by beatriceotto | Dec 11, 2018 | triologisms
Old Nestor has a few choice words to say to his fellow Greeks for their unwillingness to take on the Trojan hero Hector. He compares their cowardice to his own ‘hard-enduring heart’ which fuelled his courage in his youth. ‘Wearing this armour he...
by beatriceotto | Dec 6, 2018 | a quote to note
I don’t blame them either. A delightful recollection of a sensible ursine response to the outrage of war in their habitat. See another lovely account from the same book, of monster lobsters. “Last year, when the hard fighting was going on up there”...
by beatriceotto | Nov 27, 2018 | triologisms
One goddess you should never cross, quick to rouse to wrath and terrible in her exactions. Divinely, drop-dead gorgeous, of course. There are several heart- prefixed triologisms in Homer, emphasizing the human pain, terror and sorrow of war and hostility; see, for...
by beatriceotto | Nov 30, 2017 | a quote to note
This is part of a detailed, detached account of what happened when people entered a gas chamber, as experienced by Sofya, a Russian doctor in Grossman’s 800 page novel of the Second World War in and around Russia. I found it moving that he focuses on her eyes,...
by beatriceotto | Nov 30, 2017 | a quote to note
This is a memorable description of Captain Grekov, commander of House 6/1 in the rubble of Stalingrad, summing up so much of the man by the look in his eyes. See also in the same book a touching account of the eyes of a woman – with much of what they had seen in...
by beatriceotto | Nov 23, 2017 | a quote to note
Having been caught between the colliding tectonic plates of two totalitarian systems, it is easy to see how Grossman saw history not in terms of a matched battle between good and evil, but of a juggernaut trying to mow down seedlings of kindness. Despite – or...
by beatriceotto | Nov 23, 2017 | a quote to note
This graphic and heart-rending typology of despair makes me conscious of having been mercifully spared much of anything that could be likened to despair. Count your blessings, indeed. ‘Abarchuk sighed. ‘You know what, someone ought to write a treatise on...
by beatriceotto | Nov 23, 2017 | a quote to note
This refers to a love affair that burgeons in the grimness of Stalingrad, and I like how Grossman expands the spectrum to show that love can happen in the worst places, full of ‘noise, stench and rubble’. The photo by Angela Compagnone seemed the perfect...
by beatriceotto | Nov 16, 2017 | a quote to note
A fine metaphor for dots of kindness shining through darkness; Grossman’s hope for the future is largely vested in the fact that the great machinery of totalitarian brutality has failed to extinguish these random sparks of human warmth. ‘Even at the most...
