The art of captaincy - Mike Brearly

“In Cricket, the role of the captain has been consistently underrated in recent years. This should hardly surprise us. We have been living in an era in which the measurable has increasingly become the predominant mode of valuation.” (Brearly, 1985, p.1).

one key role of the captain is “willing to take in and think about the anxiety of those who work in the team.” (Brearly, 1985, p.4). “This function of containing anxiety and handing it back in a form that can be thought about.” (Brearly, 1985, p.4).

“there is no substitute for the leader’s capacity to bring people together in a common task, so that people come to take pleasure in their joint individual work.” (Brearly, 1985, p.7).

“A French general was once tactlessly asked, after a famous victory, if it hadn’t really been won by his second-in-command. He thought for some time before answering. ‘Maybe so,’ he replied. ‘But one thing is certain: if the battle had been lost I would have lost it.” (Brearly, 1985, p.10).

“Certainly the best play is not necessarily an adequate captain, any more than the best salesman makes a sales manager. Indeed, the outstandingly gifted may well find it difficult to understand the problems of the average performer in their field.” (Brearly, 1985, p.40).

“Towards the end of his career, his wish to ‘make things happen’ had an unsettling effect on the team, especially on the bowlers; for Brian found it hard to let things happen of their own accord, or to allow the bowlers to find a rhythm and to force a batsman into error by tying him down first.” (Brearly, 1985, p.41).

“But the building may first require demolition. Space may be needed for new acquisition or for the development of those already there.” (Brearly, 1985, p.58).

“It is no use having all the knowledge of technique in the world you don’t know, as a coach, how and when to impart it. There horse may not want to drink – or he may be unable to.” (Brearly, 1985, p.68).

“Cricket is so much a matter of confidence; no one can learn unless he believes that he can learn, and that he’s worth teaching. For a batsman very much out of form, Tiger’s instructions would often be that he should arrive early and have a long net, on a good wicket, with bowlers who bowled to his strengths. We need constantly to be reminded of our good qualities in order to get into a frame of mind which is suitable for amending our faults.” (Brearly, 1985, p.68-9).

“Too many wish to turn others into imitations of themselves.” (Brearly, 1985, p.70).

“Yet true fairness is hard to assess. It is simply foolish not to give your best bowlers the first chance on a helpful pitch. And you are bound to keep them going for longer before taking them off when you know how reliably they have taken wickets in such conditions in the past.” (Brearly, 1985, p.172).

“I have argued that an essential ingredient in good captaincy consists of a captain’s respect for his own team. I will end this chapter by remarking that the complete captain also shows respect for the crowd, the umpires and the opposition.” (Brearly, 1985, p.176).

“there is no point in brilliant tactical ideas if they flummox the bowler more than the batsman.” (Brearly, 1985, p.187).

 “Winning is not the be-all and end-all of sport. In cricket the captain has the prime responsibility for the standard of behaviour of the team.” (Brearly, 1985, p.237).

“I would support the now unfashionable view that one of cricket’s lessons for life is to teach its players to take the rough with the smooth and, in particular, to accept the umpire’s decisions, however erroneous.” (Brearly, 1985, p.248).

“However, people do have ideas on their own; and having fairly regular forums in which they can be expressed has the benefits for everyone. The captain has the benefit of ideas from all sources. If they differ from his, he discovers where the opposition lies, and what form it takes. Players learn the habit of thinking for themselves, and not only about their own specialism.” (Brearly, 1985, p.259).

“As captain, one needs several steadily reliable players who are willing to give advice sulking if one does not follow it.” (Brearly, 1985, p.262).

“justice does not reduce so simply to the same treatment for each individual, since different individuals have different needs.” (Brearly, 1985, p.265). “he would ask himself eachday what the members of the party wanted from him.” (Brearly, 1985, p.266).

“Nevertheless, whatever the captain’s style, he must let the team know he is pleased with them when they do well, and feels for them when not. His concern may surprise. I was quite touched when, a week after the event, Greig told me that he could have cried when I ran myself out early in the Delhi.” (Brearly, 1985, p.266).

 “on one point they would all agree. A captain must instill the will to win.” (Brearly, 1985, p.273).

War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

This book about young aristocratic Russians in the time of the Napoleonic war  is certainly beyond my complete comprehension. Hence I’ll focus on 2 themes that stood out to me: power and the pursuit of happiness.

The war provides the perfect background to explore the theme of power and influence over people. „war began. In other words, an event took place which defied human reason and all human nature. Millions of men set out to inflict on one another untold evils – deception, treachery, robbery, forgery, counterfeiting, theft, arson and murder – on a scale unheard of in the animals of law-courts down the centuries and all over the world, though at the time the men responsible did not think of these deeds as crimes.“ (Tolstoy, 1868, p.667). „Every last man oft hem clearly knew beyond doubt they were all criminals, and they had to move quickly to hide all traces of their crime.“ (Tolstoy, 1868, p.1073).

It is power that binds people together in groups: “Pierre could not see these people as individuals; he saw them all together and in movement.“ (Tolstoy, 1868, p.1131).

„There are two sides to life for every individual: a personal life, in which his freedom exists in proportion to the abstract nature of his interests, and an elemental life within the swarm of humanity, in which a man inevitable follows laws laid down for him.“ (Tolstoy, 1868, p.669).

But power is not simple: Leaders can’t order and events will happen. Orders don’t correspond to events.

“From the incalculable series of Napoleon’s orders that were never carried out, one series of orders that were carried out, not because of any essential difference between these and the ones not carried out, but simply because this series happened to correspond with the course of events bringing the French soldiers into Russia.” (Tolstoy, 1868, p.1337).

„It was necessary for those millions of men who wielded the real power – soldiers, shooting or bringing up supplies and guns – to do what they were told by one or two feeble individuals.“ (Tolstoy, 1868, p.669). „If any of these causes had been missing, nothing could have happened.“ (Tolstoy, 1868, p.669).

So what is the role of leader and what is the role of those being led - the leaders provide the moral: „Since time began and men started killing each other, no man has ever committed such a crime against one of his fellows without comforting himself with the same idea. This idea is ‚the public good’, a supposed benefit for other people. No person in control of his passions is ever aware of this benefit, but a man fresh from committing such a crime always knows certain where the benefit lies. Rostropchin knew.“ (Tolstoy, 1868, p.990).

“(1) Power is a relationship between a given person and other persons by which the less directly a person participates in a collective enterprise the more involved he is in expressing opinions and theories about it and providing justification for it.” (Tolstoy, 1868, p.1341).

“(2) The movement of peoples is determined not as historians have supposed, by the exercise of power or the intellect or both together, but by the actions of all involved; all the people who come together in such a way that those who participate most directly in the activity assume the least responsibility for it and vice versa.” (Tolstoy, 1868, p.1341). “But these justifications are very necessary at the time, shifting moral responsibility away from the men who produce the events. These short-term measures operate like brushes on the front of a train clearing the rails ahead.” (Tolstoy, 1868, p.1339).

“In moral terms power is the cause of the event; in physical terms it is those who are subject to that power.” (Tolstoy, 1868, p.1341).

The second theme is the pursuit of happiness or a purpose in life: The main characters live in Russian aristocratic society - a society that favours shallowness and vanity.

Instinctively the main characters know, that this is no way of living and is the source of their unhappiness. When Andrey Bolkonsky lies severely wounded on the battle field: „How can it be that I’ve never seen that lofty sky before? Oh, how happy I am to have found it last. Yes! It’s all vanity, it’s all an illusion, everything except that infinite sky. There’s nothing, nothing – that’s all there is. But there isn’t even that. There’s nothing but stillness and peace. Thank God for that!“ (Tolstoy, 1868, p.299).

So all main characters in the book look for a purpose in life and they try out pretty much everything – a journey through plenty of philosophical ideas. But all of them fail – but towards the end Tolstoy develops his unique way.

A main source of happiness is the feeling of being part of a whole and containing this whole in oneself: „Pierre glanced up at the sky and the play oft he stars receding into the depths. ‚And it’s all mine and it’s all within me, and it all adds up to me!’ thought Pierre.“ (Tolstoy, 1868, p.1134).  In a dream Pierre recognizes this idea clearer: “’Wait a minute,’ said the little old man. And he showed Pierre a globe. This globe was a living thing, a shimmering ball consisted of drops closely compressed. And the drops were in constant movement and flux and sometimes dissolving from many into one, sometimes breaking down from one into many. Each drop was trying to spread out and take up as much space as possible, but all the others, wanting to do the same, squeezed it back, absorbing it or merging into it. ‘This is life,’ said the little old teacher. (…) God is in the middle and each drop tries to expand and reflect Him on the largest possible scale. And it grows, gets absorbed and compressed, disappears from the surface, sinks down into depths and bubbles up again. That’s what happened to him, Karatayev: he has been absorbed and he’s disappeared.” (Tolstoy, 1868, p.1185).

Being part of a whole and containing it, leads to unconditional love of the world:

„’Yes, it’s love ...’ (his thoughts were lucidity itself), ‚but not the kind of love that loves for a reason, a purpose, a cause, but the kind of love I felt for the first time when I was on my death bed and I saw essence of the soul, love that seeks no object. (…)  .... When you love with human love you can change from love to hatred, but divine love cannot change. Nothing, not even death, nothing can destroy it. It is the essence of the soul.“ (Tolstoy, 1868, p.1021).

Unconditional love also implies the danger of being indifferent to the world and life:

„Karatayev enjoyed no attachements, no friendships, no love in any sense of these words that meant anything to Pierre, yet he loved and showed affection to every creature he came across in life, especially people, no particular people, just those who happened tob e there before his eyes. He loved his dog, his comrades, the French, and he loved Pierre, his neighbour. But Pierre felt that for all the warmth and affection Karatayev showed him (an instinctive tribute to Pierre’s spirituality), he wouldn’t suffer a moment’s sorrow if they were to part.“ (Tolstoy, 1868, p.1080).

Thus there is a catch to this principle uncondititional love. It more or less means renouncing life. „Loving everything and everybody, always sacrificing oneself for the sake of love, meant loving no one person, and not living this earthly life. And the more he absorbed this principle of love, the easier he found it to renounce life, and the more effectively he destroyed the dreadful barrier that the absence of love sets up between life and death.“ (Tolstoy, 1868, p.1091).

Thus love should be unconditional but it never ends up being undiscriminating. The character who live a happy life in ‘War and Peace’ always find a partner that they cannot help but love more than the rest of the world. „It was a sudden awareness that life, seen though his love for Natasha, was still precious.“ (Tolstoy, 1868, p.1091). „’Love gets in the way of death. Love is life. Every single thing I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is – everything exists . only because I love. Everything is bound up with love, and love alone. Love is God, and dying means me, a tiny particle of love, going back to ist universal and eternal source.’“ (Tolstoy, 1868, p.1093).

So in the end, this love means restriction in the world. So for Tolstoy happiness doesn’t exist in freedom, but in restriction: „It was Natasha, and he loved her. (...) By now Pierre’s embarrassment had almost disappeared, but he felt that all his former freedom had disappeared with it. He felt that now there was a judge listening to his every word and every action, someone whose judgement mattered more than the judgement of everybody else in the world.“ (Tolstoy, 1868, p.1241).

And this restriction applies not only to love, but also to the material world:

„It was only here and now that Pierre had fully appreciated fort he first time in his life the enjoymentof eating when you are hungry, drinking when you are thirsty, sleeping when you are tired,keeping warm when it is cold and talking to a fellow creature when you feel like talking and you want to hear men’s voices. Through deprivation Pierre now saw the satisfaction of his basic needs – good food, cleanliness and freedom – as the ultimate happiness, and the choice of an occupation or lifestyle, now that this choice was so restricted, seemed such a simply matter that he forgot that a surfeit of luxury takes all the pleasure oout of satisfying our basic needs and maximum freedom in the choice of occupation, which had been provided for him through education, wealth and his position in society makes the actual choice of an occupation extraordinarily difficult, because it destroys the need and desire for any such thing.“ (Tolstoy, 1868, p.1126).

“In his prison shed Pierre had learnt, though his whole being rather than his intellect, through the process of living itself, that man was created for happiness, and happiness lies within, in the satisfaction of natural human needs, and any unhappiness arises from excess rather than deficiency. (…) He had learnt that just as there is no situation in the world in which a man can be happy and perfectly free, neither is there any situation in which he should be unhappy and not free. He had learnt that there is a limit to suffering and a limit to freedom, and those limits are never far away (…) He learnt that when he had married his wife by his own free will (so he had thought), he had been no freer than he was now when they locked him up in a stable for the night.” (Tolstoy, 1868, p.1179).

The best purpose in life is no purpose “And from habit he would start asking himself questions. ‘What comes next, then? What am I going to do?’ And immediately he knew the answer: ‘Nothing, I’m just going to live. Oh, it’s marvellous!’. And it was the lack of any purpose that gave him the complete and joyous sense of freedom underlying his present happiness. He could seek no purpose now, because now he had faith – not faith in principles, words or ideas, but faith in a living God of feeling and experience.” (Tolstoy, 1868, p.1230).

Advertising Works 21 - Marie Oldham

Much needed faith in advertising effectiveness awards restored.

Aleksandr Puskin – Die Erzählungen 1999

This is one of the most musical books I have ever read. Calm and musically in rhythm at the same time.

„Dieser Mensch schreibt: Die edelste aller Errungenschaften des Menschen war dieses stolze, feurige Tier usw. Warum sagt er nicht einfach: das Pferd.“ (Puskin, 1999, p.5).„Genauigkeit und Kürze – das sind die ersten Eigenschaften der Prosa.“ (Puskin, 1999, p.6).

„wissen Sie, wie mir eine Ausländerin die Strenge und Reinheit der Petersburger Sitten erklärte? Sie versicherte mich, für Liebesabenteuer seien unsere Winternächte zu kalt, und unsere Sommernächte zu hell.“ (Puskin, 1999, p.9).

„Er hatte Bücher, zum große Teil militärische, aber auch Romane. Er gab sie einem gern zum lesen, ohne je eines zurückzuverlangen; dafür gab er nie ein Buch zurück, das er selbst sich geliehen hatte.“ (Puskin, 1999, p.48).

„Einmal saßen an die zehn unserer Offiziere bei Silvio zu Tisch. Sie tranken wie gewohnt, das heißt sehr viel.“ (Puskin, 1999, p.48).

„Mangel an Mut entschuldigen am wenigsten junge Menschen, die gewohnt sind, in der Tapferkeit den Gipfel aller menschlichen Tugenden und die Entschuldigung aller möglichen Laster zu sehen.“ (Puskin, 1999, p.51).

„Die düstere Blässe, die blitzenden Augen und der dichte Rauch, der seinem Munde entströmte, verliehen ihm das Äußere eines wahren Teufels.“ (Puskin, 1999, p.52).

„Marja Gavrilovna war mit französischen Romanen erzogen worden, folglich war sie verliebt.“ (Puskin, 1999, p.64).

„Vergebens versprach sie sich selbst, daß ihr Geplauder die Grenzen des Anstandes nicht überschritten habe, daß dieser Streich keine Folgen haben könnte, ihr Gewissen murrte lauter als ihr Verstand.“ (Puskin, 1999, p.119).

„Wenn Gott mir Leser schickt, so könnte es diese interessieren zu erfahren, auf welche Weise ich zu dem Entschluß gelangte, die Geschichte des Dorfes Gorjuchino zu schreiben.“ (Puskin, 1999, p.134).

„Die Männer heiraten gewöhnlich im 13. Lebensjahr 20-jährige Jungfern. Die Frauen prügelten die Männer die Frauen; so hatten beide Geschlechter die Zeit ihrer Herrschaft, und so war das Gleichgewicht gewahrt.“ (Puskin, 1999, p.149).

„Und die Nichtachtung von Leuten, die du verachtest, kann dich verdrießen?!“ (Puskin, 1999, p.164).

„Ihr Ton mißfiel, ihre Reden erschienen zu lang, ihre Ärmel zu kurz.“ (Puskin, 1999, p.171).

„Und Sie konnten glauben, die Franzosen hätten sich die Hölle gegraben! Nein, nein, die Russen, die Russen haben Moskau in Brand gesteckt, Schreckliche, barbarische Großmut.“ (Puskin, 1999, p.82). „Oh, dann könnte ich stolz sein auf den Namen einer Russin! Die ganze Welt würde dieses große Opfer bewundern! Jetzt schreckt mich nicht einmal mehr unser Niedergang, unsere Ehre ist gerettet; nie wieder wird Europa sich erdreisten, Krieg zu führen gegen ein Volk, das sich selber die Hände abhackt und seine Hauptstadt in Brand steckt.

Ihre Augen blitzten nur so, ihre Stimme klang hell. Ich umarmte sie, unsere Tränen der edlen Begeisterung mischten sich in die heißen Gebete für das Vaterland. Du weißt es nicht? Sagte Polina zu mir mit begeistertet Miene. – Dein Bruder ... er ist glücklich, er ist nicht in Gefangenschaft – freue dich: er ist gefallen für die Rettung Rußlands.

Ich schrie auf und fiel ihr ohnmächtig in die Arme.“ (Puskin, 1999, p.183).

An Introduction to English Poetry – James Fenton 2003

Short, simple book: it does what it says on the tin.

„The iambic line, with its characteristic forward movement from short to long, or light to heavy, or unstressed to stressed, is the quintessential measure of English verse.“ (Fenton, 2003, p.39).

„The four foot iambic line is a great device, and has been used by the poet desirous of greater speed and more emphatic rhythm.“ (Fenton, 2003, p.53).

„In an inflected language such as Italian, a word may rhyme simply because it has the same grammatical form as another, simply because it terminates in –ato or –ando or –are (these are all feminine rhymes).“ (Fenton, 2003, p.67). „In English poetry, with ist reliance on masculine rhymes, rhymes themselves are harder to find, and they have a rather higher degree of significance.“ (Fenton, 2003, p.67).

„When there are more than eight lines in a stanza, something very grand is being attempted or achieved.“ (Fenton, 2003, p.71).

„At fourteen lines in iambic pentameters, the sonnet is slightly too long to be considered as a stanza. (...) and although a sonnet sequence could have an overarching narrative, a poem made up of sonnets would still feel like a poem made up of poems, rather than stanzas.

The Petrarchan sonnet, which ist he sonnet in ist classic form, tends to split into two sctions, known as octave and sestet. (...) a-b-b-a-a-b-b-a (...) c-d-e-c-d-e.“ (Fenton, 2003, p.77).

„What the reader or listener wants to know is how the poet is going to come up with the rhymes for Fiji – we do not go to this text for information about Gauguin or his art, or indeed for a witty observation about Gauguin, since the poem isn’t about him. It is about rhyming.“ (Fenton, 2003, p.82).

„In consequence, a poem that rhymes becomes easier to remember than one that doesn’t. Rhyme is a mnemonic device, an aid to the memory. And some poems are themselves mnemonics, that is to say the whole purpose of the poem ist o enable us to remember some information. So if poetry is supposed tob e memorable speech, it is worth bearing in mind that rhyme aids ist memorability.“ (Fenton, 2003, p.97).