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News and current affairs
North Island: West Coast
North Island: East Coast
Rangatahi step up to tackle environmental issues
1:29pm, Friday 19 April 2019. By Regan Paranihi
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Young leaders are tackling some of the country's biggest issues as part of a rangatahi initiative. Te Ao spoke to rangatahi Māori at The Blake Inspire Leadership Development programme in Waikato.
55 rangatahi leaders from across the country have arrived at Tūrangawaewae Marae, a starting point in their exposure to environmental issues.
Harono Hokianga of Ngāpuhi says "I want to go to the chiefs of my iwi to discuss some strategies around how to preserve our environment at home because there are many problems at home and that's where I want to help."
Rangatahi from across NZ were selected to take part in the five-day course, where the environment was at the forefront of discussions.
The course is timely, with the release of the Environment Aotearoa 2019 report, which showed that 4,000 of New Zealand's native species are currently threatened with, or at risk of extinction.
The report also shows that 90% of seabirds and 80% of shorebirds are threatened with, or at risk of extinction and that two-thirds of the rare ecosystems present in Aotearoa are under threat of collapse.
Mahanga Mitchell (Hokianga) says he is "gathered up with some other young delegates from up and down the country, focusing on environmental issues and how we can do our part to save our planet."
This is a chance for these leaders to connect, hear and see their peer's opinions.
"It's cool to see that there are other young people like me like getting involved in their communities, trying to help out the environment for the greater good," says Mitchell.
The location of the course has also inspired many of the rangatahi present.
"Everybody talks about that black sand, that you gotta get in your feet in Raglan," says Mitchell, "It was just an amazing experience, beautiful coastline...going kayaking and getting to know everybody."
Hokianga adds, "When we went to Turangawaewae the activities we did there were Māori ones...[learning] about Māori protocols and all things Māori, to give them insight into Māori knowledge."
These rangatahi hope to grasp all the knowledge that has been given to them over the past few days in the hope to make their environment a better and safer place.
Waka ama helps men paddle to a healthier future
King advances to Tournament of Champions semi-finals in New York
White Island Tours continue for first time since Whakaari eruption
17-year-old paddler sets new national waka ama record
Whānau rejects "Pākehā Slave" status of tipuna kuia
Three generations of paddlers compete at national level
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Ngāpuhi hapū feel rushed about settlement proposals
Wairaka ingoa not erased from Auckland's history

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Here it is. The documentation of the last six months of 2012. So weird that we're halfway through the year. Where the heck is time going?
Started the year off with a low-key NYE celebration at Tiff's house with Franklin, Steph, and a visit from Jeremy. Spent a good part of the night admiring Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato in their MTV NYE show, haha.
Later that week, the Lovelys had a reunion/Rachel's early birthday dinner at Roti in West Portal. It was nice to all be back together.
Then I turned 24, and the day after I celebrated with some friends at Naan n Curry, because I just can't get enough chicken tikka masala, Tart to Tart, and Yancy's. Oh, the Inner Sunset. Celebrated some more friends' birthdays and called it a month.
Signed up for the San Francisco Half-Marathon through work. It's two weeks away, might I add. The highlight of February was that Summer came to visit for President's Day Weekend.
And that's just always a good thing.
Then, almost a month after her visit, I drove down to Summer's so that we could go to Disneyland. I'm telling you, getting an annual passport was a very good decision.
Also celebrated Pi(e) Day with some of my favorite co-workers and some pie.
At the end of the month, my sister came home for Spring Break. The Hunger Games movie came out. My dad retired. And I moved out!
The first month in my new apartment meant many Target and IKEA trips. Franklin and I discovered that The Habit opened up in San Mateo. That was pretty exciting. I bought a couch. For my room. Still not over how crazy and good that is. Went to Kaitlyn's bridal shower.
Went to Marisa's bridal shower.
Then celebrated my mom's birthday later that day.
Hosted women's group for the first time ever. Mid-April marked the beginning of my jam-packed schedule.
I usually don't like the month of May. I'm not sure why–there's just something about it that always bothers me. But May 2012 was a really good month. Tiff and I saw James Morrison (for the third time) in concert at the Fillmore.
I celebrated Cinco de Mayo with different people, as well as Chelsea's birthday. I went to Disneyland with my family over Mother's Day Weekend.
Drove home from the weekend and went straight to a Giants game (my first game of the season). Since I waited so long to go, I had to make up for lost time, so I attended another Giants game later that week. Then went to the Brian Wilson gnome giveaway game a week later. Yeah, three Giants games in seven days.
Walked across the Golden Gate Bridge and back, praying over it and the city with my Jesus siblings. That was really great. The City celebrated the Bridge's 75th Anniversary.
Summer visited me in my new apartment over Memorial Day Weekend, and helped me rearrange and revamp my room. That involved more Target and IKEA trips. We also watched a lot of Buffy. Then she left and I went to yet another Giants game. Then I mourned the end of this glorious month.
Celebrated Kaitlyn and Gilbert's marriage at their wedding with Jia Min, Rachel, and John George in Paso Robles. That was so beautiful.
RSF Nursery dinner in the Inner Sunset, did some hiking with Franklin, discovered the best boba ever in downtown Oakland, had dinner with Lily after having not hung out for way. too. long, my sister came home for the summer, Matt Cain's perfect game (6/13: Matt Cain Day), attended KP's JOYN event, celebrated with the Hayward family for my cousin's baby shower (said baby has now been born), celebrated Emma's birthday with Emma and Lindsey, with some nice roomie-bonding, and went to a Giants game.
And that was June. One long, run-on sentence of fun all smashed up.
And now here we are. Amid all the highlighted events above were weekly fellowship with Sunset CG, RSF prayer nights, RSF Nursery times, random hangout nights with friends, some baking, some cooking (yeah, cooking), some cleaning, lots of crying, more laughing, shopping, reading, almost-weekly family dinners, and nights where I would just sit and enjoy my room. Last weekend I drove down to Simi and hung out with the Wulffs. On Sunday, Summer, Christine, and I went to Disneyland, just the three of us, for the first time ever. That's a blog post in and of itself. Thursday was my half birthday, and my co-workers surprised me with a (Snow White) card and carrot cake. That was just about the greatest thing ever. I was so surprised. We've discovered that surprising me is a hard thing to do, since I just ask so many questions about so many things.
Here's to the second half of 2012!
this is so very good.


Located on Düsseldorf's popular Königsallee Shopping Street in the heart of the town centre, this newly-opened 4-star Superior hotel offers free Wi-Fi, a hearty buffet breakfast and elegant rooms. Heinrich-Heine Allee Underground Station is 300 metres away.
Rooms at Hotel Favor are stylishly decorated in warm colours and feature floor-to-ceiling windows. Comforts include a flat-screen TV, an iPod docking station and a seating area. Some also include a balcony.
International breakfast cuisine is served in the restaurant with balcony, or out on the sunny hotel terrace. In the evenings, guests can enjoy a variety of drinks in the chic fireplace lounge.
Car access to Hotel Favor is directly via the Königsallee. The historic Old Town is just 300 metres away, while it is 700 metres to the Rhine Embankment. Düsseldorf Trade Fair is 6 km away.
Hotel Favor's main entrance can be accessed via the pedestrian zone on Schadowplatz.
Please note that car access to Hotel Favor is directly via the Königsallee.


In August of 2017, myself and 10 other delegates, as well as 2 alternates and several observers, made our way down to Chicago, IL for the 2017 DSA National Convention.
Being my first National Convention since joining the organization, I didn't know what to expect. I had read up on the agenda and programming and heard tell of past Conventions from long-standing members of Twin Cities DSA. Yet, we were being told that this Convention would be historic–after all, DSA had grown exponentially in less than a year.
I ran to be a delegate earlier that summer and was elected to a delegate spot by the general membership of Twin Cities DSA. I was looking forward to representing our chapter at the Convention, voting on bylaw and constitutional changes, networking with other chapters, and taking workshops to learn new skills. What I got was all of that, but also so much more.
The majority of the Convention was spent in the General Plenary Session. This is where we would present, debate, and vote on amendments and additions to our National Bylaws and Constitution. Each delegate received a packet with all of the proposed amendments and resolutions being brought forward by members and chapters throughout the country.
At first, it was pretty overwhelming. Many delegates were both new to DSA and also new to Robert's Rules of order. There were hiccups along the way–frustrations on logistics, disagreement on certain points of debate, time constraints, and more. It was a learning curve for all of us.
When not in the General Plenary Session, we had breaks during which we could meet up with Regional or Political Caucuses. These were the times during which we were able to learn from one another and discover what other members and chapters were working on throughout the country. I personally loved having the time to talk with other chapters in our region so that we could build more connectivity and solidarity between the chapters closest to us.
Another chunk of the weekend schedule was devoted to educational workshops. Some workshops were built around theory, while others were built around skills. Each delegate got to choose which workshops they most wanted to attend. For me, I found the workshops to be invaluable and was able to bring what I learned back to our chapter so that I could teach others the same skills.
The last night of the Convention culminated in a banquet that featured speeches from comrades around the world, a fundraiser, great food and conversation, and of course, a socialist sing-a-long. I really have to say, you haven't experienced a socialist sing-a-long until you've sung Solidarity Forever in a room of 500 fellow socialists.
I learned a lot at the 2017 Convention, both about myself as an organizer and about DSA. Now, we all have a lot to look forward to with the 2019 Convention right around the corner.
For those interested in running for a spot in this year's delegation, I first recommend taking a little time for introspection. Think about what you want to achieve as a delegate–what are some goals you can make for yourself, what do you want to gain from the experience, what do you want to bring back to the chapter?
Secondly, I recommend talking to your fellow Twin Cities DSA members. Find out how you being a delegate could help serve your fellow members. Remember, we work best when we work together.
And finally, learn from former delegates who can teach you about their experiences at past Conventions. My account above is brief and is the experience of one individual member. Each and every delegate has a different experience at Convention.
Stay tuned for more information from our chapter soon!
To learn more about the 2019 Convention, check out the National website.


Description: Try to survive the city that is crawling with zombies, ultimate zombie survival, shoot, run and grab the grenades! Earn money to buy better weapons.. Effing Zombies is a Zombie Games.
Instructions: WASD/arrows to move; mouse to aim and shoot.
spacebar to toss grenades; R to reload..


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Q: How to: Add a result to the same database as login My app shows a menu of a restaurant where, after logging in with an email and password from the database, the client guides you to a computer that calculates Kcal after certain dates. I would like to be able to put the result in the same database and the same data that the client used as the image.

[
This is for an application I have for a contest
private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    ani = Convert.ToInt32(textBox1.Text);
    cm = Convert.ToInt32(textBox2.Text);
    kg = Convert.ToInt32(textBox3.Text);
    s = ani + cm + kg;
    if (s < 250) label_mesaj.Text = "1800";
    else if (s >= 250 && s <= 275) label_mesaj.Text = "2200";
    else label_mesaj.Text = "2500";
}

private void button2_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    SqlConnection con = new SqlConnection(constr);
    con.Open();
    SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand("insert into Clienti(parola,nume,prenume,adresa,email)values('" + textBox4.Text + "','" + textBox1.Text + "','" + textBox2.Text + "','" + textBox3.Text + "','" + textBox6.Text + "')", con);
    SqlDataAdapter da = new SqlDataAdapter(cmd);
    DataSet ds = new DataSet();
    da.Fill(ds);
}

This is code that add to my database new clients after a registration, so i don't know how to remember that "id_clienti"
I expect that "label_mesaj" to show on the "kcal_zilnice" in the database after LogIn with the same data.

A: That's how I managed to solve the problem
The LogIn part that I remember the email
private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        SqlConnection con = new SqlConnection(constr);
        SqlDataAdapter da = new SqlDataAdapter("Select count(*) from Clienti where email='" + textBox1.Text + "' and Parola='" + textBox2.Text + "'", con);
        DataTable dt = new DataTable();
        da.Fill(dt);
        if (dt.Rows[0][0].ToString() == "1")
        {
            client.email = textBox1.Text;
            this.Hide();
            Form4 ssss = new Form4();
            ssss.Show();
        }
        else MessageBox.Show("verifica datele");
    }

And in the next Form
private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        SqlConnection con = new SqlConnection(constr);
        SqlDataAdapter da = new SqlDataAdapter();
        con.Open();if (s < 250)  label_mesaj.Text = "1800";
        da.UpdateCommand = new SqlCommand("Update Clienti set kcal_zilnice= '" + label_mesaj.Text + "' where email= '" + Form3.client.email.ToString() + "'", con);
        da.UpdateCommand.ExecuteNonQuery();
        da.UpdateCommand.Dispose();
        con.Close();
    }

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Disclaimer: All information deemed reliable but not guaranteed. All properties are subject to prior sale, change or withdrawal. Neither listing broker(s) or information provider(s) shall be responsible for any typographical errors, misinformation, misprints and shall be held totally harmless. Listing(s) information is provided for consumers personal, non-commercial use and may not be used for any purpose other than to identify prospective properties consumers may be interested in purchasing. Information on this site was last updated 4/23/19. The listing information on this page last changed on 3/18/19. The data relating to real estate for sale on this website comes in part from the Internet Data Exchange program of CBRMLS (last updated Tue 04/23/2019 03:17:40 PM EDT) or Multiple Listing Service of Greater Cincinnati (last updated Tue 04/23/2019 04:11:50 PM EDT) or NKY MLS (last updated Tue 04/23/2019 08:02:35 PM EDT) or NEOHREX (last updated Tue 04/23/2019 04:22:03 PM EDT). Real estate listings held by brokerage firms other than Cutler Real Estate may be marked with the Internet Data Exchange logo and detailed information about those properties will include the name of the listing broker(s) when required by the MLS. All rights reserved.


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A new sequencing method to detect DNA modifications of relevance to cancer
February 25, 2019, New York—Ludwig Cancer Research scientists report in the current issue of Nature Biotechnology a new and improved method to detect chemical modifications to DNA. These modifications—or "epigenetic" marks—help control gene expression and their aberrant distribution across the genome contributes to cancer progression and resistance to therapy.
Led by Chunxiao Song and Benjamin Schuster-Boeckler, both assistant members of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, Oxford, the study demonstrates that their method, dubbed TET-assisted pyridine borane sequencing, or TAPS, is a less damaging and more efficient replacement for bisulfite sequencing, the current gold standard for mapping epigenetic modifications to DNA.
"We think TAPS could directly replace bisulfite sequencing as a new standard in DNA epigenetic sequencing," said Song. "It makes DNA epigenetic sequencing more affordable and accessible to a wider range of academic research and clinical applications."
One class of epigenetic modifications involves the attachment of chemical groups to one of the four "letters," or bases, of DNA. These marks do not alter the DNA sequence itself, but rather influence the switching on and off of genes. Two of the most common modifications of this type involve the addition of chemical methyl and hydroxymethyl groups to cytosine to create 5-methylcytosine (5mC) and 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC). "Abnormal patterns of 5mC and 5hmC abundance are classic hallmarks of cancer," Song said.
For decades, biologists have relied on bisulfite to detect 5mC and 5hmC modifications, but the chemical is extremely destructive, degrading as much as 99% of the DNA it contacts. "You can imagine that if you're dealing with very limited genetic samples, such as cell-free DNA circulating in blood, bisulfite sequencing becomes very challenging," Song said.
Another limitation of bisulfite sequencing is that it detects 5mC and 5hmC only indirectly. The technique converts unmodified cytosine to a related base called uracil, while leaving methylated cytosine intact. "This is very inefficient and computation intensive," Song said. "It's like looking for Waldo by eliminating everyone who is not Waldo. TAPS allows us to find Waldo directly."
The new method involves two steps. The first uses an enzyme known as TET to convert 5mC and 5hmC to a third modification, 5-carboxylcytosine (5caC). The second step involves a new chemical reaction developed by Yibin Liu, a postdoctoral researcher in Song's lab, to convert 5caC into thymine – DNA base that can be read by ordinary sequencing machines.
The process generated a new type of data, and the laboratory of Schuster-Boeckler developed the computational methodology required for its analysis. "Compared to bisulfite sequencing, processing TAPS data is not only twice as fast, it also retains a lot more information from the original sample. This makes it much easier to detect mutations and structural variations even while identifying DNA modifications," Schuster-Boeckler said.
After demonstrating that the core chemistry of TAPS worked, the team spent another year perfecting it, pushing the efficiency of the reaction from about 70% to over 95%. The researchers also developed two variations of the TAPS technique – TAPS-Beta and CAPS – which can be used to detect only 5mC or 5hmC, respectively.
In tests with mouse DNA, the researchers showed that TAPS can generate more accurate sequencing data at half the cost of bisulfite sequencing. "We can get twice as much useful data for the same amount of money," Song said.
Song, Schuster-Boeckler and colleagues are now refining TAPS to analyze cell-free DNA shed by tumors into the bloodstream with the goal of applying the technique to develop minimally invasive cancer diagnostics.
This study was supported by Ludwig Cancer Research, Cancer Research UK, NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre and the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation.
Chunxiao Song is also a PI with the Target Discovery Institute at the University of Oxford, and Benjamin Schuster-Boeckler is a PI with the Big Data Institute at the University of Oxford.
Ludwig Cancer Research is an international collaborative network of acclaimed scientists that has pioneered cancer research and landmark discovery for more than 40 years. Ludwig combines basic science with the ability to translate its discoveries and conduct clinical trials to accelerate the development of new cancer diagnostics and therapies. Since 1971, Ludwig has invested $2.7 billion in life-changing science through the not-for-profit Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research and the six U.S.-based Ludwig Centers. To learn more, visit www.ludwigcancerresearch.org.
For further information please contact Rachel Reinhardt, rreinhardt@lcr.org or +1-212-450-1582.


Thank you for your interest in Lake Region Christian School's Summer Program! We are excited about having your child join us! Our qualified staff will care for your child's needs and provide a summertime environment where students will be challenged both academically and spiritually.
Summer School begins on Tuesday, May 29, and ends Friday, August 17. Our day runs from 7:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Any students ages 3 - 12 are welcome to attend. To register your child, you must pay in advance for your first week of summer care. On your first day of summer care, you will pay in advance for the following week. Current LRCS families and First Baptist members receive a special discounted price.
*** Summer care will only have 24 full-time slots available. Please sign up as soon as possible, because these spots fill quickly.
If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Margie Erickson, the summer school coordinator at 218-251-2059 or the school office at (218) 828-1226. We look forward to seeing your child this summer!


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Home»ADOT News»ADOT looks ahead to completing Loop 303 projects in 2014, including ramps linking expanded freeway to I-10 in Goodyear
ADOT looks ahead to completing Loop 303 projects in 2014, including ramps linking expanded freeway to I-10 in Goodyear
2013 saw opening of 12 miles of new lanes in West Valley
PHOENIX – After opening a dozen miles of new lanes along Loop 303 west of Phoenix this year, the Arizona Department of Transportation is looking ahead to completing the expanded freeway north of Interstate 10 in 2014.
That will include finishing the largest ongoing highway project in the state: the $145 million freeway-to-freeway interchange that will directly connect Loop 303 to Interstate 10 in Goodyear.
Under the Maricopa Association of Governments' 20-year Regional Transportation Plan for the greater Phoenix area, ADOT launched a series of projects in 2011 to upgrade Loop 303 from a two-lane rural highway to a safer six-lane urban freeway. For the first time, drivers are accessing Loop 303 by using on- and off-ramps at several major intersections.
In July, ADOT opened the three new southbound Loop 303 lanes between Peoria Avenue and Mountain View Boulevard, just south of Grand Avenue (US 60). Crews fully opened all three northbound lanes between Peoria Avenue and Bell Road in September, after work to add a layer of smooth rubberized asphalt was completed.
The segment between Peoria and Glendale avenues was completely opened in November. The new segment between Camelback and Thomas roads also opened this fall, while crews continue to work on finishing the stretch between Camelback Road and Glendale Avenue by summer 2014.
The Loop 303/I-10 interchange, featuring several elevated ramps to connect the two freeways, I-10 frontage roads and major improvements to local roads in the area, is scheduled for completion by fall 2014. Crews broke ground on the project in November 2011.
An ADOT video about progress on the Loop 303 construction can be viewed at www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJuoZA794zc.
Information about ADOT's Phoenix-area freeway projects is available via www.azdot.gov/PhoenixMetro.


Parents always ask how they can help their child memorize the basic math facts (+ / - to 18). Over the years, I have recommended flashcards, dice games, addition and subtraction PowerPoint slideshows (where the answer flashes on the screen after three seconds), drill booklets, and websites such as Arcademic Skill Builders. There is no one method that appeals to everyone and, in the end, the only thing that matters is that the child reaches the goal of speed and accuracy by the end of grade 2.
Recently, I came across yet another method, which seems to have renewed my students' interest in math. XtraMath is a website, where the teacher uses her email address to create a free class account, with student log ins. It's premise is simple. Students in Kindergarten and Grade 1 focus on addition, Grade 2 - subtraction, Grade 3 -multiplication, and Grade 4 - division. Of course, it's easy to differentiate for individual students, should you have students working below or above grade level. Students access the class page, click on their name and login with a four digit number code. When they have completed their task for the day, the program automatically logs the student out. Students can log in as often as every day, but it's recommended that they don't log in more than once per day. The best part is, it only takes a few minutes. Unfortunately, the program is flash-based, so we can't use it on our iPads. For the past three days, I have been rotating my students through on two classroom computers. So far, the students seem to like it (and I like that I can log in and check which facts they've mastered).
Please post a comment to share how you are using XtraMath in the classroom.


Railway Recruitment Board is soon going to release the recruitment notification for around one lakh posts in the month of February 2019.
The notification will be available on the official website from February 23, 2019.
"Preparative works for the notification is taking a lot of time. Right now, we have to calculate exact vacancies in various departments and also have to apply the reservations rules, especially the newly announced EWS reservation", said sources.
The Railway Recruitment Board (RRB) will release the answer keys of the 2nd stage computer based test (CBT) of Group C, ALP, Technician posts soon.


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Make a Profit or Have a Positive Impact? There's No Choice to Be Made
More and more companies today are finding ways to achieve both.
By Shirli KopelmanFaculty Director, Center for Positive Organizations @NegGenuinely
Once upon a time, businesses solely cared about making money. For many people still reeling from the devastating impact of the 2008 economic collapse, today making money remains important--but so is a stable job.
But over the last decade we've witnessed a new trend, especially among the men and women attending business schools. These people no longer are satisfied with only collecting paychecks and ascending the proverbial corporate ladder; now they want meaningful jobs.
They yearn for what is called a Career With a Heart. They want work to be aligned with their personal values. They want their jobs to positively fuel, sustain, and energize their work over the long-haul. And instead of aiming for the often unattainable work-life balance, negotiating a career with a heart allows their personal and professional lives to complement and nourish each other.
Beyond goals for individual careers, there's another shift happening in the business world; people, especially the Millennial generation, want to work for companies that innovate and have a positive impact on the world and society. This isn't just another call for corporate responsibility. It's people who truly believe that any business can serve as an agent of positive change in the world.
The Ross School of Business identifies these companies as part of the positive business movement, whereby businesses go above and beyond maximizing shareholder value, making the world a better place. Positive businesses place a premium on employee engagement by encouraging and building workplaces that thrive on the very things that support a career with a heart, such as innovation, creativity, integrity, generosity, and inspiration--all while placing a high premium on managing and leading their employees in a positive, cooperative manner. An excellent example of a positive business operating today is Zingerman's, a collection of small food-related companies and entrepreneurial ventures in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Zingerman's is led by CEO and co-founder Ari Weinzweig, who explains his business philosophy:
Instead of having a conflict-based, win-lose approach that is so endemic in most of the world where the customer is fighting with the business and the owners are fighting to hold down the employees, we can create something where everyone is in it together.
A positive approach to business and leadership doesn't just benefit employees--it benefits organizations as well. Numerous studies, like the one conducted by Gretchen Spreitzer, faculty member at the Center for Positive Organizations, have shown the power of positive employee engagement. In this study, she and her colleagues found that people who thrive at work demonstrated 16 percent better overall performance (as reported by managers) and 125 percent less burnout (self-reported) than peers. Plus these employees were 32 percent more committed to their organization and reported 46 percent more job satisfaction. That's a win-win for executives and employees.
But positive business is not only about the people factor. At the 2014 inaugural Positive Business Conference, Ross professors shared cutting-edge research on positive business practices through finance, accounting, production & supply-chain management, marketing, business law, and strategy. Yes, positive business includes treating employees, producers, consumers, and suppliers with dignity and respect--but it's as much about community, leading on social issues, and working to better the environment. It considers social and natural resources in a way that goes beyond sustainability to build flourishing healthy ecosystems.
Business schools need to quickly respond to this shift to view business as a way to do good, and develop leaders who make a positive difference in the world. For example, in my own negotiating classes and programs, I challenge my students to go beyond the traditional tug-of-war battles over resources and beyond the proverbial win-win approach. I teach them not only how to cooperate to co-create financial value but also how to embrace an even more positive approach that also benefits well-being. Students recognize that negotiating is a creative process in which both parties explore and achieve better outcomes by working together to share, exchange, and build new resources. They negotiate genuinely to affect not only profits, but to propel positive business.
And the magic is that when negotiating genuinely, profits and positive can go together. When asked how she measures social impact and corporate responsibility, Sarah Endline, founder and CEO of Sweetriot had a simple answer: Counting the chocolate she sells, because each chocolate is sourced and produced in a way that supports farmers and the environment. Are people willing to pay more for such products? Some definitely are. But if negotiated in a business savvy way, it might not cost more to implement positive business practices.
This positive approach to negotiating, especially in business, is exactly what the world needs. We do not live in a zero-sum society. We face staggering global issues like natural resource depletion, poverty, political instability, and ongoing conflict and pollution, which threaten the world and all of humanity. If we're to solve the complex global problems we face, businesses must be on the forefront finding solutions, bringing people together to co-create value, and leading the way.
Can businesses inspire positive change in the world? Absolutely, and it's only just begun.
Published on: Oct 22, 2014


Can I as an NRI own on immovable property.
As an NRI you can own immovable property (except for agricultural land/farmhouse plantation properties where permission needs to be taken) by way of gift, inheritance or purchase. For more refer rbi.org.
From which accounts can I pay for my property?
You can pay both from your NRE and NRO account. However you need to be careful about the treating of the sales process and repatriation benefits which varies from account to account. For more refer rbi.org.
As an NRI can I apply for loan?
As an NRI can I appoint a person as a Power of Attorney in India to complete my loan formalities.
NRIs can definitely appoint a Power of Attorney to complete all loan formalities towards the purchase of a property in India, considering the fact that an NRI wouldn't be in India for long periods. Refer to the rules by different banks for the same.
As an NRI am I limited to the number of investment I can do in Residential/Commercial Properties in India?
RBI has not fixed any restriction purchase of Agricultural Land/Plantation Property or Farmhouses in India.
As there any extra tax implication for purchase, sales and renting of real estate in India for NRIs.


text:
Q: WPF Toolkit - Deactivate Chart Animation When a new Chart is created and a Series (ColumnSeries for example) is added along with data the columns are rendered as a type of FadeIn animation and appear a split second after the Chart is drawn on screen.
Is there anyway to stop this animation happening? Alternatively, is there anyway of forcing the chart to complete the animations before rendering?
Paul

A: i have downloaded the latest source code at http://wpf.codeplex.com/SourceControl/list/changesets
my idea is, to remove the animation by changing the style for the different chart series (chart points, DataPointStyle)
example for charting:PieDataPoint
try to remove the animation for the shown data and take your own style with a given key (x:key="myStyle" -> DataPointStyle="{StaticResource myStyle}")
and remove Opacity="0" at <Grid x:Name="Root" Opacity="0">
remove this visual state group from your style
<VisualStateGroup x:Name="RevealStates">
    <VisualStateGroup.Transitions>
        <VisualTransition GeneratedDuration="0:0:0.5" />
    </VisualStateGroup.Transitions>
    <VisualState x:Name="Shown">
        <Storyboard>
            <DoubleAnimation Storyboard.TargetName="Root" Storyboard.TargetProperty="Opacity" To="1" Duration="0" />
        </Storyboard>
    </VisualState>
    <VisualState x:Name="Hidden">
        <Storyboard>
            <DoubleAnimation Storyboard.TargetName="Root" Storyboard.TargetProperty="Opacity" To="0" Duration="0" />
        </Storyboard>
    </VisualState>
</VisualStateGroup>

EDIT
This is the changed style.
<!--  charting:PieDataPoint  -->
<Style TargetType="charting:PieDataPoint">
    <Setter Property="Background" Value="Orange" />
    <Setter Property="BorderBrush" Value="White" />
    <Setter Property="BorderThickness" Value="1" />
    <Setter Property="IsTabStop" Value="False" />
    <Setter Property="RatioStringFormat" Value="{}{0:p2}" />
    <Setter Property="Template">
        <Setter.Value>
            <ControlTemplate TargetType="charting:PieDataPoint">
                <Grid x:Name="Root" Opacity="0">
                    <VisualStateManager.VisualStateGroups>
                        <VisualStateGroup x:Name="CommonStates">
                            <VisualStateGroup.Transitions>
                                <VisualTransition GeneratedDuration="0:0:0.1" />
                            </VisualStateGroup.Transitions>
                            <VisualState x:Name="Normal" />
                            <VisualState x:Name="MouseOver">
                                <Storyboard>
                                    <DoubleAnimation Storyboard.TargetName="MouseOverHighlight" Storyboard.TargetProperty="Opacity" To="0.6" Duration="0" />
                                </Storyboard>
                            </VisualState>
                        </VisualStateGroup>
                        <VisualStateGroup x:Name="SelectionStates">
                            <VisualStateGroup.Transitions>
                                <VisualTransition GeneratedDuration="0:0:0.1" />
                            </VisualStateGroup.Transitions>
                            <VisualState x:Name="Unselected" />
                            <VisualState x:Name="Selected">
                                <Storyboard>
                                    <DoubleAnimation Storyboard.TargetName="SelectionHighlight" Storyboard.TargetProperty="Opacity" To="0.6" Duration="0" />
                                </Storyboard>
                            </VisualState>
                        </VisualStateGroup>
                    </VisualStateManager.VisualStateGroups>
                    <Path x:Name="Slice" Data="{TemplateBinding Geometry}" Fill="{TemplateBinding Background}" Stroke="{TemplateBinding BorderBrush}" StrokeMiterLimit="1">
                        <ToolTipService.ToolTip>
                            <StackPanel>
                                <ContentControl Content="{TemplateBinding FormattedDependentValue}" />
                                <ContentControl Content="{TemplateBinding FormattedRatio}" />
                            </StackPanel>
                        </ToolTipService.ToolTip>
                    </Path>
                    <Path x:Name="SelectionHighlight" Data="{TemplateBinding GeometrySelection}" Fill="Red" StrokeMiterLimit="1" IsHitTestVisible="False" Opacity="0" />
                    <Path x:Name="MouseOverHighlight" Data="{TemplateBinding GeometryHighlight}" Fill="White" StrokeMiterLimit="1" IsHitTestVisible="False" Opacity="0" />
                </Grid>
            </ControlTemplate>
        </Setter.Value>
    </Setter>
</Style>

After my first attempt to remove the animation, I wanted to give up, because it has not worked.
But then I looked upon me with the reflector to the source code and have found a way that it still works.
Setting the DataPointStyle unfortunately is not enough, I think it's a bug.
<chartingToolkit:Chart Margin="8">

  <chartingToolkit:Chart.Series>
    <chartingToolkit:BarSeries x:Name="barSeries"
                                Title="Experience"
                                DataPointStyle="{StaticResource myBarStyle}">
    </chartingToolkit:BarSeries>
  </chartingToolkit:Chart.Series>

</chartingToolkit:Chart>

In the constructor of the control where the chart is included simply execute the following.
this.barSeries.RefreshStyles();

hope this helps


I thought you might enjoy reading the following article about Kenny Albert, son of Marv, which appeared in the New York Post on May 4, 2017, written by Don Burke.
And on the 13th day, Kenny Albert rested. Sort of.
After doing play-by-play for 12 NHL playoff games over the previous 12 days in five different cities, his first day without a game to broadcast since April 11 was anything but restful.
After arriving at his home in New Jersey the night of April 23 from Boston, where he had called Game 6 of the Bruins' series against the Senators that afternoon, Albert spent a few hours the next morning carving out his travel itinerary for the NHL conference semifinals, where he is again pulling yeoman duty, bouncing between the St. Louis-Nashville series for NBC and the Rangers-Senators matchup for MSG Radio.
That was after dropping off his dry cleaning in anticipation of leaving town again the following day, when he was to fly to St. Louis for Game 1 of the Western semis. That afternoon, he attended a memorial service for legendary FOX/SNY director Bill Webb, grabbed a quick dinner with his wife and two daughters, was a guest on two radio shows, did some prep work for his upcoming broadcasts, did an interview, and wrote an article for MSG's website previewing the Rangers-Senators series.
Yep, that's how Kenny Albert spent his day off.
"Sometimes he'll send me his schedule. I'll look at it and say, 'What?' It's all over the place," said his dad, iconic play-by-play man Marv Albert, who knows a thing or two about maniacal scheduling.
Forty years ago, Marv, who now works primarily on Turner Sports' NBA package, broadcast both Knicks and Rangers home games on radio, did the weeknight sports on the 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. news at WNBC, and filled his weekends with an NFL game, a college basketball game or a boxing match.
Albert's streak of 12 games in 12 days — which this week became 16 games in 17 days — is a personal best, but he also had a stretch in January when he did 14 games in 15 days while broadcasting the NFL, the NHL and the NBA.
He began doing the NHL conference finals for NBC in 2014. That year the Rangers advanced to the Stanley Cup finals and the next year they went to the conference finals.
"I wound up working 12 out of the 13 games in the  conference finals.," he said. "The next year, there were three games in Anaheim during the conference finals and the Rangers were playing Tampa Bay.
"There was a triple-overtime game in Anaheim. It started at 6 [p.m.] local time. … I was going through Miami on the red-eye to make it to Tampa. I made the final red-eye. It left at 1:15 [a.m.] and I actually made it to the morning skate. … People who had watched the game that [previous] night were looking at me funny when I walked into the building. They had no idea how I got there so fast.
There hasn't been a need for any such time travel this time around — at least not yet.
During last month's first round, six of the games the 49-year-old Albert worked went into overtime. He worked with four different broadcast partners, took eight flights, rode once by car from Boston to Montreal, twice from Montreal to Ottawa, once from New York to Boston and twice from Boston to his Bergen County home. On two of those rides, NBC's NHL analyst, Pierre McGuire — who also did 12 games in 12 days, just not always the same games — joined him.
"She's great about it," Albert said. "It worked out well this year. My kids [Amanda, 17, and Sydney, 14] were off from school for the first couple of days of this stretch. They were up for Game 1 of the Rangers-Montreal series, so we were able to spend some time, have lunch, explore a little bit. They went to the game that night.
It happened last week, around 4:30 in the morning. Albert awoke and, for a good 15 or 20 seconds, had no idea where he was. He was in a hotel room, of course. Isn't he almost always?
But what hotel? What city? What country?
It's an occupational hazard, the kind of thing that happens from time to time. He wisely has taken to snapping cell-phone photos of his room number so he doesn't head for the wrong door.
"Sometimes I still have the room number from my previous stop in my head," said Albert, who eventually realized he was in Ottawa.
"I don't feel tired during these stretches. I guess the adrenaline kicks in. … You kind of feel tired after the stretch is all over. While it's going on I think it's the adrenaline and keeping up with both series and reading all the articles on the off day — which isn't really an off day for me because I'm working another game.
Work clearly is something Albert doesn't shy away from. He did 39 playoff games in 2014, including 16 in 17 days; 32 the following season, including 13 in 14 days; and 26 last season, even though the Rangers were eliminated in the opening round.
With that in mind, Barbara makes sure her husband has his vitamins packed as well as remedies for his throat should he need them.
It likely will be mid-June before that even has a chance to happen. No matter how the Rangers fare, Albert will call the Western Conference finals for NBC, and he will be at the Stanley Cup finals, where will do radio play-by-play for Westwood One.
His son, who was 5 years old when he began tagging along to games, shares that philosophy.


text:
package org.deeplearning4j.nn.weights;

import lombok.Data;
import lombok.EqualsAndHashCode;
import lombok.NoArgsConstructor;
import org.apache.commons.math3.util.FastMath;
import org.nd4j.linalg.api.ndarray.INDArray;
import org.nd4j.linalg.api.ops.random.impl.TruncatedNormalDistribution;
import org.nd4j.linalg.factory.Nd4j;

@Data
@NoArgsConstructor
public class WeightInitVarScalingNormalFanOut implements IWeightInit {

    private Double scale;

    public WeightInitVarScalingNormalFanOut(Double scale){
        this.scale = scale;
    }

    @Override
    public INDArray init(double fanIn, double fanOut, long[] shape, char order, INDArray paramView) {
        double std;
        if(scale == null){
            std = Math.sqrt(1.0 / fanOut);
        } else {
            std = Math.sqrt(scale / fanOut);
        }

        Nd4j.exec(new TruncatedNormalDistribution(paramView, 0.0, std));
        return paramView.reshape(order, shape);
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


It's nice to say that my plugin for NuGet commandline that I wrote for NuGet 1.4 is still working. All tests are green.
I created an issue for NuGet.org v2 feed to provide more easy-to-fetch information about packages in the feed.
If you use NuGet, please make sure you on the latest build of the plugin.


Toll Brothers exciting new community Regency at Trotters Pointe. All homes include master bedrooms on main level, 10' high ceilings, granite counter tops, 42'' maple cabinets, hardwood floors in selected locations and many more standard features always included at Toll Brothers. Price listed is for base price of home.
TURNKEY home- 1st time ever offered! This beauty is better than NEW. If you are looking for exquisite details, this is the home for you! Custom built in 2006, home boasts Decorative Plaster Crown moldings throughout all rooms! Hardwood floors, custom built-ins, STUNNING Tray Ceiling in Master, 2nd floor Laundry, FULL Finished basement, GENEROUS room sizes all on a dead end street!!! Oversized heated garage w/lift is perfect for a mechanic.
Ocean block. Two bedroom, one bath house to be built to maximum size of 560 square feet. Features will include loft, central air and heat, granite countertops, hardwood floors thru-out, stainless steel appliance package, and Andersen windows. Still time to build to suit. Active association offers guarded ocean and bay beaches, playground, and club house. Many family activities offered during summer.


The loss of a loved one is an indescribable feeling. The feeling is more painful if your loved one died because someone somewhere did not do their job correctly or if they were careless. In such cases, the law allows you to find a lawyer that can get you compensation. While this compensation is not enough, it will help ensure that the people responsible pay for what they did. Here are some of the considerations you should make when hiring a wrongful death attorney.
The good thing about hiring someone who is skilled and experienced is that your chances of winning the case or getting the right compensation increases. Getting someone with the right experience is not hard if you do your research correctly. You need to go online and look for a wrongful death attorney with a range of experience in such cases. Moreover, you need to ensure that they have represented other people with cases that resemble yours. It is important to note, that the best kind o attorney is the one who has represented other cases successfully.
The third factor that you need to have in mind is the availability of the attorney that you want to hire. A wrongful death case is sensitive, and the entire process might turn out to be stressful. However, things can be easier if your attorney is actively involved and always available.
Charges vary when it comes to different wrongful death lawyers. In addition to this, most of them prefer different payment methods. Therefore, taking your time to learn more about the legal costs can save you a lot of trouble. You get to avoid ending up with an attorney who is only after your money. Be sure to know all the price estimates and hire a professional that you can comfortably afford.
Recommendations can help you a lot when looking for a wrongful death attorney. You can get a lot of information from people you trust such as your friends, family members, and acquaintances. You can get recommendations of some of the best attorneys that you can trust with your case. In this case, the attorney that you should settle for is the one who is being recommended by most of your loved ones.
Finally, you have to make good use of the internet if you want to make the right choice. You can learn so much about wrongful death lawyers online. Target those lawyers that have the most positive reviews.


The colonists were obsessed with tea and they even felt that it was a necessity in the household. So they certainly didn't want to pay a tax for it. They began to find ways to smuggle in better tasting and cheaper tea from other parts of the world. The colonists' favorite smuggled tea was from Holland, so by 1773 more than 75% of the tea the colonists were drinking was smuggled from Holland.
The Boston colonists loved their tea!


Taxlandia: tax can be FUN!
Of course, that would be preferable, but it's not an option.
The good news is that even the EU bureaucrats don't think a 100 percent tax is workable. As a matter of fact, once players pick a tax burden that exceeds 87.5 percent of economic output, they fail.
It's good to see confirmation of my hypothesis that even EU bureaucrats are capable of recognizing that taxes can be excessive at some point. That's not good news for the former French President. Or the ghost of FDR.


text:
Rescuing Hi`ilani by Reina Torres
Reina Torres, Rescuing Hi`ilani, Romantic Suspense, SEAL OF Protection universe, Special Forces Operations Alpha
Jackson Guard, aka "Ajax," gave up the woman he was falling for because it had been drilled into his head that being in the Delta Force was the greatest sacrifice he'd ever make. Meeting with "Ghost" and "Truck" from a Texas-based Delta Force unit opened his eyes. These men… their entire unit were all happy, in love, some with kids. It gave him hope that he could have it all too. He just has to plead his case to the woman whose heart he broke.
Hi`ilani Ahfong was ready to give everything up for love and follow Jackson where ever he was stationed around the world, but he didn't just put the brakes on, he left her on the side of the road wondering where she'd gone wrong. Her manager barely managed to hold onto the 'I told you so' she so richly deserved and helped her focus her energy on performing and building her career. Now, she's back on track.
Everything changes when Hi`ilani walks into the middle of a murder. Fleeing for her life, she runs smack dab into the very man who'd broken her heart. Now the murderers are after her, needing to shut her up, and that's trouble that can hurt the people she loves. Jackson wants to take care of her and keep her safe while the police track down the men. But she's put her trust in Jackson before. She'd given him her heart and soul and he'd left her bleeding. How can he make her believe that this time he's in for the long haul and not just 'Rescuing Hi`ilani'?
Rescuing Hi`ilani is part of the Special Forces: Operation Alpha, Delta Force Hawaii world, which is, in turn, part of the SEAL of Protection universe.
Title: Rescuing Hi`ilani
Series: Special Forces: Operation Alpha, Delta Force Hawaii – part of the SEAL of Protection universe
Author: Reina Torres
Rescuing Hi`ilani is that delightful combination of intense, action-filled suspense along with a second chance to getting love right this time around – if life is kind.
When Jackson took on a commander role in Delta Force it was driven home to him that he was better off, and his loved ones were safer if he had no outside commitments. An enemy could easily use a wife, family in a hostage situation or threaten their lives or worse. He would, in fact, be protecting those he loved by remaining on his own. So, he made the most difficult decision of his life and walked away from his love with little explanation. He was, after all, protecting Hi`ilani. Too bad for him that she didn't see it that way.
Hi`ilani would have followed Jackson anywhere, her love for him was so deep and committed that nothing he asked of her would have been too much… except when he asked to be set free. Devastated, she threw herself back into her career, her performances and tried to get the man she still loved out of her heart and mind. Now, Jackson is back in her life, protecting her from those who were caught in the act of murder – by Hi`ilani. They will not stop until she is dead as well… and that's something that Jackson will not allow to happen.
I fell in love with the characters, the culture and the location of Rescuing Hi`ilani. I freely admit to a good chuckle over Jackson's reaction to the fact that other Delta Force personnel actually have wives and kids, and definitely a happy life outside of their military duties. What had been driven into his head as an absolute fact could, in reality, be possible with everyone involved loved, happy and safe. And I mentally cheered when he immediately took his new found friends to see his love perform… he wasted no time.
I also thoroughly enjoyed that Hi`ilani made him work to win her back. He has broken her in two, and he's going to work to prove to her that she should place her trust in him again.
There is tension, danger, and a lot of action in Rescuing Hi`ilani, you won't be disappointed on that front. I so enjoyed learning more of the Hawaiian culture, Ms. Torres took me right to the islands and I loved every second of my visit. Jackson and Hi`ilani were so right together and their romance, along with the suspense drives this story. I'll not go into the romantic suspense aspect as you should discover that mystery all on your own. This one was priceless, and I'm definitely wanting to return for more adventures.
If you love a good romance, some romantic suspense and definitely some fast action then you'll feel right at home with Rescuing Hi`ilani, I would not hesitate to recommend this one to any Romantic Suspense, Mystery or Romance reader. Ms. Torres always captivates me, no matter what genre she's writing in… yeah, she's that good. Go check her out.
Available in paperback or for the Kindle
http://keeperbookshelf.com/rescuing-hiilani-by-reina-torres/trackback
Kissed by the Country Doc by Melinda Curtis
Taming the Troublemaker by Kadie Scott


text:
Q: what is wrong with this print_repeat function? print_repeat should print out the string s, but repeat the ith character i times (starting counting at 1).
So print_repeat("this") should print thhiiissss
int print_repeat(char s[]){
    int i,j;

     i = 0;
     while (s[i] != '\0');{
         for (j = 1; j <= i+1; j+1){
             putchar(s[i]);
         }
    }
    return 0;
}

void main()
{
    print_repeat("this");
}

A: Find the correct code below:
    while (s[i] != '\0')
    {
      for (j = 1; j <= i+1; j++)
      {
        putchar(s[i]);
      }
     i++;
   }

The main problems were:
1. Not incrementing the variable i inside while loop
2. Variable j is not incremented correctly
3. There is semicolon right after the while which is incorrect.
Suggestion: try debugging your code. That will help you learn faster.

A: In your print_repeat code, you never increment i in your while loop, which would result in infinite loops.

A: add "i++;" on the end of the while loop.


text:
Wednesday | 16 Nov 2016
Kennards Hire Rally Australia: The route
This will be the fifth time that Coffs Harbour has hosted Australia's round of the WRC, and this year the loose gravel rural and forestry roads Down Under count as the final challenge of the season.
The route closely follows the 2015 format, with three days of action based on Australia's east coast in New South Wales, more than 500km north of Sydney.
The stages are split between the Coffs Coast state rainforests and open farmland, with many roads lined by trees, leaving no margin for error.
Friday's action features a loop of three familiar fast and undulating shire stages; Utungun, Bakers Creek and Northbank and a new version of the forest-based Newry stage, which at 25.3km is the longest test of the day.
Each will be run twice, along with two new spectator-friendly stages; the 1.27km Destination NSW SSS takes the competition back to Coffs' harbourside jetty district, while the 1.37km Raceway SSS is based on a drift and rallycross track close to the town.
The showpiece of Saturday's competition is two passes through the 50.80km Nambucca, one of the longest and most difficult stages of the season. An extended 14.84km version of Valla is also driven twice, and two more visits to the Super Specials complete the longest day of the event.
Five more tests north of Coffs Harbour on Sunday complete the itinerary, starting with Settles Reverse, Bucca16 and Wedding Bells. Settles Reverse and Wedding Bells will be repeated after a midday service and the latter counts as the live TV Power Stage - where the final bonus points of the season will be allocated.
The 23 stages cover 312.98km in a route of 1040.51km.
Volkswagen targets winning farewell
German manufacturer bows out in Australia
M-Sport set for Fiesta RS swansong
Current evolution bows out after Australia
Nandan's thumbs-up for 2017 cars
More stability for next year's challengers


text:
Category Archives: Hungarian Literature
Conrad, Krasznahorkai, Joso
Posted on May 28, 2019 by Simon Lavery
My eye seems no worse after the recent laser surgery , so I'm able to post some brief updates again.
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness. Norton Critical Edition, ed. Robert Kimbaugh. 3rd edition, 1988. First published 1899. Each time I reread this novella I'm more puzzled by it. It's been interpreted in such varying, often conflicting ways, as the essays at the end of the Norton edition show. From Achebe's scorching criticism of Conrad's possibly unconscious racism and endorsement of white European supremacy, to the Marxist, Freudian, symbolic and other approaches, it defies a single, unitary approach. As the introduction by CB Cox to my old Dent's Collected edition has it, 'there is no key which will unlock the secret meaning' [of HofD].
The narrative-within-a-narrative by Marlow famously describes his storytelling method – he eschews the 'direct simplicity' of the usual 'yarns of seamen':
…to him the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze…
Is Kurtz a monster and a devil, a madman who believes himself a deity who has succumbed to 'the fascination of the abomination'? Or the 'universal genius' that his acolytes worship (like the bizarre Russian 'harlequin' – therein lies perhaps another line of political interpretation)? Kurtz's notorious postscript to his report to the sinister "International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs" highlights the generally held view that there is a distressing element of racism in the story: 'Exterminate all the brutes' is pretty unequivocal. Or is Kurtz, as some claim, referring there to the brutal European 'pilgrim' colonisers, greedily extracting the ivory and other precious treasures the 'dark continent' provides them? The imagery of darkness, fog, haze, etc., constantly elides and obscures the narrator's perspective, and the reader's.
It was after reading this disturbing novella that I turned to the Multatuli, mentioned in my previous post, for its very different, very clear attack on colonial exploitation by the rapacious Europeans.
László Krasznahorkai, Sátántangó. Tuskar Rock, 2012. Translated (brilliantly) by George Szirtes. First published in Hungarian 1985. Another slippery, elusive narrative. The epigraph from Kafka sets the tone of this surreal, nightmarish fable-fantasy. It also has the dark, sardonic (gallows) humour of Beckett – and a couple of enigmatic, sinister-clown central characters who wouldn't seem out of place in Waiting for Godot.
In 'mercilessly long autumn rains', lashed by winds, a desolate rural community that resembles the corporate, pointless bleakness of a communist-era Hungary collective farm languishes and rots, neglected, despairing. The 'stinking yellow sea of mud' deepens, the roads turn to rivers. The scheming, avaricious inhabitants gather in the dingy bar. There they drown their sorrows and sins, flirt and bicker. Until that strange pair arrives: Irimiás and Petrina, thought to have died but now restored to life: resurrection men. The villagers' hopes rise: they will provide salvation from their 'years of "wretched misery", break the damp silence'. They will lead them in an escape to a better, more fulfilling life. Except, unsurprisingly in this topsy-turvy world, nothing works out as expected. Maybe this returning pair are treacherous spies, tricksters or devilish emissaries. Definitely not the Messiah.
Written in long, loping sentences, each chapter is one unbroken paragraph. Part One is numbered I-VI, Part Two, VI-I. The effect is mesmerising, constantly surprising, subverting the superficial familiarity of the drab scene. That mirror structure, like tango moves, provides a hypnotic, dance-like feel.
Is the novel an allegory about storytelling, fabulising 'reality'? The drunken village doctor spies on his neighbours, making notes that become this narrative. And it's a dystopian account of an absurd world that outdoes reality in its weirdness, temporal fluidity and defiance of rational thought, with the illusion of 'Resurrection' and perhaps redemption as tantalisingly elusive as a phantom tango dance partner.
It's a fascinating, absorbing work. It was filmed in 1994 by Béla Tarr (seven hours long and, appropriately, in black and white).
Jayne Joso, From Seven to the Sea. Seren Books (an imprint of Poetry Wales Press), 2019. Some while ago I posted on this writer's Soothing Music for Stray Cats. This one is very different, and better.
On her seventh birthday Esther is taken by her not particularly attentive mother to live in a seaside town (somewhere in Wales, it seems) with her new father – a grumpy control freak who clearly hates kids. The classic ogre stepfather. The imaginative child can't settle in her new school, where it's debatable who's nastier: the pupils or the teacher. Sensibly she takes to skipping classes to visit her new friend Pete, a kind, grizzled old seadog she encounters in the harbour. She loves going out to sea with him in his boat. He's the father she craves.
Various mishaps (some dogs have a hard time) darken spirited little Esther's world, but it's a touching fairytale where it's evident that things will work out ok for her. The sea will always be there to cradle her.
Posted in English Literature, Hungarian Literature	| Tagged Jayne Joso, Joseph Conrad, László Krasznahorkai, Sátántangó, Seren Books, Seven to the Sea, Tuskar Rock books	| 8 Replies
Miklós Bánffy, The Transylvanian Trilogy: final post
Posted on April 10, 2018 by Simon Lavery
Miklós Bánffy's The Transylvanian Trilogy gets better in vols. 2 and 3. In my previous two posts I suggested that vol. 1 was over-populated with minor characters who clogged the narrative, contributing little except unmemorable names and attributes. The next two volumes introduce quite a few new characters, but the cast-list stabilises a little, and the players become more identifiable and their significance clearer.
My two Everyman's Library volumes of the Trilogy
I said last time I'd try to be more positive in this final post on the trilogy. The plot certainly gathers momentum, and I found myself racing through the last volume as the thwarted affair between Abady and Adrienne becomes ever more passionate but meets more and more obstacles. I don't intend spoiling what happens, but would urge you to persevere to the end to find out – it's a powerful dénouement for these lovers and for Transylvanian society.
I also said I'd say more about the secondary central male character in this rather too androcentric trilogy, Laszlo Gyeroffy. His erotic-romantic progress is more disastrous than Abady's, largely as a consequence of the grudge he bears against the Hungarian aristocratic social world he was born into but from which he's been ostracised. After the scandalous breakup of his parents' marriage when his mother ran off with another man, his father reacted badly and killed himself and his mother disappeared. Society considers him tainted, and he's treated like a pariah.
Vol. 1 ended with his descent into addiction: gambling and alcohol (there's a titanic amount of drinking and drunkenness in the trilogy). This leads to his losing Klara, the love of his life. He'd spiralled deeper into a decline after this, and despite the attempts of the beautiful Fanny Beredy, one of the few resourceful and spirited independent women we meet in the story, to redeem him, he's so full of loathing for life and himself and his largely self-induced exile from society that he spurns not just her but several subsequent (beautiful of course) young women who try to raise him from the gutter.
He's sold his estate and most of the family heirlooms he'd managed to retain far too cheaply, having lost interest in everything. He also spurns the attempts of his family, including Abady's, to rescue him from his descent into hell. His decline is sad to witness, and not entirely his fault; he's a victim of that 'dramatist Fate' mentioned in vol. 1 as much as he is of his own self-destructive nature. This theme is raised more overtly with the decline of another young aristocrat, Gazsi, whose sad end causes Abady to ponder (without much philosophical profundity or originality) whether it's human nature or lived experience that influences our fates.
The rather disturbingly sexist presentation of women I noted as present at times in vol. 1 is less apparent in the remaining volumes, but it's still there. In the final volume, for example, a shopkeeper's young daughter, just thirteen or so, secretly ministers to Laszlo's obsessive need for alcohol in defiance of her father's beatings, seeing in this shadow of a man the 'fairy prince' he seems to her when he tells her stories of his dazzling former life at the peak of Budapest social life. For a couple more years her love for him grows. There's never any suggestion of a sexual relationship, for Laszlo is too far gone in self-pity to notice her; but this doesn't alter the element of exploitation in his treatment of the besotted girl.
There's more, too, of the over-sexualised presentation of women. Several scenes stand out in which Adrienne is involved. I pointed out the furtive gaze on her of Abady in vol. 1 when she'd abandoned herself to the physical thrill of ice skating; in these later volumes there are even more sexually explicit scenes in which her voluptuous sensuality is lingered over in a manner that can only be described as soft porn. One is when she arrives at a 'bal des têtes' dressed in a shimmering gold dress with 'the lowest possible décolletage'; she looks 'like some legendary goddess'. When she and Abady have sex later he's seen literally bowing down in reverence to her beauty as if she were a Hindu goddess.
It's not the sumptuous moment of erotically charged mutual worship that maybe I've made it sound like: the other men at the ball are shown drooling over her with 'red-hot desire', while Abady congratulates himself on his good luck. Far from showing an empowered Adrienne, this simply reinforces the secondary role women are forced to play in this society: her only 'armour', as the narrator describes Adrienne's metallic gown in this scene, and her manner when she's flirting at another time to disguise her true feelings for Abady, is her sexual attractiveness. She might as well have no intelligence or other qualities – and Bánffy only hints at their existence. His interest resides in Abady.
Meanwhile the political disaster of WWI looms ever nearer, while the Hungarian politicians in their 'shifting political groups', changing like a weather-vane in the wind, continue to look only inwards to the petty feuds and squabbles in their own country. Near the end, when the Archduke Ferdinand is assassinated and war seems ever more inevitable, there's a moment when the narrator muses that with 'skilful diplomacy' it could still have been averted – but of course the reckless Hungarians indulge in quite the opposite, and carnage follows. Their lemming-like charge into it is referred to in the narrative as a 'curse that had fallen on Hungary'.
The 'cold cynicism' of politicians like Slawata, who tries to lure Abady into his schemes, is reflected in the hopeless addiction of this doomed generation of Austro-Hungarian aristocrats for an antiquated and destructively perverse form of 'code of honour', which I touched on in the first of these posts. Its most extreme manifestation is in duels, several of which take place in the final two volumes, and all of them absurd, or 'stupid, stupid', as Abady puts it when he too is involved after a ludicrous exchange with a drunken, corrupt lawyer-politician. (I'm reminded of Conrad's more acerbic view of this theme in 'The Duel' [in A Set of Six, 1908], in which the participants engage in decades of vicious duelling, of 'homicidal austerity', for reasons neither of them can remember.)
I had to skip many of the lengthy political scenes in this trilogy, which went into far too much detail, involving arcane aspects of Habsburg, Balkan and other european political chicanery, than I could endure. But the elegiac treatment of this fatally doomed world of aristocratic misfits, scoundrels and smouldering Byronic heroes is compellingly done, for the most part, and the constant, looming awareness of the slaughter that will change that world forever is handled with chilling aplomb by Bánffy.
Posted in Hungarian Literature	| Tagged Everyman's Library, Joseph Conrad The Duel, Miklós Bánffy, The Transylvanian Trilogy, World War I	| Leave a reply
Miklós Bánffy, The Transylvanian Trilogy: post 2, in which I look at vol. 1, 'They Were Counted'
Posted on April 9, 2018 by Simon Lavery
FR Leavis says of Anna Karenina, quoting Matthew Arnold, that Tolstoy's novel has 'many characters…too many' – but dismisses this as a misreading. He does the same with James's contention that this novel lacks 'composition' and is 'defiant of economy and architecture'. Miklós Bánffy's Transylvanian Trilogy has an elegantly composed structure (more on that later), but perhaps falls short of the kind of greatness Leavis argues is found in Anna Karenina. This is largely because of its defiance of economy and 'composition' – it is too long, has too many superfluous characters (I mentioned last time my need to keep a record of names to try to reduce the confusion caused by the huge cast; I counted 23 different names in just two pages of Pt 1 ch. 2), too many digressions and superfluous descriptive passages.
The Trilogy is, nevertheless, almost a great sequence of novels. It's difficult in the space of this second post on it here to substantiate such a claim, and to give a sense of its overall quality, its (mostly) coherent and subtly controlled narrative – or the defects noted above.
In this post I shall concentrate on vol. 1 of the Trilogy. In the previous post I gave an outline and introduction.
Balint Abady is the protagonist, heir to a vast estate of forests and farmland in Transylvania, in 1904 when the Trilogy opens a region of Hungary (but since the Treaty of Trianon of 1920 part of Romania). The region had a long history of fierce 'national consciousness' (Hugh Thomas, quoting Banffy in his Introduction to vol. 1), showing hostility to the Habsburgs and Germany, and, in this Trilogy, towards the Hungarians (an animosity I witnessed in the 1970s when I visited Ceauşescu's communist state; I even stayed in Cluj, which is the nearest city to the Abady castle of Denestornya at Kolozsvar).
This causes the dissent and arrogantly parochial factionalism that the scenes set in the Hungarian parliament so witheringly portray; the politicians wrangle and orate, oblivious while the empire around them implodes. Abady is Bánffy's mouthpiece and alter ego, frequently shown despairing at their 'narrow-minded, prejudiced, dogmatic talk', which 'got on his nerves' (Pt 1 ch. 2), their politically myopic stupidity, their over-fondness for histrionic gestures and violence in the parliamentary chamber, and for their 'usual rabble-rousing speeches full of slogans' (Pt 3 ch. 1). He's shown to be 'disgusted by the insincerity and triviality of it all' (Pt 4, ch. 3). A page later there's this impassioned narrative comment on such divisive, xenophobic scenes:
Such was the general political naivety…that they at once assumed that they were the victims of a conspiracy. They saw enemies everywhere, not realizing that all nations were governed by their own interests and that the skill with which these were grasped and developed was the true basis of a nation's peace and prosperity. From this distrust of anyone who did not agree with them sprang the divisions within their own ranks…
Coat of arms of the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1915: public domain via Wikimedia Commons
The ethnic and regional factions in this parliament preclude any kind of rational debate or consensus politics of the kind Abady advocates, and the 'kaiserliche und königliche' dual monarchy is simply despised and dismissed, rather than understood and dealt with diplomatically – Bánffy the politician-diplomat, like Abady, tried and failed to hold these factions together while striving to save his doomed, beloved homeland.
Abady is an interestingly flawed character, however; he's too innocent and politically naïve to succeed in such a quest. He can't even manage a rapprochement between the Romanian ethnic peasants of his own estates and villages with their Hungarian overlords. Instead he's distrusted or exploited by them, and even by the Romanian lawyer Timisan, with whom Abady forms a kind of friendship, but who proves as unreliable in aiding his quest for compromise and progress as the rest.
He's also not immune from the corruption of this state. He's elected then re-elected to his constituency of Lelbanya through the habitual use of bribes of the small electorate; he suspects the election was rigged, but acquiesces. He's only too easily duped by the wily Azbej, the steward of his mother's estates, and the others whose equally self-interested duplicity is more than a match for his callow rectitude.
His flaws are a feature of his tortured love life, too. He falls deeply in love with Adrienne, who's married to a sadistic madman who enjoys toying with them. One of my main problems with this Trilogy is with Banffy's portrayal of women and sex. Abady has had numerous mistresses and conquests in his younger days, most recently with a pretty married aristocrat on a neighbouring estate. The women desired by the men in the trilogy are always beautiful and more or less sensual; we get little sense of their characters or emotional complexity.
Adrienne is more fully rounded in her portrayal than the others, but we know little about her beyond her role in Abady's relentless campaign to have sex with her. He's vaguely aware that her reluctance is caused by her being raped by her brutal husband, which has understandably traumatised her, but this doesn't prevent him from trying initially to use poetic language about the purity of 'animal nature' to win her over. She's too smart to fall for this transparent approach, calling the mating instinct he's invoked a 'baited trap, a swindle.' Instead of showing empathy for her vulnerable state (she'd married Uzdy to get away from a cloying home, only to find herself a different and worse kind of captive, despised by him and his cruel family) and understanding the causes of her sexual prurience, and helping her overcome them with tenderness and emotional maturity, he instead is shown concluding 'he must feel his way carefully'. She's his prey, like the animals and birds these male aristocrats love slaughtering in the name of sport.
For weeks and months Abady tries to exercise decency and constraint, despite the voices in him that laugh at his 'scruples and self-searching', and which accuse him of behaving 'more like a timid schoolboy than a grown man of the world.' So one day when he and Adrienne are lying on cushions on the floor, embracing and kissing, and she speaks of the right of women to have freedom to do with their bodies and thoughts what they liked, despite what society considered moral, he sees this as 'the moment for which he had been waiting', when he should 'press for more.'
He starts his 'attack' and tries to force her into having sex, but she springs free, appalled and accusatory. His response is very like that of the abject schoolboy he'd admonished himself as being earlier, but his humility comes too late, his apology is disingenuous and his integrity, to my mind, shattered.
As vol. 1 progresses Adrienne finally overcomes her aversion to sex and they become lovers, but this nasty scene taints the otherwise conventional and romantic-erotic scenes between them that follow.
There's something too lascivious in the male gaze of the two main romantic heroes, Abady and his cousin Laszlo Gyeroffy (as when Laszlo looks at the 'voluptuous' Fanny Beredy, the 'curves of her body' barely hidden by her clinging gown – Pt 2 ch. 3), among other sexually predatory men in the Trilogy. Descriptions of men are far more varied and less stereotypically sexual. There's a scene in which Adrienne is shown ice-skating, and Abady watches her, unseen, transfixed. At first the description is lyrical and rather beautiful, but it becomes more troublesome. Adrienne is compared, in Abady's focalisation, to 'a young maenad caught in a magic wintery bacchanalia, a prey to every madness and abandon, drunk with unrestrained desire and ready for whatever the night might bring'. This says more about his lust than her true self. Yes, she's abandoned to the sensual pleasure of the skating, but the desire is surely all his; she's objectified. And doesn't know he's watching her; it's voyeurism.
Other women characters are also too often commodified like this and likened to panthers or goddesses or their bodies rhapsodically described, especially when they wear revealing ball gowns. I don't want to overstate this tendency in the novel; Bánffy is careful to show Abady coming to realise that his attempted assault on Adrienne is no better than her husband's habitual treatment of her. The way in which the lovely Fanny Beredy – the women are always implausibly sexy and beautiful – uses her sexual allure to distract the heartbroken Laszlo into a passionate affair with her is done more convincingly and subtly than the heavy-handed and chauvinistic campaigns of Abady and most of the other menfolk in these pages. There are also some sympathetically drawn strong and spirited women in the novel, like the independent Sara Bogdan Lazar – but even she falls for the dubiously Byronic and doomed Laszlo.
At one point Laszlo witnesses a distrurbing scene where a butler is about to rape a terrified housemaid; her subsequent pregnancy and disgrace indicate Bánffy's moral sense, but even so his treatment of these two central male characters and their sexual attitudes isn't entirely satisfactory.
Already I've said too much for one post, and have barely touched the surface of this flawed novel. I'm also aware I've been largely critical. The final section of vol. 1 does much to mitigate the unsavoury features I've noted above. I'd like to consider the more positive virtues of the Trilogy when I turn to the final two volumes. And I haven't said enough about some of the fine writing, especially the descriptions of landscapes, and nature in vol. 1; I hope to rectify all this next time.
Posted in Hungarian Literature	| Tagged Everyman's Library, Miklós Bánffy, The Transylvanian Trilogy	| 4 Replies
The days of the Arpad kings: Miklós Bánffy, The Transylvanian Trilogy post 1
Posted on March 27, 2018 by Simon Lavery
Miklós Bánffy (1873-1950), The Transylvanian Trilogy. Vol. 1: They Were Counted (624 pp.) Vol. 2: They Were Found Wanting; They Were Divided (830 pp). Everyman's Library, 2013. Translated by Patrick Thursfield and Katalin Bánffy-Jelen (the author's daughter), winners of the Weidenfeld Translation Prize for vol. 3 in 2002. The trilogy first appeared in Hungarian in 1933 (vol. 1), 1937 (vol. 2) and 1940 (vol. 3). The English translations date from 1999-2002.
Last December I enjoyed a post by Emma at Book Around the Corner on vol. 1 of the Transylvanian Trilogy by Miklós Bánffy. I commented that I'd had the Everyman two-volume English translation on my shelves for some time and must get round to reading it. Why not do a readalong? she challenged. Fellow blogger Meredith at Dolce Belleza was also tempted, but in the end we both had to duck out because of other commitments.
I did press ahead with reading the trilogy, however.
It fills some 1500 pages so it's impossible to boil down all my thoughts about this great work in a short post. I'll begin, then, with an introductory piece to provide some literary and historical-political context. For the action of the novels begins in 1904 with numerous tumultuous scenes in the Budapest parliament alternating with more frequent scenes at sumptuous balls, hunting parties and salons, and ends as the young men set off cheerfully for a war in Europe in 1914 which they believe with heartbreaking optimism and romantic naiveté will be over by Christmas.
The novels are set against the labyrinthine complexity of politics in the Austro-Hungarian Habsburg Empire and the Balkans in their dying days leading up to the disaster of WWI, 'when European civilization committed suicide', as the eminent historian Hugh Thomas puts it in his informative introduction to my edition. As a consequence there's a bitterly elegiac tone to the trilogy.
Bánffy came from one of the ancient Hungarian aristocratic families that had ruled Hungary for a thousand years. His wealth derived from the family's vast forest estates in Transylvania (the trilogy's protagonist, Bálint Abady, spends much of his time, when not engaged in romantic pursuits or parliamentary debates, trying to modernise his badly-run family forest estates). That troubled province was handed over to the new state of Romania at the Treaty of Trianon in 1920. Like parts of lowland northern Europe, this was a region at the crossroads of clashing ethnic and other groups, which as a result was a site of fierce conflict for centuries.
Today we know Transylvania best, perhaps, through the sensational-melodramatic Gothic novel of 1897 by the Irish hack writer and theatre impresario Bram Stoker, who somehow created one of the most significant works of fiction and character archetypes of the modern European age, given that he was a second-rate writer. His half-digested library research into the folklore surrounding Transylvanian Count Vlad the Impaler was conflated with the high camp Gothic-horror stories about vampires that Byron's physician Polidori had revived in 1816 when Mary Shelley produced the first draft of Frankenstein as her contribution to that famous ghost story competition with which they wiled away the long dark days and nights of the 'year without a summer' by Lake Geneva (see my posts on this recently). Stoker's Dracula has coloured our view of Transylvania ever since as a dark, exotic land of wolf-haunted forests, sinister castles and long-nailed, hissing undead predatory Counts with harems of sexy bloodsucking brides.
Bánffy's trilogy has no time for this entertainingly lurid stuff. His is the world of ballroom gossip, aristocratic adultery and political intrigue, factional plotting and treachery. As foreign minister for Hungary from 1921-22 he was involved in the attempts by his countrymen to mitigate the punitive land divisions that ensued from the post-war convention at Trianon to carve up the empire that had been lost after the catastrophic war and defeat of the Germans in 1918. He succeeded in leading Hungary into the League of Nations in 1922, but was denounced by Right-wing nationalist Hungarians who saw him as having sold them out to Yugoslavia. He then lived to see the rise of Fascism and invasion of his homeland by the Nazis, followed by the Russians who ousted and replaced them with an almost equally repressive Communist regime. When he died in 1950 he was living in exile from his ruined home near Cluj-Napoca.
Bonczhida Castle, ancestral home of the Bánffy family, devastated during WWII and now undergoing restoration. Image in the public domain via Wikimedia Commons
He'd been brought up to hope and believe that his beloved country would one day break free from the Austro-Hungarian Empire and resume its independence as a monarchy, restoring its status before the catastrophic defeat to the Turks at Mohács in 1526. Much of the tragedy of the political element of the trilogy results from that naive and romantic dream which blinded Hungarian politicians to the otherwise obvious signs of the approaching disaster of 1914.
Most of the characters in the trilogy have very long race memories, and still wrangle bitterly about ancient battles and ensuing humiliations, while oblivious of nearing disaster. In Vol. 2, for example, Count Antal Szent-Gyorgyi will only invite guests to his famous shooting parties if they fulfil his decidedly choosy criteria. Not only did he rule out 'bad shots' and the 'bad-mannered'; he also excluded anyone with 'decided political opinions' for he 'loathed politics – and politicians'. With his 'rich knowledge of history and genealogies' he would also rule out anyone 'if he thought their ancestry ignoble or unworthy', considering princes and near-royalty as less estimable than 'some simple country nobleman whose ancestors had been 'nice people' since time immemorial':
For Count Antal, anyone who was able to trace his descent from the days of the Arpad kings…took precedence over all others.
People of Czech extraction were also excluded, possibly because his ancestors' lands had been overrun by 'the army of Giskra', or else because of his hatred of the pan-Slav movement – which meant pro-Russian and therefore anti-Habsburg. His loyalties were even more eccentrically refined; he barred anyone who had any connection to 'the Heir, the Archduke Franz-Ferdinand', for his allegiance was to 'the old Emperor, and the Heir's supporters were clearly anxiously awaiting the Emperor's demise, showing themselves 'greedy, unacceptable opportunists'.
This brief background gives some indication of the strengths and weaknesses of the trilogy. It's an immensely ambitious, highly addictive and readable attempt to set a tragic romantic drama against the even more tragic backdrop of the most momentous upheaval in world history since the days of Napoleon. This places it in the company of similarly wide-ranging and portentous epics like War and Peace, and, in a different way, Proust's A la Recherche…
But the very complexity of Balkan/Austro-Hungarian history and politics often slows down the narrative and causes the reader to long for an index of characters. I drew up my own in the end. And those Hungarian and Transylvanian names are so polysyllabic and tongue-twistingly multi-consonantal, they don't reside memorably in this ageing reader's memory. I had constantly to resort to my notebook summary of each chapter, as minor characters reappeared in a more important role some hundreds of pages since their last appearance. And every one of the huge aristocratic cast of characters seems to be related to everyone else.
Next time, maybe in more than one post, I'll take a look at the plot and try to set it in the context I've started sketching here.
Vol. 1 has a detailed introduction (as mentioned above) by the historian Hugh Thomas, a genealogical family tree of the Bánffy dynasty, a chronology of historical and family events, and both volumes contain maps of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1913 and of Transylvania.
Posted in Hungarian Literature	| Tagged Austro-Hungarian Empire, Bram Stoker Dracula, Cluj-Napoca, Everyman's Library, Miklós Bánffy, The Transylvanian Trilogy, Transylvania	| 16 Replies
Death – and sex – in Venice: Antal Szerb, Journey by Moonlight
Posted on October 7, 2017 by Simon Lavery
Antal Szerb, Journey by Moonlight Pushkin Press 2002; 1937 first publication
Everyone seems to love this novel, from Nicholas Lezard, late of the Guardian, to Len Rix, its gifted translator, who points out in an afterword that every cultivated Hungarian reads and loves it; Journey by Moonlight is to Hungary what Catcher in the Rye is to America, it seems.
What's not to like about it? Journey by Moonlight was written by an erudite, sensitive, polyglot academic Hungarian, born to a Jewish family but assimilated into the Catholic faith, who died a brutal death in a Nazi labour camp in 1945. Offered an escape route by concerned friends, he opted instead to share the fate of his fellow Jews and intellectuals in such camps.
Its opening lines are compelling, riffing ironically perhaps on Thomas Mann (and anticipating du Maurier's 'Don't Look Now', without the genuine dread):
On the train everything seemed fine. The trouble began in Venice, with the back-alleys.
This is, the deadpan narrator informs us, protagonist Mihály's first visit to Italy; he's 36, and on his honeymoon. But 'he secretly feared [Italy]', associating it with 'grown-up matters, such as the fathering of children'. It's the same
Instinctive fear he had of strong sunlight, the scent of flowers, and extremely beautiful women.
Ok, so far I'm with the fans; this is wittily dry, ironic, funny. The style and tone are poised, laconic, observant and engaging; this voice isn't fooled by Mihály's emotional disarray and callow selfishness. There are some terrifically funny asides, like this one about Mihály's wife, Erszi, as she lies alone in bed brooding anxiously as her husband goes on a drunken situationist dérive through those alluring back-alleys of Venice, like a Beckettian version of Mann's von Aschenbach:
Women are usually better at lying awake and thinking…She had long known that she did not understand him, because Mihály had secrets even from himself, and he did not understand her since it never occurred to him that people other than himself had an inner life in which he might take an interest. And yet they had married because he had decided that they understood each other perfectly, and that, for both, the marriage rested on purely rational foundations and not fleeting passion. For just how long could that fiction be sustained?
It's often darkly funny like that, with that wry narrative voice dipping into postmodern self-reference and metafiction. What follows is a complex, meandering modernist take on this man-child's self-conscious 'journey' into himself as he strives to reconcile the twin lures of eros and thanatos – death and sex in Venice – and various other points en route to Rome.
There's a wildly funny sequence after he 'loses' Erszi on a train journey ('not unintentionally', as the narrator knowingly puts it) in search of himself and his adolescent fantasy friends, and hooks up with a ditzy, sexy American art student called, of all things, Millicent. She asks, for example, who was the Italian artist who painted trees like the ones they had walked past:
"Botticelli," replied Mihály, and kissed her.
"Ooooh," she said, with horror on her face. Then she kissed him back.
Just the right number of Os in that 'Oooh'. As they make love the narrator caustically points out that Mihály's passion is a pursuit of 'fantasy and not physiological fact!'
Her healthy mouth was entirely American (oh, the prairies!), the little hairs on her neck were foreign…"Geography is my most potent aphrodisiac," he thought to himself.
This is closer to Mel Brooks than Mann or Gide – and why not?
But Mihály isn't a pseudo-cynical mixed-up, grieving teenager like Holden Caulfield, or tortured artist: he's a grown man of limited talent, from a privileged family, tempted to reject the cosy bourgeois life Erszi represents in order to go off on his spiritual-erotic psychogeographical quest in search of himself and a rebellious, bohemian dream for which our narrator has made it clear he's just not suited. I'm afraid I found him boring – despite that sophisticated, ironic narrative critique of him.
There's far too much sub-Freudian stuff like this: 'Those Etruscans were perfectly aware that dying is an erotic act', a creepy academic tells Mihály in a particularly over-long section of the novel. This kind of nonsense gives him 'a frisson'; this was the kind of immature talk he'd loved in his little ménage as a youth in Budapest. The brother and sister at its heart, Éva and Tamás Ulpius, and his fellow acolytes (they reminded me of the characters in Cocteau's weirdly absurd Les enfants terribles), had got off on enacting gruesome little dramas involving death, murder and suicide. This is what Mihály is longing to rediscover or re-enact in Italy.
Portrait of Szerb in the Pushkin Press edition
Despite the numerous occasions when the novel has some seriously and perceptively funny things to say about the existential angst at the heart of modern life's darkness (oddly enough there's little direct reference to the rising fascism in Italy that Mihály pays characteristically little attention to when it bursts through his self-absorption), it doesn't all hang together.
For example, at one of the tragi-comic climaxes of the narrative, when Mihály's intention to commit suicide like his revered late friend Tamás is thwarted by a pretty girl whisking him away to be the most badly-chosen godfather ever at a christening, his grumpily whining confusion is brilliantly evoked in looping, free indirect style:
They burst in on him with their precious stupid business, the way people always burst in on him with their precious stupid business when life was sublime and terrible. And sublime and terrible things always happened to him when life was stupid and precious. Life was not an art-form, or rather, it was an extremely mixed genre.
That's very funny and good, but the novel's general impact is a bit of a disappointment after its big build-up on the jacket blurb. Maybe I'm just not in the right place, reading it just after going back to work after a long summer break. Maybe reading about a pretentious 36-year-old's 'Inbetweeners' crisis (with a shot of Gide's immoralists about him, too) came at the wrong time for me. I can appreciate its dark ironies, that aloof, unreliable narrative voice – and the looming threat of fascism that's always there, even when unstated… I'd be interested to hear what others think of it.
Posted in Hungarian Literature	| Tagged André Gide, Antal Szerb, Catcher in the Rye, Daphne du Maurier, Fascism, Hungarian literature, Journey by Moonlight, Pushkin Press, The Inbetweeners, Thomas Mann	| 9 Replies
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