A Plunge into Spring

Is this the first day of Spring that I see before me? I can't help but believe that it is, as the hot sunlight streams once again through my little office window. It feels like poem season again, as the the sun evokes feelings of warmth and longing. The daffodils in the recent frost bitten soil are ready to explode and the crocuses have already set forth into the light in their forests of blues, purples and yellows, almost looking like little drops of sweets.

I thought I would take a break from the manuscript and feed the birds and squirrels (old crisps, biscuits and potato) then i procrastinated a little further by standing still and listening to the birds sing. Spring is definitely in the air, there is no doubt about it, I am quite tempted to remove the tarpaulin from the swing chair in the garden, and this is always a good sign. Although I have a mighty headache, the desire to write is strong, so as with the spring breaking forth upon us once more, so must my work, but not before having a little read of Wordsworth to get us all in the mood.


Wordsworth - Lines Written in Spring

I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.

Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And ’tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot measure:--
But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.

If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature’s holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?

Article Seven - Better Late Than Never

Literature │Better Late than Never
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

(published in "Avrupa" newspaper)

It has come to my attention, with full gusto, that the phrase “better late than never” resonates deeply when it comes to the reading of an Austen classic, and I will share with you the reason why. Having been a student of English, and briefly touching upon Austen’s Mansfield Park, and Northanger Abbey for a gothic course, I was drawn into Austen’s alluring use of satire. She mocked the laughable elements of society which made people act in foolish ways; she also mocked the institute of marriage, and the way in which it was carried out, one was extremely lucky if love was involved at all, as pointed out in Pride and Prejudice “Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance. If the dispositions of the parties are ever so well known to each other or ever so similar beforehand, it does not advance their felicity in the least. They always continue to grow sufficiently unlike afterwards to have their share of vexation; and it is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your life.”

Austen’s ability to depict the society in which she was born into are as well developed as the fine detail in a Rembrandt painting, however, to my great shame, I hadn’t managed to read any of her romances, and when I did, it was quite evident that Austen had created the very skeleton of any successful, humorous romance that it around today. Austen’s ability to stay with us is clearly evident in the way that the her stories are retold repetitively, after all, was it not the BBC’s version of Pride and Prejudice that made many delve into the books of Austen, it would be a lie if the dark and brooding image of Mr Darcy, played by Colin Firth did not make you sit up in your seat and make you feel hope and despair at the strong headed Elizabeth Bennet who’s prejudice could not see through Mr Darcy’s pride until the very end. Off course you did, along with millions of other people.

And so it is, my fellow reader, my confession, that until the age of 23, I had not read an Austen romance, and I had not experienced the “Mr Darcy madness”, but long at last, I did, and I too wanted to be as strong willed as the great Elizabeth Bennet who just like people in real life, is heavily flawed, but discovering a lighter side to Austen was as though I had entered a personal enlightenment in my repertoire of literature. What one must do when reading much of Austen, is to merely hang in there, and I say this due to the fact that she tends to introduce something like ten characters within the first three short chapters, and one becomes immediately bombarded by a vastness of description and affliction for one to meditate upon, but this is achievable. Austen uses contrast in order to develop her characters, she makes Mrs Bennet an unstoppable, clucking, excitable, silly woman whilst Mr Bennet is calm, and seeks sanctuary in his library, after all, the poor man has been inflicted by an overwhelming number of women, Austen repetitively draws our attention to Mr Bennet’s ability to seek safety within a space of his own, something which was not available to women who only hoped to seek some sort of peace in marriage which was more like a business deal, Charlotte tries to explain this to Elizabeth when she accepts Mr Collin’s proposal, “I am not romantic you know. I never was. I ask only a comfortable home…I am convinced that my chance of happiness with him is as fair, as most people can boast on entering the marriage state.”

Austen proves in this book which she originally called First Impression, and had written before the age of twenty-one, that her exceptional ability to bring characters and situations to life is paramount, it is as though we can hear them breathing and watch them as they take a turn of the room. I am grateful that she was not discouraged from writing, as this novel like many after, was rejected and put to the side, but nothing would stop Austen from having her word which has lasted 192 years after her premature death at the age of 42, so I implore you, if you have not yet read the works of Austen, then it is not too late, after all, it is better late than never.
© Zehra Mustafa

On Being Ill

I've had my fair share of bouts of illness which can last up to months and months, and I know many other who go through these bouts too. These bouts leave you feeling as though your soul is being slowly drained away, you can't sleep, you can't eat, you can't work, you simply can't function. But what is worst about being ill, it that sometimes you can not see the light, and the thought of being well again is alien...an employer's dream ehh. Well, this is what it is like when being ill for a long time. Along with the feeling of "will I ever be well again" the worst thing for me, is when I am not longer able to read, and with any illness, for many, this is a tough thing, especially when all that you can do is watch the zombifying TV. But why have I chosen to talk about this today? Maybe it is because every now and then, with a bout of illness, whether it is gastritis, mumps or influenza, there are at times little glimmers of light, and today, there is a little light as I am able to step away from article writing which I am completely on top of, and edit my book which I have now titled "Shadows". February is always a tough month, it has been months without any real sun light, and by now, all that we really crave is a little warmth. So what I am saying to all of you out there, who are in the fits of illness and submerged under it's looming darkness, hold on in there, you will get out.

I will now leave you with a few extracts from Virginia Woolf's "On Being Ill"

"Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed, what wastes and deserts of the soul a slight attack of influenza brings to view, what precipices and lawns sprinkled with bright flowers a little rise of temperature reveals, what ancient and obdurate oaks are uprooted in us by the act of sickness, how we go down into the pit of death and feel the waters of annihilation close above our heads and wake thinking to find ourselves in the presence of the angels and the harpers when we have a tooth out and come to the surface in the dentist's arm-chair and confuse his 'Rinse the mouth- rinse the mouth' with the greeting of the Deity stooping from the floor of Heaven to welcome us... Novels, one would have thought, would have been devoted to influenza; epic poems to typhoid; odes to pneumonia; lyrics to toothache...All day, all night the body intervenes blunts or sharpens, colours or discolours, turns to wax in the warmth of June, hardens to tallow in the murk of February...But all of this daily drama of the body there is no record. People write of the mind..."

Article Seven - A Voice Through Time

Literature │A Voice through Time
Virginia Woolf’s The Years

(published in "Avrupa" newspaper)

The Years was going to be something new; it was going to “…take in everything, sex, education, life etc and come with the most powerful and agile leaps like a chamois, across precipices from 1880 to here and now”, wrote Virginia Woolf, and this, she certainly achieved. As I edged closer to the end of this novel, my fingers gripping to the pages, hoping that it was not going to end yet, even after 410 pages or so, I knew that it was going to have to. As I put the book down, I let out a sigh; it was a sigh of fulfilment, and anticipation to read more books written by Woolf. Woolf’s books tend to be expressed by readers as confusing, boring and not altogether there, but trust me my readers, this woman is completely there, sharing with us a story that gives deep insight into the minds of others; their thoughts and feelings shared with us like a little secret whispered into out ears. What a breath of fresh air” I thought immediately and then laughed at myself, because it is actually quite old air which has the ability to be revived over and over again since its publication, finally, in 1937. I say finally because it took Woolf five years to write and re-write this novel until she was satisfied with it.

The Years follow the lives of the Pargiter family from 1880 to the present, which is the mid-1930s; noting all the changes that society undergoes, such as the use of the horse drawn cart which diminishes as the first automobiles are introduced. We also experience England being under attack during world war one, in which a sense of eeriness is aroused, here is a description of a blacked out London; “No light shone, save when a searchlight rayed round the sky, and stopped, here and there, as if to ponder some fleecy patch.” As we go through the years, we watch the Pargiter’s grow old and move away from the Victorian era. In “The Present”, we discover the way in which women have gained more freedoms, as Peggy is able to be a doctor, which was completely unheard of in the era the book sets off in. There are not only social advancements in terms of freedom, but also ones to do with the Victorian family. As with Virginia’s own father, Elizabeth, who is the eldest, the glue of the family, is heavily relied upon by her father, it is with her father’s death that she is able to experience true freedom, freedom from the patriarchy and freedom from the Victorian values that Woolf has always tried to sever herself from. She is finally able to live out the life she deserved. Woolf does not only write the female parts exquisitely, but is able to form the shape and mind of a man’s too, displaying her ability to move fluidly between the two.

Many of the ideals, dreams and thoughts that are discussed in the book, also belong to Woolf herself; such as the emancipation of woman, thoughts on siblings, looking to the future, reminders of the past, but most of all, the subject of getting old, and acceptance. Woolf’s earlier works can put off many readers, but with a sharp mind such as Woolf’s, everything falls into their place, and it is hard to miss the point that Woolf is making with this book. Each year opens with an incredible description of the setting, mirroring and progressing with the chapter’s contents as if the words curled and fell from a poet’s pen, allowing a swift movement in thought and feeling. This book must be approached with an open flexible mind which is able to keep up with the changes to and fro, and must be ready to part with the characters at the end of the book which can be quite hard; this is feeling of sadness on our part, but an incredible accomplishment on Woolf’s.

© Zehra Mustafa

Article Six- The Poetess

Literature │The Poetess
Sylvia Plath

(published in "Avrupa" newspaper)

My discovery of Sylvia Plath was by accident at the age of fifteen; I had been browsing the shelves of WHSmith for anything that would catch my attention, when I found a book lying on its front, wedged on top of another book, almost falling to the back of the shelf. I turned it around to find it was The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. It was the first time that I had heard her name, and therefore knew absolutely nothing about her. I read the back, and it was these words that intrigued me, “…it broke existing boundaries between fiction and reality and helped to make Plath an enduring feminist icon. It was published under a pseudonym a few weeks before the author’s suicide.” The fact that this was possibly one of the last things that she had written made me believe that I could somehow unravel a mind that was so near the edge. Yesterday, the 11th February was the anniversary of Sylvia Plath’s death, had she not tragically taken her own life in 1963, she would have been 77 years old this year. Many question her integrity as a writer, whether she would have been as famous had her life not been cut dramatically short at the age of 31, or if she was pitied for being married to the great poet Ted Hughes who had cast a shadow upon Plath’s writing career and claimed to have mistreated her. The best advice, from one reader to another, is to look at her work for what it is.

Her words of poetry bleed from the page onto the reader’s heart as she gives us the keys into the secret life of a daughter, a wife, a mother, and a poetess. When I first read her poetry, it was completely different to anything that I had ever read; it was different to pastoral images conjured up by Wordsworth, or lost innocence by Blake. What I read was something different altogether, it was raw, full of anguish and anger, yet there was a strong sense of a calm voice in the midst of it such as the poem “Lady Lazarus” published in Ariel, after her death; the poem is an account of her failed suicide attempts, in which she declares; “Dying, Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well” Just through these lines, we are able to understand that life for her has become one long, tedious job. As her depression takes a hold of her, Plath’s life turns immediately into a struggle in which she finds herself drowning in, but not completely, she hangs on long enough to share her experiences with us.

Plath should not be thought simply as the depressed poetess, as she is more then capable of producing funny and witty poetry as seen in “The Applicant” where she delves into the roles within a marriage, “Now your head, excuse me, is empty. I have the ticket for that.” The woman is turned into an object that is put on the earth to fulfil her marital obligations, “To bring teacups and roll away headaches, And do whatever you tell it. Will you marry it?” This use of imagery in which a human is dehumanised is a constant theme through her poetry, especially of women. The theme of a women being trapped in a man’s world is a theme that runs deep in The Bell Jar as her fate lies in their hands at the end of the book, as they are the ones to decide if she is sane or insane.

When one reads much of Plath’s work, they find themselves reading it at a fast pace, much of her poetry becomes a chant as she controls the rhythm and beat of each stanza. Her voice becomes forceful in “Daddy” as she talks about the Nazis, we can even see their shiny black leather boots stomping and crashing, what Plath is able to produce is a strange sense of controlled rage and agony. Through much of her pain which becomes clear throughout her poetry, she remains, at all times a true master of her poetry’s dialogue, as well as her prose which too is submerged in poetic image. With poetry in mind, and the words of a brilliant poet, I leave you with an extract from The Bell Jar; “Piece by piece, I fed my wardrobe to the night wind, and flutteringly, like a loved one’s ashes, the grey scraps were ferried off, to settle here, there, exactly where I would never know, in the dark heart of New York.”

© Zehra Mustafa

Article 5 - From Russia with love

Literature │ From Russia, With Love
A Review of Turgenev’s First Love

(Published in "Avrupa" Newspaper)

The scene is set, after a party of guests have left and two friends remain seated, they decide to tell one another the stories of their first loves. First loves are meant to be sweet and charming, but as with much Russian literature, we know that nothing is going to be clear cut and easy. The novella’s protagonist, Vladimir Petrovich declares, “My first love was certainly not at all ordinary”, and it is then that we know for sure that we are in for an unusual story.
Ivan Turgenev

The story follows Vladimir’s dizzying love for an old princess’s daughter, 21 year old Zinaida, who lures the 16 year old Vladimir with her charming beauty. However, as we read on, we learn that Zinaida is in fact, not as charming as the 16 year olds eyes detect; but it is hard for a boy at such a young age to look too far beyond beauty. Yet, then again, it seems that age means nothing when it comes to beauty, as Zinaida has men of all ages trying to win her affections, but she only loves one, and that person remains a mystery till the end.

Ivan Sergeyavich Turgenev was born in Oryol, Russia in 1818, and was one of Russia’s greatest playwright and novelists to have lived. He was born into a very wealthy family; his father was a colonel in the Imperial Russian Cavalry, and his mother was born into wealth. Turgenev’s family life was an unhappy one, which can be detected through his character, Vladimir. Turgenev was very conscientious of the social system and the inequalities experienced by the serfs, and believed very strongly in western society, as repressive Russia stifled the individual’s social and political rights. It was this way of feeling and thinking that lead him later to be exiled to his estate. What made Turgenev popular and unpopular at the same time, was that he painted a realistic picture of Russian society, and by doing so, he brought his characters to life, as we see in First Love.

Turgenev sets the novella to a fast pace, which starts out with a quick picture painted of Vladimir’s family and their situation, but Turgenev does not miss anything out by doing this. His words take on a phantasmagorical beat; he does this in a number of ways, and one example is when Vladimir is riding his horse, Turgenev makes each word echo to the softening, then hurrying gallops of his horse. He also shows his talents as a writer and a sociologist by his ability to capture youth with a great sharpness, by being able to cut away all emotions attached to adulthood, and it is this ability to tap-in with each character that makes his writing a worth while read. Although much of the book is focused on his fixation with Zinaida, we also find out just how unhappy he is with his relationship with his father, who will not show any emotion to a son who desperately seeks his love. Turgenev portrays Zinaida as a strong woman who is able to turn grown men into lap-dogs, whilst her mother is an illiterate woman, who was lucky enough to become a princess through marriage, and through each character, a picture is painted of their social status and emotional ineptness. Turgenev too received very little love from his parents, and it seems as though when he created the image of the father and mother in First Love, he was exorcising some lingering demons, but by doing so, he captured both sides of love in a very short space and time.



© Zehra Mustafa

February means a number of things, first it is my mother's birthday, her 60th, this year, then it is my birthday, but it is also the anniversary of Sylvia Plath's death, which happens to be the same day as my mothers birthday, February 11th. I discovered Sylvia when I was 15 by accidentally picking up The Bell Jar, which then led me onto immediately discovering her poetry, and I was hooked for life. Today, as the snow fell, I thought about her, and about what may have become of her, had she lived,this year she would have been celebrating her 77th birthday, but instead, we have to do the celebrating for her. I flicked through the pages of Ariel, and came across this one, which fits the mood I think, for this white lit night.

Wintering - Sylvia Plath

This is the easy time, there is nothing doing.

I have whirled the midwife's extractor,
I have my honey,

Six jars of it,

Six cat's eyes in the wine cellar,

Wintering in a dark without window

At the heart of the house

Next to the last tenant's rancid jam

And the bottles of empty glitters -

Sir So-and-so's gin.

This is the room I have never been in.

This is the room I could never breathe in.

The black bunched in there like a bat,

No light

But the torch and its faint

Chinese yellow on appalling objects -

Black asininity. Decay.

Possession.

It is they who own me.

Neither cruel nor indifferent,

Only ignorant.

This is the time of hanging on for the bees - the bees

So slow I hardly know them,

Filing like soldiers

To the syrup tin

To make up for the honey I've taken.

Tate and Lyle keeps them going

The refined snow.

It is Tate and Lyle they live on, instead of flowers.

They take it. The cold sets in.

Now they ball in a mass,

Black

Mind against all that white.

The smile of the snow is white.

It spreads itself out, a mile-long body of Meissen,

Into which, on warm days,

They can only carry their dead.

The bees are all women,

Maids and the long royal lady.
They have got rid of the men,

The blunt, clumsy stumblers, the boors.

Winter is for the women, still at her knitting,

At the cradle of Spanish walnut,

Her body a bulb in the cold and too dumb to think.

Will the hive survive, will the gladiolas

Succeed in banking their fires

To enter another year?

What will they taste of, the Christmas roses?

The bees are flying. They taste the spring.