Calming Influences

One of the advantages of growing older is that the trials of the heart are behind you. One learns to adapt a calm, unruffled routine. There is no pressure of identifying oneself with the values of one’s peers, no agony of waiting by the phone, no strenuous effort of going on the first date, no heated argument and no agitation from the inconstancy of love. I came to a conclusion that the chief thing for me is to be contented by relying on one’s inner resources and to look at the presences rather than the absences.

 

Henry James compared the disposition of youth with a turbulence (the opposite of calm) in his novel, ‘The Wings of the Dove’ (1902):

‘that wondrous state of youth in which the elements, the metals more or less precious, are so in fusion and fermentation that the question of the final stamp, the pressure that fixes the final value, must wait for comparative coolness.’

Nature has a way of providing a cure for the ills of modern life. If you are observant, it always rewards you with something beautiful and unexpected. A broken rainbow I saw in this early morning was a symbol of consolation from nature.

 

My regular routine, which may sound utterly boring to some, enhances life rather than reduces it to infinite monotony. In the early morning, I love inhaling the fresh, familiar odour of eucalyptus, primroses, buttercups and wild roses from the countryside which mingled with the smell of old furniture and lavender in my bedroom. The early mornings are incredibly quiet except the seabirds calling for one another in their exquisite bel canto.

 

I love the dawn. It is silent, raw and primitive and men have not yet unleashed their loud machines. I would observe the fishermen putting away their creels and negotiating with their fishing nets – a sight full of rituals, so strange, yet so curiously familiar.     

 

If I feel a little bit indulgent, I would ask the fishermen for 'the catch of the day' or some sea crabs to cook for my luncheon or supper. And then, I come back home after my morning walk and I would make a strong cup of tea to recover my composure. From that moment after I have my first cup of tea, a withered, alien looking figure becomes a more solid human being.  I throw aside all engagements during the day except a surprise visit from my friend, Gordon or the postman.

Oven-baked crab with white bread crumbs. (This delicious recipe, The Crown Hotel's Baked Crab is available here) 

Inside the four walls, time seems to stand still. No other forces could penetrate this equilibrium and confinement in which I seek my refuge. Before I settle down with a book, I always pick some flowers from the garden and put them everywhere around the house. The beauty of flowers is one of the reasons for living.  

 

Recently, I have lost all my interest in current affairs which always dampen my spirit. I divide my reading into morning reading and afternoon reading.  I find the mornings are better for reading fiction for my concentration and mind are most alert like a watchful bird of prey. In the afternoon, after my luncheon, I would read non-fiction which mainly includes poetry, art criticism, book reviews in the newspapers, autobiographies, essays, travel writings, diaries and letters. The very permanence of my books sitting on the bookcase gives an influence of quietude.

 

My afternoon reading mainly includes non-fiction and light reading

I wonder if people still do read the autobiographical writings by Lady Winifred Fortescue (the authoress of Perfume from Provence) and Mrs. Robert Henrey about their life in England and France. Their works deserve to find a new readership especially now that there is the revival of interest in women writers of the past.

Mrs. Robert Henrey wrote exquisitely refined books, mainly about her domestic life in London, her house in Normandy and the dressmakers in her native city, Paris. Her books capture the charm and cosmopolitan elegance of a bygone age.



I've always wanted a complete edition of four volumes memoirs by Alexander Herzen after reading unsatisfactory abridged versions which are cheaply available. But the particular edition that I've been looking for is translated into English by Constance Garnett. It's quite rare to find a set that is reasonably priced. Eventually, my patience and perseverance had paid off after finding the complete volume edition that I've been looking for at the local charity Oxfam bookshop in decent condition in a reasonable price. After Proust, Herzen is one of my favourite writers. I wish I could write like him.   



The books come with the newspaper articles about Herzen's memoirs. One of the article was written by Rebecca West in Sunday Telegraph (July 16, 1968)

In the evening, I go out for another long walk and marvel at the clarity of silvery clouds, the wild meadows glistening in the twilight like green pools and hundreds of small white butterflies in their courtship, restless and hungry for love while chasing one another across the meadows. This atmosphere of carnival gathering among the butterflies by the hillside merely deepen my own solitude and mournful emptiness. When I come home after my evening walk, a sense of healthy tiredness takes over my limbs.

 

Before going to bed, I usually listen to the classical music. It will be either Bach or art songs (lieder). I am very fond of Gustav Leonhardt’s recordings of solo harpsichord music by J.S. Bach. Gustav Leonhardt’s performance is stabilising and soothing. The image of his impeccable elegance and beautifully sedate performance on the harpsichord can affect one’s mind like a hypnotic gesture.

Gustav Leonhardt (his performance of Bach on harpsichord is hypnotic and magical)

 

Gustav Leonhardt

Listening to art songs at night time can make me feel melancholy. The unrequited love and angst-ridden search for the meaning of life and death are indeed the themes most favoured by poets in the art songs. When it comes to the business of living, poets themselves, however, feel ambivalent toward it.

 

Dutch baritone Henk Neven is not new to those who are regular listeners to BBC Radio 3. I love his album called The Sea. He has a warm, velvety tone and is capable of considerable power to these delicate and contemplative art songs. But his singing is absolutely gorgeous, artful, full of pathos, finely nuanced and achingly poignant. In the quieter songs, his singing is ideally sensitive, restraint and songs like Beau Soir by Debussy are a marvel of tenderness and serenity.   

Henk Neven - The Sea: Songs by Debussy, Faure and Schubert 

 

Early this evening, I was listening to the beautiful Dutch baritone’s, Henk Neven’s performance of Debussy’s famous song, Beau soir (Beautiful evening) based on the poem by Paul Bourget. The wanderer ‘with the troubled heart’ in the poem is full of serene acceptance and resignation.

 

The wanderer seeks solace in nature but at the end of the song, it is not the enjoyment of life and youth that he is reminded. Instead, he is reminded by the brevity of life. As he contemplates on the sea and the setting sun, the last verse gives a metaphor: like the rivers go to the sea, every living soul will go to the grave. The wanderer in this poem is a symbol of all human suffering and weariness rather than a person.

I would listen to lieder while I sit in a sort of religious quietude with my eyes closed, with the booklet from the CD open on my lap. I tried to slip away into the bygone age during which these romantic songs were written. The interpretation of the singers may be different but the melody stays exactly the same.

Gustav Leonhardt's music had a soporific effect on Philomena

There is a beautiful love song by Richard Strauss, written during an early period of his career called “Red Roses” Rote Rosen (1883).  The song is based on a text by Karl Stieler and it is one of three love songs that Strauss dedicated to the singer, Lotti Speyer in October 1883.

 

Lucia Popp sings Rote Rosen (Red Roses) by Richard Strauss (Wolfgang Sawallisch, piano). This track is included in Warner Classics CD Label below. The link to the song - click here

 

Strauss's Rote Rosen is such a poetic, wistful song. The last verse reads: ‘I feel the night, the night so cool and cloudless, but day and night have merged in one together. And your red rose suffuses all my dreaming of the fair garden where I found it blooming.’ I love this song performed by the soprano, Lucia Popp. I listen to this record by Lucia Popp more than any other records on Strauss because this CD contains all my most favourite songs by Richard Strauss. Rote Rosen is definitely one of them.

This is one of my top 10 favourite Strauss's Four Last Songs CD albums. This is the music that is closest to my heart. Strauss's music slows you down. The transcendental beauty of his music gives you a feeling of floating or winding down. They were written at the end of his life while he was living as an exile in Switzerland after his homeland, Germany was devastated during the Second World War. His health was failing and he was aware of approaching death. The four last songs were to be his swansongs and his last tribute to his life. Strauss never heard it performed during his lifetime.

The Four Last Songs were first performed in the Royal Albert Hall by the soprano, Kirsten Flagstad and the Philharmonia Orchestra under Wilhelm Furtwängler on 22 May 1950. The novelist, Philip Roth, who also loves this music, wrote it beautifully in his novel, Exist Ghost:

For the profundity that is achieved not by complexity but by clarity and simplicity. For the purity of the sentiment about death and parting and loss. For the long melodic line spinning out and the female voice soaring and soaring. For the repose and composure and gracefulness and the intense beauty of the soaring. For the ways one is drawn into the tremendous arc of heartbreak. The composer drops all masks and, at the age of eighty-two, stands before you naked. And you dissolve.

    

At the foot of the stairs the grandfather clock is leisurely ticking and the green shades of the lamps illuminating narrow circles with their dim lights in the drawing room. The birds are still singing outside my window but no longer in chorus but singing solo until the darkness of the night, its silence, its inertia, its cold breath envelope them into its own quiet immensity.

 

The sound of the sea is the most calming influence of all...