tnr : the new renaissance : Current Issue

   THE BRITISH JOURNALIST, JONATHAN DIMBLEBY in
his recent book describes his long journey to Russia,1 demonstrating an impressive knowledge of this mysterious country where he met “a great diversity of people—from St. Petersburg glitterati to impoverished potato-pickers, from a witch who charms the sprites of the forest to the mountain herdsmen who worship fire and water, from oilmen to woodcutters.”2 An expert on Russia, Dimbleby seemed surprised by the people’s enthusiastic support of Vladimir
Putin, the “born-again Tsar” who, as Dimbleby puts it, is establishing“a totalitarian regime”, even a “new Fascist”3 empire.
      To many observers this piece of breathtaking and conclusive commentary recalls the “mystery” of the Soviet collapse in the early 1990s when Western Sovietologists failed to predict the Soviet empire’s end. They were struck by the unanticipated “sudden and total disappearance,” in George Kennan’s words,4 of their powerful communist adversary.
Leon Aron explains this as a deficiency of the structuralist approach to socio-economic development, prevalent in western analytical circles for decades. Western experts, Aron says, were able to explain “structural reasons why the Soviet Union should have collapsed,”
5 but that approach failed “to provide a satisfying account of how it happened.”6
      To the intellectual knowledgeable about Russia, it may be easy to explain why today’s Russia is sliding toward authoritarianism and“revisionism” in world affairs.7 Russia is often regarded as a modification of the Soviet model, characterized by over-concentration of political
and economic powers; by an authoritarian center; by its diluted democratic institutions; and its great (or imperial) ambitions in the international arena.

The November rain rat-a-tat-tats beads on the window.
I scratch words like anxious birds on a yellow pad.

In your cottage in Wiltshire, perhaps you are writing.
Your anguished Asiatic eyes almost disappearing in your full

Like a black angel in the snow
Today you were my testimony,
And I cannot keep it to myself —
Indeed the Lord’s seal is on you.

Such a strangely singular seal —
As if bestowed from beyond, —
Which, it seems, has ordained you
To hang in a church niche framed….

violins chase the flute
into Mozart green
through bassoon wood
into meadows laid out
in cello-bass patterns
sparkling with French horn sunlight
melodies in bloom
the harmonies of early summer

The sea climbs up to Coney Island
step by wrinkled step, drifting back
and forth on the beach
to the moon’s beat, like the old men
marking time on the Boardwalk,
uncertain of the promised land’s hard comfort.
Gulls hobo up a thermal
swirled around the Thunderbolt’s old bones
to ride the rails, scavenging down
the coaster’s skeleton for scraps.

1st Fiction Excerpt

The Possible Death of Alice Yee
Robert I. Mann

I JUST ABOUT DIED IN 1982 in Berkeley, California from an attack that wasn’t exactly a physical assault, principally because my physicality is somewhat debatable, though it certainly was an assault on my spirit. I was pounded and ripped, spiritually and went into a kind of coma, in which I could hardly move or speak — like those nightmares where you’re paralyzed flat in bed, making groaning noises when you find yourself rooted to one spot, screaming at passersby, who can’t hear you, screaming that lasts right up till now. Actually, there was no coma or nightmare; I am only trying to describe what it felt like, though I was essentially rooted to one spot, or at least to one room, a kitchen. I have been standing in that kitchen since 1982.
I had been attacked by nearly everyone in the creative writing course and later, people outside the course, the attacks spreading down Telegraph Avenue to coffee houses, to bookstores, all the while not being protected by the man who should have protected me, the guy writing these words. Of course, you’ve figured out by now, it was he who was really being attacked, attacked through me, his character in a story. Yes, that’s the truth, I am not as real as you are. But I took the pounding, as much as he did, because I was never just words on a page, never just an idea, even though that is how I am known. And maybe I was what I was attacked for, a cliché: a stereotypical young asian woman imagined by a young white man. Maybe. But if I was a cliché then, then I in fact existed, which is what I’m getting at.

WHY ARE YOU SO INDIGNANT, DEAR FRIEND? Is it about that petite lady who, since yesterday, has been on everyone’s lips?
     Granted, it was the day before the wedding, the champagne already on ice, but to run off with another — it’s too much to bear. But didn’t the dear little girl do the right thing? Her fiancé, of course, got a raw deal, but why did the whole world sing his praises?
     And why was he called “handsome Martin”? What woman wouldn’t find it unbearable in the long run to see a man’s face, a perfect face, without a blemish? Not even the slightest little
wrinkle — I ask you, who could endure it? He was too handsome, that was his undoing.
     And just consider: his abundance of virtues!

Brother Thomas’ nearly 50 years of creating works in clay can be understood
as his commitment of self to the doing of mitzvoth. A mitzvah is more than doing a good deed or observing a specific commandment or dictum. It is the investment of one’s entire being in...acts of loving kindness.
....As I write these words of tribute and thanksgiving, I am listening to Mozart’s magnificent Requiem. Each note and melody is woven into the glorious whole. It is a powerful tribute
to the creative genius of Mozart and the remarkable capacity of the human spirit to soar toward the heavens. Brother Thomas’ works and words have inspired all who are open to
them. They inspire us to embrace the commitment to be a better person, and to act in ways that stretch our capacity to make this a better world for ourselves and our progeny.

Bernard H. Pucker
Pucker Gallery, Boston
19 April 2007, from Boston to
Erie, Pennsylvania