always a relief

It's taken about a year to reach this point (due to an unlucky combination of studying in Austria, chosing a difficult subject and various personal problems), but yesterday I finally completed my dissertation. Writing it made me realise what I love and what I hate about history as a discipline - and to be honest my doubts about whether it's possible to actually say anything meaningful about the past have multiplied ad infinitum. The most important lesson I've learned is that what I've come to dislike is not and never will be history per se, it's just the area I've focused on. Everything else is still as exciting and new as it was when I first started reading biographies about famous Frenchmen at the tender age of eleven.
Now I have to do lots of revision for my last and arguably most important exam ever, but I don't really mind - reading about Late Antiquity is exactly what I want to be doing right now. Plus, it can be done outside, in a park or in a café. I think it's time for another list though. Let's call it:

Things I'm going to do now that I've handed in my dissertation (part 1):
- Bake cinnamon rolls. I did this a couple of weeks ago when I was feeling restless and I loved the result. I'm not a terribly good cook or baker really, therefore I'm always pleased when I manage not to burn something.

two more days

My brain feels as if it's melting. I can't wait for it to be over because then I'll lie down in our garden and SLEEP THE CLOCK AROUND.



You should listen to this with headphones on, crappy laptop speakers just don't do this song justice.

sartorial choice

What I wore vs. what the people I study (ambassadors, a hundred years ago) wore.

Weltuntergangsstimmung

"Man war sich allerdings auch des Unschöpferischen, Morbiden, in gewissem Sinne sogar Dekadenten dieser gschlossenen Gesellschaft bewußt: "Wenn der große Staatskanzler (Metternich) das geflügelte Wort prägen konnte: 'Aprés nous le déluge!', warum sollte sich da ein einfacher Hofrat darüber Sorge machen, was der kommenden Generation wohl beschieden sei möge?" Aber selbst scharfe Kritiker, die als homines novi in diese Gesellschaft auf dem Dienstwege Einlaß fanden, konnten sich dem Zauber an Lebenskultur, wie sie von den Beamten des Ballhausplatzes repräsentiert wurde, nicht entziehen: Zur "Erbitterung über die Vermessenheit, mit der sie ihre Unzulänglichkeit am Staatsruder exerzierten", gesellte sich doch "die wehmütige Sympathie für ihre tief menschliche Art, ihren Abscheu gegen jede Gewalt und ihre fromme Ergebenheit in ein Schicksal, das sie für unabwendbar hielten.""

(Helmut Rumpler, Das Standesbewusstsein des österreichischen Berufsdiplomaten)

Vienna: Longing for the past forever. Nothing ever changes.

Something I've just remembered.

A professor told me last semester that scholarship isn't personal and criticism isn't personal either. He was referring to the fact that other students and I had protested against the way he was talking to us which felt very condescending. His point of view was that it was an impartial critique.
I told my brother about this who is a student of medicine. He just laughed and said, "But you're in humanities! Everything is personal because it all happens in your minds! How can criticising someone's thoughts not be personal?"
He's got a point.

I'm glad I'm not a scientific robot, or a history wonk who pretends that history is a science.

done!

I've been doing this until about half an hour ago (it's 5 AM in the morning right now), namely looking sullen, reading heavy books and trying to make sense out of medieval documents. Now it's over. I'm going on holiday in about six hours - three weeks in Great Britain, hiking and indietracking. I'll see you soon, have a wonderful summer (or winter)!

anno 1460

In case you were wondering what I do at university: Right now I'm writing an essay on...this. I am trying to transliterate, translate and analyse Renaissance last wills. Not the most enjoyable thing I've ever done.

long ago

"Some pretenders to high science and higher techniques aside, we do not start out with well-formed ideas we carry off to distant places to check out by means of carefully codified procedures systematically applied. We go off to those places, or, increasingly these days, ones closer by, with some general notions of what we would like to look into and of how we might go about looking into them. We then in fact look into them (or, often enough, look instead into others that turn out to be more interesting), and after doing so we return to sort through our notes and memories, both of them defective, to see what we might have uncovered that clarifies anything or leads on to useful revisions of received ideas, our own or someone else's about something or other. The writing this produces is accordingly exploratory, self-questioning, and shaped more by the occassions of its production that its post-hoc organization into chaptered books and thematic monographs might suggest."

What Clifford Geertz writes about cultural anthropology is basically how I feel about history.

what I've learned

(via so much to tell you)

There's nothing quite as effectual as two weeks inhaling the illusion that history is a fact-based science to turn even the humblest student into a fanatic postmodernist.

ruins

"Ruinen erwecken in mir erhabene Ideen. Alles wird zunichte, alles verfällt, alles vergeht. Nur die Welt bleibt bestehen. Nur die Zeit dauert fort. Wie alt ist doch unsere Welt! Ich wandle zwischen zwei Ewigkeiten. Wohin ich auch blicke, überall weisen mich die Gegenstände, die mich umgeben, auf das Ende aller Dinge hin, und so finde ich mich mit dem Ende ab, das mich erwartet."

Denis Diderot, Der Salon von 1767

Like most students in Austrian schools I had to choose subjects I was especially interested in when I was 16. It means attending extra lessons and learning things that aren't part of the regular curriculum. I chose several subjects, but my favourite was History. Of course it was - four hours of History per week instead of two, the French revolution instead of the Austrian constitution and a memorable trip to an exhibition about Afghanistan where Diderot's quote was painted on a wall. I must have been about 17 back then and I thought that French history would always be my greatest interest. I was wrong, but that quote, scribbled down on a scrap of paper, has been on display in my room ever since.
Whereas most people in my year didn't quite know or couldn't decide what to do with themselves after school, I always wanted to do just this one thing, I was only really interested in the past, it was the only thing that seemed right and important and it still is. Why am I writing about this now? Well, I watched a program on TV about Eastern Prussia in the 40s yesterday, and the day before I read a document about rich people stealing a shepherd's goat on a small Dalmatian island in the 15th century. And people don't really change all that much. When I was 17, I said I'd never want to work with people because I couldn't stand it, couldnt's stand them and now that I'm 22 I've come to realise how wrong I was.
I suppose you could be a historian because you'd want to escape into another world or because you're interested in theory, but to me that's a bit cynical. To me, it's about trying to grasp every last bit of information about humanity there is. The cleverest people I know have all used their knowledge to do something, to help others in one way or another. One day, I hope to do the same. It would be a nightmare to become like Faust, to study endlessly and yet achieve nothing worthwhile.

types and fiction

Neil Bartlett's "Who Was That Man? A Present for Mr Oscar Wilde" has been the most exciting book I've read this year:

"The features of the beloved can move freely from person to person. And this is not the only transposition. The man who actually paints the portrait of Dorian Gray, Basil Hallward, is deeply in love with his subject, and as he paints, the portrait of Mr. W. H. appears again. Just as Shakespeare saw his boy as one whose hair was like spun gold, and whose face was the meeting-place of the lily's white and the deep vermillion of the rose, just as Erskine saw Cyril Graham, as Gray himself is to see Sybil Vane, Basil sees Dorian as wonderfully handsome, with his finely-curved scarlet lips, his frank blue eyes, his crisp gold hair. He too sees this boy as the foundation of his art, his great friend, his point of entry into a great tradition. Dorian is his ideal, a platonic ideal in both the philosophical and sexual senses of the word. He is the model for whom he was waiting for all his life.
Wilde wrote in a letter, "Basil Hallward is what I think I am." So who was Dorian Gray?
Dorian Gray has gold hair, blue eyes, and rose-red lips. Lord Alfred Douglas, of course, was also blonde, blue-eyed, lily white, and he had rose-red lips.
The point is, Dorian Gray was imagined in 1890. Wilde first met Douglas in January or June 1891. He was the man for whom he gave years of his life, the man for whom he would have died, the greatest love of his life. He was his type.
He was a fiction, one that already existed in his books."

(I hate the idea of being someone's type, the idea of liking someone not because they're unique but because they fit into a dream of the perfect other being. It's so very predictable and boring. I've always had the sneaky feeling that people, especially boys, aren't really interested in me but in some weird fantasy of a bookish, cute girl. It always makes me feel slightly sick whenever I'm confronted with those clicheés. My only type is the one who doesn't fit into the category of a certain type.)

brb

Hello. I'm a little distracted by
a) uni, i.e. all those transcriptions/translations/essays I've mentioned before
b) uni, i.e. the massive protests by students and professors; seven days of squatting, demonstrations and discussions so far, still going strong. And about time!
unsereuni! Let's go!
Here are some pictures taken by Kevin at the Technical University (merci cheri):

"this tabletop football table is occupied"

"assembly here in lecture room 1. please don't enter any earlier than 16:00! there's a lecture going on!"
This was taken right before the students of the TU came together and decided to start squatting as well. Quite friendly and organised, contrary to what Austrian TV and newspapers might say.

srsly

I just found these again.
When it was still warm and sunny, Kevin and I went to the countryside to eat bread and observe what life is like in tiny villages. The countryside is very nice as long as it's not too flat. Driving in a car is also very nice, especially when you sing along to proper tweepop or proper Britpop.
Right now, all you can do is stay indoors where it's warm.

That's alright though - if you have to write essays or translate old documents from Latin or not-quite-Ancient-and-not-quite-contemporary Greek all day anyway, it's okay to just stay in. Now I just wish Neil Bartlett's sort-of biography of Oscar Wilde wouldn't distract me from what I really ought to do... in my research seminar, we keep having discussions about how to "do" history - how to do the research, how to write about things, about all the different theories. It's especially interesting because there are only four students and one professor, none of us seems to be in love with post-modernism, at least concerning history, and everyone actually cares about what to do with the medieval documents we're studying, what do we want to know, what do we want to ask, how are we going to get any answers?
As you can imagine, a historian who's interested in medieval Dalmatia will offer a different answer than Neil Bartlett. But I feel so lucky to know about all the different options, not to feel confined by one theory or one approach. Right now I'd just like to move away to a country where history is less rigid, less influenced by all those big German theories and discussions, where style isn't suspicious and seen as a lack of seriousness. Articles and books written in German still make me want to go to sleep - those about history I mean, not Thomas Mann of course! Honestly, sometimes I just want to get up and scream:

ungh the soliloquy

What xkcd is to computer nerds, Hark! A Vagrant is to me. It's the best comic I've seen on the internet. (In real life, I'll always be devoted to Asterix and Calvin&Hobbes because I like Romans and stuffed tigers, obviously.) If you're into history and literature at all, you'll probably like it. Jokes about Charlotte Corday murdering Marat? The Northwest Passage? Benjamin Disraeli? There's even one about Herodotus and Thucydides. Though it must be said that anyone who produces a half-decent comic about Napoleon would win me over because, err, it's Napoleon and that's always funny in a slightly scary way?
Enough talk, more comics:

Ahahaha this one is so good, why am I the only one who still likes Robespierre though? His methods were, well, flawed... well, maybe not so great after all. He was a bit of a genius though! An evil genius. Ah, I just really like the French Revolution, it's so complicated and varied, all the different plans and revolutionaries. Not like South Eastern European history at all - if you're not a complete noob who gets confused about where the Balkans even are, that is. The other day I eavesdropped on some students. I couldn't help it, they were sitting next to me on the train. Here goes:

A (aka 19-year-old Austrian sports student): So, where you from?
B: Well, I was born in Bosnia, but raised in Germany.
A: Huh. You don't look Serbian.
B: Well, I'm not Serbian. I'm Bosnian.
A: Ah, you know. Eastern, I mean.
Theodora: WHAT?!?!?!?

Oh the shame. It made me SO SAD. It's both politically and geographically incorrect. If it had been me, I'd have started explaining about why exactly it might not be sensitive (let alone sensible) to say things like that, but I suppose that boy was slightly more intelligent/tolerant than me and knew when to let things be...

my resistance is low

Three books I've read (and one enthusiastic description): I haven't had much luck with books this year, there had only been a couple spectactular ones until I started reading the novels I bought in the Netherlands. "Giovanni's Room" by James Baldwin and "Jill" by Philip Larkin were both exceptional. It doesn't happen often that I read two great books in a row.
But right now I'm reading the third book I bought. This one I got on a whim, because I liked the title, the cover image and the description. It was the first novel I've ever bought that was written recently, it's only about ten years old, I usually only read novels that have been written at least fifty years ago. It's also the first Irish novel I've read (no Joyce for me yet!). So, basically, I didn't expect much because I didn't know what to expect. But oh, it's such a good read, a book to get lost in really. Haven't had that in ages, I can't even remember the last time I got really into a story. I've been enthusiastic about style or characters or themes, but not stories so much recently. There's a lot of story here, it's about a friendship/love story between two teenagers in Dublin in 1916. Well, that's one aspect at least. And then there's everything else, persons and nationalism and the church and so on. Oh, of course, the title: "At Swim, Two Boys" by Jamie O'Neill. As you can see, I'm no good at describing books, I'm way too enthusiastic and if you'd hear me talk about it, you'd only get random words and "oooh" and lots of gestures. Here's the wikipedia thingie if you're interested. I won't read it, it might spoil it for me.

the past in question

Apart from wanting to go on holidays again, I've been very busy with university which has been surprisingly awesome. I've been trying to understand the whole Twilight-nonsense, luckily Kevin has directed me to a website which explains all and made me laugh very hard. You should all read it, keep in touch with youth culture and stuff, you know. My indiepop credibility has gone down the drains recently because I developed a rather questionable affection for certain well-known English singers with a penchant for romanticising their homeland. I blame this on feeling blue for the past weeks. You feel blue for only a day and you're immediately convinced that young men with guitars are more than just self-absorbed drug addicts.

Speaking of which, and by that I mean "romanticising the past", am I the only one who thinks it's more than strange to see so many girls who are into vintage clothes talk about how "lovely" women in the 30s and 40s looked? Isn't it weird to totally disconnect the political reality from fashion? Let me explain. Maybe I'm being too much of an historian and over-sensitive, but it always makes me confused to see someone write that their outfit was inspired by "ladies from the depression-era". Even more puzzling, I recently read somewhere, I forget where, that someone was inspired by the thought of young women in WW2 waiting for their boyfriends to come home from the war. Now this really made me almost angry. That really means romanticising the past, doesn't it? Wearing an outfit that makes you feel like such a woman and feeling that this is a good thing, a romantic notion - is that just "inspiration", free from all connotation, or is it ignorant? Because if I said that, if I was inspired by my grandmother waiting for her boyfriend to come home during WW2, I'm also thinking of lack of food and bombs and destruction and certainly not of clothes. But maybe that's just because I'm from Europe and the past is indeed a whole different country for me here. I can't really get inspired by it. I'm just glad the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s etc are over.


I find it really hard to disconnect fashion from its sociopolitical background, quite apart from serious stuff like wars and economic depressions. For example, even though I think the whole 50s New Look silhouette is beautiful and flattering on other woman, I also can't help thinking of the female stereotype of that type which, frankly, makes me want to throw up.
Obviously I have simply studied history for too long and have now finally turned into one of those overly political creatures. I shall buy some spray paint tomorrow and practise my street art.