Monday, April 28, 2008

Erinnern / Remembering / Souvenir / Ricordare / ПОМНИТЬ

To balance work, the most significant event of the day was a foray a few blocks away to the British Bookshop with Yvonne, who commuted an hour back to the apartment to retrieve a fresh book to read...since she devoured The Secret Life of Bees in two days flat. Our haul, several on sale, yea!: Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood; Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen; The Zahir, by Paul Coelho; Medea in Performance 1500-2000, by Edith Hall; Romantic Affinities – Portraits from an Age 1780-1830, by Rupert Christiansen; The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Apt. 3W, by Gabriel Brownstein; and then the ultimate finds priced at 1 Euro: Rain, by Brian Cathcart; Austria Blue Guide; and a long-time interest of mine, Good Vibes – Feng Shui, by Rosalyn Dexter. There are also discoveries to be made in the museum bookstore sale bins, like the large and beautifully printed volume of essays and photographs, a kind of memorial + textbook published ten years ago in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the Mauthausen concentration camp, available in a Museum Quartier bookstore for 3 Euros. There were at least a dozen of these books marked down to practically nothing. The essays are in five languages, matching those of the book’s title: Erinnern / Remembering / Souvenir / Ricordare / ПОМНИТЬ. Mauthausen, located in Austria, was categorized as a “Level Three Camp”--- the most brutal. Of the 200,000 who were interned in the camp during its seven years, more than half (105,000) died there. In his essay, Hans Marsalek describes how works of art, which were forbidden, strengthened the will of the prisoners to survive. He summarizes: “Art can transfigure truth; it can also rouse, cry out, mobilize and remind.”

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