From Sabbath year to Sabbatical

Number Two. Another non-fiction book. In German. I have published. 'Twas to be a project with a Berlin-based art historic publisher that came to naught. No other publisher I contacted was interested, nor the literary agent I work with. So there it lay in a cupboard (digital, computer, these days).

When a friend of mine recently published a thriller, partly set in China, via books-on-demand, I figured: "Me too". Die Wandlungsreise (transforming travel, the metamorphosing trip, the voyage of change ....) is a brief cultural history of the sabbatical - investigating the links between the ancient sabbath year and the 'sabbatical' of our days (nobody has written about this so far, it seems) - enveloped in episodes of my sabbatical travels in Italy (2005) and reflections upon them (later). Some photos are mingled in and there's an index, with travel tipps and brief descriptions of artists mentioned - who created works with grotesques, during the Renaissance (the topic, which fuelled my sabbatical travels). Naturally, I very much hope that some of you shall want to read it!

Eating out (in Brussels)

A few days ago I went for lunch at Kwint, a newish fashionable restaurant in Brussels, opened in October 2009 by Caviar Kaspia and Maison de la Truffe, two French companies situated on Place de la Madeleine, in Paris, whom I have never head of before (all I know is Fauchon; must take a luxury label 101 course soon). I was struck by the lunchtime busy-ness and the tres 'artiste contemporain' design of the place, easily viewable through the huge glass windows. The photo has nothing to do with this, by the way. It's the only foodie image I could find among my photos (a traditional dish at Da Bolognesi in Rome).

After visiting an engaging exhibition about the history of Belgium (1815 onwards) in the Musee Belvue and with some time to kill before boarding a plane back to Hamburg, I was hungry. So why not spend a good €20-30 on a main dish for lunch? - not at all unusual for Brussels. It was easy enough to get a table. The maitre d' simply pointed towards two free tables for two in front of his nose. Ordering was easy too, because I had made up my mind after screening the menu by the entrance that I should satisfy my craving for a lovely plate of pasta; in this instance, home-made (of course ..., only, by whom?) tagliatelle in a creamy sauce covered by a slice of braised foi gras and black truffle shavings. Just a light lunch, you know, en passant.

The friendly enough waitress took two or three turns to remember my desire to drink a Chardonnay with my meal, one of only two wines available by the glass. Oh well. Darkish bread and a fancily presented breadstick (you know, the italianate grissini ones) hit the table first. How nice. The waitress did not bother to show me the bottle before pouring the wine into the glass - indeed, as there are only two white wines offered and it's written in the menu. The tagliatelle followed suit rather quickly. Though they did taste 'freshly made' and were hot and al dente, I cursed myself for ordering such a flashy dish. Foi gros is a pleasure to eat and so are tagliatelle. But they don't go together too well, especially if only accompanied by an admittedly well seasoned and not too heavy creamy sauce and truffle shavings. The lack of vegetable fresh- and crunchyness - asparagus slices, or to stay in season, some chicoree - was all too apparent. Even sun-dried tomatoes might have done the trick. And the creaminess of a pate de foi gras sauce - similar to spaghetti wallowed in cream cheese (Rabbiola for example; yummy) - would have fused much better with the pasta than the well prepared slice of foi gras. My own fault for ordering it, of course, though paying for my meal should not have been such a lengthy affair - a matter of service, if I may say so.

You may wonder why I decided to share such luxurious problems with you. For one, I used to enjoy eating in Brussels and was seldom disappointed (2002-2004); fond memories 'usurped'. Second, high priced lunch should come with comprehensively good service. In fact, good service makes mediocre food taste good and should in any case not be contingent on price. Third - paralleling in metaphors - I'd rather that croissants become a rare delicacy if they are always well made. Instead, what we get today is croissants at every corner - often very nicely packaged or presented - and hardly any are taste good.

First time Africa

45 years of confinement to the Western world (does that include Istanbul and Abu Dhabi?) have finally been surmounted. On a Tuesday I learnt that I shall be on a plane to Nairobi, Kenya, Africa, Sunday next.

Was I excited? Yes! though knowing, I would not see much of this continent, country and city, which I had never set foot on. I would be attending a workshop in a hotel all week.

So what! A 6:30 flight took me to AMS. I got to know parts of Amsterdam's Schipol airport I had never seen. Then I boarded an aged and pretty full 747 to Nairobi and proceeded to chat with a French engineer, who worked 'in oil (petrol)' and other industrial engineering, in many countries. He had recently moved to Mombasa, though he still had a home in Southern France; a nomad by (work)-choice. That's globalisation for you! In the smaller plane to Amsterdam, I had talked to a Hamburg doctor, who was heading to safari in Kenya. He would be flying to Kilimanjaro airport. I thought he was pulling my leg, until he showed me the airport location on the map in the in-flight magazine. That's globalisation for you, of the tourist kind! At that point, it struck me that to ask developing countries to contribute to mitigating climate change was truly a western, cheeky joke!

Back to 'my' 747. Flying down the Italian shoe, the monstruous plane cruised above the Mediterranean for about 1/2 hour. I know, because I was looking out the window to experience that moment; when we would hit the shores of Africa, in this case Libya. The lightish blue of the Mediterranean was replaced by the reddish yellow of the Sahara desert. It took a good 2 hours to traverse it. What where those concrete installations in the middle of nowhere, down there? Rocket launch installations? Terrorist training camps? What was that airstrip doing there in nomansland? Towards the end of the desert, I could identify circular irrigated fields, some wet, some fainted, some dry. Though I did not wonder what might be grown on those fields, I was struck by the size of the African continent, which is hardly illuminated at all. Even in the Alps, you see lights at night.

We landed at Nairobi's Kenyatta airport in the dark. With my 5-day bag, I got out of the airport pretty fast, after having purchased a visa. I quickly identified the sign, which Martin, the driver, had held up, among the mass of chauffeurs waiting for their prey. Because it was my first time in Africa, Kenya, Nairobi, he made a detour, passing through the centre of town. Not very enticing, but a very friendly gesture nonetheless.

And so I arrived at the Sarova Panafric Hotel, which I would not leave for 5 days, but for 3 short excursions (a dinner, visiting the International Livestock Research Institute and an hours' walk in the city centre).

The next morning, I swam in the agreeably cool pool, all alone (it's too cold for most people, but I'm used to the North Sea). During a cigarette break from the workshop, I saw lots of mini-busses on the avenue, which led to downtown. They had very entertaining names plastered on their windscreens: Happiness, Babyface and other names. I was told that people chose particular mini-busses according to the kind of music they played inside; the 'image' they had. Otherwise, people might opt for the KBS, the public transport busses. In the afternoon, a vast array of school busses transported girls and boys in red or green uniforms, which naturally reminded me of England. I've also seen schooluniformed children walk by the wayside of busy roads, which I doubt any Western European mother would allow their brood to do.

The three outings from the hotel took us to a Brazilian restaurant with lots of meat, the aforementioned agricultural research center, which is agreeably nestled in the hills on the outskirts of the city, with a view of the Kilimanjaro, if you're lucky (we weren't) - and the walk into town, during which I got to know a Zimbabwean teacher (refugee), who spoke a little German and very elegantly succeeded in making me give him some money. I did not doubt his account of his recent experiences, but apart from that, he did an excellent job of insinuating himself into my path.

What else did I see and learn? Little. Kenyans drink milk with tea, not tea with milk. Most men wear big, elongated shoes. Most peoples' teeth are startingly white (ok, contrast). The air can be fresh, when there's no rush hour. The city park features lots of dry grass. Nairobi residents thrive on petrol, there's no non-automobile transport to speak of, apart from walking (or biking). I saw a corrugated iron-roofed slum and it's "market street", running along the highway. As we rushed by in a Land Rover, I saw the most colourful patchwork clothing on sale at one of the stores.

In the hotel enclave, I met laughing Philippines, joking Tanzanians, headshaking Indians and positive Americans during the workshop. We could have been anywhere. We were surrounded by many hotel staff, in orange, yellow or blue jackets or full, dark suits. At night, a security person was stationed on every floor, wearing a lilac uniform. Many other workshops took place beside ours, including one for lots of women, organised by a local savings bank.

Indeed, I have seen little of Africa, Kenya, Nairobi. Perhaps I shall have the chance to go back.

perspective

Is our sense of history confined to our limited ability to imagine times past - any kind of history - beyond the lifespan of a two, three or four generations? How scientists do it, who research with millennia in mind, I certainly cannot imagine. There is time and there is cause and effect. Many people are concerned with the extinction of all manner of species, to which our human way of life contributes. But there are mightier causes at work, over very long periods of time, which you can read about in Elizabeth Kolbert's New Yorker article "The Sixth Extinction". Yes, we have a lot of work to do to reverse the reduction of biological diversity. But just because we humans made a great mess does not mean we can clean all of it up.

Scholarly Consideration

What an exhiliarating and strange feeling to read the first review of one's first book. 'Tis done. A Mrs. Carla Lord of Kean University (USA) read my book on the grotesques and published a review of it in the Renaissance Quartely that's just come out, which I'd like to share with you (excerpts). There is room for improvement, were I to take on the grotesques again ... .

Victor Kommerell. Metamorphosed Margins: The Case for a Visual Rhetoric of the Renaissance Grottesche under the Influence of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag AG, 2008

... It is difficult to know what readership was intended for Kommerell’s short guide to grottesche. Perhaps it is meant for monolingual undergraduates, since there is little else available in English that is recent, except for another, more comprehensive, book issued in 2008, replete with 242 color plates: Alessandra Zamperini, Ornament and the Grotesque: Fantastical Decoration from Antiquity to Art Nouveau. For his study Kommerell has depended on some fine scholarly sources. He has also found guidance from the dean of grottesche studies, Nicole Dacos. Kommerell presents some unusual new material from buildings recently restored, along with a bit of etymology and some potted history. Kommerell tells us that the first use in writing of the term grottesche is in the contract of 1502 for the Piccolomini Library in the cathedral of Siena, which ‘‘many scholars have cited’’ (15). He neither specifies the scholars nor the citations. ... . The excavation of the Domus Aurea in Rome inspired an explosion of enthusiasm, copying, and variations of grottesche themes in the Renaissance, which built on an existing fascination for classical antiquities (among his chronological errors, Kommerell places Cyriacus of Ancona, an early recorder of antiquities active in the first half of the fifteenth century, in the fourteenth century).

Grotesques were everywhere in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: in the center or the margins of walls and vaults, painted, or in relief on pilasters. Kommerell has indicated the main motifs used in Renaissance grottesche ... . Citing Paul Barolsky (‘‘As in Ovid, so in Renaissance Art,’’ Renaissance Quarterly 51.2 [1998], 469) Kommerell suggests that Ovid was everywhere in the Renaissance, but that thesis is difficult to substantiate. Dorothea Scholl offers more thorough coverage of Ovid as a source in her habilitation thesis on grotesques (Mu¨nster, 2004). Kommerell analyzes the intentions of patrons: to be in step with or ahead of fashion, erudite and/or politically assertive in their juxtaposition of heraldry with decorative patterns. He also discusses the role of grottesche in churches: their placement and themes. Among the less familiar sites that Kommerell illustrates and describes are the grotesques of the cathedral at Spoleto; the Palazzo Vitelli (now the city art gallery in Citta` di Castello); the painted vault, once a market place in Assisi; and the Casa Zuccari in Florence.

From the introduction onward Kommerell’s ebullient style may strike some readers as refreshing and others as irritating. Often he interrupts an argument to note the arbitrary closure of a museum or library when he visited it. If this book is intended for the monolingual student, Kommerell might in a revised edition translate suc phrases as ‘‘Fuga in Egitto’’ (n. 246), which has a perfectly good English equivalent, along with ‘‘parete’’ and ‘‘pomeriggio.’’ Or for a more systematic study of grottesche, the multilingual student can read Dacos’s classic La de´couverte de la Domus Aurea and her subsequent books on the Vatican logge (1977) and on Giovanni da Udine (1987) in Italian.