After all that walking we drove to Liliana's home, which she shares with her husband and nine cats. One of those cats actually believes she is paper, as you can see here:
Cat, pretending to be Paper
Liliana has the most magnificent personal library I have ever seen anywhere. The room takes up almost half of the upper story of her beautiful home, and three if the walls are like this:
Liliana's magnificent library -- wall one, with Marta
Liliana's magnificent library: Wall Two, with me signing books
Liliana's magnificent library: Wall Three, with Husband
A study to die for...
Library, with Ladder
After signing books we all went down for a delicious dinner, and I signed the guest book. I was honoured to write a few words before comments by Pauline Melville (possibly the most well-known Guyanese author, having won the Whitbread Prize) and David Dabydeen.
Last December, I received an email from Professor Liliana Sikorska, Head Department of English Literature and Literary Linguistics of the Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland.
She said that she had loved my book, The Speech of Angels, and had talked about it with a friend, who had fallen in love with another book of mine. Professor Sikorska is an editor of Studies in Literature in English published by Lang Verlag in Germany and the US, which, apart from scholarly articles connected with a given topic, also contains an interview with a writer in each volume. She asked if I would give her such an interview.
I said yes; the interview took place; and led to an invitation to be the University's guest author at the University's yearly LIES event -- LIES being an acronym for Literature in English Symposium. It would mean visiting Poznan for two days. Well, tell me -- are bunnies fluffy?
Long story short: LIES took place the week before Easter, and I was there. This was the programme.
The actual Symposium took place on Sunday, but I arrived on the Friday before that and was treated to the most wonderful Polish hospitality. Liliana and her friend and colleague Kasia picked me up at the airport and whisked me into Poznan, where I was brought to my hotel for a freshen-up. That evening we had a meal together in a cozy Polish restaurant, and I met some more lovely Polish women, whose mastery of English was truly impressive.
The next morning, Saturday, I roamed around Poznan a little on my own, after which I met up with Kasia and Martha; after lunch I was taken on a sightseeing walkabout of Poznan--a truly beautiful city, resulting in the following photos.
The Castle
The Poznań residence of the German Kaiser William II was designed by Franz Schwechten and erected in the years 1905-1910. It was the last imperial edifice built in Europe, modelled on mediaeval castles and meant to be the symbol of German domination of Wielkopolska. There is an interesting legend linked to the construction of the castle. Commenced in 1905, it attracted crowds of onlookers. The German president of the city took notice of a farmer from Górczyn who visited the building site every day and urged the workers to work hard. Amazed by seeing a Pole endorsing the building of a German castle, he asked him to state his reasons. The farmer answered: "the prediction says that when the imperial castle is erected, Poland will be resurrected". Indeed, soon World War I broke out and Poland regained its independence.
Easter Market
Stary Rynek (the Old Market Square) and its surroundings are among the most interesting places to see in Poznań. The Renaissance town hall, old houses, charming side streets, numerous museums, monuments, cafes and people walking about - all of them create the unique atmosphere of the place. Stary Rynek is the heart of Poznań.
Located to the south of the town hall, the houses were once used for trade purposes. In the Middle Ages makeshift wooden stalls were erected there where herring, salt, binders, torches, candles and other commodities were sold. In the 16th century the stalls were replaced with narrow houses with Renaissance arcades supported by sandstone columns. The houses featured stalls on the ground floor and apartments on the upper floors. House no. 17 boasts the coat of arms of the merchants' guild consisting of a herring and three palm trees and House no. 24 has the owner's emblem on the capital of the column. The work must have been finished around 1535 judging from the date carved on the capital of the column of House no. 11. The edifice adjoining the merchant houses to the south was built in 1538 and is called the Municipal Chancellery or the House of Scribes. Until the 18th century it was the residence of municipal scribes and presently it houses the Society for the Friends of Poznań founded by Mayor Cyryl Ratajski. The arcades are a popular spot where local artists sell their cityscapes. Kurzanoga [Chicken Leg] Street behind the merchant houses presumably owes its name to a house that once stood there.
Town Hall
The town hall in Poznań is undoubtedly the most magnificent Renaissance building in Wielkopolska and one of the finest in Poland. The earliest mention of it is from 1310 but it must have been built at the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries judging by the keystone in the cellar decorated with the coat of arms of the Czech dynasty of the Premyslids (Weneclaus II Premyslid was King of Poland in the years 1300-06). The Gothic town hall was a small one-storey building without a tower that was not added until the early sixteenth century. In the mid-sixteenth century a fire swept through the city and the town hall was partly destroyed. Giovanni Battista Quadro, an Italian architect from Lugano, enlarged the town hall westwards in order to strengthen the tower which was on the verge of collapsing.
In front of the town hall in the Old Market Square. This Baroque fountain is embellished with the crest of Poznań and bas-reliefs representing the four elements. The sculpture in the basin depicts a mythological scene: the abduction of Proserpine by Pluto. The fountain was designed by Augustyn Schöps in the years 1758-66.
The Synagogue – Wroniecka Street, near Stawna Street, Małe Garbary and the extension of Żydowska Street. The construction plans were made in 1902. The corner stone was set on 6th May 1906. The construction was completed on 5th May 1907. The last service was conducted on 9th September 1939. In 1941 the Nazis transformed the synagogue into a swimming pool for Wehrmacht soldiers and it is still used for that purpose nowadays. In 2003 the Jewish community took over the property right to the building
Having established the first archbishopric (968) near the ducal palatium and the rotunda founded in 965 on the island of Ostrów Tumski, Mieszko I built a pre-Romanesque three-aisled basilica. The shrine was damaged in the years 1038-39 and rebuilt in the following years (until 1058) in the Romanesque style. In the 13th c. an early Gothic presbytery was erected and in the mid-fourteenth century a new Gothic nave was built. The reconstruction of the church in the Gothic style continued in the 14th and 15th century, during which a new presbytery with a chevet and a row of chapels was added. In the 17th c. the church was extensively rebuilt in the Baroque style (most probably by Krzysztof Bonadura the Old, and later in accordance with a design by Pompeo and Antoni Ferrari). The church was damaged in a fire in 1772 and given a Baroque interior that survived until 1945.
Last February I spent three wonderful weeks in South India. The best part of my morning routine was a walk up a nearby mountain to visit a little ashram where I could sit and meditate in silence. On the way up, dotted here and there along the cobblestone path, sat a few of the local sculptors, selling their work and creating their next piece. Always I stopped to watch, fascinated.
These were simple men. They sat on the bare earth, their basic tools laid out before them. In one hand they held the stone they were working on, either soapstone or marble; in the other hand was the chisel. With all the patience in the world they carved away, scraping and sculpting to mould from the stone their works of art: effigies of gods, or elephants with babies in their innards, or ornate lampshades, candlesticks, incense holders, jewelery boxes, and, in one case, a snarling tiger. Each piece was perfectly formed.
They had no blueprint or model to work from. Each sculptor knew innately, with an uncanny surety and minute precision, how much to remove and at what angle, and did so as naturally and confidently as you and I would tap a keyboard. Sometimes he held the stone with his toes, and hammered (hammered!) away to get it right (see photo). A millimeter to the left or right would have ruined the finished product; but it never did. Symmetry and balance flowed from those sculptor hands, perfection in stone. It was as if the final product was already in the stone, waiting for the sculptor’s thought, the chisel’s touch. Some of these artworks may have lacked the sophistication of their expensive lookalikes in the boutiques of Chennai Airport, but each one was a miracle in stone. I was spellbound, hooked. I was probably their best customer in those three weeks; I bought several pieces to bring home as gifts.
There is something about the experience of reading a good book; that like a well-brewed cup of coffee, stays with you long after it is finished.
A little over a month ago, I had the opportunity to read Of Marriageable Age by Sharon Maas, in exchange for an honest review on a popular reading and book review website.
I don’t know what I was expecting, when I began–but it certainly wasn’t to find myself in the middle of the night staring entranced at the laptop, feverishly swishing at virtual pages; blatantly ignoring the loud, throbbing sleep signals pulsing in my forehead.
The next morning my husband woke up a little alarmed at what must have been my demented, unblinking expression; and suggested, a little gently, that it might be healthy for me to stop reading after midnight.
But good books, often by definition, tend to command your attention; and though I spent the next 24 hours walking around like a catatonic zombie, it was worth it. Read More...
Svetlana's Reads and Views:
What does a boy living in 1940s training to be a doctor in in Tamil has in common with a girl living in 1950s in British Guiana as well as another girl living in India during 1920s? This is one secret I will not reveal. I found Of Marriageable Age to be a beautiful and enchanting story of culture, forbidden love, hidden stories and secrets as well as secrets of philosophy to be written. Instantly I was drawn to the characters, although at times I had slight frustrations because every chapter alternated from a different point of view and in many cases years and years have passed when we meet the characters again and again, which also has caused me a few times to forget the family relationships.
My favorite character has to be Savitri, for strangely enough she has really nestled inside my heart, a caterpillar seeking to become a beautiful butterfly. The images I often recall from the book include Savitri as a young girl finding a soul-mate in her playmate, or else being compared to a butterfly. The butterfly as well as the title do play a huge role within the story, although I often thought that as a child, Savitri was already a butterfly, sort of a reverse of coming of age story I guess. Of Marriageable Age, the title, refers to the other two characters, Nat and Saroj, in particular when a girl turns to a woman, I believe. There are lots of twists and turns within the book, and what did impress me is that she begins to drop some hints early enough, although one cannot be certain until the very end of how three characters with three different backgrounds become linked. Read More...
This is an excerpt from a guest post I made on the blog www.womenfictionwriters.com:
I write my novels flying by the seat of my pants, without a plan or even an outline, not knowing where I’ll end up when I write that first word. I plunge blindly into the story with nothing more than a vague idea of a character, and go along wherever she takes me. I’m often surprised at the results. Sounds like a recipe for chaos, but there’s a method to the madness, and I quite clearly learned the method back in 1971-72, when, as a very naïve 19-year-old, I left my home in Guyana and plunged into the heart of the Amazon for the adventure of my life. I had no plan, no goal, and very little money; I just knew I had to go. I certainly had no idea that I’d end up learning not only how to navigate South America flying by the seat of my pants, but a whole new approach to life and, several decades later, how to write a novel.
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