Inter-European Racism is the Best
Pfuel [a German military general] was one of those hopelessly opinionated, arrogant men who would go to the stake for their own ideas, self-assured as only a German can be, because only a German could be self-assured on the basis of an abstract idea - science, the supposed knowledge of absolute truth. A Frenchman is self-assured because he sees himself as devastatingly charming, mentally and physically, to men and women alike. An Englishman is self-assured on the grounds that he is a citizen of the best-organised state in the world, and also because as an Englishman he always knows the right thing to do and everything he does, because he is an Englishman, must be right. An Italian is self-assured because he gets excited and easily forgets himself and everybody else. A Russian is self-assured because he knows nothing, and doesn't want to know anything because he doesn't believe you can know anything completely. A self-assured German is the worst of the lot, the most stolid and the most disgusting, because he imagines he knows the truth through a branch of science that is entirely hie invention, though he sees it as absolute truth.
Tolstoy: War and Peace, Volume III, Part I (Book IX), Chapter 10.
War and Peace has got to be the best book ever written. And, although I've only read this one translation, I'm sure that Anthony Briggs's has got to be a top-class one. I guess you see it in the colloquialisms especially. But more generally, Briggs's text is full of life, and the language is always utterly natural and clear. And not least, it comes in a great one-volume edition which can fit in your pocket.
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I'm back in St. Andrews, having spent a few days in Ireland to hear the Maynooth Guitar Ensemble play a piece I wrote for them. They played it quite well: there were mistakes, certainly, but they got the sense of the piece, the dynamics were fantastic, and so I am very happy. I made it too difficult, despite my best efforts to make it really easy. The rest of the pieces in the concert were better played. The ensemble is much better than it was when I was around: it's still very much a student ensemble, but they really get music into their performances. It's especially admirable when you consider that many of the members have only played classical guitar for two years or less, and have never played in a classical ensemble before. The concert was recorded, so when I get the recording I'll put it up here with a PDF score.
But I'm so glad to be back in St. Andrews. I can't express how much I love this place. I enjoyed my time in Maynooth, meeting up with old friends and talking about classical music (a virtual impossibility here), but I think that I enjoyed my time there only because of these good friends. I don't know why this is. It could just be because these friends, many of whom were first years when I was in Maynooth, are now final years, and so all of their friends are younger still; and so I got the feeling that I was surrounded by a bunch of kids. And I somehow got the sense that no-one - apart from my friends, of course - was intensely interested in anything, or really intelligent, or saw themselves as a part of the international community in a substantial sense. Here, I feel that everyone is like this. I wonder if it is related to the huge percentage (80%+?) of non-British Isles students in St. Andrews. Or the large postgraduate population. Or that St. Andrews is hard to get into, so the level of intellect is that much higher. Or that all my friends in St. Andrews study philosophy and other book-heavy subjects, whilst my friends in Maynooth study music, and so my St. Andrews friends are better at ideas and words and such, whilst my Maynooth friends are better at, well, music. I don't know; but I'm hugely struck by whatever the difference and its causes are. I miss this place every time I leave.
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I saw Kick Ass the other day. It's amazing. It's a genuinely great film, written and directed by people with a really good sense of language and style and all the rest of it. It will become a cult movie, I'm sure of it.