Friday
Years ago I read a memoir written by Eliza Scott, my great grandmother, which included accounts of the novels that had been important to her when she was growing up in Barton, England. It has meant so much to me that I have been writing my own A Life Lived in Literature. The latest installment appears every Friday.
nIn 1995 I experienced my 15 minutes of fame when I was invited to participate in Slovenia’s 50th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day. This time Julia and I had both received grants to visit the country—a Fulbright for me, an international studies grant for Julia to study Slovenia’s high school graduation exams—and we were able to reconnect with former colleagues and friends.
As far as the year went, Slovenia following its break with Yugoslavia was not dramatically different from what it had been seven years before: while there were fewer regulations and more freedom of movement across borders, it remained the beautiful country it had been in 1987-88. The boys attended international programs that were embedded within the Slovenian school system, with Justin attending Gimnazija Bežigrad for high school and Darien and Toby Danila Kumar for elementary. The education was excellent and the fees reasonable and, to offset some of Justin’s tuition, I taught a senior poetry class to four international students at Bežigrad.
At the University of Ljubljana I met some extraordinary students and colleagues and gained new literary insights. Uroš Mozetič, who taught the British Modernists, alerted me the gender challenges of translating English into Slovenian. (When Auden writes, “Lay your sleeping head, my love/ Faithful on my faithless arm,” a Slovenian translator must indicate the gender of the loved one—for Auden, it would have been a man—while in English it can remain ambiguous.) I had the talented Cvetka Sokolov in a literary theory class—Cvetka has become a noted author of children’s and young adult fiction—and also Nada Grošelj, today one of Slovenia’s premier translators. (Nada taught herself English at a young age so that she could read Lord of the Rings.) Igor Maver opened my eyes to the dynamics of Slovenian-Australian immigrant fiction (which are also to be found in American immigrant fiction). I could go on and on.
Meanwhile, I was still reading to the boys at home, and because we had to rely on whatever was available at a local library, some of the readings were eclectic. For instance, we read Zane Grey’s Riders of the Purple Sage and, for years afterward, it became family practice to dramatically pronounce, at the most unexpected moments, the protagonist’s name, which inspires awe and dread in his enemies:
“Who are you? We are seven here.”
The rider dropped his sombrero and made a rapid movement, singular in that it left him somewhat crouched, arms bent and stiff, with the big black gun-sheaths swung round to the fore.
“Lassiter!”
It was Venters’s wondering, thrilling cry that bridged the fateful connection between the rider’s singular position and the dreaded name.
Here’s another line that has stayed with us, although this one involves a movie. We took a special trip to Paris and, on the bus, watched a videotape of Orca: The Killer Whale, a Moby Dick imitation and Jaws wannabe that is so awful as to be memorable. Among the dreadful lines is one that has become legendary in the Bates household. Umilak, the stereotypical wise old native guide, dismisses the whale expert who is counseling the Ahab-like sea captain with, “She knows it from university, I know it from my ancestors.” Almost as bad, and again delivered in oracular fashion, is, “He is not gone, he hides and waits in a sea cave.”
Along with Zane Grey, I remember reading to the boys E. Nesbit’s The Phoenix and the Carpet. We also tried out, but rejected as boring, Kenneth Grahame’s The Golden Age.
The boys made friends with their schoolmates, who were from all over the world (it helped that English was the lingua franca). I especially remember students from Poland and Kenya. Justin also became the ace pitcher on Ljubljana’s top youth baseball team, which did wonders for his confidence.
William Boyd, the African American student who had joined us in 1987 and sung in Yugoslavia’s major concert halls, again flew over (this time the government was less suspicious) and used the year to decide whether he would go into the ministry like his father. (By the end of the year, he decided in the affirmative, and he would succeed his father at Baltimore’s New Elizabeth Baptist Church.) Once again he was a singing sensation, performing at one point in the Christmas Eve service in the cathedral on Ljubljana’s central square. His reputation was such that a Slovenian playwright wrote him into an avant garde play, having him descend as an extraterrestrial being singing in a strange language. Unfortunately, the incense that accompanied the scene messed with Williams’s breathing so that he had to dial things down.
But the highlight of the year for me was reading Walt Whitman’s “Oh Captain, My Captain” to a national television audience to cap off Slovenia’s 50th year celebration of Victory in Europe Day (May 8, 1945). I was one of six readers from allied nations. We wore handmade suits that had been specially tailored for us and stood on a platform 20 feet in the air with the word “ZMAGA”—”Victory”—in large letters behind us.
It was an elaborate affair, held on the square in front of the National Assembly Building. Prior to our reading, we had watched as Slovenian concentration camp survivors paraded around the square, followed by the country’s famous Lipizzaner horses (dating back to when Slovenia had been part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire). Alpinist climbers scaled the surrounding buildings, the Slovenian national orchestra performed on the front steps, parachutists descended from airplanes, and beauty pageant winners holding ceremonial horns looked down from the rooftops. Although the Slovenes were ostensibly celebrating the day when Germany declared unconditional surrender in 1945, the affair was even more about celebrating Slovenia’s independence from Yugoslavia four years before.
What impressed me most, however, was that the Slovenes chose to cap the event with poetry. The readings were from Russia (Vladimir Mayakovsky), France (“Liberté by Paul Eluard), the United Kingdom (Shakespeare’s Henry V speech “Once more into the breach, dear friends”), a poem by Spain’s Garcia Lorca (killed by the fascists), Whitman, and a Slovenian poem read by a teenager representing the future.
The Shakespeare was actually read by a Scot, who expressed some ambivalence about the speech given how Scots are caricatured in the play. The Eluard was read by a French Canadian who didn’t know why she had been chosen. (I figured that, since Canada was also an ally, it was two for the price of one.)
For my part, I was at first unsure why a tragic poem like “Oh Captain,” which mourns the death of Lincoln, would be the choice to celebrate a victory, unless it was to commemorate the 28,000 Slovenians that died fighting the fascists (who built a fence enclosing Ljubljana during the war). The organizers then explained that Jimmy Carter had given the poem to Yugoslavia following the death of its president Josip Tito, a wonderful use for a great poem. I belted out the words (or lip synced them, having previously been recorded) as the Slovenian air force flew overhead and the Slovenian television audience sat riveted. Or not.
To capture this wonderful year, allow me to reference a film. In After Life, by the Japanese director Hirokazu Koreeda, people who have died end up in a netherworld until they can settle on a memory from their lives in which to spend eternity. Some people’s suggestions are rejected (say, a ride on a Disney roller coaster) and some people can’t make up their minds (in which case they remain in this limbo until they can). Then the scene is staged and the person passes on. The film prompts one to think of one’s own best moment, and my moment comes from this year in Slovenia.
We had a large king-sized bed in our apartment and sometimes, on a Sunday morning, the five of us would gather in it as I read aloud. I remember thinking at the time it was a perfect moment. So yes, if I had to choose, this is how I would spend eternity.
Past Installments of A Life Lived in Literature
A Life Lived in Literature: How It All Began (Sept. 5, 2025)
Early Reading Memories (Sept. 12, 2025)
Childhood Confusion: Reading to the Rescue (Sept. 19, 2025)
Confronting Segregation (Sept. 26, 2025)
School Reading vs. Real Reading (Oct. 10, 2025)
Childhood in Paris (Oct. 17, 2025)
My Time at Sewanee Military Academy (Oct. 24, 2025)
Existentialism for High School Seniors (Oct. 31, 2025)
Why I Majored in History, Not English (Nov. 7, 2025)
My College Search for Authenticity (Nov. 14, 2025)
On D. H. Lawrence and a Sexual Awakening (Nov. 21, 2025)
My Life as a Bildungsroman (Nov. 28, 2025)
Grad School: Literary Baptism by Fire (Dec. 5, 2025)
Early Scenes from a Marriage (Dec. 12, 2025)
Bringing Up Baby in Grad School (Dec. 19, 2025)
Grappling with Racism (Jan. 2, 2026)
Journal of a Young Teacher (Jan. 16, 2026)
Teaching and Reading in Yugoslavia (Jan. 23, 2026)
Life at 40: Barely Controlled Chaos (Jan 30, 2026)
From Secular Humanist to Christian Believer (Feb. 6 2025)
Looking Back at a Lifetime Together (Feb. 13, 2026)
