Reading was nearly always my de facto leisure activity in the school (and university) holidays. The holidays have always represented a chance to escape deep into the pool of history and literature I have loved to soak myself in since childhood – and until recently only exceptional circumstances could change this.
Now, however, with three young children under the age of 7, I cannot count so readily on time to spare for my love of reading. Reading has to be squeezed in wherever possible; writing even more desperately so. As I type this, a 2 year old is trying to cover me with a blanket, while a 4 year olds is asking where she can find another biscuit. I break away from the screen to tell one to stop, the other that she can’t snack now as dinner will be ready soon. Back, now, to my screen.
As a tired parent of young children, I started early on to find that my capacity for sustained concentration on long sentences of text on page was substantially diminished. I would not – could not – turn to TV as a sort of substitute: I broke decisively with that medium as a vessel of entertainment way back in my early 20s. I still love movies – well, some – but TV I have for some time regarded as something like a cesspit in which I do not wish to spend any time. (As an aside, students I teach – who have often discovered this fact – question me with scrupulous zeal and disbelief when I reveal it; I do not know how successful are my attempts to convince them that life beyond TV is, in fact, rather worthwhile).
What medium, then, to seek when pages of text are too much to cope with after a long day, and the humdrum presentism of the TV screen seems too banal to contemplate? The answer, I have often found, lies in Art – and in my growing collection of Art books. It is a brilliantly relaxing activity to sit and take in great works of art, to glance across page after page of image and artistry, to be sucked into the worlds and scenes that great painters of the past have endeavoured to convey.
And, what’s more, this proves a very lovely opportunity for fun with toddlers (and older children too) – who love looking at the paintings, identifying what’s depicted, naming colours and characters they can spy. Earlier this evening my two year old flicked through 25 pages of Degas and 23 pages of Matisse (OK, not exactly an old master) with me and she delighted in much of what she saw, as did I. Not a bad way to relax after a day of work.
The bedtime story routine in recent weeks has become increasingly elaborate. First goes youngest daughter (age 1), who enjoys such classics as ‘Each Peach Pear Plum’ and ‘Peppa Pig goes to the Aquarium’. The older two sometimes sit and listen to these stories, which the little one enjoys hearing time after time, participating with special enthusiasm in the noises the animals make in the stories (among other sound effects). When her story is finished, she is carted off for a short feed, while the other two produce their own choice of stories for the evening.
Usually I accept their first choice, though I refuse to read Christmas stories at the wrong time of year, and occasionally I send them back to their rooms to choose again. I tend to refuse stories that are very long. A five to fifteen minute duration per child is the norm.
After we have finished the children’s choices of story, we move on finally to *my* book – and for the past few weeks, this has been a collection of short stories titled ‘Herodotus for young readers’. It reproduces – candidly, and in places even gorily, and often amusingly – various stories from the fifth century BC ‘Father of History writing’ himself. Most of the stories have enthralled the kids – though a few have caused them to lose interest. I have done my best to simplify the language of the stories in places as I have read, which enables the kids to follow better. Yesterday we completed this book, which touches on such varied topics as the Persian rulers Cyrus, Cambyses and Darius, Egyptian Pharaohs, the battle of Marathon and more.
My 4 year old daughter, in particular, has enjoyed the Herodotus stories: she has developed a habit of asking me earlier in the day: ‘Are we going to read a Herodotus story tonight? However, this evening she was in bed early, too tired for a story – and I was left reading only to my 6 year old son. Since we’d just finished the Herodotus book, I told him I was going to pick something new and different when it came to my story. So I went out and retrieved my copy of Chekhov’s Short Stories off the bookshelf outside my bedroom – before turning straight to a story called ‘Home’, in which a Russian lawyer holds a conversation with his 7 year old son, before telling him a bedtime story.
My son focussed intently on the story as I told it. He seemed to love especially Chekhov’s breaks from the main narrative of the story to depict the interior thoughts of the father as he discussed things with the little boy. ‘Focalisation’ is the clever-sounding literary term one might use to describe this technique. The father’s point in his conversation with his son is to admonish him for taking tobacco and smoking: throughout the conversation he reasons with himself about whether he is doing this effectively, and how he might take one approach or another in how he chooses to communicate with his son. He ends up inventing a bedtime story for his son, which, it seems, accomplishes the goal of conveying the message about the importance of not stealing and not smoking, effectively. This happens at the end of the story itself.
Chekhov’s lawyer father then muses to himself on the strangeness of the discussion he has just had with his young son, and on the strangeness of its apparent success:
“People would tell me it was the influence of beauty, artistic form,” he meditated. “It may be so, but that’s no comfort. It’s not the right way, all the same. . . . Why must morality and truth never be offered in their crude form, but only with embellishments, sweetened and gilded like pills? It’s not normal. . . . It’s falsification . . . deception . . . tricks . . . .” He thought of the jurymen to whom it was absolutely necessary to make a “speech,” of the general public who absorb history only from legends and historical novels, and of himself and how he had gathered an understanding of life not from sermons and laws, but from fables, novels, poems. “Medicine should be sweet, truth beautiful, and man has had this foolish habit since the days of Adam . . . though, indeed, perhaps it is all natural, and ought to be so. . . . There are many deceptions and delusions in nature that serve a purpose.” He set to work – but lazy, intimate thoughts still strayed through his mind for a good while”.
To be introduced in childhood to the writing of a profound author is perhaps a bit like being stung by an imperceptible wound, of which one’s contemporaries are none the wiser. An introduction to penetrative writing naturally enough causes wonder, even as it invites depth of contemplation, while opening the self to doubt and depth. Is it in some sense cruel to cause such a wound? My son’s tired eyes indeed swelled with wonder and tenderness at the end of the story. He had told me he was excited to read a new book when I picked this one off the shelf. The story had lived up to his expectations.
In a world which does so little to reward the sort of sensitivity and insight which exposure to beautiful literature can engender, to carry a love of stories can nonetheless somehow be a very rich blessing to those who love them. I know I am going to be asked to read some more Chekhov soon.
ad astra per mundum 