Svetlana’s Zinky Boys &
Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet
Newspaper Club | Today’s Updates
A lovely motivational mantra that I always tell my students to recite in our classes is –
Day by day,
In every way,
I’m getting
Better & Better!
And well, this beautiful mantra applies to all of us learners in the great grand garden of literature, ain’t it!
Today was yet another rewarding day on a fledgling Newspaper Club that took off full throttle just this last past week!
In today’s Malayala Manorama, we chanced upon the concept of ‘Stockholm Syndrome’, mentioned in a news article. Hence we went ahead and explored more on the topic.
Members excitedly shared a few books and even fairy tales that explore more on the Stockholm Syndrome.
Another beautiful contribution was a write-up on two historians – Aanchal Malhotra and William Dalrymple, on the #writerseries1.
The member said that, both these writers are passionate researchers although their research methods were so different.
While Aanchal collects research data based on testimonials, Dalrymple uses index cards to arrange his ideas and thoughts. And he signs off on this particular post on the insightful ‘writer series’ on a memorable note!
Yet another member gave us all a beautiful gist of today’s news from the Newspapers, from G7, to Biden to Boris Johnson, to Denmark’s midfielder Eriksen.
One member shared from her beautiful ‘reading space’ at home, that was such joy, inspiration and motivation to all of us.
Sharing a note on her reading table, she said,
‘Sharing this because, as we progress in academic life, you need a ‘space’ just for reading…. It’s good to invest in a good table which suits your requirements, and all the gadgets like laptop and kindle!’.
A few members vibrantly responded to a ‘phrasal verb’ challenge from today’s newspapers.
Another member shared from the illustrations of Jeff Harris in today’s Sunday Magazine, which she added,
‘Complete with jokes and activities, it’s a lovely way for kids to learn!’.
We also had a lovely discussion on the ‘Book Recommendations’ from the latest Magazines in town!
One member said her pick would be Svetlana Alexievich and Rainer Maria Rilke.
So we did an extended discussion on these two writers in particular.
The first writer is Rainer Maria Rilke!
Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet is a collection of ten letters written by Bohemian-Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke to a 19-year old officer cadet by name Franz Xaver Kappus!
[In today’s parlance, it could be something like, a student who is undecided about their career options after their UG Programme, decides to write an email to their teacher for guidance, or something like, a student giving their poem / creative writing to their Professor asking for their advice and suggestions.]
Kappus, similarly, is just 19 years old, when he starts corresponding with the popular poet and author Rilke, from 1902 to 1908.
Added, as an officer cadet, he was undecided whether to take up a career as an army officer or oblige his inner call as a poet!
That’s when he writes letters to Rilke, seeking his advice as to the quality of his poetry, and also in helping him decide between a literary career or a career as an officer.
In the very first letter that opens the book, Kappus writes to his mentor -the renowned poet and author - Rilke requesting Rilke to provide a critique of his poetry.
Rilke is so dignified and awesome in his response!
In his reply, Rilke provides the young Kappus very little in criticism or in suggestions for his improvement as a poet.
Instead, Rilke discourages Kappus from reading criticism and advises him instead to trust his inner judgment, saying,
"Nobody can advise you and help you. Nobody. There is only one way - Go into yourself."
Almost every line in this letter is worth its weight in gold.
Especially at the place where he talks about Art, which I found so intense and lovely!
Says Rilke,
“A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity”.
That is the only way one can judge it, says Rilke, in the letter.
Rilke’s responses in his letters to Kappus give him the much needed motivation and confidence to look probe deeper into the nature of beauty and art, and also on philosophical and existential questions.
There was one particularly lovely response from one member, to our discussions on Rilke, which goes thus -
Rilke is one of my
favourites too, ☺️
So happy to see so many posts on him today in the group.
One book creates curiosity and interest about another, leading us on an endless reading trail.
Like what Juliet writes
to her pen pal Dawsey Adams in the book, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel
Pie Society,
"That's what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you onto another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It's geometrically progressive! All with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment."
It was my favourite diarist, Etty Hillesum who introduced the poet and author Rilke to me 💛
A voracious reader, Etty’s own canon included
Dante, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Goethe but above all she adored the writings of
Rainer Maria Rilke, whose work overflows with ideas for living a creative and
writerly life.
Etty, an aspiring writer, in her passionately committed search of beauty, meaning and the right words to describe her experiences, constantly turned to Rilke – her “great teacher” as she called him.
She writes, “Slowly but surely I have been soaking Rilke up these last few months: the man, his work and his life. And that is probably the only right way with literature, with study, with people or with anything else: to let it all soak in, to let it all mature slowly inside you until it has become a part of yourself.”
The letters give us a sense of Rilke’s great felicity with words, and provide an interior portrait of an artist that is revelatory and moving. The book is a perfect treat for aspiring writers, the philosophically inclined and just anyone who loves the beauty of noble thoughts clothed in apt and dignified language.
Here are some gems gleaned from Rilke's wisdom:
🔹“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer”.
🔹“If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.”
🔹“I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other.”
🔹“The necessary thing is after all but this; solitude, great inner solitude. Going into oneself for hours meeting no one - this one must be able to attain.”
🔹“If you will stay close to nature, to its simplicity, to the small things hardly noticeable, those things can unexpectedly become great and immeasurable.”
🔹“Someday there will be girls and women whose name will no longer mean the mere opposite of the male, but something in itself, something that makes one think not of any complement and limit, but only life and reality: the female human being.”
🔹“Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”
🔹“A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity. That is the only way one can judge it.
🔹“If only it were possible for us to see farther than our knowledge reaches, and even a little beyond the outworks of our presentiment, perhaps we would bear our sadnesses with greater trust than we have in our joys.”
The second writer we took up for discussion today is Svetlana Alexievich.
Svetlana Alexievich is also the Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, 2015.
Svetlana Alexievich was born in Ivano Frankivsk, Ukraine, 31 May 1948.
Both her parents were teachers. She studied to be a journalist at the University of Minsk and worked as a teacher, journalist and editor.
Her criticism of the political regimes in the Soviet Union and thereafter Belarus has periodically forced her to live abroad, for example in Italy, France, Germany and Sweden.
Experience of the Individual
Svetlana Alexievich depicts life during and after the Soviet Union through the experience of individuals.
In her books she uses interviews to create a collage of a wide range of voices.
With her "documentary novels" Svetlana Alexievich, who is an investigative journalist, moves in the boundary between reporting and fiction.
Her major works are her grand cycle Voices of Utopia which consists of five parts.
Svetlana Alexievich's books criticize political regimes in both the Soviet Union and later Belarus.
From the blurb to Zinky Boys
From 1979 to 1989 a million Soviet troops engaged in a devastating war in Afghanistan that claimed 50,000 casualties - and the youth and humanity of many tens of thousands more.
Creating controversy and outrage when it was first published in the USSR - it was called by reviewers there a "slanderous piece of fantasy" and part of a "hysterical chorus of malign attacks" - Zinky Boys presents the candid and affecting testimony of the officers and grunts, nurses and prostitutes, mothers, sons, and daughters who describe the war and its lasting effects.
What emerges is a story that is shocking in its brutality and revelatory in its similarities to the American experience in Vietnam.
The Soviet dead were shipped back in sealed zinc coffins (hence the term "Zinky Boys"), while the state denied the very existence of the conflict.
Svetlana Alexievich brings us the truth of the Soviet-Afghan War: the beauty of the country and the savage Army bullying, the killing and the mutilation, the profusion of Western goods, the shame and shattered lives of returned veterans.
Zinky Boys offers a unique, harrowing, and unforgettably powerful insight into the realities of war.
We also took up for discussion Svetlana’s 2019 poignant book titled, Last Witnesses: Unchildlike Stories.
A few video excerpts on these writers were also shared.
In short, a very rewarding day on our Newspaper Club today.
So happy to also note that, when birds of a feather, with the Ullyssean ‘One equal temper of heroic hearts’ spirit come together, it’s real gotta be a carnival of sorts!
Courtesy: nobelrpizedotorg & amazondotcom
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