Three books: How my world was changed by the inner goodness of man.

The incredible anticant has opened a thread on three books that changed my world. With 72 hours to answer at the time of his posting, meaning I have already lost sixteen or so, I haven't the time to think forever; also, in matters such as these, there is something to be said for gut-reaction answers. Methinks. So:

The Diary of Anne Frank
Animal Farm

and, I shall cheat some, a poem rather than a book:

The Tomb at Akr Caar, by Ezra Loomis Pound.

Allow me to explain. Both the Anne Frank and Animal Farm were slipped to me, as an unsuspecting ca. six-year-old, by my (most unusual) maternal gran. Anne Frank became a hero, an object of identification, which infatuation lead me to be the most-knowledgable-on-the-Holocaust ca. seven-year-old Finnish girl I ever met. I wrote my diary for a good few years addressed to Anne. Animal Farm, on the other hand, I read not only because my gran gave it to me, but also because it had animals on the cover (a fine enough reason, don't you think). I remember the growing sense of "hang on a minute, there's more to this than meets the eye, this is not just about a bunch of pigs dogs and horses" my child's mind experienced during the read. Needless to say, I read both of these books countless times.

And on to the Pound poem. (I have found it quite tricky to find a suitable online site to link to, so shall stick the poem in its entirety at the end of this post.) My mother used to read and recite poetry to me probably while I was still in nappies, and she didn't stop at nursery rhymes. She had a wonderful collection of a thousand years of Western poetry Tuhat laulujen vuotta (a thousand years of song), with the original on the left-hand page and the Finnish translation on the right. She read plenty to me from that, but the Pound poem wasn't (still isn't) one she cares for. I know it to be the first poem for certain which I discovered for myself - again, at around the age of five - six. The visual imagery the piece gave me was incredible.

So. I have chosen these three works of writing based on the fact I read them before entering formal schooling (starts at seven in Finland). In a short autobiography which opens a collection of her short stories, Marina Tsvetayeva writes: "Everything I have loved, I have started to love by the age of seven, after that, nothing. At the age of forty-seven, I would say that all I was meant to know, I got to know by the age of seven, the subsequent forty years I have spent learning to understand it." (translated from the Finnish translation of the Russian original by yours truly - Tsvetayeva refers to her early-and-for-ever loves, reading at four, writing at five). I would agree on the importance of early interest and influence. For the life of me, I cannot think of books read later in life that would have been as formative to me. Anne F. gave me a near-physically-experienced abhorrence of oppression. Animal Farm gave me a healthy sense of mistrust, both in the surface-level appearance of writing, and in ideologies. The Pound poem set poetry as something that has always been a part of my life, even in the non-intellectual years of punk. I was much older when, to my horror, I discovered Pound had been accused of anti-semitic sympathies or even Nazi collaboration. It was a discovery so against my liking I never really looked into the facts. You may want to enlighten me.

Anticant's thread also suggests listing, as an optional extra, a fourth, imaginary book you would've wanted to be influenced by. In keeping with the conceptual continuity of my other three choices, I would've liked to have read (before age seven) Anne Frank's post-Holocaust, post-Auschwitz collection of poetry, "(I Still Believe in) The Inner Goodness of Man".

The Tomb at Akr Caar

"I am thy soul, Nikoptis. I have watched
These five millenia, and thy dead eyes
Moved not, nor ever answer my desire,
And thy light limbs, wherethrough I leapt aflame,
Burn not with me nor any saffron thing.

See, the light grass sprang up to pillow thee,
And kissed thee with a myriad grassy tongues;
But not thou me.
I have read out the gold upon the wall,
And wearied out my thought upon the signs.
And there is no new thing in all this place.

I have been kind. See I have left the jars sealed,
Lest thou shouldst wake and whimper for thy wine.
And all thy robes I have kept smooth on thee.

O thou unmindful! How should I forget!
--Even the river many days ago,
The river? thou wast over young.
And three souls came upon Thee--
And I came.
And I flowed in upon thee, beat them off;
I have been intimate with thee, known thy ways.
Have I not touched thy palms and finger-tips,
Flowed in, and through thee and about thy heels?
How 'came I in'? Was I not thee and Thee?

And no sun comes to rest me in this place,
And I am torn against the jagged dark,
And no light beats upon me, and you say
No word, day after day.

Oh! I could get me out, despite the marks
And all their crafty work upon the door,
Out through the glass-green fields. . . .

* * * *

Yet it is quiet here:
I do not go."

Ezra Loomis Pound

More confessions: I am a crybaby.

Went over to my cousin's yesterday to celebrate her graduation. She had a beautiful picture of my Sami gran, in fact our shared Sami gran, also in digital form which she sent me. It is above. We figured the photo would be from the early 1930s, making my gran around twenty. If you don't think she is woundingly beautiful, there is something wrong with you. Seek help, and stop muttering under your breath, "will she ever stop harping on about that granny".

We watched old cine films shot by my uncle, some from my childhood & my cousin's, some from my uncle's & mother's.

Old films make me cry, and I don't mean Casablanca or Buster Keaton. I mean the films that have snippets from ordinary people's lives, stolen from time, moments captured, preserved, the reality of the people long since dead, the reality of the moments long since gone. It doesn't have to be people I know or am related to, either, it can be anyone.

Grey hairs from grandma. A self-portrait of sorts.

My maternal gran was a tiny lady. At ten, I was the same height and weight as her - I am five six, and reached that at fourteen. No idea what I was at ten, or my gran all her adult life.

She was a dink, no doubt about that. That Sami look was all over her, the almost-cliché one, with cheekbones out to there, slantish eyes, snubbish nose, dark hair with an un-Finnish strength, almost like horsehair. She came from Eastern Finland, but had traced her father's family to the 1600s, where the tracks disappear into Norwegian Lapland. I am not just an incurable romantic when I call her my Sami gran.

I have her high forehead and strong jaw - a source of much self-loathing when younger - and something similar about the eyes and cheekbones. But alas, not the hair. Mine is the soft fine stuff Finns have. Mostly; as here and there, I have the odd black horsehair strand. Except that now, with the big four-o looming in the Autumn, the black ones have started to go silver (not to say grey), with increasing rapidity. The first ones appeared some five years ago. Initially, I'd pluck them out, or give the job to my long-suffering younger son. Now, I'm not convinced what to do with them. Plucking them out is futile, they grow back silver, there's nothing for it. I could dye my hair of course. But somehow, I almost like them. I am this age, I am this shape, I am who I am. And also, although round about the big four-o, it will be twenty-four years since my gran died, these grey (silver!) hairs are still from her.

A haircut is nevertheless in order. I am too old to have caveman hair for much longer, and besides, I am sick of it. Pageboy cut, here I come. As an added bonus, it'll be easier to backcomb for mad Solange.

I have

my great auntie's slippers and my grandmother's mittens. What more can I ask for in life?