Starting James Joyce's 'Dubliners'

Have finally done it, I've finally started reading some James Joyce. Think I read (possibly parts of) 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man' many years ago at university, but I'm not 100% sure.

Anyway, I've read the first two short stories from 'Dubliners' and the wonderful introduction to the Wordsworth Classic edition pictured above written by Laurence Davies from Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. Davies' introduction gives a good overview of Joyce's life and his outlook on life, focusing on such things as the Catholic schools which Joyce attended; his later antipathy towards the Catholic Church; his Balzac-type eye for minute detail; his great achievement of putting Dublin properly on the Irish literary map; and the sense of a need for escape from something/somewhere that pervades his work. Regarding the latter point, I couldn't help thinking that while D.H. Lawrence points towards the need to escape or transcend human self-consciousness; Joyce seems to focus on the need to escape a drab, boring, dirty, external environment.

In 'The Sisters', alongside a general atmosphere of dark, repressive, religious ritual, Joyce seems to paint a sympathetic picture of the snuff-taking priest who dies, of whom it is revealed that he went off the rails after accidentally damaging a chalice. In contrast, 'An Encounter' deals with the bleak adventure to be attained from playing truant from school, which may involve meeting a peculiar character away from the routine world of work/study.

Yeah, it's early days, but I'm now looking forward to reading all the other short stories in Joyce's 'Dubliners' collection.

Possibly One of Kotek's Relatives

A picture taken by my wife about five years ago, showing what is possibly one of Kotek's relatives, a young, ginger-coloured cat in eastern Poland.

More Experimental Vegetarian Food

More experimental vegetarian food here, this time, it's pierogi ruskie (cheese and potato dumplings) bought from the supermarket covered in my wife's homemade, black lentil and vegetable soup.

Not Great at Learning Languages

Have never been great at learning languages (did get a Spanish O Level many years ago, although this is nothing to shout home about, of course).

However, after years of (on-and-off) self-study, I can now feel myself reaching some kind of Intermediate level Polish, which I view as a bit of an achievement, as Slavic languages aren't easy for native English speakers to pick up. Still can't get my head round the case system in Polish, of course.

Have also recently started learning Irish, I'm just starting to get past beginner to elementary level here. Find it interesting that Irish has two forms of (emphatic and non-emphatic) subject pronouns.

Surprisingly, it feels quite good trying to have a semi-serious stab at learning two (not particularly easy) European languages in my middle-aged years.

Irfan Live at Warsaw Hydrozagadka 2nd December 2018

Two days before this gig, I checked out Bulgarian band, Irfan, and, immediately decided to go and see them.

I just quickly took to the band's wonderful style of music (what I would kind of describe as Bulgarian Folk music with a deep, moving sense of Byzantine-type melancholia/tragedy).

In the couple of days before the concert, I became familiar with quite a few Irfan tunes (Hagia Sophia; The Cave of Swimmers; Buruna etc.),

and it was an honour to hear such (and many other) beautiful songs live.

Think that the tunes the band did from their new album, 'Roots', went down really well with an appreciative and, at times, entranced audience.

Kotek's Handiwork

The picture above shows how Kotek turned part of the kitchen upside down in pursuit of his packets of meat and gravy.

Below, you can see that Kotek wasn't in the best of moods:

More Improvised Vegetarian Food

More improvised vegetarian food here, this time it's salad; pickled gherkins and cabbage/mushroom pierogi (dumplings) topped with aubergine/courgette lasagna.