Good Morning

Monday Musings

This morning I walked into town and back to get some provisions. It was a very sunny morning but afternoon is more intermittent. Overall a sunny day although not warm enough for sunbathing.

So , after finishing off a telephone survey report I done over the weekend I am now listening to another interpretation of two of Stravinsky's ballet scores - Petrushka and The Rite Of Spring by enfant-terrible of the avant-garde Pierre Boulez. I have Stravinsky's own recordings as well of course. Boulez does a couple of fiery interpretations though which I approve!!




I will probably do a music post later today.

Book 56 - Stig Dagerman "A Moth To A Flame"

Stig Dagerman "A Moth To A Flame" (Penguin European Writers)




"When we ourselves deceive a person we can understand it quite well, since every naked action has an escort of ornamental explanations; but that we ourselves may possibly be deceived is inconceivable, just as inconceivable as the fact that we shall die one day. We can only conceive of others dying and getting burnt."

This is an incisive psychological study of four individuals: Bengt, a student, his fiancee Berit, his father Knut, and his father's mistress Gun. The novel opens with the funeral of Bengt's mother (Knut's wife). Bengt is deeply, and somewhat dramatically, grieving, and is angry and disturbed at what he perceives to be his father's lack of "appropriate" emotion. When Bengt inadvertently learns on the day of the funeral of the existence of Gun and her relationship with Knut, Bengt vows to "avenge" his mother.

The story is told in alternating chapters, one told by an omniscient narrator, and the other in the first person by Bengt (usually in the form of letters Bengt writes to himself, as his mother had recommended for when something was bothering him). Over the course of a year we follow the emotional ups and downs of these four characters, as Bengt learns that things are not always as they seem.

Dagerman's widow (he committed suicide in 1954) states, "Stig never invented anything in his books, you know. He may have embroidered incidents a bit, mixed two or three real-life people together or even changed thei sexes sometimes; but everything he wrote about actually happened to him." And, everything in this book felt absolutely true and real to me, and I will definitely be reading more by Dagerman.