tribunal of judgement, is to commit an error of categorization. (An equivalent error would be to condemn The Communist Manifesto for lacking the lyricism of Shelley's 'Ode to a Skylark'.)

YES.

An excellently phrased response to the critical literary theories (feminism, post-colonialism, post-modernism) seeking to pigeonhole literature into their own narrow agendas instead of actually reading the text.

Diplomas of the Grandes Écoles: The Great Escape

[This is translated from an article written by Maryline Baumard on 9 October 2013 in the French newspaper Le Monde, which can be accessed here: http://www.lemonde.fr/education/article/2013/10/09/diplomes-des-grandes-ecoles-la-grande-evasion_3492235_1473685.html]

***

Barely graduated with a degree, and already a visa on the passport! Some 79% of university students in the previous year in 9 of the most exclusive grandes écoles* of the country do not exclude the possibility of looking for a job in a foreign country. This is the lesson that the Harris Interactive Institute draws from a study to be presented on Tuesday 10 October, on the state of the spirit of 975 university students from ENS Cachan, Polytechnique, Centrale, ESCP or Sciences Po.

"These results are emblematic of an encompassing pessimism. When the holders of the best degrees foresee that all the doors are not open in France for them, what do the others think?" worries Jean-Daniel Lévy, the Director of the Politics Department of Harris Interactive. The survey conducted by the Montaigne Institute shows that in effect 34% of those who will soon have in their pocket one of the best degrees think that "it will be difficult to find a job in France".

The country has nevertheless invested in its youth who have succeeded in the most competitive examinations. Here they are looking across the borders: 32% see themselves doing well in the United States, 23% in the UK, and 12% in Germany. 79% have went overseas during their studies in a grande école, of which 42% was for an internship. This opening-up is today one of the strengths of the grandes écoles which otherwise remain cautious as the list of countries invested in remains very old-fashioned. China only comes in 6th place, India in 14th. And the other emerging countries do not even make the list.

A career accelerator

After the anxiety of introductions, the primary motivation of the students of these grandes écoles remains "career opportunities" and the desire to "have an interesting job".

No wonder they prioritise countries whose ambiance they guess will be less morose than France. "I see around me many young engineers who only get interviews for foreign postings when leaving university," marvels Jean Steenhouver, graduate of the Institut national des sciences appliquées [National Institute of Applied Sciences] in 2011. "There are more offers across the borders than in France. And plus, if one thinks of the long term, it's a clear carrier accelerator. One progresses more rapidly there than if one stayed in France."

Since graduation, the engineer has spent one year on the site of an Indian subway and kicked off his second year in Amsterdam, always in urban transport. "Without Calcutta, I would not have had Amsterdam", he analyses. For him, today, only the international CV counts. While the young man has actually chosen this path, the Harris Interactive survey shows that a third of university students resign themselves to the option [of finding work overseas] out of the fear of not being able to find a job in France.

A surfeit of worry, according to Armel de la Bourdonnaye, Director of the Ecole nationale des ponts et chaussées [National School of Bridges and Roads]. "Within a period of 6 months, 96% of engineers that we graduate would get a job, of which 64% have even signed a job contract before graduating..."

Privileging the "fulfilling job"

According to Mr. de la Bourdonnaye, these results reflect an all-encompassing pessimism à la française, even if the statistics of integration on the job market shows that the crisis has passed for them. According to a survey of the Conference of grandes écoles, the insertion of the 2012 graduates shows a slight decline with a net employment rate of 81.5% out of the total graduates of 167 grandes écoles, in contrast to 84.9% in 2011. Some 83.5% of engineers had a job, compared to 78.4% of managers.

The idea of making oneself useful to society was only judged to be "very important" for 51% of them. For the graduates of schools of social sciences, this preoccupation was slightly more pressing, with nearly 61% invoking it as essential.

Now, it remains to be seen what they make of this notion of usefulness. Starting up a business? Resolutely no, since only 42% say they are ready for such an adventure (a little more in the schools of commerce, 49%).

Besides, only 35% of them completed a training module on this theme. "However, it is a desire that I sense is increasing in our latest batches of students," reassures Mr. de la Bourdonnaye. "Recently, one of my engineering students had a beautiful phrase showing that the creator of businesses is today a heroic figure when yesterday the dream of students was to integrate themselves into a big business."

Is the spirit of adventure blowing in these temples of classicism? Jean-Daniel Lévy observes that the value of money is no longer the main concern for this generation that privileges the "fulfilling job". It is in this light that they include a passage overseas. In this sense, it is less of a brain drain than adding another brick in the construction of their careers.

*A grand école (lit. "higher school") is a tertiary educational institution outside of the main framework of the French university system. They are known for being highly selective (they have entrance examinations that are very competitive) and graduates are often employed in prestigious jobs.

Short update - A Room with a View

E. M. Forster's A Room with a View is very delightful! I was gripped and kept reading it until I finished it at midnight, then I was too excited to fall asleep afterwards. Sigh.

The next day I watched the laudable film adaptation by Merchant-Ivory Productions online. I highly recommend it. (It is quite interesting to see Helena Bonham Carter play Lucy; a very different character compared to the type of 'femme fatale' characters in Fight Club and the Harry Potter series.) You can find the uploaded movie here on YouTube for free:

Warning: Nudity of a non-sexual but comic nature when Freddy and George skinny-dip with Mr. Beebe.

Cannery Row / Sweet Thursday

 

"Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream." - John Steinbeck, Cannery Row

I recently finished reading John Steinbeck's Sweet Thursday; I've read Cannery Row a few months before. Both are great pieces of writing that show that Steinbeck is indeed as brilliant in his comic work as he is in his more 'serious'/tragic writings (e.g. Of Mice and Men). I would heartily recommend them.

Both novels take place in Cannery Row, a waterfront street in Monterey with many sardine-canning factories. This is actually the nickname of a real place (pictured below), previously called Ocean View Avenue. [It was officially renamed Cannery Row in honour of Steinbeck's novel.] Cannery Row takes place in the Great Depression, while Sweet Thursday is a sequel, revisiting the colourful characters and their lives after WWII has ended.

Reading both books makes you feel as if you've actually lived there in Monterey. It really takes skill to make one feel nostalgic for a place that one has never even been to, and Steinbeck achieves this quite effectively in both novels through his careful eye for detail. He intersperses longer chapters mainly driven by the plot with shorter chapters that are basically vignettes about life in Monterey. His characters are very well fleshed-out. They are ordinary folk - bums, hookers, shopkeepers - but he writes about them very warmly with good humour and a heartfelt sense of sympathy for their lives, thoughts and aspirations, challenging us as readers to look beyond first impressions.

Take for example, the two different proprietors of the Bear Flag House (a brothel) in Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday. Dora is kind-hearted and generous, paying grocery bills for hard-up families hit by the Depression and donating to charitable causes. Fauna, who takes over Dora in the sequel, tries to turn the brothel into a finishing school, passes on her expertise on social decorum to the girls, and tries to marry them off to reputable men. (She even has a board in the house with a golden star for each girl in the House that has been married off.) Instead of the stereotyped Madam that exploits her prostitutes, both proprietors are genuinely interested in the well-being of their girls.*

Central to both novels is the immensely likeable character, Doc, who owns the Western Biological Library that supplies specimens of species. He goes to the nearby tide pool, rich in wildlife, to procure samples that he sells for money. Doc is a gentle personality whom all the occupants of the Row go to for advice and help, but somehow he always seems lonely and melancholy. His kindness motivates the characters to do something for him to show him how much he is loved in the neighbourhood, and this is the driving plot of both novels. In Cannery Row, Mack and his boys, a bunch of vagrants, decide to throw him a party but end up [SPOILER] ruining his house. In return, they try to make up for it with another party. In Sweet Thursday, Doc feels strangely depressed, and the whole community in the Row thinks he needs a woman and end up trying to pair him up with Suzy, a new hustler who has come to town. [SPOILER] As with any romantic comedy, after overcoming difficulties with each other (Suzy thinks he's too good for him, Doc is too shy, etc.), they succeed.

Doc is based on Ed Ricketts, a marine biologist and a very good friend of Steinbeck that influenced him greatly. Steinbeck himself joined Ricketts on a six-week long boat expedition to the Sea of Cortez, producing The Log from the Sea of Cortez in 1951. In fact, Western Biological in the novel is based on Ricketts' Pacific Biological Laboratories in Monterey (pictured below).

I really enjoyed both novels. I must admit I got rather misty-eyed at the ending of Cannery Row because it is just so beautifully written. I couldn't say the same for Sweet Thursday but it is really good nonetheless. Look, these aren't 'major' novels like The Grapes of Wrath or East of Eden, with a grand sweeping story and stark exposure of social injustice, but for their shorter length they are admirable minor works faithfully and nostalgically capturing the feel of a place that is no longer there. They are sweet. They are sentimental. They are something that will stick in your memory like the smooth aftertaste of well-brewed tea. Read it on a sunny and lazy afternoon. 

*Is it a fair accusation to say Steinbeck romanticises the poor? If he does (I think it is difficult to say that he doesn't), is it for justifiable reasons?

***

I am currently working through Volume 1 of Clifford R. Backman's wonderful The Cultures of the West: A History. It is very concisely written and a good book for a broad survey of the history of Europe and the Middle East. Expecting a dry textbook, I've found Backman's work insightful and informative instead. Also, instead of having boxes at the side for historical sources, he works them inside the narrative of the text, which is a highly effective approach that saves you from the distraction of switching between texts.

The Tempest / Foe

[This was written much earlier, on the 30th June 2013. I'll post my thoughts on the more recent books I've read soon.] 

Recently, I have been extremely lucky to have a streak of productive reading, finishing quite a few books that were previously merely gathering dust on my “to-read” list, due to a lack of time or pure laziness (mostly the latter). I rather guiltily suspect (no, admit that) the sense of happiness that I currently feel is quite akin to that of a couch potato experiencing a post-workout high. Nevertheless, to the books!

The Tempest, William Shakespeare

“We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep.” 

One of the things that struck me as I finished reading The Tempest was how tightly and intricately crafted it is compared to Shakespeare’s other plays.* It is one of his few plays** that observe all the three Aristotelian unities: action (the main plot is Prospero’s plan to reclaim his usurped dukedom), space (everything happens on the island), time (the whole play takes place in real time, less than one day). The result is a sense of tightness in the plot, which is further strengthened by the fact that Prospero almost single-handedly drives the play's action by manipulating all the characters to fulfil his purpose: he is the one who creates the eponymous storm, gets Miranda and Ferdinand together, and gets Alonso to restore him as Duke of Milan.

Curiously, Prospero's dominance in the play reminded me of another Shakespearean character, the crafty Iago, who displays a similar skilfulness in exploiting everyone around him to advance his grand strategy of sabotaging Othello. They are also similar in that a sense of having suffered injustice is a key source of motivation for both characters' actions as well. Of course, while Prospero has indeed suffered injustice by being usurped and then exiled by his brother Antonio, Iago's claims of injustice in being passed over for promotion are much more tenuous. A scrupulousness of means also differentiates the two. Not content on solely destroying Othello, Iago displays a strong willingness to take revenge on anyone for the lightest of provocations, be it Desdemona, Cassio, Roderigo (whom he kills after he ceases to be useful to him) and even his wife Emilia. In contrast, Prospero specifically sets out to make sure no one is unharmed in his plans to right the wrongs he has suffered, seen in how he very clearly (and painstakingly) instructs Ariel such that the tempest created wrecks the ship but leaves no person harmed, “not a hair perish’d”. Finally, they also differ in their respective plans' ultimate outcomes. While Emilia thwarts Iago's sinister plans by revealing the truth, Prospero successfully defuses all potential disruptions, be it Antonio and Sebastian’s conspiracy to kill Alonso, or Stephano, Trinculo and Caliban’s attempts to kill him. Prospero remains fully in control throughout, thanks to his powerful magic. It is, perhaps, no coincidence that the general movement of the characters throughout the play is a “moving-in” towards Prospero (from all the different corners of the island) like many dots being drawn towards a central point. Indeed, the story ends with Prospero asking them to “draw near”. I thought Prospero's manipulation of the trajectory of the characters' paths across the island is highly symbolic of the overall control that he wields over everybody else in the play.

It is due to Prospero's dominance as the main driving force of the play’s plot, as well as his apparent omniscience in knowing all that happens in the play, that has led some critics to suggest that Shakespeare wrote the Tempest as an allegory for playwriting (with himself, the playwright, being represented by Prospero as the principal architect of the story). It certainly seems very plausible. Links are frequently drawn in the play between Prospero’s magical arts with theatrical illusion, especially in Prospero’s epilogue, where his renunciation of magic and resultant powerlessness is much like how playwrights and actors lose their skills of illusion once the play ends. 

[On a tenuously related note, this seems eerily similar to Inception, where the film’s crafting of a dream has been compared by critics as a metaphor for the crafting of a film itself. How meta!]

I find the Tempest very interesting in its use of the pastoral space. As with many other of Shakespeare’s plays, the country setting of the island provides a conducive environment where tensions and conflict between the characters can be resolved in contrast to the moral corruption of the court (which was where Prospero was overthrown in the first place). It is only after Prospero reclaims his rightful dukedom and marriage successfully unites the families of Naples and Milan that the entourage then sets off back to Italy. A comparison a professor made online to an equivalent situation in the modern world seemed to me very apt; Prospero is akin to the business manager who flies the conflicted parties to a country club resort to smoothen relations and seal the deal.***

I also must express my admiration for the intricacy of the play’s structure, where dualities shimmer throughout like a series of mirrors. Many of the characters can be conceived in multifold pairings: Alonso/Prospero (the two dukes), Miranda/Ferdinand (their respective children), Gonzalo/Ariel (their assistants), Caliban/Ariel (two contrasting servants to Prospero), Caliban/Ferdinand (parallels in carrying wood for Prospero in Act II Scene II and Act III Scene I), Prospero/Sycorax (‘white’ vs. ‘black’ magic), Miranda/Caliban (characters who were taught by Prospero, but with very different results), the stormy arrival vs. the calm departure, etc. Certainly I would find it hard to believe if this complex symmetrical structure was a result of pure accident rather careful thought and design on Shakespeare’s part.

I shall stop here, but if you’re looking to read more of Shakespeare’s plays I would really recommend The Tempest. It is not as long and as intimidating as Hamlet, though working through the text is part of the fun too, right?

Foe, J. M. Coetzee

“An aversion came over me that we feel for all the mutilated. Why is that so, do you think? Because they put us in mind of what we would rather forget: how easily, at the stroke of a sword or a knife, wholeness and beauty are forever undone? Perhaps. But toward you I felt a deeper revulsion. I could not put out of mind the softness of the tongue, its softness and wetness, and the fact that it does not live in the light; also how helpless it is before the knife, once the barrier of teeth has been passed. The tongue is like the heart, in that way, is it not?”

Foe is a brilliant and compelling reimagination of Robinson Crusoe, told from the perspective of a castaway, Susan Barton, who is trying to get her story of her life on the island with Cruso and Friday written down and published by the writer Daniel Foe in England. Coetzee has always been a writer with a sleek style, and reading Foe was definitely a treat in that aspect.****

I will not try to summarise the plot, but what I found particularly interesting was the twists on the original story of Robinson Crusoe. Coetzee has inverted the perspective of the tale from one told by "Cruso" to that of a hitherto unmentioned/unknown female castaway, and in this version, Friday is also tongueless.

That which is really intriguing about the novel is not Susan's life on the island itself, which seems rather bleak and difficult, but her attempts to tell her story of her life on the island to others without having it being twisted into something inauthentic, something that is false to her understanding. In this sense, Foe is very much concerned with the dynamics of power behind storytelling. In letting Daniel write her story, Susan feels increasingly powerless as he threatens to take over the narrative, ignoring what she finds important in her own story (her search for her lost daughter in Brazil before being cast away on the island) and distorting it with his own fabulations about Cruso. The tongueless Friday is also a haunting presence in the novel; unable to speak his mind, he compels Susan to speculate on what he thinks and remembers, perhaps suggesting to us the moral imperative of speaking out for the powerless, which is also simultaneously fraught with the danger of distorting what they actually wish to say. What Friday actually thinks we never find out, for Susan's attempts to teach him to write and understand words all end in failure - Friday remains a disturbing void in the story to the very end.

Foe ends with a beautifully enigmatic section (Part IV) which has become renowned for being notoriously inscrutable. I’ve read one online review that interprets it as the symbolic enactment of the voice of the poetic imagination, which sounds really eloquent, though I'm not sure what it exactly means. (Isn't quite a lot of literary analysis like that?)

My two cents worth is that I suspect the last segment of Foe is not meant to be understood, at least, in rational terms. It is a passage that soars above meaning with its surreal, otherworldly beauty, which can only be taken in through the logic of dreams as a subjective experience of consciousness where Susan tries to imagine and sympathise with what exactly goes on in Friday's mind. 

I did enjoy the ending very much, which, quite frankly, is one of the most beautifully written sections of a novel that I have read, a testament to Coetzee’s understated but always graceful prose. Of course, like most, if not all, of Coetzee's novels, the ending raises even more questions than it answers, but then again, perhaps an open-ended conclusion would have been the most fitting for a novel so concerned with questions about the control and interpretation of narrative in the eyes of others.

*Disclaimer: I am not saying that Shakespeare's other plays are not intricately crafted! I'm just saying that his other plays seem more expansive in their scope and structure (some of his plays span years in its plot, notably The Winter's Tale) and have a different kind of beauty compared to the almost geometrically polished structure of the Tempest.
**A Midsummer's Night Dream also happens in less than a day, but it does not observe the unity of plot nor of space (it is set in both the forest and in Athens).
***I concede that this analogy fails to the extent that 1) an apparently life threatening storm is certainly different from a first-class plane ticket to a business meeting; 2) the commercialised country club resort differs greatly from the environment of the island, which is haunting, filled with spirits, and generally speaking, much more treacherous...
****I really love Coetzee's works. I highly, highly recommend Diary of a Bad Year (which is really underrated), Slow Man, and Disgrace. Please read it, and if you love his stuff, spread the message! Good literature deserves to be shared and I don't think enough people know about Coetzee!

***

"Hope deferred maketh the something sick, who said that?" - Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett

I must admit that I currently feel very, very jealous looking at my friends' photos of their fabulous adventures studying and living abroad. How I long to travel, it is like a burning ache in my heart, this desire to roam and discover! 

For the moment I live a circumscribed life. A wider life is only possible through books. This is what they cannot take away; my imagination, even if I cannot share what I think, even if I must keep it alone.

Surely it is not by coincidence that every night I dream of elsewhere. Anywhere but here.

I cannot live such an unfree life for so long. Thank god it is not forever. At least I have been spared that.

A sweeter life in Moscow

[This article is an English translation that I have made of an article by Marie Jégo in the French newspaper Le Monde, "Plus belle la vie à Moscou", 6 September 2013. It is accessible here: http://www.lemonde.fr/europe/article/2013/09/06/plus-belle-la-vie-a-moscou_3472430_3214.html

Instead of literally translating the article, I have opted to prioritise meaning. This means that the phrasing might be quite different from the original French.]

***

America has its Big Apple, Russia has its Big Cabbage*:  Moscow, its sprawling capital where 80% of the country's financial wealth is concentrated. The showcase of Putinian Russia has gotten back on its feet with the revenue from gas and petrol sales. With 12 million inhabitants, more than 8% of the country's total population, Moscow is like a state within a state.

"Moscow is not Russia," the Muscovites always say, concerned about preserving their privileged status. The state does more for them than for the rest of Russia, spending on average nearly four times more for the province (3600 euros/person/year in the capital, 950 elsewhere).

The "Big Cabbage" excites provincial appetites. It is like a magnet for the citizens of the former "Sister Republics" of the USSR, exempted from visas. Endowed with a  incomparably better quality of life than the other ex-Soviet capitals, Moscow is an El Dorado for the men and women of what was previously called the "Near Abroad", that is, the states situated in the periphery of the Federation.

The new train stations regurgitate an armada of workers every day - Ukrainians, Moldovans, Belorussians, Armenians, Kyrgyzstanis, Uzbeks, Tajiks - who disembark in search of small jobs to support their families that remain in their countries. For Tajikistan, a poor ex-Soviet country in Central Asia that borders Afghanistan, remittances make up 40% of its GDP.

A worrying demographic haemmorhage

The five Muscovite airports tirelessly transport businessmen, tourists, and students that come to try their luck or to entertain themselves in the "fat capital of a starved Russia", as described by poet Dmitry Bykov. As a result, in contrast to the rest of the Federation, the victim of a worrying demographic haemmorhage, Moscow has seen its population grow by 11% in the previous 8 years.

Immense, noisy and colourful, with its babushkas that sell kittens on Arbat Street, its Azerbaijani vendors of dried fruit and groceries in Dorogomilovski Market, its luxury boutiques on Petrovska Street, the city is also terribly modern, capable of making its European homologues turn pale with envy.

Wi-Fi access is almost universal; it is free in the airports, the circular line of the metro and in 14 public parks in the capital. The restaurants are open every hour, day and night; the theatres and the concert halls are packed full house; trendy places sprout like mushrooms.

After the transformation of the decommissioned factories Artplay, Vinzavod and Krasnyi Oktiabr into spaces for exhibitions and recreation, Garaj, a contemporary art museum, has seen its day, established recently in Gorky Park. A few months ago, a documentary cinema centre opened on Zoubovski Boulevard. In 2012, four offices were mobilised to study the redevelopment of land previously occupied by automobile factory ZIL in Moscow's South. The former cultural house in ZIL has been transformed into a centre for urban studies.

Trendy Muscovite youth are fond of this type of places. "There is now a public life in Moscow without password or right of entry, where anybody who wishes to participate can do so. In the past, we went to the museum or the cinema; now, we dance in the parks, we are passionate about urban planning. And such happiness it is to show strangers that life is hectic, that Muscovites are on speaking terms, that the city has become more open," rejoices Anastasia Lipatova, 25 years old, proofreader of Aficha magazine.

In these five preceding years, the city has become more practical, more comely, more gentle too. Want to do shopping at midnight? No problem, the majority of supermarkets are open 24/7. You no longer need to reassure yourself, before crossing the road, that you would not be pulverised by one of the many cars turning at breackneck speed around the Koltso, a very noisy and polluted eight-lane expressway located well in the city centre. Car drivers have slowly learnt to respect the pedestrian.

Poverty prowls around the train stations, but wealth is spread over streets of downtown, luxury cars and chauffeurs. (...)**

The evil tongues which claim that the Muscovite is "arrogant", "stingy", "evil", and "unfeeling", making up 60% of those interviewed in a survey by the Levada Centre published on 31st August, must be wrong.

Certainly, the guards of the escalators in the metro always have a surly air, enclosed in their glass cabins where it is written: "We do not provide assistance", but the quality of service has improved altogether. Gone are the waiters that snub you, the sellers that browbeat you; friendliness is pretty much here, even if a smile is not yet the right of the city.

A Copernican revolution has taken place with the transformation of Gorky Park, a vast green space that spreads itself along the length of Moscow until the hill of Mount Moineaux, where it is said that Napoleon Bonaparte had scornfully eyed the city destroy itself with fire in order to not let itself fall into the hands of their French enemies in September 1812.

There's a revolution opposite Gorky Park too

The Park, reputed to be a real cut-throat area in the 1990s, has become the preferred place for all the confused generations of Muscovites. Couples go there with their children to play volleyball, petanque, ping-pong, to go cycling, ride a pedal-boat, or to tan themselves in their swimsuits along the banks, fitted in the style of the "Paris Plages". Secondary and university students dash here after classes. Seated on the banks in the shade of the tall oaks, they feverishly check their tablet PCs. "Gorky Park is the best thing to happen to us lately," reckons Ania Grichina, 21 years old, journalism student at Moscow State University.

There's a revolution opposite Gorky Park too. The park with statues named Museon has had a makeover, with chaises longues, small cafes and open-air film screenings during summer nights when the weather permits. "Urban planning is in fashion. It all started two years ago, in the time of protests on the street and of the civic movement against the powers-that-be. This preoccupation with urban planning was partly stimulated even earlier by the Strelka Institute (specialising in design and development) and by Village magazine", recalls Dmitri Levenets, 23 years old, civic rights activist and founder of a project to improve the environment, and above all, road infrastructure.

Slayer of corruption, Dmitri has joined for a moment the team of Alexei Navalny, the Kremlin's No. 1 critic, who contested the mayoral elections for Moscow planned for 8 September. The charismatic lawyer Navalny, enfant terrible of the blogosphere, will cross swords with his adversary Sergei Sobyanin, the current mayor and protégé of Vladimir Putin, whose inefficient management Navalny denounces.

Endowed with an annual budget of $52 million (39.6 million Euros), Moscow has transformed itself, but "the quality of life is still very poor", affirms Alexei Navalny during one of his meetings with the electorate. According to a study recently conducted by the Strategic Partners Group, related to the state bank Sberbank, 64% of Muscovite interviewed deplored the pollution, traffic jams and piteous state of health services. "When it rains, puddles form everywhere on the sidewalks and roadways because the drainage system is poorly made. It's unbearable," explains the blogger Maria Gontcharova, 23 years old.

Anastasia Stognei, 23 years old, a former student of Voronej, established in Moscow since 5 years ago, deplores the absence of nearby shops: "Looking for matches at Auchan's place, in a shopping mall devilishly far away? No thanks." She laments that the road near to her place at the metro station Akademitcheskaya is rebuilt every year: "It makes a lot of dust and noise." For Dmitri Levenets, who has studied the issue closely, road repair is one of the most juicy activities from the perspective of corruption: "The functionaries make do with low quality materials without any regard for quotations so that ever year, they must do it again."

There remains much to be done to make Moscow a city where one can live well. The authorities assure that they do not skimp on their means: 185 million of euros have been invested over three decades. Gone is the metropolis, bloated from morning till night by kilometres of traffic jams, gone are the packed metros and trolleybuses, gone are the cars parked in double and triple file. Regulated parking, new metro stations, tramways and extra buses are here, and perhaps even a Moscow on which boats and their passsengers could navigate during the six months of the year when the river is not frozen.

Inspired by Paris, the mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, "taciturn" but "efficient" according to his mentor Vladimir Putin, wants to realise the vision of a "Great Moscow" and shift its administration to distant suburbs. The Moscow Urban Forum, a exposition organised each year by the city hall to present the capital of the future, also has grand projects for Moscow. "We wish to ensure that Moscow would have a light Venetian touch by the end of the year", anticipates Andrei Vladimirovitch Charonov, the adjunct mayor in charge of the Forum. Next up: Gondolas in Moscow?

Footnotes:

*"Chou", in addition to its meaning as "cabbage", is also a term of endearment in French, akin to "sweetheart" or "darling".
**I was unsure how to understand the sentence, so I only translated the first segment.

On the purpose of this blog

Dear Reader(s)

I have started this blog for 2 reasons:

1) To write about what I love: Books, be it fiction or non-fiction;

2) To practice my French, which is definitely getting rusty after I stopped taking lessons 2 years ago.

As such, you will find here my rambling thoughts on the former and my shoddy attempts at translation on the latter. 

Perhaps it is no coincidence that the word for translator in Italian (traduttore) is remarkably similar to the word traitor (traditore).

I have many interests, mostly in the humanities and social sciences, for instance: literature, history, economics, politics, philosophy, languages, etc.

I have started blogs before, most of which have, unfortunately, crumbled into a state of disuse within a month. I hope that this will not be the case for this blog.

Thank you for your good humour.