The first blog post!

I finally did it. With thanks to Mr B.

Introductions are important. One goes by first impressions. So, you will understand that I am a little apprehensive, a little nervous too.

For how am I to fix myself in a formulated phrase?, to quote T.S. Eliot. And when I am formulated/ sprawling on a pin/ When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall/ Then how should I begin/ To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?/ And how should I presume?

A mighty task lies ahead of me. And would it have been worth it, after all/ Would it have been worth while/ After the sunsets and dooryards and the sprinkled streets/ After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—/And this, and so much more?—/ It is impossible to say just what I mean!/ But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:/ Would it have been worth while/ If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,/ And turning toward the window, should say:/ ‘That is not it at all,/ That is not what I meant at all’.

Well, let’s take the risk and take it from there.

Mr B. finds Pamela writing indeed. Let me assure you that Samuel Richardson’s Pamela is not quite what she seems. An astute reader commented that Pamela is not so innocent, so virtuous or traditional, but rather clever, manipulative, devious and she is rewarded for it. She gets what she wants. A sentimental novel, it is being labeled. On the surface, yes. This contrasts nicely with how I use to present myself. Anything but sentimental.

But those who walked with me in Liège last night on the candle-lit slopes of the Citadelle, had they looked a tad deeper in my eyes, would have seen rapture of the sentimental kind. The long trail of hundreds and hundreds of people walking up, walking down through the forest in a procession of quivering pinpricks of light, reminded me of that scene in Walt Disney’s Fantasia, when Night on Bald Mountain abruptly ends with the sound of the Angelus bell to reveal a line of faithful townsfolk with lighted torches. The camera slowly follows them as they walk through the forest and ruins of a cathedral to the sounds of Schubert’s Ave Maria. I read on IMDb that ‘the animation of the worshipers is some of the smallest animation ever done: the camera had to be so close to some of the work that it had to be rendered at only an inch or so high’. That is exactly what it looked like from afar, the smallest animation ever done.
But once one was part of the townsfolk, which I would not describe as faithful or devout given the non-religious nature of the Nocturne, a sentiment would settle upon the crowd.

Definition of sentiment:
1. (a.) A thought prompted by passion or feeling; a state of mind in view of some subject; feeling toward or respecting some person or thing; disposition prompting to action or expression.
2. (a.) Hence, generally, a decision of the mind formed by deliberation or reasoning; thought; opinion; notion; judgment; as, to express one's sentiments on a subject.
Not exactly worship, not veneration. Serenity, that is what the crowd exuded, voices muffled to a gentle, expectant hum. This wonderfully interspersed with distant sounds of a hunting horn concerto. Chicken skin music, I tell you.
Then with the crowd, downwards it went, down endless steps, entering the hors chateau with its narrow, steep, winding alleys flanked by old town walls, and everywhere, everywhere, the incandescent merriment of a city that did not look at all like Jacques Brel’s Il neige sur Liège. This was a different city, bohémien, outre-temps and at the same time very much in it. A broad smile went to Barricade, centre culturel en résistance in the quartier de Pierreuse, which put its endearing placards in true rebellion fashion on, up, above and across the street. It almost felt like Paris.
Yes, this is my country.(http://www.lanocturnedescoteaux.be/en/la_nocturne_coteaux_liege.php)


If this blog is going to be a sentimental journey, I am using sentimental in its older 18th century meaning. The human ability to endow objective phenomena with personal meaning, and certainly not entirely devoid of cynicism or irony at times. Its sentimentalism a celebration of the emotional and intellectual concepts of sentiment, as defined above.
I am a great admirer of Sterne. As to how my blog will go and how I am to be formulated, allow me to quote some literary critics here (I won’t do it too often, have no fear). "Sterne invokes his literary parentage, calls the reader's attention to his repetition of other voices, so that the difference of his own voice will be marked […]." Sterne's tradition opposes that of Richardson and Fielding, who, for all their differences, believed in the possibility of realistic fiction to "secure inductively certain interpretation." Sterne "construct[s] a narrative in which the techniques of Richardson and Fielding, carried to comic extremes, subvert naturalized interpretation by offering multiple inductive possibilities, proliferating connotations, and thus dramatizing the reader's role ... in manufacturing a form of coherence" in "a world supersaturated with meaning”.
(http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Biblio/shandy.html
- Donald R. Wehrs)

So, I will be dramatizing your role, not wanting this to be a solipsist conversation.