Gilding The Inevitable

"Death is crazy. It's not serious. We don't believe in God. So the cactus is a symbol of how we feel about the world and all of society."
Maurice Sinet, 87, dean of French political cartoonists

"It's a place of tranquility with no business or money."
"And I like the neighbours."
Benoit Delepine, French film director

The neighbours? They could be those not yet buried but destined to lie beside Mr. Delepine, when the Grim Reaper eventually comes to claim him. In the meantime, the crypt that will contain his mortal remains is built, and there are always others surrounding the tomb and its bronze monument in the Montmartre cemetery on Paris's Right Bank, neatly tucked into their own graves, respectable ones, not like his own awaiting his interment.

Which he and a handful of others who think the way that Mr. Delepine does, with their vision of the absurdity of life and its final scene of departure, the reason for which they are still searching their imaginations. Why do some trees live long lives [think millennia!], and tortoises, and parrots [think centuries!], for example, sponges, clams and bowhead whales, when humankind has such a paltry longevity for a creature so spectacularly endowed with brains, seldom used to their full potential?

Isn't it the kind of musing one might expect from a former Charlie Hebdo political cartoonist like Mr. Sinet? Well, he and a handful of drinking buddies and artists of one kind or another appear to have discussed such matters. And they appear also to have concluded that when they depart this mortal coil their remains should not be interred just anywhere, anyhow, but memorialized with a kind of universal finger of indifference to destiny and foreverafter.

Benoît Delépine, a film director, next to his future resting spot at the Montmartre cemetery in Paris. Credit Capucine Granier-Deferre for The New York Times

They combined resources and commissioned a bronze monument to illustrate their concert of thought. There are other crypts, tombs and mausoleums in the cemetery and some of them hold the remains of once-distinguished personages whose reputations march on before them. People like Edgar Degas and Francois Truffaut, as example, two who stand out among the 21,500 graves in the cemetery. But the cactus tomb is different, looks different, speaks a different language.

Montmartre cemetery's 21,500 graves include artists such as Edgar Degas and François Truffaut. Credit Capucine Granier-Deferre for The New York Times

Thus far, seven individuals whose sense of whimsy the tomb has appealed to have paid the 500 euros it takes to make their reservation. They represent a jazz critic, a few filmmakers, a television comedy writer, and a journalist. The tomb, erected in 2010, has a fitting inscription: "Die? Rather croak!" It is empty, devoid of any presence as yet. And 57-year-old Benoit Delepine visits on occasion, to look about him. The 'neighbours' of whom he spoke could be a reference to the roaming feral cats.

Why a cactus to be depicted, setting this one tomb quite apart from all its fellows? Why, why not a cactus? Its prickly exterior ensures that none approach too near, while in desperate straits its interior is capable of providing life-saving moisture for those who might otherwise expire for lack of water in a desert environment. And this city-of-the-dead is a kind of desert, isn't it? Deserted of life, of laughter, of gay abandon, of hope of ever leaving once ensconced.

The 87-year-old Mr. Sinet may well be the first of the cactus tomb's incarcerants. He underwent surgery in December; as the editor/author of a publication he named Sine Mensuel, he has made light of his age and health, writing assuredly of his recovery where "a bottle of Chablis Premier Cru is waiting for me in a bucket of ice", on his recovery.

Why Montmartre for their final resting place, albeit in a cactus tomb? Well for starters if the cemetery was good enough for Proust, Moliere and Balzac, Adolphe Sax, Hector Berlioz and Alexandre Dumas, it is most certainly good enough for their little group which shuns the ordinary and clasps to their bosom the way less travelled.

Besides which the Montmartre cemetery was originally placed in a locality considered to be bohemian. Art, anarchy and cabaret had their home there in the 19th century. Presumably, in one shady little corner, they still do.

The crypt of the former owner of the Moulin Rouge cabaret, Jean Bauchet, is guarded by a nude statue. Credit Capucine Granier-Deferre for The New York Times

"Always Laughing"

"These concerts, the people are sitting there, old people, desolated and ill, and they came to the concerts and this music was for them our food. Music was our food. Through making music we were kept alive."
"When we can play, it cannot be so terrible."
"This was especially for Jews a very, very hard time. I didn't mind, because I enjoyed to be a mother and I was full of enthusiasm about being a mother, so I didn't mind so much."
"We were poor, and we knew that they will send us away, and we knew already in this time that it was our end."
"When I went home from bringing her to this place I remember I had to stop in the middle of the street and I listened to a voice, an inner voice: 'Now, nobody can help you, not your husband, not your little child, not the doctor."
Alice Herz-Sommer, oldest known Holocaust survivor, 110 years of age

Alice Herz-Sommer, who has died at the age of 110. She spent two years in the Theresienstadt concentration camp during the Holocaust. Photograph: Sophia Evans for the Observer

"I hope you will come back. What I want to tell you is that I admire you, your playing, hours and hours, the patience and the beauty of the music."
Upstairs Nazi neighbour, 1943 Prague, Czechoslovakia

Just as well that Frederic Bohbot, producer of the documentary The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life, felt compelled to produce a short documentary film about this extraordinary woman, a pianist to the very last year of her life. The Oscar-nominated film, which he felt certain his elderly subject would be pleased to see receive the Oscar, will now not come to pass: "There was no question in mind, 'would she ever see the Oscars'." He seized the moment, as it were, now gone forever.


No matter, she had seen much else in her life, and despite the unbelievable grief and misery that life brought her she found solace in music and believed that joy could be found anywhere, even in the grimmest, most dreadful of all possible circumstances. And she was living proof, until yesterday, Sunday, February 23, that life was worth living and in living it happiness would be gained, despite unimaginable adversities.

Image from the book The Garden of Eden in Hell. Photograph: Droemer 

In 1942 her 73-year-old mother was selected for transport to Terezin. From there she would later go on to Treblinka, a notorious extermination camp located in (Terezin) Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia. She had herself taken her mother to her destination with death, to the place where her mother was assembled along with other Jews meant for transport to the city, then the death camp. And it was then that the realization of the future hit her.

She sought to stifle the fearfully horrifying thoughts that assailed her, in understanding that she and all the Jews of the country were to be consigned to death. It was her music, playing the piano, that gave her comfort. She became engrossed in the 24 Etudes of Frederic Chopin, adapting a ritual of artistic perfection to hold at bay the full recognition of the ritual of ethnic cleansing that Nazi Germany had embarked upon.

Alice and her son, Raphael. Photograph: Droemer
 
Her husband eventually died of typhus at another infamous death camp, Dachau. But before then, Alice Herz-Sommer with her son Stephan and her husband were all sent to the very same city of Terezin (Thereienstadt) where people such as she, classically trained musical professionals were encouraged to stage concerts. Of the 140,000 Jews who were dispatched to Terezin, 33,430 died there, with another 88,000 moved to Auschwitz and other death camps, where they too met their deaths.

Stephan and his mother Alice Herz-Sommer were two of the fewer than 20,000 who had somehow survived and were liberated when the Soviet army entered the camp in May of 1945. As she reminisced before the cameras for the documentary focusing on her life, she recalled herself "always laughing", despite the horrors that surrounded her. In performing the music that delighted and transported her, in performing to lift the spirits of others around her, she found joy.

She was born in Prague, and her sister gave her piano lessons when she was only five. She recalls meeting Franz Kafka, and remembers also a statement of his: "In this world, to bring up children: in this world?" She married Leopold Sommer in 1931 and their son was born two years before the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia. The night before her departure to Terezin, she recalled a Nazi who lived upstairs who called on her so he could tell her that he would miss her piano playing.

Alice Herz-Sommer left Czechoslovakia in 1949, moving to join her twin sister Mizzi in Jerusalem where she taught music at the Jerusalem Conservatory until 1986, the year she moved to London. Her son, Raphael, had a career as a concert cellist. He pre-deceased his mother, in 2001. A long life, a good life, despite the unspeakable tragedy that intervened between her youth and young adulthood and her final freedom from impending death.

"We are all the same", she said, "Good and bad". She held no bitterness in her soul.

The Inventor's Sting

"The pain in my soul is unbearable. I keep asking myself the same unsolvable question: If my assault rifle took people's lives, it means that I, Mikhail Kalashnikov ... son of a farmer and Orthodox Christian am responsible for people's deaths.
"The longer I live, the more often that question gets into my brain, the deeper I go in my thoughts and guesses about why the almighty allowed humans to have devilish desires of envy, greed and aggression. Everything changes, only a man and his thinking remain unchanged; he's just as greedy, evil, heartless and restless as before!"
Mikhail Kalashnikov, Russia

When small arms are spoken of and particularly in the context of rebellious insurgents, of terrorists, of third-world militaries, this is the rifle of choice, the AK-47 assault rifle, more familiarly known as the Kalashnikov. Mikhail Kalashnikov achieved celebrity status when, as an amateur designer, inventor, craftsman, tinker, he designed his infamous assault rifle. He died last month at age 94, his enterprise acknowledged in the wild popularity of his weapon.

What he invented has become the weapon of choice for millions around the world. The AK-47 has the distinction of being the world's most popular firearm, certainly one of the world's most dependable in conditions that bogged down more sophisticated and elegant weapons. There is an estimated one hundred million of them to be found in use around the globe. Initially the Soviet Union helped to disperse it to Third World insurgents, and licensed production in 30 countries.

National liberation fighters, revolutionaries and their ilk swore by its attributes. Not as accurate as more technically developed rifles of its type, it is reliable, guaranteed to perform in sandy or wet conditions posing an operational risk to most other weapons that tend to jam, like the American M-16. "During the Vietnam War, American soldiers would throw away their M-16s to grab AK-47s and bullets from dead Vietnamese soldiers", Mr. Kalashnikov said with pride in 2007.

"I sleep well. It's the politicians who are to blame for failing to come to an agreement and resorting to violence", he said defensively in 2007 during an interview with The Associated Press, on the 60-year anniversary of his dreadful creation. In that same year, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke of the AK-47 as a "symbol of the creative genius of our people". Presumably no one in close listening space to its utterance shuddered over the statement.

Closer to the time of his death Mikhail Kalashnikov felt far less certain about his role in designing a weapon that has been used to bring death to countless numbers of combatants and innocents alike. His simple and reliable device was a source of great pride to him, a humble man who had never received any measure of monetary reward as a result of its use since his invention had never been patented, and had become the property of the country he served.

The honours he received which included that of the Hero of Socialist Labour, and the Order of Lenin and Stalin Prize, sufficed to persuade him that he had served his country well. And that sentiment was emphasized before he died when Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church responded to the letter written to him by Mikhail Kalashnikov: "If the weapon is used to defend the Motherland, the Church supports both its creators and the servicemen using it."

The future, however, has overtaken the past to become the present. Just as the genie representing the genius of scientific molecular enquiry into atomic properties unleashed nuclear destruction on the world, an advance in mass destruction that cannot be recalled to its former state of a process waiting to be discovered, the genie of Mr. Kalashnikov's automatic rifle refuses likewise to take up its former, mysterious abode.

Yet Another (Surprise) In-Memoriam

In a way, in his inimitable way, he was Everyman. He characterized, skilfully enough to have the vast viewing public, easily bored, but transfixed by his thespian capabilities, wedded to the series he famously starred in, as Tony Soprano. A man conflicted as much by his humanity as he so obviously was by his thuggish lifestyle. He aspired to the best at what he did, and the theatrical James Gandolfini most certainly was good at portraying the fictional Tony Soprano.

He enjoyed a vast fan base. He may have been born James Gandolfini, aspiring to the big screen and finally discovering the role that would bring him fame and an enthusiastic following of people who just couldn't get enough viewing time of an Italian Mafia boss living a professionally tawdry and brutal lifestyle, compromised by self-doubts while his status as a 'typical' Italian husband and father concerned for the welfare of his family gave nuance and humanity to the character he portrayed.

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James Gandolfini from The Sopranos (Courtesy of HBO)

Tony Soprano and his motley, socially deviant, clumsy, violent, sometimes-wry, occasionally clever, and always wretchedly brutish crew fascinated viewers. Most devoted fans couldn't wait for the next installment in the series to be presented. Each of the cast became a well-recognized archetype of failed humanity. Each could be found to have some saving grace, hugely overshadowed by their character failings.

When the series finally ended, in a typical way for what it portrayed; no happy ending of such social dysfunction, scarred and imperfect personalities steeped in life's seamy values, accepting of no other way of life, James Gandolfini moved on to other roles. But his years of acting out Tony Soprano's life of uncertain and confused existence defined him as an actor. He was himself deeper and more successfully introspective than the man he portrayed.

But he was a man whom other kinds of demons finally took possession of. Did he ever present as the picture of a healthy, well-balanced physical specimen?  He was only 51 when a massive heart attack brought his life to an end. James Gandolfini clearly enjoyed life in all its manifestations. He had two marriages, and was father to three children, the last two still in infancy. He did not model himself to a healthy lifestyle, the result being three children less a father.

Does the photograph portraying him enjoying a meal just before his untimely death express that of a healthy man? He was corpulent, indulged in the over-use of alcohol and his choice of food in his daily consumption menus obviously left much to be desired. He was clearly headed toward compromised health morbidity and met it head on in the land of his ancestry.

A shock to those who thought so highly of his talents and viewed him with fond regard.

'Final pictures': A holidaymaker took this photograph of James Gandolfini enjoying dinner in Rome on Tuesday night - around 24 hours before he passed away suddenly following a suspected heart attack

Remembering A Life

"She made a mean beef Stroganoff, followed her husband from job to job and took eight years off from work to raise three children. 'The world's best mom', her son Matthew said".
Obituary, The New York Times -- Yvonne Brill, rocket scientist

No, really, this woman was incredibly extraordinary, exceptional before her time. Her time dated from working in rocket science in the mid-1940s, that's how much ahead of the times this woman was. Her fine scientific mind had another component; that of a wife and a mother sensitive to the needs of her family.

She has died at the age of eighty-eight, in Princeton, New Jersey. Celebrated for her development of a thruster used for positioning satellites in orbit above Earth. Celebrated otherwise as a mother whose passing is mourned by her children. In her time she was the only woman involved in rocket science when she was involved with the initial designs for an American satellite.

In her extremely important role as a mother, however, she chose to step away from the mind-bending brilliance of rocket science to devote her undivided time to raising her family of three children. When she was satisfied that she had performed that maternal obligation fully, she returned after a decade-and-a-half to formulate plans for her greatest achievement.

She worked for NASA in the 1980s, and was awarded the National Medal of Technology in 2011 by President Barack Obama during a White House ceremony acknowledging the design of her rocket system. The New York Times obituary which dwelled on her domestic accomplishments as much as her scientific prowess, unleashed a storm of controversy on social media.

People wrote of their outrage that this extraordinary woman, an accomplished and decorated scientist in a discipline that celebrates those rare minds of genius, would have her obituary pay tribute to her role as wife and above all, mother. Far too fundamental, a mere veneer over her far greater accomplishments as a scientist. Outrageously sexist.

Her son Matthew, celebrating The world's best mom", must surely be sighing, thinking of his mother's choice deliberation in surrendering herself to motherhood in all its complexities of nurturance, laying aside temporarily the scientist in herself, giving more than ample indication of which role she gave priority to.

Knowing that, when she felt she had accomplished what she had set out to do in that starring role, she would be prepared to resume her fruitfully rewarding life as a rocket scientist. The obituary critics are dead wrong.