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Mr aegiandyad
A few weeks ago I lost my beloved spouse, whom I adored. We were extremely close. He was a brilliant scientist and faithist who was always surprising in his responses to questions about everything under the sun. No chatbot could possibly respond the way he did. He was never banal or predictable and always made me laugh. Spontaneous comedy is the hardest act to replicate. When previous beloved relatives died I always saw visions or dreams reassuring me that they were well and happy. Memorably, my uncle appeared in a dream walking through parallel realms of fields filled with flowers. Some were familiar. Most were not. Perhaps he was reassuring me that life after death is wonderful in ways we cannot predict. After my mother's death I saw her flying between stars, all of which were strange yet intriguing. As my husband was dying in hospital I dreamt that his soul was rising upwards in a spiralling movement of pixelation, similarly to the illustration above. I am
Children are fun.
I was looking through the baby photos of our children and it struck me forcibly that every child looked exactly as they turned out grown up. By that I mean their characters were written on their faces early on. Our oldest child loved playing with numbers and rearranging plant pots in ever increasing circles using a range of small and bigger plant pots which he would re-arrange over several happy hours on the front room floor. Our first daughter was a climber. She started by climbing up the ironing board and sitting on it while waving her little legs joyfully beneath her. We were having house renovations and up she'd go on the highest ladders. We frequently panicked but learnt to trust her as she eventually came down herself unharmed. As she grew older she hazarded risky sports, single handedly sailing boats and often winning races. Other people used to marvel at how much this slight teenage girl would risk. The third child, a boy, was always very caring and loving. He would ask us
Children are fun.
I was looking through the baby photos of our children and it struck me forcibly that every child looked exactly as they turned out grown up. By that I mean their characters were written on their faces early on. Our oldest child loved playing with numbers and rearranging plant pots in ever increasing circles using a range of small and bigger plant pots which he would re-arrange over several happy hours on the front room floor. Our first daughter was a climber. She started by climbing up the ironing board and sitting on it while waving her little legs joyfully beneath her. We were having house renovations and up she'd go on the highest ladders. We frequently panicked but learnt to trust her as she eventually came down herself unharmed. As she grew older she hazarded risky sports, single handedly sailing boats and often winning races. Other people used to marvel at how much this slight teenage girl would risk. The third child, a boy, was always very caring and loving. He would ask us
Joyce's Ulysses is 100
There is a global intellectual game called, "Have you read and understood Ulysses? Or have you read Proust? This game was played when I was 16, living as far away as Zimbabwe, where the country's intellectuals played it, as did many across the globe. My best friend went on to study French at Cambridge and wrote a thesis on Proust. If you think of Ulysses as a musical comedy that might help. Stravinsky talking about Beethoven's 'die große Fuge', said that it was utterly avant garde and would be for all time. That applies just as much to Ulysses. Joyce uses the English language as music to show its many possibilities, cadences and variations. For instance the first sentence "STATELY, PLUMP BUCK MULLIGAN CAME FROM THE STAIRHEAD, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned: -- Introibo ad altare Dei." It is a perfect image of a
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A riveting essay. Thank you. BTW, some of my relatives are descended from Major Barczynski, who died on Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. His wife and three daughters fled to the United States.
One of the most interesting questions about Napoleon is, perhaps, why such a brilliant general allowed himself to undertake the disastrous Russian campaign. Tolstoy's version depends on his idea that Mother Russia was protected by fate and her snowy vastness. He also thought that individuals had little control over events. In Russia Against Napoleon the historian Dominic Lieven shows that the young Czar Alexander and his close advisers understood warfare in Russia more than Napoleon did. They saw through Napoleon but he misunderstood them. While Napoleon may have been a battlefield genius, Alexander showed greater diplomatic skill in gathering the coalition that eventually defeated Bonaparte. That was no easy matter, given the fear of both the French and the Russians that prevailed in German lands.
The Russians persuaded the Prussians and the unwilling Austrians to join them by showing thatNapoleon could be defeated through their management of the long and deliberate retreat in 1812, which had lured the French deep into Russia, far from their supply lines, and exposed them to constant attacks on their flanks. This retreat had needed complex administration in the provisioning of food and, above all, horses, the availability of which, as Lieven shows, could win or lose a war. Success required a cruelly efficient conscription system, which Russians accepted because of the trust between sovereign, elite and people, which was at the heart of the Russian autocratic system. This trust explains how Alexander's regime survived even after abandoning Moscow. When the Russians entered Paris, however, within hours Napoleon's supporters fled. His closest relatives vanished and Prince Talleyrand began negotiating the succession.
To Lieven Alexander was the man who “more than any other individual, was responsible for Napoleon’s overthrow.” Lieven called the Tsar’s Guards “the finest-looking troops in Europe.”
The Russian Imperial army did party and drink, have courtly intrigues and battlefield manoeuvrings. What helped them excel was the Russian ability to appraise the finely balanced strategic alternatives that presented themselves as soon as they decided on invasion.
This crucial decision was based on the understanding that if French power were eradicated, Russia would face new enemies in its place. Should they stop at the borders of the empire in 1813 and negotiate a new peace with the French, which much of the Russian military elite wanted, or force exhausted troops to march as far across Europe as it took to topple Napoleon? This was what Alexander wanted and he persuaded his unwilling generals.
If France's revolutionary armies represented modernity, Russia stood for empire.Russia at the time showed how the empire could use its resources rationally when attacked. Russia could raise armies faster than revolutionary France could and Russian equipment and provisioning matched those of the French. The French communicated in their own language, but the Russians understood captured letters in French. Russian generals could communicate in several languages — including Latvian, which helped with confidentiality. Alexander's charismatic personality also attracted fleeing Frenchmen to help bring about his downfall. Russia's intelligence operation was far superior.
Lieven shows how devastating exhaustion was. Prussia’s elderly commander, Blücher, at one point hallucinated about giving birth to an elephant. He recovered enough to be carried towards Paris in full view of his troops, wearing a lady’s green silk hat to shade his eyes.
Such stories... no wonder we're still fascinated today.
Also posted here: www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d5160eac-14…