Reading List

Perfect pairs (but Kindle not in the picture).

Currently reading:

• Blood of the Martyrs, by Naomi Mitchison.
• The Merchants of Nations, by Alexandros Papadiamantis (on Kindle).
• Western Travellers to Constantinople: The West and Byzantium, 962-1204: Cultural and Political Relations, by Krijne N. Ciggaar.
• The First Crusade: A New History, by Thomas Asbridge.
• The Alexiad, by Anna Komnene (Comnena).
• Walter Scott's Journal.
• Infancy and History: On the Destruction of Experience, by Giorgio Agamben.
• One-Way Street and Other Writings, by Walter Benjamin.

There's a perfect symmetry in this list, I notice: four pairs of books, one of historical novels, one of historical research, one of memoirs (though The Alexiad could fit the previous category as well, it is a memoir too, IMO), and one of theory. One of them is left in my locker in the PG common study space; one is on Kindle (the Greek book, strangely enough). Only three out of the eight are library loans.

So much for statistics. I am enjoying them all, if one might be bold enough to use the word 'enjoy' for the venerable works of Agamben and Benjamin. They are all related to my research (no guilty stuff this week), one way or another. Perhaps the novels are the least directly relevant ones, but it must be remembered that the finished project will be a novel, too. You learn the craft from other novelists, not from theory, and not only on your own efforst. 

Naoi Mitchison's political engagement is powerful and very relevant nowadays (she wrote this novel in the thirties, but there is much in common with that era now, unfortunately), and I am interested in lives of slaves and of saints, which are part of my own novel as well. Papadiamantis' book is a re-read: it was a favourite historical romance of my childhood, but I am curious to see what I'll make of it now. So far I'm finding it fascinating: set in the thirteenth century Aegean island of Naxos and Venice, it is teeming with pirates, abductions, betrayals, quests, wicked and angelic characters, and medieval politics. As I read, I am half-forming a project in my mind of translating this novel into English. But this is one of the dangers of research: fascinating projects pop up from every new book, article, or paper one reads, enticing one away from the work at hand (as Benjamin would say). But there is only so much time, and the PhD must remain firmly on top as the (only?) priority, research-wise. Easier said than done. 


 Alexandros Papadiamantis is a nineteenth century Greek writer, translator and journalist, one of the best prose writers in the Greek canon (in which he has held a place constantly since his death in 1911, but for quite different reasons then and now). His novels were considered rather inferior than the rest of his work - which is now seen by some scholars as early modernist and rather groundbreaking - but are being reappraised.  Here's an interesting assessment (in French).