Many that live deserve death. And some die that deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be so eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.
J.R.R. Tolkein
I find myself revisiting this long-defunct section of my blog in response to the news of Kenneth Smith’s execution, which took place on January 24th of this year. Smith was condemned for the 1988 murder of Elizabeth Sennett. He had been hired through an intermediary (who received life in prison) at the behest of Sennett’s husband, Charles (who killed himself once he learned that he was suspected). Smith committed the murder—brutally beating and stabbing Sennett to death—along with another man, John Forrest Parker, who was executed in 2010.
Smith was first scheduled to be executed via lethal injection in 2022, but the execution was botched—the third one in a row in the state of Alabama. After over an hour of trying, the execution team quit after they failed to properly place the IVs in Smith’s veins.
This is why, when Smith’s execution was rescheduled, it was decided to carry out the grim task using a novel method: nitrogen asphyxiation. During this procedure, the victim is strapped down to a gurney and fitted with a mask, which forces him to breathe in nitrogen until death occurs. It was the first execution of this kind performed in the United States—perhaps in history. And while the Alabama Attorney General insisted that the execution was “textbook,” and predicted that “many states will follow,” witnesses described Smith writhing and gasping for a number of minutes before finally succumbing.
When I read about this execution, I felt an acute sense of horror and disgust. In my moments of optimism, I like to imagine that, as the years go by, our ethical standards are becoming ever-more elevated. It is thus acutely depressing to hear that, in 2024, we are still fumbling for ways to kill our prisoners—and that asphyxiation is being regarded as, somehow, innovative and humane.
In my view, punishments can only be justified on a limited number of grounds. It is justifiable, for example, to isolate somebody who has proven dangerous to others. And legal consequences are warranted if they serve as deterrents for other potential criminals.
Yet imprisonment isolates a prisoner just as effectively as execution, while study after study has shown that the death penalty does not, in fact, deter potential criminals.
All this seems rather pedantic to say, as it is quite obvious that capital punishment is not a policy born of logic. Rather, it only exists to satisfy a primitive urge for vengeance. It is Old Testament wrath, and not New Testament mercy.
Now, anybody can certainly understand the urge to get back at someone. And perhaps executions can provide closure for the family and friends left behind by a murder. However, vengeance is not, and cannot be, justice. Indeed, our institutions of justice have been created precisely to supplant the basic law of an eye for an eye. And even if—at least in some parts of America—capital punishment is widely popular, and even if it provides some sort of consolation to some, the death penalty is impossible to justify according to any ethical framework I am familiar with.
It may be true, as Tolkein said, that there are some who “deserve death.” However, I find it disturbingly hubristic to think that any human institution, however admirable its ideals, is wise enough to mete it out. Kenneth Smith certainly deserved punishment. But I cannot see how asphyxiating him has made the world a better place.
The Canary Islands are one of the treasures of Spain. Culturally Spanish, they are geographically and climatically quite unlike Europe or even the relatively closer African coast. They are, rather, a world unto themselves, each one quite distinct from the other—products of wind, waves, and volcanism.
Gran Canaria, despite its name, is neither physically the largest island (that is Tenerife) nor the most populated (Tenerife again), but it is home to the largest city in the archipelago: Las Palmas. (Confusingly, there is another island named La Palma; and the capital city of yet another Spanish island, Mallorca, is named Palma.) Home to nearly 400,000 people, it is a proper metropolis, with its suburbs stretching for miles all around.
As our Airbnb was in the outskirts of this mighty municipality, we decided that we ought to make Las Palmas our first stop of the trip. We headed first to the city’s cathedral. It fronts an attractive plaza lined with (what else?) palm trees and buildings sporting the colorful façades typical of the city. The cathedral looms overhead without being particularly grand or beautiful from the outside. It is more charming in the nave, where the stone columns imitate palm trees in their leafy spread. But I had to say I did not enjoy the view from the towers, which was of rather ugly urban sprawl.
That being said, although I am sure many parts of the city are, like any city, rather bland and devoid of character, the historic center of La Palma is indeed quite lovely. We strolled around, peaking into a few shops, taking note of restaurants, until we arrived at our next destination: the Pérez Galdós House Museum.
Though comparatively obscure outside of Spain, Benito Pérez Galdós is one of the most iconic writers within the country. For reference, if Cervantes is the Spanish Shakespeare, then Galdós is the Spanish Dickens. He was, in other words, an extraordinarily prolific novelist who stood at the height of the Spanish literary world during his lifetime—both praised by critics and adored by the public. And although many of his most notable stories are set in Madrid—a Madrid as carefully delineated as Dickens’s London—it was from this tropical island that the great writer hailed.
Much of the furniture was handmade by Galdós. He was also an able piano player.
Despite his fame and the strong sale of his books, Galdós never owned a house in the capital city. Instead, he stayed with his nephew as a kind of long-term guest. A lifelong bachelor (though with many lovers), this arrangement seemed to suit his habits just fine. In his later years, Galdós did eventually buy a house, but in Santander (on the northern coast) rather than in Madrid. (Like many madrileños, Galdós escaped the suffocating heat of summer by fleeing north.) And yet it is not that house, but his childhood home in Gran Canaria, which eventually became his museum.
You can only visit the house via a guided tour, but our tour was excellent. The house is of fairly modest dimensions—two floors, with a sizable patio in the middle. No attempt has been made to furnish it as it might have been while Galdós was a boy. Instead, his furniture and decorations were brought here from his home in Santander. This may sound like an odd decision, as it achieves neither an authentic reconstruction of his childhood or adulthood. But it was done so intelligently and tastefully that, somehow, I felt I was getting to know Galdós on an intimate level.
He was a man of many surprising talents. Aside from his obvious literary ability, Galdós was, for example, a skilled pianist. Indeed, he was quite the music enthusiast, and even devoted much of his time to writing criticism of performances. Galdós was also a decent draftsman. In the exhibition room near the entrance to the museum, you can see many examples of his sketches, some of which are of the characters from his books. Most surprising to me, however, was his ability as a woodworker. Much of the furniture in the museum was made with his own hands, and it is very fine work indeed. Surrounded by all of this, you get the impression of a man bursting at the seams with brilliance.
The tour ends with the rough version of the official Galdós monument—the real version of which stands in Retiro Park, in Madrid. (Next to it, there’s a little public library shelf where I donate my books.) I emerged from the museum feeling quite inspired. While he may not be my favorite author, Galdós lived his life fully devoted to art in a way few of us mere mortals can imitate. He is a true literary hero.
After this, we ate a delicious lunch at the Moroccan restaurant across the street to recover our strength. Then, we headed to another excellent museum: El Museo Canario.
Though you may think from its name that this museum would be devoted to all things Canary, its collection is exclusively devoted to exploring the islands’ original inhabitants: the Guanches. (Properly speaking, the “Guanches” was but one group of the islands’ inhabitants, but the name is commonly used to refer to all of the indigenous people collectively.)
The Canary Islands have been inhabited for thousands of years, starting perhaps as far back as the sixth millennium BCE. There is evidence of trade between the islands and several ancient civilizations, including the Phoenicians and the Romans. However, at some point contact with the mainland was lost. What resulted—as seems to be the general rule in isolated peoples—was a kind of technological reversion. By the time the Spanish made contact with the Guanches, they had lost the ability to navigate the open ocean. Indeed, they were literally a stone-age people, making tools out of wood, bone, and rock, and painting caves.
Contact with the Spanish proved disastrous. Much of the original population was wiped out. Not that they didn’t fight back. At the First Battle of Acentejo, for example, the Guanches killed nine out of every ten Spaniards. Yet, in the long run, they had neither the numbers nor the technology to resist European colonization. Those who escaped slaughter gradually integrated into Spanish society, losing their culture. And because none of the colonizers saw fit to write down more than a few sentences in the native language, it has mostly been lost, too. What remains of their language and their bones reveals, as expected, a link with North Africa. But it is tragic to consider how we must now make guesses about a culture which existed until the 1500s, as if they were an ancient people.
The Museo Canario began in the late 1800s as a kind of private project among a group of intellectuals, under the mistaken belief that the archaeological remains were related with the European paleolithic. Indeed, the museum’s collection is housed in the former home of the leader of this group, Gregorio Chil y Naranjo (who must have been quite a wealthy man). By any standard, the museum’s collection is excellent—with stone tools, ceramics, and even a reproduction of the cave paintings in Galdar (though I wish we had gone to see the originals). Best of all—and strangest—is the so-called “Idol of Tara,” which is a ceramic cult statue depicting a seated woman. Her proportions are, however, rather strange—with enormous thighs and shoulders, but an exceedingly tiny head. Rebe thought it was very funny.
The Idol of Tara
Yet the most memorable part of the visit were the bones. In one room, assembled like a cabinet of curiosities, are the bones of dozens of Guanches on display in glass cupboards. There are even a few mummified bodies. It is quite an impressive sight, I admit, though it did give me some misgivings. I doubt, for example, that we would condone digging up and displaying bones from the European Middle Ages in the same way. Indeed, as it was the Spanish who were responsible for the extinction of their culture, it does strike me as adding insult to injury to treat these erstwhile human beings as decoration. But perhaps I am being overly scrupulous.
This did it for our sightseeing in the capital. After this, we made a quick stop in the nearby town of Arucas. On the way, we got a taste of capricious Canary weather. In mere minutes, it went from sunny to pouring rain, and the car briefly hydroplaned a couple times as I drove through flooded roads. By the time we arrived, however, the skies had largely cleared, and we were able to walk around without umbrellas. Arucas is famous for two landmarks. First there is the massive neogothic church of San Juan Bautista, which seems out of all proportion to the modest town surrounding it. The other is the famous Arehucas rum plant. Unluckily, it had closed just before we arrived, so we couldn’t take a tour. But I must admit that, when I bought a little bottle to try for myself, I wasn’t especially fond of the liquor. I prefer brandy or whisky.
Next we stopped in the nearby town of Firgas. This attractive village is primarily famous for the Paseo de Canarias, which is a long fountain running alongside a walkway. The fountain is decorated with three-dimensional maps of the Canary Islands, along with their flags and coats of arms. Aside from this touristy eye-candy, however, Firgas is just a nice place to stop and have a coffee or a bite to eat.
This model gives you a good idea of how mountainous the island is.
On our next day in Gran Canaria, we headed south. Our first stop was the Maspalomas. We parked the car in a kind of suburban beach community, near an oddly gaudy building that I took for a kind of amusement park (but was actually a shopping center), and started walking towards the ocean. We were there to see the dunes. When they came into view, I was stunned. It is the sort of thing that you expect only to exist in film studios—mountains of sand, rolling into the distance, surrounded by the crystalline blue sea. Apparently, during the last age, when the ocean was considerably lower, sand from the erstwhile ocean floor was washed up. This result of this long geographical process is perfect for Instagram.
We left the wooden walkway to stumble around the dunes. Though it was December, the sun was blindingly intense on the sand. Just moving around on the dunes was strangely exhilarating—either waddling up the steep hills and causing a miniature rockslide in the process, or nearly falling as the sand gave way beneath you on your trip back down. But after about half an hour of that, I’d had my fill of sand and yearned for solid ground.
After this, we suffered a bit of confusion. Rebe had read that Mogán was one of the most beautiful beach towns on the island, and so we set our GPS to that location. But when we turned away from the ocean and into the rugged, dry interior, I began to feel that something was off. The drive was interesting—winding through a valley, passing town after town, many of them charming—but the beach did not seem to be forthcoming. Finally, we arrived at Mogán, and parked near a basketball court. The town had a kind of shabby, neglected appearance (no offense) that did not seem to mark it out as a tourist hotspot.
Soon, our error was revealed: the famous town was Puerto de Mogán, not Mogán itself. In fact, we had basically driven right past it before we turned inland. Thus, we got into the car and headed back toward the coast.
Puerto de Mogán is, indeed, a beautiful beach town in a lovely natural setting. The low, white buildings cluster around the bay, while volcanic hills jut up to the left and right. It is also, however, a good example of how tourism can ruin a place. The seaside was full of oversized, overpriced, and badly-reviewed restaurants, while the streets had little more to offer than tourist knicknacks. There was not even an inviting place to have a coffee. Still, the place itself is undeniably attractive, as we found while observing the bright orange grabs darting among the jagged rocks, swept about by the waves.
But we were hungry, and—as mentioned—the town was bereft of decent restaurants. Rebe got on her phone and discovered that there was a promising restaurant in, of all places, Mogán—the town we had just visited. So we got in the car and drove back up the valley to the town, parking in the same parking space, in order to eat in the Restaurante Canario de Oro. There, the owner recommended several local dishes to us which we duly ordered and shared. It was quality local food.
This did it for our time on the south coast. To return to the north, we decided to drive through the center of the island. The road took us high up into the mountains in the interior, until we approached the highest peak, the Pico de las Nieves. Unfortunately for us, during the drive the weather turned from pristine blue skies to downcast to downpour. By the time we got to the mountaintop, ice-cold rain was lashing down, and we decided not to get out of the car. There wouldn’t have been much of a view, anyway.
On the way down the other side of the mountain, we stopped in a village called Tejeda. Under normal circumstances, I am sure it is a beautiful little town. But with the wind and biting rain, we could only think of getting inside somewhere. We ended up in a bakery, where we had a few of the local pastries to recover our strength. But I’m afraid I saw very little of Tejeda.
By the time we reached our next stop, Teror, the weather was clearing up a little. Its name notwithstanding—which goes back to the Guanches—there is nothing terrible about Teror (except for finding a parking spot, perhaps, as that was a little stressful). The town center is well-preserved and extremely charming, indeed probably the loveliest we saw during the trip. True, there isn’t very much to do, but just strolling through and peaking into buildings here and there was quite enough. Though I would hesitate to put the difference into words, Canarian towns in general have a distinct style of architecture and layout that makes them unlike their counterparts on the Spanish mainland. And Teror is an excellent example of this.
By the time we finished our stroll and found the car, the sun was setting. We still had one more full day in Gran Canaria to go.
Our first stop the next day was Los Tilos de Moya, one of the great natural parks on the island. Despite its being relatively well-known, I was surprised not to find any kind of official parking lot—or, indeed, any other visitors at all. We left our rental car next to an out-of-business restaurant and embarked on the 2km circular hike, with no other humans in sight.
“Tilo” translates as laurel to English, and this reserve is regarded as a representative of the large laurel forests that once covered the island. The hike was very pleasant—easy and short, while giving us a taste of the lush greenery of the tropical island. But I must admit that I apparently have no idea what a laurel tree looks like, as I could not identify a single tree as belonging to that species. As I discover from a google search, the sort of laurel that grows in the Canaries is not the same species as the one we use to season our food. In any case, it sure does make an attractive forest.
After our little hike, we drove to the northwestern coast, to the town of Agaete. This town was previously famous for being the best place to catch a glimpse of El Dedo de Dios, a precarious rock formation that looked like God’s finger pointing upwards. Unfortunately, however, a storm broke off the index finger in 2005, and God has been making a fist ever since. Nevertheless, Agaete is well worth visiting for the attractive maritime promenade and the natural pools that have formed in the volcanic rock next to the ocean.
Here you can see the damaged Dedo de dios.
Though it was December, there were quite a few people in the water. Rebe and I were not quite so brave. Instead, we walked along the shore taking photos. On the way into town, we passed the Monument to the Poets—a statue commemorating three modernist Canarian poets of the early 20th century. Once we got to the bay, we caught a glimpse of the departing Fred Olsen, a ferry that runs between Gran Canaria and Tenerife—a trip of about an hour and a half. This part of town was full of restaurants, some of which seemed like tourist traps, but several of which looked actually quite nice. We chose one with a view of the beach and had an absolutely terrific lunch. It was Spanish food at its best: cheap, healthy, and dripping with olive oil and garlic.
After this, we headed back into the interior of the island, to Artenara. This town is located far up in the mountains, 1200 meters (or 4000 feet) above sea level. Getting there took some time, as I kept distrusting my GPS. Several times, I was instructed to turn onto something that did not appear to be a real road, and so I disobeyed. Then I was rerouted to yet another unpromising little path. Finally, I decided I had to accept my fate, and I turned into a narrow dirt road.
No sooner had I done so but another car came the other way. The path was too narrow for two cars and had no shoulder, so I was forced to awkwardly back out back onto the road to let the other driver pass. For the rest of my time driving on the road, I was in a panic lest anyone else come the other way, as there was absolutely no space I could squeeze into to let anyone pass. One side of the road was a rock wall, and the other side a steep dropoff. Thankfully, nobody did come, and we made our way to Artenara.
The view alone would have been worth the stress. But Artnenara is also home to a unique museum. After the destruction of the native Guanche population, the incoming Spanish sometimes took over the vacated cave dwellings and turned them into their own habitations. This museum is a kind of recreation of what one of these cave houses might have been like. It was rather bizarre—European sensibilities squeezed into a subterranean context—but oddly fascinating.
This did it for our trip. After Artenara, we went back to the Airbnb, and flew back to Madrid early the next day. Once again, the Canary Islands had surprised us with their richness, variability, and beauty.
Rebe having a chat with the famous Basque philosopher, Miguel de Unamuno, who visited this town.
Happy belated New Year! This past 2023 was, in retrospect, a surprisingly productive year for me. First, I got back to regularly writing on the blog, and completed most of my backlog of travel writing. I also successfully ran a marathon, finished a draft of my next novel, and—most unlikely of all—got a new job! I’m not sure if I’m going to repeat my marathon experience this time around (it took a lot out of me!), but I do plan on refocusing my attention on improving my German level. After all, learning foreign languages is exercise for the brain.
I still have some trips to write up, such as my trip to Gran Canaria and my big family voyage to Ireland. And I have a great many smaller posts to write about places in Madrid and New York. But my biggest goal is to finish my book and begin trying to get it published.
In my reading, I have all but given up making specific goals, since I am liable to be swayed by any new discovery that seems interesting. However, I do hope to finish both Churchill’s history of the Second World War and Robert Caro’s biography of Lyndon Johnson. Unfortunately, next year is an election year in the United States, and I have a tendency to get sucked into the general excitement—something that is usually reflected in my reading. So we’ll see how that plays out.
The best time of year for reading is, for me, the time between Christmas and New Year’s. The weather is cold, school is out, and I feel relaxed and fully able to focus. I find myself devouring books with great relish, and that is precisely the case with this wonderful collection of Mozart’s letters.
First, a note on the translation. Mozart’s writing is highly idiosyncratic—full of misspellings (at least when he was younger), multiple languages, puns and wordplay. Spaethling’s translation is thus a kind of virtuosic performance in itself, as he brings as much of this exuberance seamlessly into English. As an example, I will quote the first letter in this collection, written when Mozart was just thirteen:
My dearest mama,
My hear is filled with alott of joy because I feel so jolly on this trip, because it’s so cozy in our carriage, and because our coatchmann is such a fine fellow who drives as fast as he can when the road lets him.
Spaething’s careful rendering of Mozart’s peculiar style allows that composer to fully come to life in this book. The result is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating books in the history of music. Though the letters all have the feeling of being dashed off in a great hurry—much like some of his music—they brim with energy and intelligence, and create a remarkably revealing look at the composer. To get an idea for the Mozartian style, it is worth quoting one of his later letters. This one is to his father, merely describing a pleasant outing in a city park:
I just can’t make up my mind to go back to the city so early—the weather is just so beautiful—and it’s so pleasant to be in the Prater today.—We had a little something to eat in the park, and now we’ll stay until 8 or nine o’clock in the evening.—The only company I have is my pregnant little wife—and her only company—consists of her little husband, who isn’t pregnant but is fat and happy…
The man revealed by these letters is full of contradictions. On the one hand, Mozart is capable of being headstrong, defying his father and even the musical establishment, seeking out his own artistic path. And yet, he is also weak-willed—easily swayed by flattery, improvident with money, and short-sighted regarding his career. One gets the impression that his father had inadvertently been overprotective—shielding the child genius from practical concerns so that he could only focus on music—and when Wolfgang had to make his own way outside of the stern, practical, and worldly guidance of his father, he quickly sank into dysfunction.
This is illustrated most painfully in the last section of this volume, which is filled with repeated and increasingly desperate pleas to his friend for money. His letters to his father are also quite revealing of this dynamic, though perhaps inadvertently so. It is amazing to think that one of the greatest composers of history could have been, in many respects, a frustrating disappointment to his father, but this seems to have been the case. In his letters to his father, he seems always to be pleading for Leopold’s approval, even as the imprudent Wolfgang continually flouts his father’s advice.
And yet, revealing as they are, the best letters in this volume are not those to his father, but to his cousin “Bäsle” (Maria Anna). Mozart seems to have found a kind of ideal playmate for his brand of practical jokes and bathroom humor in his cousin, and his letters to her are full of the most extraordinary playfulness—not to mention, a kind of fixation on excrement which sometimes goes beyond the bounds of humor into obsession. Here is an excerpt of perhaps the best of these letters:
Dearest cozz buzz!
I have received your highly esteemed writing biting, and I have noted doted that my uncle garfuncle, my aunt slant, and you too, are all well mell. We, too, thank god, are in good fettle kettle. Today I got the letter setter from my Papa Haha safely into my paws claws. I hope you too have gotten rotten my note quote that I wrote you from Mannheim…
In these letters, perhaps most clearly, you can see the kind of childlike charm of Mozart. And this immaturity is arguably the source of both his particular genius and his constant financial troubles. Both Mozart’s letters and his music brim with a wonderful sense of play—as if his mind were constantly prancing from one idea to another—picking up one form, giving it a twirl, and setting it down into a new pattern.
Yet it would be wrong to accuse Mozart of superficiality. For underneath this childlike playfulness is a deadly serious commitment to his art. This is readily apparent in this volume, as the constant references to music in these letters belie a kind of workaholic productivity as well as a dedication to reaching the highest possible standards at all times. He was anything but an unconscious composer, as he often shows a keen awareness of how his music should affect his listeners.
It is interesting, I think, to compare these letters with those of another wonderful correspondent, Vincent Van Gogh. At first glance, the two artists could not be any more dissimilar: Van Gogh started late and never achieved fame during his lifetime, whereas Mozart was famous since his childhood. The painter was the furthest thing from a technical master, whereas Mozart dominated both instrumental and compositional technique in multiple domains.
And yet, these two men—both of whom died much too young—share one dominating characteristic: an overwhelming, uncompromising commitment to their art. Arguably, this monomaniacal devotion led both of them astray, as they both died isolated and penniless. But who can honestly wish that either man had been even a whit more “practical.” Indeed, I think the world would be a better place if we had more people to dedicate themselves with reckless abandon to the creation of beauty. And such a man is ultimately what these letters reveal.
Though superficially this year has been a disappointing year in reading—I finished considerably fewer books, just over 60 rather than my typical 75 or more—this lack of quantity is largely illusory. A good number of the books I’ve finished this year have been quite long, many over 500 pages and a couple well over 1,000. So in terms of total pages read, I believe I am at par.
For whatever reason, I usually begin the year by getting extremely obsessed with a book. This year, it happened to be Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, which convinced me that I was chronically under-rested and, thus, in danger of imminent death. For months afterwards, I dutifully tried different strategies for achieving optimal sleep—cutting down or (briefly) giving up caffeine, sleeping with a mask, going to bed earlier, drinking herbal tea, avoiding alcohol—and it did make a difference. However, probably the best thing I did for my sleep was simply to get a new job that didn’t require me to get up so early. Since then, I have mostly resorted to my old bad habits.
A few books I read this year required so much effort that they became little projects. This can certainly be said of my encounter with the Qur’an—a book difficult for a Westerner to appreciate, I think, though I did my best. I read a few other religious classics to complement my exploration of Islam—some Buddhist sutras and the Egyptian Book of the Dead—though none made nearly so deep an impression on me. Another project, offsetting my spiritual investigation, was my attempt to finally tackle two of the great works in the history of science: Faraday’s Experimental Researches in Electricity and Maxwell’s Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism. In both cases, I achieved only the most basic understanding of these great thinkers, though it was rewarding just the same.
I also finally started on two historical series that had long been on my list. The first is Winston Churchill’s account of World War II—deservedly a classic, and quite fun to read, despite its limitations. The other is Robert Caro’s magisterial biography of Lyndon Johnson, which deserves all the superlatives that can be heaped upon it. Both series, though in different ways, make the fine-grained texture of history more palpable, bringing the past alive with copious detail. I will add to this list, though it isn’t exactly a series, the two books by David Simon: Homicide and The Corner. Though Simon’s scope is smaller—the city of Baltimore rather than a president or a major historical event—he is just as good at revealing the inner workings of human life.
There are a few other smaller categories I should include. One is accounts of historical disasters. This describes John Hersey’s Hiroshima, Svetlana Alexievich’s Voices from Chernobyl, and Walter Lord’s A Night to Remember (about the sinking of the Titanic). Perhaps my morbid fascination with these events reveals something unsavory about my character, but I greatly enjoyed these books. Another category is America. Into this bin I would put William Least Heat-Moon’s famous travelog of the United States, Alan Taylor’s excellent history of the early American colonies, and Laurence Bergreen’s informative biography of Christopher Columbus. I am not sure I am feeling any more patriotic, though it is good to reconnect with one’s native land occasionally.
Last, I ought to mention fiction. This year has been, in retrospect, rather light on literature. True, I finally finished Les Miserables, which took months, and finally reread The Canterbury Tales. I also read the trifecta of great American plays: A Streetcar Named Desire, Death of a Salesman, and A Long Day’s Journey into Night—all deserved classics. But the books that stand out in my memory are The Things They Carried (an excellent anti-war book) and Sister Carrie (a devastating deconstruction of the American Dream). I also ought to mention having read my first P.G. Wodehouse and Agatha Christie, both superb in their respective fields.
My goals for 2024 are basically to keep going in the same direction: read a few more spiritual classics, some more influential works of science, continue reading Caro and Churchill, and tackle some rewarding works of literature. As usual, I must express my gratitude to everyone on this site. All of you help make reading a communal activity rather than a lonely endeavor. It is a continual pleasure.
Strange to say, but I seem to be enjoying the holidays more and more with each passing year. This year, to my surprise, I even find myself searching out Christmas music and sentimental holiday movies. I think this is because I have come to appreciate how holidays chart the course of time, preventing one moment from slipping into another in a dreary monotony. And, corny as it sounds, I realize that we do need periodic reminders of what is really important in life, and opportunities to take the time to celebrate it.
So, to all of my readers, I wish to say: Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Happy New Years, and enjoy the holidays!
Robert Caro sets his own standard for political biographies, and if this volume was at all lacking for me it was only in comparison to the masterful first volume in this series. But even this is not exactly a fair comparison, as The Path to Power covered Johnson’s formative years—delving into his family history, his marriage, his schooling, his environment, his first working experience, and finally his rise to the House of Representatives. Its scope, in other words, is quite broad.
Means of Ascent is a very different book, covering only seven years (1941-48). It is significantly shorter (though still hefty enough), and most of these pages are dedicated to Johnson’s 1948 Senate race. This corresponds to what Winston Churchill called his “wilderness years,” in which Johnson was directionless and cut off from the main arteries of power. He spent some of this time in a non-combat role in the military (and spent the rest of his life shamelessly exaggerating his minimal exploits), some of this time using his connections to get rich through a radio station—and finally got back onto the path to power by stealing a Senate election.
As Caro says repeatedly, Johnson is a complex personality with a strange admixture of the despicable and the admirable—and this book contains precious little of the latter. As a result, whereas in the first volume one could sometimes feel sympathetic for the young man from Texas, here he is little more than a power-grasping villain. Caro himself obviously came to feel disgusted with Johnson’s personality, and his feelings seep through in his descriptions of Johnson’s ample transgressions: his blatant mistreatment—indeed, verbal abuse—of anyone he considers inferior (including receptionists, waiters, his own staff, and his poor wife), his absolute amorality regarding even basic ideals (such as democracy itself), and his willingness to stop at nothing to obtain power.
Caro contrasts Johnson’s personality with that of his opponent in the 1948 Senate election, Coke Stevenson—a man Caro portrays as honest and honorable. And here the esteemed biographer got into a little bit of trouble. While Stevenson may indeed have been upstanding in the sense that he was true to his word, did not bow to lobbyists, did not attack political opponents, and did not seek political office in order to satisfy a lust for power—while all this may have been true, Stevenson was also certainly a reactionary and a racist.
These rather unflattering qualities are given only a passing mention in the book, which may leave the reader with a skewed impression of Stevenson. Caro was roundly criticized for this, and in an article in the New York Times, published in 1991, he responded some of these criticisms. Yet his defense—that the subject of race played little role in the election—while valid as far as historical explanation goes, still does not quite excuse the glowing portrait he painted. Upon finishing the book, it is difficult to resist the impression that Caro himself came to admire Stevenson.
Even so, as abhorrent as I find Stevenson’s views to be, I would still prefer such a man to the Johnson of 1948, who seems to have had no political philosophy, no political aspirations beyond his desire to control people, and—worst of all—no respect for the institution of democracy. Throughout all of the legal battles and maneuvers which allowed him to keep his stolen election victory, Johnson never once betrayed the slightest hint that he might have had misgivings about betraying the will of the people. Indeed, as Caro makes clear, he seems to have been proud of it, virtually boasting of the “victory” in later years.
Now, at this point I will do something very brave—or cowardly, perhaps—and venture a slight criticism of Caro. After so many pages, his writing style is beginning to ware on me. This is because, I think, his primary rhetorical technique is that of superlatives. What I mean is that, for Caro, everything is as extreme as possible. Johnson is not just a sleazy politician, but unprecedentedly amoral; Stevenson is not just a popular governor, but a Texan hero; and so on, and so on. Caro relentlessly emphasizes how extreme every event and experience was—so much so that, by the end, you are begging for something totally ordinary and unremarkable to happen (and no, not superlatively ordinary).
That said, the book is eminently readable and highly enjoyable. Here Caro creates such a memorable portrait of an amoral, power-crazed politician that, had this book been written by anyone else, it would by itself be considered an enduring classic of American political writing. It is only when compared to his other books that this one may seem somewhat light.
Most good books lend themselves to be read on many levels. One can read them superficially, merely for momentary pleasure, or study them deeply, working your way slowly through their contents. For the most part, I try to chart a middle path through these two extremes, doing my best to understand what I’m reading—at least on a basic level—without getting bogged down in academic study.
However, some books simply do not lend themselves to that approach, and this is one of them. One can skim over the mathematical proofs in, say, Newton’s Principia and still get a fairly good idea of what the book is about. But in Maxwell’s magnum opus, the math is what does the talking. Indeed, by the midway point I was so desperate—feeling guilty, lazy, and stupid for understanding so little of what I was reading—that I decided to turn to an old ally, Kahn Academy. There, I went through all of the videos on electricity and magnetism, and learned a great deal. (The last time I had any formal instruction on the subject was in my sophomore year of high school, and I doubt I understand much back then.)
But I found, when I picked up the book again, that even this Hail Mary would not save me from the perdition of Maxwell’s writing. Indeed, as I had already bought the heavily annotated student’s edition (with copious notes by Howard J. Fisher), it seemed that I had used up all of my lifelines, and simply had to content myself with only the most superficial reading of this important book.
What follows, then, is probably as valuable as a review of Hamlet by somebody with an elementary level of English. Here I goes.
Now, as I mentioned, the version I picked up is meant for students. Thus, it is heavily abridged and, often, so full of explanatory footnotes that the original text is crowded out.
For what it’s worth, even if you do have the mathematical and scientific chops to handle Maxwell’s tome, I would recommend either this version or something similar. The original is famous for being rather unfocused and overlong. After all, this book was not meant to be Maxwell’s Origin of Species—a text devoted to propounding a radical new theory. Maxwell had already set forth his most revolutionary insights—most notably in the paper “A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field,” in 1865—several years before this book was published. Instead, this was meant as a kind of definitive textbook on the subject, to be studied by university students, telegram technicians, and other specialists. Thus, there are long sections in which he rehashed old theories which would be of limited interest to any modern reader.
This edition attempts to pare down the original, leaving only what Fisher considers to be the “central argument”—that is, the material leading directly to Maxwell’s signature breakthroughs. These would be, first, his four famous eponymous equations and, second, the electromagnetic theory of light.
Regarding the former, as you may know, Maxwell did not actually formulate his equations in the form which modern students encounter them. It was one of Maxwell’s followers, Oliver Heaviside, who put the equations into their definitive form. Instead, Maxwell puts forward twelve equations, which use the now-defunct quaternion notation rather than vector calculus. This makes Maxwell’s presentation seem rather foreign, even to those less ignorant than myself. What is more, Maxwell has a liking for using Gothic letters as symbols in his equations, which gives them a doubly strange appearance.
More generally, I think even a mathematically literate reader will have some trouble following significant portions of this book, if only because Maxwell’s mathematical language seems clunky and dated. In my version, for example, Fisher is continually translating Maxwell’s operations into more familiar forms (which, admittedly, I still did not follow).
As I had recently made my way through an (abridged) version of Faraday’s epochal Experimental Researches in Electricity, I was most interested in the sections in which Maxwell reflects on his predecessor’s work. He is extremely laudatory of the English physicist and is quite generous in giving credit for developing this new way of examining electricity.
And, indeed, if I have any way of understanding Maxwell, it is only through the lens of Faraday. At first glance, the devoted experimentalist with no mathematical schooling seems to have little in common with the visionary theorist who prefers numbers to words. And yet, as I’m sure Maxwell would agree, they were bound together by a new vision of the cosmos. In a nutshell, and said very imprecisely, I think their insight was to see energy rather than matter as fundamental.
In the Newtonian view that preceded Maxwell, the world was composed of matter—indeed, even light was supposed to be made up of little corpuscles. This matter traveled in straight lines and attracted other matter in straight lines. This Newtonian view was embodied in, say, Ampère’s earlier theory of electromagnetism.
And yet this view always sat uncomfortably with Faraday, who instead saw the curving lines of the magnetic field as the fundamental reality, rather than one piece of matter attracting another via “action at a distance.” Indeed, Faraday’s brilliant experiment involving the shifting of light via a magnet got him tantalizingly close to the central insight of Maxwell’s life: the unification of light with electromagnetic radiation.
Faraday is one fount of Maxwell’s inspiration. Yet if Maxwell has a mathematical predecessor, it is Joseph-Louis Lagrange, whose work comprises a culminating chapter in this book. Lagrange arguably developed the math that Faraday had been striving toward from another direction. For in Lagrangian mechanics, rather than thinking of forces being exerted by physical objects, one thinks of the energies in the system—the object in question merely following the path of least resistance through the fields of energy around it.
It was Maxwell’s great insight to see how the work of Faraday and Lagrange—among many, many other brilliant scientists—fit together to form one complete account of electricity and magnetism. It is a theory in which fields of energy take precedence over particles, indeed in which the world around us is filled with vibrations in luminiferous ether. And while some parts of Maxwell’s theory (notably the ether) have not survived to the present day, his basic insight was so sound and so significant that, as Richard Feynman said, his discovery constitutes one of the major turning points in human history. You certainly wouldn’t be reading this review without it. Thus, Maxwell’s name stands beside Newton’s and Einstein’s as one of the greatest physicists of all time—even if his book is completely opaque to people like me.
Werner Herzog’s series of films about inmates on death row all begin with him making his stance on the death penalty clear: he is against it. And yet, these films are anything but political. Herzog does not, for example, review the arguments against the death penalty—that many of those condemned are likely innocent, that it is racially biased, that it does not act as a deterrent to other violent crime, and so on—nor does he get into its legal justification or its history.
Indeed, although Herzog repeatedly states that he is against the death penalty, he seems intentionally to portray the punishment in its most “justifiable” form. With some arguable exceptions (to be discussed later), all of the prisoners he interviewed were convicted of horrible crimes on very strong evidence. Most of them, for that matter, are white; and in any case he never explicitly brings up the subject of race. Thus, most of the arguments usually cited against the death penalty do not apply to these cases.
Despite this—or, perhaps, because of it—Herzog’s films become a strong statement against the death penalty’s continued existence. His view is not that the death penalty is wrong because it violates constitutional rights or it’s statistically unfair or so on, but that the death penalty is simply wrong in itself. This is because even the worst criminals are human beings. It is a simple and powerful argument, and I think ultimately the right one to make. For there will always be people who commit terrible crimes, and as a consequence there will always be the temptation to view such people as somehow inhuman or monstrous, and thus not worthy of life.
Herzog combats this tendency by bringing the viewer into direct contact with the reality of the death penalty. Every episode of this documentary series begins in the same way: The camera goes from the holding cell of the death house to the execution chamber. Eerie music plays in the background and Herzog’s equally eerie voice gives us the basic facts about the death penalty in America.
Typical of Herzog, the camerawork has a curiously amateurish quality. It looks as if somebody were simply holding their phone and walking. The angle shifts like a man turning his head: peering down at the Bibles on the table, up at the microphone to capture the prisoner’s final statement, and into the observation room where relatives of the victims and the prisoner are there to watch the final moments.
It is a short and simple sequence, and yet I think it is far more effective than any flashy camerawork or well-produced dramatization could be, as it really makes you feel as if you are a prisoner being led to your own execution. As the camera moves from the white cellblock to the execution chamber with its sickly green brick walls, you can feel some of the numbing terror of institutionalized death.
And this impression is fleshed out with further information at various moments in the different episodes. In the feature-length, standalone documentary that kicks off the series, Into the Abyss, we hear from the priest who administers the last rites and who stays with the inmate as the poison is administered. Behind him we see the rows of stone crosses, where the prisoners are buried whose families don’t make arrangements. They bear only the prisoner’s ID number, no name.*
Later on in that documentary, we hear from Fred Allen, who was the captain of the team that managed the “Death House.” He describes the final hours of a prisoner: They are allowed to shower, for example, and to put on their civilian clothes. They can use a phone to call loved ones. At the fatal hour, a team of five guards takes the prisoner to the gurney, and are able to have the prisoner strapped down within thirty seconds. Allen performed this routine for over 120 executions. His final job was to unstrap the dead prisoner and move them to a stretcher for removal.**
In the documentary on Hank Skinner—whose execution was stayed by order of the Supreme Court just twenty minutes before it was to take place—we get perhaps the most revealing look at the final moments of an inmate scheduled for death. In Texas, though executions are carried out in Huntsville, the male death row inmates are housed in the Polunsky unit, about 40 miles away. In a powerful sequence, Herzog and his crew make the drive from the one prison to the other, showing what a condemned man would see as his last glimpse of the world outside. As Herzog says, it is rather dreary—the standard tableau of gas stations and billboards facing a highway—but when seen through the eyes of somebody who will shortly cease to exist, even this banal landscape can be crushingly beautiful.
(Skinner has since died in prison, months before his new execution date.)
All of this footage and information serves to make something that is normally quite abstract terrifyingly concrete.*** But perhaps even more valuable than this are the interviews with the inmates. Herzog shows himself in these films to be a masterful, if unorthodox, interviewer. Into the Abyss, for example, opens with Herzog evoking tears from the minister by asking him to explain an encounter with a squirrel.
More generally, he is good at getting his subjects to open up, not just about the details of the cases, but about their inner world—what they miss about the outside world, what they dream about, how they are dealing with their approaching end. Yet sometimes the silences are more revealing than the words. Another of Herzog’s characteristic touches is to hold the camera on a person’s face when they have finished speaking. This is uncomfortable at first, but I think it gives the interactions a certain naturalness that recorded interviews otherwise lack. For in reality we often observe others in silence.
I hesitate to make the following comment, as I am a layperson and have no psychological training whatsoever. Nevertheless, I could not help noticing some strong similarities between many of the subjects. With the exception of Blaine Milam, everyone behind bars whom Herzog interviews is surprisingly articulate and intelligent. More than that, I often got the feeling that they would be adept at convincing and manipulating others, for many of them are persuasive on camera.
This apparent intelligence is striking all the more so for the stupidity of their crimes. The crime at the center of Into the Abyss, for example, is so shocking partly because it was done with so little planning and for such a small reward (a car). Both Douglas Feldman and James Barnes—murderers from other episodes—seem highly intelligent, and yet both were caught for pointless and easily-caught acts of violence (the former, basically a case of road rage, and the later, a domestic dispute). Robert Fratta killed his estranged wife rather than just get a divorce, and Linda Carty murdered a woman for her child, somehow believing she could convince others it was her own. The only notable exception to this pattern of stupidity is George Rivas, of the notorious Texas Seven, who was a methodical planner—most famously, orchestrating a complex prison break.
Another thing I found striking was that so many of these convicts strongly protested their innocence, even in the face of overwhelming evidence against them. To be sure, if you are on death row, the only way to potentially avoid execution is to fight for your innocence. Still, even if their circumstances virtually force them to deny the crime, I did notice a lack of regard or concern for the victims of these crimes. Darlie Routier, for example, who was convicted for killing two of her sons, spends all of her time painstakingly going over all of the evidence that could exculpate her, but seems unconcerned that the (supposed) real killer is still on the loose. An even starker example is Douglas Feldman, who gunned down two truck drivers in a random spree of violence. He said in his final statement:
I hereby declare Robert Steven Everett and Nicholas Velasquez guilty of crimes against me, Douglas Alan Feldman. Either by fact or by proxy, I find them both guilty. I hereby sentence both of them to death, which I carried out in 1988.
A starker lack of remorse could hardly be imagined.
Here are a few more similarities that jump out. Two of the convicts in this series, Darlie Routier and Robert Fratta, are notable for being highly superficial, in the sense that they care deeply about how they look and are perceived by others. Another similarity is religion. Many of the convicts, perhaps unsurprisingly, turn to God in their time of need. Fratta, for example, converted to Christianity in prison, and claimed that God had inspired him to invent a new political philosophy (in which all the Christians live together under an elected monarch—oh, and the different races are to live separately), while another murderer, James Barnes, converted to Islam and confessed to additional murders (including some he probably did not commit). Hank Skinner, meanwhile, lost himself in mystical, New Agey numerical coincidences.
If there is one prisoner who stands out as being unlike the others in this series, it is Blaine Milam. In the film, he comes across as somebody who is neither particularly bright nor articulate (indeed, an intellectual disability claim is being reviewed). And he also lacks, for me, the strange remorseless quality I noted in the other convicts. When he talks, he does not sound like he is trying to manipulate you, and he does not plead his case. And yet, he is guilty of perhaps the most disturbing and disgusting crime of all in this series: the brutal torture and murder of a 13-month-old baby girl. Indeed, this murder was so sickening that it dissuaded Herzog from making more of these films.
In fairness to these convicts, I wish to highlight the two who were convicted on the weakest evidence. In my view (and, again, I am the furthest thing from an expert), these are Darlie Routier and Hank Skinner.
For both, the case against them is largely forensic and circumstantial—they were the only people known to be at the scene of a crime, and their blood was found on the murder weapon and the victims. However, in both cases the motive is rather unclear. Furthermore, Routier was herself nearly killed from a knife wound (prosecutors say it was self-inflicted) and Skinner had such a high level of alcohol and codeine in his system that an expert testified he would have been physically unable to commit the brutal triple homicide (though he did walk to a girlfriend’s house shortly after the murder).
For what it’s worth, I personally found the cases against these two to be quite strong, even if it did leave some room for doubt. The theory of their innocence requires, for both, that somebody break into a house and commit a brutal murder—sparing only the person convicted—and then vanish without leaving any trace of their identity. It seems far-fetched to me.
I have gone on about the criminals, but ultimately even they are not at the core of these films. Rather, it is the crimes they committed. These brutal acts are the vital center of these stories, whose effects ripple outward in space and time. Herzog, as usual, does his best to get as close as he can to the moral abyss. He uses archival footage of crime scenes, recordings of interrogations, taped confessions, interviews with police officers and detectives—all this, trying to get a clear look at the worst side of our nature.
This crime sets the convict on a path towards prison and, ultimately, death. And of course it ends the path of the victims. The victims’ stories, instead, reverberate back in time, as they become the centers of investigations and the protagonists of tragedies. And it is perhaps the final tragedy of these victims that they are no longer around even to tell their stories. As one prosecutor explains, when dealing with a murder, there is a kind of asymmetry in our sympathies, since the victim’s suffering is in the past and, therefore, abstract, while the suffering of the criminal is present and palpable.
Herzog cannot, obviously, round out the picture of these crimes by interviewing its victims. But he does his best to give these victims a voice. When he can, he interviews surviving family members. These interviews are (perhaps unsurprisingly) among the most heartbreaking parts of this series—each person faced with a sudden, violent, irrecoverable loss. And though it is uncomfortable, he even asks the murderers to recall their victims—vainly hoping, perhaps, to ignite some spark of conscience. This is a natural extension of his basic attitude: for if Herzog is against the death penalty, he also cannot ignore the evil of murder. As he repeatedly makes clear, he is not opposed to punishment, but to the taking of human life.
There is a repeated image in this series, of birds slowly flying over what appears to be a landfill. They are just pigeons and seagulls, hundreds of them, on the lookout for trash. And yet, the sky and land are so bleak that these birds take on the appearance of vultures circling carrion. This image has no obvious connection to the subject of the film, and yet it somehow seems to embody it. Herzog has a knack for choosing visual metaphors that are powerful without being obvious. This image, I think, represents a feeling rather than a thought: pure desolation—ugly, gray, bleak. This mood hangs over this whole project, lending every moment a certain weight. I think it is a feeling we ought to reckon with.
*In Texas, starting in 2019, ministers could no longer be with inmates as they are executed. This is because, in 2019, the execution of Patrick Murphy was stayed since the prison would not allow a Buddhist minister to be with him in the execution chamber, while Christian ministers could be present. The Supreme Court decided that this constituted religious discrimination and the execution was postponed. In response, Texas simply decided that no ministers, Christian or Buddhist, would be allowed in the execution chamber. This hardly addressed the fundamental issue, in my opinion, as Christian prisoners were still given access to a minister (before the execution), while Buddhist inmates were not. This policy was apparently reversed when, in 2021, John Ramirez won a Supreme Court case that allowed a Baptist minister to be in the execution chamber with him when the fatal injection was administered. In any case, it is rather bizarre to think that the government’s commitment to religious equality is enough to stop an execution from going forward, but not its commitment to avoiding cruel and unusual punishments.
**It is worth noting that, after having participated in so many executions, Allen had a crisis of conscience and decided that the death penalty was immoral. He immediately quit his job, even though he had to give up his pension. This crisis was provoked by the execution of Kayla Faye Tucker in 1998, which was the first execution of a woman in Texas since 1863. As it happened, Tucker had become something of a celebrity, with even some foreign officials supporting clemency for her crimes.
***I cannot resist adding one final morbid detail about the execution process. One popular fixture of executions is the “Last Meal,” in which the prisoner can request virtually anything to enjoy as their final taste of earthly nourishment. Back in 1959, the blues singer Jimmy Rogers released a song, “My Last Meal,” in which he (as a convict) requests an impossible last meal (including dinosaur eggs, mosquito knees, and rattlesnake hips) so that the warden won’t be able to execute him. The reality is far less romantic. In Florida, the cost of the last meal is limited to $40, and in Oklahoma to $25, neither of which is enough to afford anything luxurious. In Texas, however, the practice of the last meal was abolished in 2011, when the white supremecist Lawrence Russell Brewer requested an enormous last meal—indeed, almost worthy of Jimmy Rogers—and then refused to touch it. Now, Texas inmates simply eat whatever is served to the other prisoners.
The Middle Rhine is majestic and impressive, but it is not exactly tranquil. There are barges and ferries full of tourists constantly running up and down the river. There are small villages, yes, but they are often crowded with visitors. During my visit, an American fighter jet even flew over the river valley. The Middle Rhine, in other words, for all of its beauty, is not a trip to the countryside for a bit of scenery and fresh air.
But its little brother, the Moselle, is wonderfully sleepy by comparison. Joining the Rhine at Koblenz (of which, more later), the Moselle seems to flow lazily along when compared to the mighty current of the Rhine. Rather than being surrounded by steep cliffs and towering hills, the land gently rises into green knolls, all of them covered in vineyards.
I observed this gentler valley as my train traveled from Koblenz, and was immediately charmed. My destination was the little town of Moselkern. I had arrived early, and the town was so quiet that it almost seemed abandoned. Nothing was open, and nobody was on the street. But I did notice some silly pieces of doggerel printed on the sides of buildings. In front of the Hotel Kebstock, for example, I read this:
Mein lieber Gast,
laß dich
Nieder mache Rast
Bei Bier und Wein,
bring Glück herein.
An der Mosel
und am Rhein,
trinkt man
den guten Wein.
In essence: “Come on in, drink some wine, and have a rest.” It certainly sounded appealing.
But I couldn’t stay for long, for I was not visiting Moselkern to see the town. Rather, as I had been doing so often on this trip, I was there to see a castle: Burg Eltz.
As you may know, most castles everywhere are situated in or near a town, normally on a piece of high ground. This particular castle, however, is not in any town, but right in the middle of a forest. To get there, in other words, I had to take a hike.
I marched out of Moselkern headed northwest, following the Elzbach, a little stream that empties into the Moselle. Very soon I found myself completely surrounded by woods. It was marvelous. As I have had occasion to say many times on this blog, one thing I miss about New York is the lush greenery of its forests. For all of its beauty, most of Spain is relatively dry and arid, the landscape yellowish and bare. Thus, I intensely savored the sensation of being, once again, in a dense, green wilderness, surrounded by birdsong and close to the sound of running water. Indeed, I found this hike so intoxicatingly enjoyable that I almost forgot about the famous castle. Later on, I found that this forest is actually an official nature reserve.
Now, it is possible to reach the castle by shuttle bus. But for anyone contemplating visiting the Eltz Burg, I highly recommend doing so this way. Stepping from under the canopy and into the clearing, and seeing the enormous castle above you, is a tremendous experience—the closest that you can probably get to time travel.
(Another tip for travelers is to bring cash, since the castle does not take credit cards and there are no ATMs in sight. Thankfully, I came prepared. You should also be aware that the castle is only available for visits from April to October.)
At first glance, the castle is both imposing and perplexing. It is difficult to imagine what such a magnificent keep is doing seemingly in the middle of nowhere. This mystery is resolved when we learn that this used to be an important trade route between farmers to the north and the Moselle to the south, where their crops could be shipped downstream. This is such a key point to control that there has been a fortress of some kind here for over a millennium. And for most of that time, the castle was controlled by one family: the Eltz.
This is precisely what makes Burg Eltz so special. It has been in the possession of a single family since the Middle Ages, and it still is today. This has made for truly exceptional preservation. Most of the Rhine castles, for example, were damaged or destroyed in various wars; and what stands today are usually later reconstructions, often with whimsical Romantic fancies added on. Even the best-preserved castle on the Rhine, the Marksburg, does not have its original furnishings. But the Eltz is a kind of enormous time-capsule, an unbroken link to the medieval past.
Burg Eltz has only ever been seriously attacked once. The evidence of this is to be found on a hill overlooking the castle, where the ruins of a small fortress can be seen. This is the Burg Trutzeltz, which was constructed to bombard Burg Eltz with catapults and primitive canons. This was part of a local power struggle of the 14th century, known as the Eltz Feud, in which the knights of Eltz Castle struggled to maintain their independence from the Bishop of Trier. Eventually they capitulated and the family became once again vassals. As it stands now, the castle is remarkable more for its beauty than for its value as a fortification. Indeed, the tall, flat walls of the castle would make it an easy target for canonfire. I would wager that a single piece of artillery could wreck the place.
I climbed up the stairs to the main rampart—quite sweaty by now—and bought a ticket for the next guided tour. It would start in about 45 minutes, which gave me some time to visit the castle’s treasury. This is a kind of miniature museum in what appears to be the castle’s dungeon, exhibiting the family’s most valuable possessions. Some of the objects on display are quite fine, exhibiting the prosperity of this aristocratic family. There are, for example, ceremonial crossbows and ornate hunting rifles. And of course, courtly life requires plenty of fine dining. There are ivory drinking vessels, silverware with mother-of-pearl handles, and even a weird mechanical drinking game, a device which participants would wind up and release on the table, dooming one unlucky (or lucky) couple to draining its contents.
I have to admit that, most of the time, the accoutrements of the upper crust leave me feeling a little cold. As impressive as is the workmanship and artistry required to make such items, to my eyes their aesthetic value is drowned by their proclamation of wealth. This collection, however, was more charming to me for being the accumulated possessions of one single family, displayed in what is still—to an extent, at least—their family home. There certainly is an anthropological value, at least, to seeing authentic examples of luxury in their original context.
Now it was time for the tour. (There are no photos allowed on the tour, but the website has photos of all of the major rooms.)
Once again, I normally find tours of aristocratic or royal dwellings to be kind of depressing. But the interior of Burg Eltz was unlike any other building I have seen. Even though it was obviously the home of a wealthy family, the furnishings of the room often struck me as being charmingly rustic. The roof timbers were visible and the supporting columns were irregularly carved. The Eltz were a family of knights, and their arms and armor form an important part of the decoration.
But by far my favorite aspect of the castle were the wall decorations. These include vegetable motifs vaguely reminiscent of Muslim decorative styles (possibly brought back from the Crusades). Yet compared to, say, the Alhambra’s elegant designs, those in Burg Eltz are sort of clumsy and clodish. I do not mean this as an insult, however, as I found the taste displayed in these decorations to be beguilingly foreign—that is, genuinely medieval, and alien to modern sensibilities of line and color. To repeat myself, a visit to this castle is the closest one can come to a trip back in time, so wonderfully does it preserve the flavor of the Middle Ages.
After an hour, I was back outside. I was both satisfied and exhausted. The only place to eat nearby is in the castle’s café, where I had—what else?—a plate of currywurst and pommes, along with a beer. Fortified, I decided that I ought to explore the lovely forest some more before venturing onward. Thus, I walked on a circular path that goes around the valley below the castle. The best part was the view of the castle from across this valley, its grey spires contrasting against the sea of green around it. By the time I circled back to the castle, I was convinced that this is one of the great destinations of Europe. The castle itself is first-rate. Its dramatic location in the middle of the woods pushes it into another realm entirely.
After another hike, I was back in Moselkern. (In retrospect, I think I could have taken the path instead to the neighboring town of Müden, just for the sake of variety.) Here, I caught a train to the biggest town nearby: Cochem. “Big” is, of course, a relative term here, as Cochem has just about 5,000 residents, making it about half the size of my own little hometown, Sleepy Hollow. Nevertheless, it is a very attractive place, with the local castle—the Reichsburg Cochem—sitting on a hillock overlooking the quiet houses below. This attractive castle, as it happens, is yet another example of Romantic reconstruction, as the original was burned down by French troops in 17th century.
(Cochem has a long history, but perhaps the most interesting thing about the town is that, during the Cold War, it was in this sleepy place that West Germany kept its emergency supply of currency. In a bunker located beneath some nondescript houses, 15 billion German marks were stored away, to be used in case East Germany started counterfeiting their money.)
The cellar of the wine bar.
There is, I am sure, a great deal of sightseeing to be done here. But I was quite saturated by this point in the day, and was far more interested in sampling the local wine. The seemingly endless vineyards surrounding the valley in every direction seemed to confirm this desire. Thus, I found my way to a wine bar on the side opposite the town center, sat down on a wooden chair outside, and had a drink. In fact, I have to admit that I had a few. It was just too pleasant to give it up. The weather was perfect, the wine refreshing, and I had nothing else to do. Also, the knowledgeable bartender was quite willing to explain German wines to a clueless foreigner. I listened intently and retained exactly nothing of what he said.
After I decided that I couldn’t have another glass without jeopardizing my return journey, I reluctantly made my way back to the train to return to Koblenz. I had one night left in Germany.
Koblenz is a proper city, with a population of well over 100,000. Like many places in Germany, Koblenz was bombed nearly out of existence during the Second World War, and had to be rebuilt. As a result, it is not exactly the stereotype of a charming European urban center. Nevertheless, I found it to be quite a pleasant place to relax after my journeys on the Rhine and the Mosel. It was quiet, convenient, and not entirely bereft of charm.
There is only one major tourist attraction in Koblenz, and that is the Deutsches Eck (literally the “German Corner”). This is the point where the mighty Rhine meets the charming Moselle, thus creating a cultural and a literal confluence. It was here that Wilhelm II—last king of Germany—decided to construct one of the many monuments to his grandfather, Wilhelm I. It seems to have been the younger Wilhelm’s object to elevate his grandfather to the status of national hero. He even demanded that Wilhelm I be referred to as “der Große” (“the great”). All over Germany, massive statues of the Kaiser were erected.
To be sure, the first Wilhelm was an important figure in German history, as it was during his reign that, with the help of Bismark, he achieved unification of the separate German states. Much like Italy, you see, for much of European history Germany was split into several dozen states, each with its own laws, currency, and ruler. During the 19th century, both Germany and Italy were unified in a wave of patriotic nationalism, thus allowing them to compete on an equal footing with France and England for domination of Europe. The symbolism of the confluence of these two rivers was surely not lost on those who built this monument.
Where the rivers meet.
The enormous equestrian statue that now rides atop the stone pedestal is, however, a reconstruction. The first statue survived the WWII bombing of Koblenz, but was hit by American artillery fire during the invasion of Germany (sorry about that). The pedestal was bare for several decades until the statue was finally replaced after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany. Hoisting up the statue of a dead Kaiser may be an odd gesture to celebrate the end of communist rule, but it did help bring tourists to the city.
When I visited, the place was full of locals and tourists alike. The huge pedestal is a pleasant place to sit and enjoy the river, or for kids to climb and play on. Nearby, one can see the Koblenz cable car, which takes riders over the Rhine (sadly, I didn’t make time to go). The journey ends on the other bank of the Rhine, on the hill upon which sits Ehrenbreitstein Fortress. A real modern fortification rather than a romantic faux-medieval castle, this fortress is not exactly beautiful, but it is perhaps worth visiting for the view alone.
On my first night in Koblenz, I was so tired that I just peeked into a Lidl for a premade sandwich and some chips and ate this paltry dinner in my Airbnb. On my second night, after a day of exploring the Rhine, I made the mistake of choosing a fast food place in the old city center (overpriced and unsatisfying). Finally, on my last night in Koblenz and in Germany, I had the good sense to find a biergarten. There is an excellent one—enormous, with hundreds of outdoor seats—right beside the Deutsches Eck.
Here, I ordered some sausages and potatoes and a large mug of German beer and sat down on one of the wooden chairs under the shady plain trees. Now, there is something that foreigners ought to know when drinking at a biergarten. The lovely glass mugs (or “steins,” as they are called in English, but not in German!) have proven to be so tempting that many people simply walk off with them as souvenirs. To combat this, one must often pay a deposit, called the “Pfand,” which is normally a euro or so. This amount is then returned to you when you bring the mug back to a special window.
I am clearly not a food photographer
Well, there I was, enjoying the fading light of my last evening on the Rhine, sipping an excellent beer and savoring the full feeling in my stomach, when I heard people talking right behind me. It was a couple, and they were wondering how they could use the bathroom. The door, you see, had a lock on it, and you had to put in a euro to open it. However, I had just found out that, if you asked one of the cashiers, they could give you a key to open it without paying. I turned around and conveyed this information in my best German, for which I was heartily thanked.
The interaction then took a strange turn. The female half of the couple spoke quite decent English and started asking me polite questions about myself. I did the same, and found out that they were young newlywed Germans on a little vacation. She then left (to go to the bathroom, naturally) and I was stuck chatting with the male partner. He was quite drunk and for some reason was convinced that he was able to speak English. What came out of his mouth, however, was a totally incoherent series of sounds with the occasional English word thrown in. I tried telling him that I could understand German, but it was of no avail, and I was subjected to a stream of literal nonsense until his partner returned. Hastily, I made my exit, and walked back to the monument.
I sat on the steps and looked out. The Rhine and the Moselle were beautiful in the sunset, and I felt very sad that I had to go. It had been an absolutely wonderful vacation. One day, I am sure, I will come back.
Lotz in Translation 