oandthegang tries desperately to keep up
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1Oandthegang
Footnote Hell
Four pages in to Doctor Zhivago was a footnote to the word 'zemsky', the first word in Russian in the text. Looking down for the explanation of zemsky I saw that there had been an earlier footnote to a paragraph in which Pasternak had discussed the horses pulling a two-horse open carriage, "the shaft horse pulling with the innate honesty of a simple soul while the off horse arched its neck like a swan and seemed to the uninitiated to be an inveterate idler who thought of nothing but prancing in time to the jangling of its bell". The footnote explained that the horses were harnessed in troika style although there were only two of them. In a troika the shaft horse trots and the two off horses canter. I was immediately as distracted as a witch finding a knot. How would the paces of a trotting and cantering horse compare? How would you harness them to allow for the different movements. The shaft horse must be the one with the high arched collar. Why? Why had this system arisen? Undoubtedly a cantering horse looks more dashing than a trotting horse, but what are the relative strengths of movement? (As a detour I mused on the fact that until the invention of photography people didn't know how horses legs worked at speed.) Horses seem to be more inclined to canter than to trot when covering ground. Is it more efficient? Etc., etc. The thread of the narrative was totally broken and there was nothing for it but to get up and have breakfast. During breakfast I thought about the distraction caused by the footnote, then the value of the footnote itself: an otherwise slightly peculiar sentence had been explained. I then speculated on the likely importance of the description of the horses, whether it was a foreshadowing of events to come, whether it was more immediately relevant to the discussion in the following paragraphs about the land question and the increasing violence of the peasants. Coming back to the book to write this post I was struck by the words "seemed to the uninitiated" with reference to the "idler" off horse. Was this comment freighting a particularly significant meaning? Simple souls are innately honest, their labour is obvious, but there are others who work as hard and whose labour is also needed to make the entire enterprise work, even though their labour is invisible. What does this foreshadow in the book?
So there you go. I have now been thinking about this paragraph one way or another for an hour. I'm unlikely to forget it. I will stare at troikas more closely. I have gained in knowledge but am now utterly distracted by the wretched horse analogy and have lost the flow of a narrative which I was enjoying. Excluding Zhivago's poems I have nearly 450 more pages to go. Fortunately it appears flicking quickly through the book that there are not very many footnotes in this edition (Vintage 2002 reissue of the Harvill 1958 translation)
Four pages in to Doctor Zhivago was a footnote to the word 'zemsky', the first word in Russian in the text. Looking down for the explanation of zemsky I saw that there had been an earlier footnote to a paragraph in which Pasternak had discussed the horses pulling a two-horse open carriage, "the shaft horse pulling with the innate honesty of a simple soul while the off horse arched its neck like a swan and seemed to the uninitiated to be an inveterate idler who thought of nothing but prancing in time to the jangling of its bell". The footnote explained that the horses were harnessed in troika style although there were only two of them. In a troika the shaft horse trots and the two off horses canter. I was immediately as distracted as a witch finding a knot. How would the paces of a trotting and cantering horse compare? How would you harness them to allow for the different movements. The shaft horse must be the one with the high arched collar. Why? Why had this system arisen? Undoubtedly a cantering horse looks more dashing than a trotting horse, but what are the relative strengths of movement? (As a detour I mused on the fact that until the invention of photography people didn't know how horses legs worked at speed.) Horses seem to be more inclined to canter than to trot when covering ground. Is it more efficient? Etc., etc. The thread of the narrative was totally broken and there was nothing for it but to get up and have breakfast. During breakfast I thought about the distraction caused by the footnote, then the value of the footnote itself: an otherwise slightly peculiar sentence had been explained. I then speculated on the likely importance of the description of the horses, whether it was a foreshadowing of events to come, whether it was more immediately relevant to the discussion in the following paragraphs about the land question and the increasing violence of the peasants. Coming back to the book to write this post I was struck by the words "seemed to the uninitiated" with reference to the "idler" off horse. Was this comment freighting a particularly significant meaning? Simple souls are innately honest, their labour is obvious, but there are others who work as hard and whose labour is also needed to make the entire enterprise work, even though their labour is invisible. What does this foreshadow in the book?
So there you go. I have now been thinking about this paragraph one way or another for an hour. I'm unlikely to forget it. I will stare at troikas more closely. I have gained in knowledge but am now utterly distracted by the wretched horse analogy and have lost the flow of a narrative which I was enjoying. Excluding Zhivago's poems I have nearly 450 more pages to go. Fortunately it appears flicking quickly through the book that there are not very many footnotes in this edition (Vintage 2002 reissue of the Harvill 1958 translation)
2FlorenceArt
I've never read Doctor Zhivago, but I remember a detailed description of the different kinds of carriages used by Michael Strogoff. I didn't remember about one horse trotting and the others cantering though. That does sound weird.
I sorry about your footnotes trouble but I have to confess they made me laugh!
I sorry about your footnotes trouble but I have to confess they made me laugh!
3AnnieMod
And yet - this is exactly how a troika moves - with one trotting horse and 2 cantering. :) They are usually harnessed differently as well - which helps with the different gait.
PS: Your footnotes troubles made me laugh -sorry - I know laughing at someone else's bad fortune is bad but... :)
PS: Your footnotes troubles made me laugh -sorry - I know laughing at someone else's bad fortune is bad but... :)
4Oandthegang
As I am now distracted from Zhivago I thought I'd get in another one of the reviews I've been meaning to write for ages.
This Boy - Alan Johnson
I loved this book and have given copies to friends, but don't know where to begin with this review. Words to adequately describe it fail me (though it won't stop me blethering on). Suffice it to say that it won the Orwell Prize in 2014 as well as the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize.
For those unfamiliar with Alan Johnson, the brief biographical note in this book states that he was born in May 1950 and was General Secretary of the Communication Workers Union before entering Parliament as a Labour MP in 1997. He had a number of cabinet positions in the Blair and Brown Governments, including Health Secretary and Education Secretary, and until 20 January 2011 was Shadow Chancellor the Exchequer.
OK, you say, so far so dry, another political memoir. But you would be so very very wrong.
Johnson has somehow written a memoir of a life of considerable hardship and poverty which in any other hands would surely have been eligible for the 'miserable lives' category but which in his is a remarkable social document recording the good and the bad with considerable objectivity. Furthermore it is a hymn of praise to the love and strength of his mother and of his sister, who at a very young age over responsibility for the family. It is a surprisingly warm and optimistic book.
Chapter 1 begins "My sister Linda and I were born either side of the creation of the National Health Service in 1948. I like to think our relative birth weights had something to do with Labour's achievement. In 1947, Linda weighed just 5lbs 4 oz and was so tiny that she slept on a pillow in a drawer, which was convenient given that there was no room for a cot. By contrast, I put the 'boom' into baby boomer, weighing in at 10lbs on 17 May 1950."
The Johnsons lived in conditions which it is shocking to be reminded pertained in London as recently as the mid twentieth century. (Depressingly it is probably the case that there are some people still living much like this, but hopefully less likely that such conditions will apply to entire neighbourhoods.) His parents and sister lived in one room until he was born, but after his birth the charitable trust which owned the building allowed them to move to a two room apartment higher up the stairs. All the buildings on the street had been condemned in the 1930s. There was no electricity in the building, and the only toilet, shared by upwards of five families, was in the concrete yard which backed onto the railway line. The gas street lamps were lit by a lamplighter who arrived by bicycle. Alan's mother told the children he was the Sandman, come to send them to sleep. The houses were finally declared unfit for human habitation and demolished in the 1960s. Because conditions in the buildings were so bad children and adults spent as much of their time as they could in the street, and life in those streets was recorded by the photojournalist Roger Mayne in a series of photographs taken between 1956 and 1961, some of which are reproduced in the book.
Mayne's photographs also record the ethnic mix of the neighbourhood where relations between the whites and the black West Indians were uneasy; the Notting Hill Riots happened in 1958 and in 1959 Oswald Mosley returned from France to stand as North Kensington candidate in the General Election for the Union Movement (a British Fascist organisation founded by Mosley).
Johnson's mother had been clever enough to win a scholarship at a good school, but her father, having forced her to work for it, refused to buy the uniform necessary for her to take it up. Although home was comfortable, her father's cruelty and the burden of having to run the house and look after her many siblings must have made any chance of escape appealing and to a girl of eighteen Steve Johnson, a charming musician, would have looked a good bet, but he turned out to be a feckless womanising ne'er do well, ultimately abandoning her, and despite chronic poor health Lily had to take whatever work she could get to support the family, reduced to walking the streets of Notting Hill with a bag to collect any coal fallen from delivery carts. (For anyone familiar with West London the book is fascinating for its reminders of the comparatively recent squalor of addresses now inhabited by bankers.)
For years Linda and Alan ensured that no hint of their home circumstances leaked out to anyone who might feel that intervention was necessary and when Lily died in 1964, aged forty-two, the same age at which her mother and grandmother had died, sixteen-year-old Linda dealt with the authorities, won the right for herself and Alan to continue to live alone together rather than go into care or to distant relatives, and took over all responsibility for Alan. (Linda's boyfriend, Mike, was also remarkable through all of this.)
By the end of 1968 the eighteen-year-old Alan had married, become a father, and begun the career with the Post Office which would ultimately take him to Parliament.
This really is a very good book, full of remarkable anecdotes (the story of the charity children's holiday is one of my favourites) which also give pause for thought.
After reading this I began his follow up, Please, Mister Postman, which I have not finished, perhaps because what I read of it was a perfectly adequate memoir of happy married life on an estate in a small town and early days of becoming involved in politics its subject matter was not so remarkable. Perhaps I should peek at the end to see if there is any interesting stuff about national politics and infighting in the Blair/Brown years of the Labour party, but then again.....
This Boy - Alan Johnson
I loved this book and have given copies to friends, but don't know where to begin with this review. Words to adequately describe it fail me (though it won't stop me blethering on). Suffice it to say that it won the Orwell Prize in 2014 as well as the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize.
For those unfamiliar with Alan Johnson, the brief biographical note in this book states that he was born in May 1950 and was General Secretary of the Communication Workers Union before entering Parliament as a Labour MP in 1997. He had a number of cabinet positions in the Blair and Brown Governments, including Health Secretary and Education Secretary, and until 20 January 2011 was Shadow Chancellor the Exchequer.
OK, you say, so far so dry, another political memoir. But you would be so very very wrong.
Johnson has somehow written a memoir of a life of considerable hardship and poverty which in any other hands would surely have been eligible for the 'miserable lives' category but which in his is a remarkable social document recording the good and the bad with considerable objectivity. Furthermore it is a hymn of praise to the love and strength of his mother and of his sister, who at a very young age over responsibility for the family. It is a surprisingly warm and optimistic book.
Chapter 1 begins "My sister Linda and I were born either side of the creation of the National Health Service in 1948. I like to think our relative birth weights had something to do with Labour's achievement. In 1947, Linda weighed just 5lbs 4 oz and was so tiny that she slept on a pillow in a drawer, which was convenient given that there was no room for a cot. By contrast, I put the 'boom' into baby boomer, weighing in at 10lbs on 17 May 1950."
The Johnsons lived in conditions which it is shocking to be reminded pertained in London as recently as the mid twentieth century. (Depressingly it is probably the case that there are some people still living much like this, but hopefully less likely that such conditions will apply to entire neighbourhoods.) His parents and sister lived in one room until he was born, but after his birth the charitable trust which owned the building allowed them to move to a two room apartment higher up the stairs. All the buildings on the street had been condemned in the 1930s. There was no electricity in the building, and the only toilet, shared by upwards of five families, was in the concrete yard which backed onto the railway line. The gas street lamps were lit by a lamplighter who arrived by bicycle. Alan's mother told the children he was the Sandman, come to send them to sleep. The houses were finally declared unfit for human habitation and demolished in the 1960s. Because conditions in the buildings were so bad children and adults spent as much of their time as they could in the street, and life in those streets was recorded by the photojournalist Roger Mayne in a series of photographs taken between 1956 and 1961, some of which are reproduced in the book.
Mayne's photographs also record the ethnic mix of the neighbourhood where relations between the whites and the black West Indians were uneasy; the Notting Hill Riots happened in 1958 and in 1959 Oswald Mosley returned from France to stand as North Kensington candidate in the General Election for the Union Movement (a British Fascist organisation founded by Mosley).
Johnson's mother had been clever enough to win a scholarship at a good school, but her father, having forced her to work for it, refused to buy the uniform necessary for her to take it up. Although home was comfortable, her father's cruelty and the burden of having to run the house and look after her many siblings must have made any chance of escape appealing and to a girl of eighteen Steve Johnson, a charming musician, would have looked a good bet, but he turned out to be a feckless womanising ne'er do well, ultimately abandoning her, and despite chronic poor health Lily had to take whatever work she could get to support the family, reduced to walking the streets of Notting Hill with a bag to collect any coal fallen from delivery carts. (For anyone familiar with West London the book is fascinating for its reminders of the comparatively recent squalor of addresses now inhabited by bankers.)
For years Linda and Alan ensured that no hint of their home circumstances leaked out to anyone who might feel that intervention was necessary and when Lily died in 1964, aged forty-two, the same age at which her mother and grandmother had died, sixteen-year-old Linda dealt with the authorities, won the right for herself and Alan to continue to live alone together rather than go into care or to distant relatives, and took over all responsibility for Alan. (Linda's boyfriend, Mike, was also remarkable through all of this.)
By the end of 1968 the eighteen-year-old Alan had married, become a father, and begun the career with the Post Office which would ultimately take him to Parliament.
This really is a very good book, full of remarkable anecdotes (the story of the charity children's holiday is one of my favourites) which also give pause for thought.
After reading this I began his follow up, Please, Mister Postman, which I have not finished, perhaps because what I read of it was a perfectly adequate memoir of happy married life on an estate in a small town and early days of becoming involved in politics its subject matter was not so remarkable. Perhaps I should peek at the end to see if there is any interesting stuff about national politics and infighting in the Blair/Brown years of the Labour party, but then again.....
5SassyLassy
Perhaps I should peek at the end to see if there is any interesting stuff about national politics and infighting in the Blair/Brown years of the Labour party, but then again..... I say no distractions, back to Zhivago where you have to be fully immersed!
With regard to the troika gaits. The Equine Heritage Museum explains it this way: The troika is the only harness combination with different gaits of the horses. The centre horse canters while the outer horses trot. This allows them to cover ground very quickly (up to 31 mph) without wearing out the horses. For much of the rest of the world, the three horses travel at a much slower pace.
This picture seems to show the Russian troika pacing. Edited to say the pacing of the Russian troika. This does not look like a Russian excursion.
http://www.equineheritagemuseum.com/the-modern-horse/types-of-carriage-turnouts-...
With regard to the troika gaits. The Equine Heritage Museum explains it this way: The troika is the only harness combination with different gaits of the horses. The centre horse canters while the outer horses trot. This allows them to cover ground very quickly (up to 31 mph) without wearing out the horses. For much of the rest of the world, the three horses travel at a much slower pace.
This picture seems to show the Russian troika pacing. Edited to say the pacing of the Russian troika. This does not look like a Russian excursion.
http://www.equineheritagemuseum.com/the-modern-horse/types-of-carriage-turnouts-...
6FlorenceArt
>4 Oandthegang: Sounds very interesting!
7lilisin
>1 Oandthegang:
And now you've left me wondering what the difference is between a trot and a canter!
And now you've left me wondering what the difference is between a trot and a canter!
8Oandthegang
>5 SassyLassy: Now I'm even more puzzled. Will check out the website.
>7 lilisin: A canter is a much more comfortable ride!
Cantering is a sort of casual lollopping run, the sort of thing a horse might do when it spots the possibility of hand outs, and sounds like diddle-ump, diddle-ump, diddle-ump, with the emphasis on the ump. It is a more gathered movement than a gallop and gives wonderful opportunities for flouncing manes and tails.
Trotting is closer to fast walking and if you are on the horse is probably much like being on the shoulders of someone who is running on the spot. For comfort a solo rider will often 'post', i.e. rise off the saddle and rest on it again in time to the horse's gait to avoid brains being scrambled by the vibration (the rider's not the horse's. OK so I exaggerate a bit.) When riders are ceremonially en masse, as in musical rides or taking the Queen somewhere, the riders don't post, because it would look very untidy having them all going up and down out of synch. Trotting looks business-like and gets you about quicker, and the beat of the hooves is even without accent. There is a specially extended form of trotting used in buggy racing, where the horses go very fast but never break into a gallop, but it doesn't look much like normal trotting.
Clearly one of the gaits is less tiring than the other. I'd've thought the canter, but as troops trot rather than canter over long distances I guess it's the trot.
I'm sure someone will provide a much more sensible explanation, and now I'm going to look for one myself!
>7 lilisin: A canter is a much more comfortable ride!
Cantering is a sort of casual lollopping run, the sort of thing a horse might do when it spots the possibility of hand outs, and sounds like diddle-ump, diddle-ump, diddle-ump, with the emphasis on the ump. It is a more gathered movement than a gallop and gives wonderful opportunities for flouncing manes and tails.
Trotting is closer to fast walking and if you are on the horse is probably much like being on the shoulders of someone who is running on the spot. For comfort a solo rider will often 'post', i.e. rise off the saddle and rest on it again in time to the horse's gait to avoid brains being scrambled by the vibration (the rider's not the horse's. OK so I exaggerate a bit.) When riders are ceremonially en masse, as in musical rides or taking the Queen somewhere, the riders don't post, because it would look very untidy having them all going up and down out of synch. Trotting looks business-like and gets you about quicker, and the beat of the hooves is even without accent. There is a specially extended form of trotting used in buggy racing, where the horses go very fast but never break into a gallop, but it doesn't look much like normal trotting.
Clearly one of the gaits is less tiring than the other. I'd've thought the canter, but as troops trot rather than canter over long distances I guess it's the trot.
I'm sure someone will provide a much more sensible explanation, and now I'm going to look for one myself!
10RidgewayGirl
Your discussion on the various gaits of the troika are fascinating. I'm as ignorant on the subject as when I began (I think I'll need to go find a YouTube video and see it in action), but I am entertained.
And I'll keep an eye out for the Alan Johnson. Your review has me ready to read it.
And I'll keep an eye out for the Alan Johnson. Your review has me ready to read it.
11Oandthegang
>10 RidgewayGirl: Perhaps you should watch the movie of Doctor Zhivago. Bound to be troikas, or at very least pairs of horses harnessed troika style!
12lilisin
>8 Oandthegang:
Thank you for the explanation although like >10 RidgewayGirl:, I think I'll need a youtube video to really understand the difference. I have seen the movie though and it is beautiful (if even just for the music) but never paid much attention to the gallop/canter/trot of the horse. Not to say I haven't noticed differences, just that I can't name the different stances.
Just like I understand the difference between a toe-loop, an axel, a loop and a salchow in figure skating but I can't actually see the difference other than sometimes they go into the jump backwards and other times forwards.
Thank you for the explanation although like >10 RidgewayGirl:, I think I'll need a youtube video to really understand the difference. I have seen the movie though and it is beautiful (if even just for the music) but never paid much attention to the gallop/canter/trot of the horse. Not to say I haven't noticed differences, just that I can't name the different stances.
Just like I understand the difference between a toe-loop, an axel, a loop and a salchow in figure skating but I can't actually see the difference other than sometimes they go into the jump backwards and other times forwards.
