Eva Stachniak's Blog: On the absence of stories..., page 3
December 7, 2013
A visit to a dentist in 1838
This is my December contribution to Writing Historical Novels.
I’d like to invite you to a dentist’s office. Not a modern one, though, but one a character in your next novel set in the 19th century might have endured. I have based its description on a few drawings and some research into the history of dentistry.
We are in Paris. The year is 1838.
The office is decorated with a pair of elephant tusks, the gaping skull of a crocodile, dried lizards, turtles, and the skeletons of snakes. An Egyptian mummy stands in a corner of the room, right beside a small cabinet with a variety of dentures and teeth on display.
The doctor’s business card might say (third person on business cards is the norm): Perfection will be the first consideration in all his dental operations; to make his prices reasonable and to be ready with promptness to attend to the calls of those who require his advice or professional services is his second.
It promises everything you hope for.
“Please open your mouth wider, Madame,” the doctor says. As you fear, the tooth that is giving you so much pain has begun to rot. The doctor will be able to save it, but he has to clean the cavity and then fill it with gold leaf. This is a lengthy procedure requiring much patience, and a good few hours. Other dentists, he warns you, practise quick methods, promising to do it in a few minutes. What they fail to mention is that the compound they pour into a cavity is unpredictable. It will either shrink and fall out or expand and shatter the tooth. What is more, the deterioration will not stop, if the rot is not patiently extracted first.
“In short, Madame, it has to hurt,” the doctor assures you, “if it is going to help.”
On a previous visit, the doctor might have given you instructions to rub your gums with your fingers until they bleed, to rinse your teeth in cold water, to brush them with Poudre de Ceylan and then restrain from rinsing your mouth for at least one hour. It probably did not help that much.
You nod – silently, because your mouth is wide open. The muscular young man behind your armchair, an assistant who has so far stood motionless as a carving, shifts his weight, making the floor boards squeak. If necessary, he will hold your head, especially during an extraction, which would have been much faster than cleaning a cavity and filling it with gold leaf, a process in which each layer demands careful and precise placement.
If you have lost too many teeth, the doctor might recommend a bridge and false teeth. Here you have a choice. There are Waterloo teeth, the harvest of a battle, collected from corpses at the battlefield. There are also porcelain teeth. Fonzi’s “incorruptibles” might be your dentist’s personal recommendation. Before firing, a platinum pin is embedded in the back of each tooth and this can be soldered on to a base. The newest ones are much improved. “Baked of different clays to avoid that unnatural and somewhat,” the doctor might say, “ghostly white. They are called incorruptibles because, unlike Waterloo teeth, they will not stain.”
As you are having your cavity filled, the dentist might discuss the possibility of making dental procedures painless. Not very likely, in his opinion. He might debunk the lures of his competitors, unscrupulous promises of benumbing gasses which promise painless extractions. He has not seen much of use in this area, even the laughing gas proved in an observed hospital trial proved to be far less efficient than claimed.
“Like anything in life,” your wise 19th century dentist might say. “I believe that what promises to be pleasant and quick, is of no value whatsoever and may likely be harmful.”
The bill?? Oh, yes, of course. It will arrive a few days later. The cost will most likely be 300 francs.
Recommended reading:
James Wynbrandt. The Excruciating History of Dentistry: Toothsome Tales & Oral Oddities from Babylon to Braces. St. Martin’s Griffin: 2000.
Loretta Frances Ichord. Toothworms & Spider Juice : An Illustrated History of Dentistry. Millbrook Press: 2000.
http://writinghistoricalnovels.com/20...
I’d like to invite you to a dentist’s office. Not a modern one, though, but one a character in your next novel set in the 19th century might have endured. I have based its description on a few drawings and some research into the history of dentistry.
We are in Paris. The year is 1838.
The office is decorated with a pair of elephant tusks, the gaping skull of a crocodile, dried lizards, turtles, and the skeletons of snakes. An Egyptian mummy stands in a corner of the room, right beside a small cabinet with a variety of dentures and teeth on display.
The doctor’s business card might say (third person on business cards is the norm): Perfection will be the first consideration in all his dental operations; to make his prices reasonable and to be ready with promptness to attend to the calls of those who require his advice or professional services is his second.
It promises everything you hope for.
“Please open your mouth wider, Madame,” the doctor says. As you fear, the tooth that is giving you so much pain has begun to rot. The doctor will be able to save it, but he has to clean the cavity and then fill it with gold leaf. This is a lengthy procedure requiring much patience, and a good few hours. Other dentists, he warns you, practise quick methods, promising to do it in a few minutes. What they fail to mention is that the compound they pour into a cavity is unpredictable. It will either shrink and fall out or expand and shatter the tooth. What is more, the deterioration will not stop, if the rot is not patiently extracted first.
“In short, Madame, it has to hurt,” the doctor assures you, “if it is going to help.”
On a previous visit, the doctor might have given you instructions to rub your gums with your fingers until they bleed, to rinse your teeth in cold water, to brush them with Poudre de Ceylan and then restrain from rinsing your mouth for at least one hour. It probably did not help that much.
You nod – silently, because your mouth is wide open. The muscular young man behind your armchair, an assistant who has so far stood motionless as a carving, shifts his weight, making the floor boards squeak. If necessary, he will hold your head, especially during an extraction, which would have been much faster than cleaning a cavity and filling it with gold leaf, a process in which each layer demands careful and precise placement.
If you have lost too many teeth, the doctor might recommend a bridge and false teeth. Here you have a choice. There are Waterloo teeth, the harvest of a battle, collected from corpses at the battlefield. There are also porcelain teeth. Fonzi’s “incorruptibles” might be your dentist’s personal recommendation. Before firing, a platinum pin is embedded in the back of each tooth and this can be soldered on to a base. The newest ones are much improved. “Baked of different clays to avoid that unnatural and somewhat,” the doctor might say, “ghostly white. They are called incorruptibles because, unlike Waterloo teeth, they will not stain.”
As you are having your cavity filled, the dentist might discuss the possibility of making dental procedures painless. Not very likely, in his opinion. He might debunk the lures of his competitors, unscrupulous promises of benumbing gasses which promise painless extractions. He has not seen much of use in this area, even the laughing gas proved in an observed hospital trial proved to be far less efficient than claimed.
“Like anything in life,” your wise 19th century dentist might say. “I believe that what promises to be pleasant and quick, is of no value whatsoever and may likely be harmful.”
The bill?? Oh, yes, of course. It will arrive a few days later. The cost will most likely be 300 francs.
Recommended reading:
James Wynbrandt. The Excruciating History of Dentistry: Toothsome Tales & Oral Oddities from Babylon to Braces. St. Martin’s Griffin: 2000.
Loretta Frances Ichord. Toothworms & Spider Juice : An Illustrated History of Dentistry. Millbrook Press: 2000.
http://writinghistoricalnovels.com/20...
October 21, 2013
On Writing about Catherine the Great
From:
http://writinghistoricalnovels.com/20...
http://writinghistoricalnovels.com/20...
In Poland where I grew up, Catherine the Great has always been an object of hatred and scorn. After all, she is the Tsarina who, with the help of Prussia and Austria, wiped Poland off the map of Europe for over a hundred years. She is the empress who crushed the last Polish uprising and made Poland’s king – her one time lover – her prisoner. The Poles still cannot forgive her the bloody massacre in the suburbs of Warsaw during the Polish uprising of 1795. She is routinely referred to as “this horrible woman” and a “hypocrite”. Since mid-eighteenth century she has been a symbol of imperial Russia, a woman feared and despised, hated and cursed. A view shared by generations of Turks and descendants of Ukrainian Cossacks.
In Canada, where I’ve lived for the last thirty years, I have met another Catherine. Her Western biographers - and she has had many of them - stress that she was one of the most formidable women rulers in modern history. She is referred to as an enlightened empress, a legislator who did not shy from the first comprehensive attempt to reform Russia’s laws, a masterful politician with steady nerves and clear goals to strengthen Russia. She is hailed as a builder of magnificent palaces, gardens, schools, hospitals, and orphanages. She is seen as a collector of art, which can still be admired in St. Petersburg, and a passionate woman who didn’t hide her desires, taking younger and younger lovers as she aged.
It was this contradiction that provided the initial inspiration for turning to Catherine as the subject of my novel. Then, the more I learned about Catherine the Great, the more she intrigued me. How did she manage to transform herself from a minor Prussian princess who arrived in Moscow at 14 without a word of Russian at her disposal into the powerful autocrat of All the Russias? How did she survive the long and hard years in a loveless marriage, deprived of her children who were considered too important to be raised by their mother? How did she win over the hostile court for whom she was a mere “Housefrau with a pointed chin?” How did she manage to push aside her immature husband and reach for the throne of Russia?
In my subsequent research I have found many answers to these questions. Each biographer of Catherine the Great – and she has had many excellent ones from J.T. Alexander to Robert Massey – stresses some other aspect of her character. She was smart, charismatic, pragmatic and hard working. She had clear goals and stuck to them. She knew which course of action was politically feasible and which should not be attempted without patient building of support – like the abolition of serfdom which she wished to implement but gave up in the end. She was also clear that Russia’s prosperity was her ultimate goal and that she was not going to detour from it.
From a Polish perspective, none of this may matter much. Russia’s gain has been Poland’s loss and another look at Catherine the Great won’t change it. To me, the very act of re-examining who Catherine was has been a fruitful journey.
The Winter Palace: A Novel of Catherine the Great
October 4, 2013
Oh, My Darling
Oh, My Darling by Shaena LambertMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Shaena Lambert is a wise and thoughtful writer. She is an astute observer of domestic dramas, of aging, of motherhood, of revelations that come at most unexpected moments. Her characters are the people we recognize. They are among us, they are us, or they can be us. Their moments of understanding, of coming to terms with their shortcomings are beautifully rendered, with quiet wisdom that sears your heart.
I love short stories. At their best they do exactly what "Oh, My Darling" does. They condense experience and render it in beautiful, concise sentences. They are like poems with their economy, but also like novels with their depth and scope. They they us live another's live, for a moment, make us fellow travellers to people who matter because, through them, we reach this quite moment of reflection which makes reading such a deep pleasure.
View all my reviews
September 27, 2013
On Women in 18th century Russia
My guest post from Writing Historical Novels:
http://writinghistoricalnovels.com/20...
The women of the Age of Reason have captured my imagination. Their voices sound much closer to our contemporary sensibilities than the voices of their daughters and grand-daughters. For starters, they are not coy about their sexuality. The eighteenth century women would’ve found the Victorian ideal of a woman as “angel of the house” separated from the desires of the flesh odd or even preposterous. Many among them, especially if they had the luck of being born or married into aristocratic families, claimed an active role in the misogynous male world and were quite successful in their endeavours.
I am particularly interested in the women of Russian nobility. It was Peter the Great (1682-1725) who forcibly removed them from their secluded position inside the home (terem), brought them into salons, dressed them in Western clothes and fostered their participation in the social life. Suddenly they found themselves obliged to entertain guests, conduct conversations with men who were not their husbands or relatives, and appear in public at various court functions. These were not popular measures. The majority of the Russian society took to them with fear and reluctance. There was talk of shamelessness, of the decline of morals and of the dangers to the soul, but by the time Catherine the Great ascended to the throne in 1762 Russian ‘elite’ women were well used to their new freedoms.
Having left their domestic seclusion, the Russian women began to take an active role in Russian life. It helped that in the eighteenth century Russia enjoyed a sequence of female rulers: Peter the Great’s wife succeeded him as Empress Catherine I. Later and his youngest daughter ruled Russia from 1742-61 as Empress Elizabeth Petrovna. Then came the thirty-four year long rule of Catherine the Great.
In Catherinian Russia, women were a fixture of the court and public life. They actively participated in all court events, threw themselves into charitable work, founded and cared for educational institutions, and ran their estates. They enjoyed more property rights than Western women and their growing confidence brought spectacular results. Princess Ekaterina Dashkova who thought herself Catherine the Great’s best friend, perhaps with too much self-confidence, can serve as an example. Widowed early in life, she never re-married. She not only became an active and very successful manager of her own estates but also became Director of the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, the first woman in the world to lead a national science academy. She was also a founder of the Imperial Academy of the Russian Language which in the years 1789–1794 was engaged in compiling the six-volume Academic Dictionary of the Russian Language.
What did foreign visitors to Russia make of this new confidence of the Russian noblewomen? Through my research for The Winter Palace, I found out that many Western men found the Russian women too confident, too free and too independent. Charles Masson, in his Secret Memoirs of the Court of Petersburg, chastises them as being unnatural and masculine, and of “assuming superiority over men”. Western women were far more impressed by what they saw. As Princess Dashkova’s Irish house guest, Martha Wilmot, put it: “Russian women enjoy more rights and more independence than the women of the West.”
http://writinghistoricalnovels.com/20...
The women of the Age of Reason have captured my imagination. Their voices sound much closer to our contemporary sensibilities than the voices of their daughters and grand-daughters. For starters, they are not coy about their sexuality. The eighteenth century women would’ve found the Victorian ideal of a woman as “angel of the house” separated from the desires of the flesh odd or even preposterous. Many among them, especially if they had the luck of being born or married into aristocratic families, claimed an active role in the misogynous male world and were quite successful in their endeavours.
I am particularly interested in the women of Russian nobility. It was Peter the Great (1682-1725) who forcibly removed them from their secluded position inside the home (terem), brought them into salons, dressed them in Western clothes and fostered their participation in the social life. Suddenly they found themselves obliged to entertain guests, conduct conversations with men who were not their husbands or relatives, and appear in public at various court functions. These were not popular measures. The majority of the Russian society took to them with fear and reluctance. There was talk of shamelessness, of the decline of morals and of the dangers to the soul, but by the time Catherine the Great ascended to the throne in 1762 Russian ‘elite’ women were well used to their new freedoms.
Having left their domestic seclusion, the Russian women began to take an active role in Russian life. It helped that in the eighteenth century Russia enjoyed a sequence of female rulers: Peter the Great’s wife succeeded him as Empress Catherine I. Later and his youngest daughter ruled Russia from 1742-61 as Empress Elizabeth Petrovna. Then came the thirty-four year long rule of Catherine the Great.
In Catherinian Russia, women were a fixture of the court and public life. They actively participated in all court events, threw themselves into charitable work, founded and cared for educational institutions, and ran their estates. They enjoyed more property rights than Western women and their growing confidence brought spectacular results. Princess Ekaterina Dashkova who thought herself Catherine the Great’s best friend, perhaps with too much self-confidence, can serve as an example. Widowed early in life, she never re-married. She not only became an active and very successful manager of her own estates but also became Director of the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, the first woman in the world to lead a national science academy. She was also a founder of the Imperial Academy of the Russian Language which in the years 1789–1794 was engaged in compiling the six-volume Academic Dictionary of the Russian Language.
What did foreign visitors to Russia make of this new confidence of the Russian noblewomen? Through my research for The Winter Palace, I found out that many Western men found the Russian women too confident, too free and too independent. Charles Masson, in his Secret Memoirs of the Court of Petersburg, chastises them as being unnatural and masculine, and of “assuming superiority over men”. Western women were far more impressed by what they saw. As Princess Dashkova’s Irish house guest, Martha Wilmot, put it: “Russian women enjoy more rights and more independence than the women of the West.”
April 9, 2013
On meaningful details in historical fiction
Here is a link to another instalment of my monthly blogs on the craft of writing. This one deals with making historical details meaningful for the reader.
The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.
- L. P. Hartley, a British novelist
For a writer of historical fiction this is a sentence worth remembering. They – the people who become the characters of historical fiction – do things differently, and a writer has to express these differences in ways that are not only correct but also relevant and meaningful.
MORE:
http://writinghistoricalnovels.com/20...
The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.
- L. P. Hartley, a British novelist
For a writer of historical fiction this is a sentence worth remembering. They – the people who become the characters of historical fiction – do things differently, and a writer has to express these differences in ways that are not only correct but also relevant and meaningful.
MORE:
http://writinghistoricalnovels.com/20...
March 15, 2013
A Goodreads contest
This is a wonderful opportunity to add new books to your Goodreads shelf and win a few!
Please check out the details:
http://catherinemckenzie.com/win-27-g...
Please check out the details:
http://catherinemckenzie.com/win-27-g...
March 8, 2013
Writing Historical Novels: a new blog
What I Have Learnt From Hilary Mantel About Writing Historical Novels,
by Eva Stachniak
Hilary Mantel – whose two latest novels won the Booker Prize – summarizes her position on writing historical fiction in the introduction to A Place of Greater Safety, her sprawling novel of the French Revolution:
Historical accounts are not always reliable. They can often be contradictory or scarce and thus open to different interpretations. Every contradiction a historical novelist encounters in their research becomes a choice to be made, and choices lead to varying interpretations.....
MORE:
http://writinghistoricalnovels.com/20...
by Eva Stachniak
Hilary Mantel – whose two latest novels won the Booker Prize – summarizes her position on writing historical fiction in the introduction to A Place of Greater Safety, her sprawling novel of the French Revolution:
Historical accounts are not always reliable. They can often be contradictory or scarce and thus open to different interpretations. Every contradiction a historical novelist encounters in their research becomes a choice to be made, and choices lead to varying interpretations.....
MORE:
http://writinghistoricalnovels.com/20...
February 14, 2013
What can a writer of historical fiction find in the archives?
This is my February contribution to Writing Historical Fiction blog. Hope you enjoy it!
"I’m not a historian. I’m a fiction writer, but history is my passion and my material; a treasure trove of stories from which I take freely. As a Polish immigrant to Canada, I’m particularly interested in stories that had been held back behind the Iron Curtain, hidden from our collective memory...."
.....
MORE:
http://writinghistoricalnovels.com/20...#
"I’m not a historian. I’m a fiction writer, but history is my passion and my material; a treasure trove of stories from which I take freely. As a Polish immigrant to Canada, I’m particularly interested in stories that had been held back behind the Iron Curtain, hidden from our collective memory...."
.....
MORE:
http://writinghistoricalnovels.com/20...#
February 2, 2013
20 books giveaway
A novel idea?
Twenty writer friends got together to offer this amazing opportunity to win 20 books. I am one of them. After just few days the giveaway has over 500 entries!
Please take a look and good luck!
Eva
Here is the link to my website and all the details:
The 20 authors 20 Book Valentine giveaway (including The Winter Palace)
http://www.evastachniak.com/2013/02/0...
Twenty writer friends got together to offer this amazing opportunity to win 20 books. I am one of them. After just few days the giveaway has over 500 entries!
Please take a look and good luck!
Eva
Here is the link to my website and all the details:
The 20 authors 20 Book Valentine giveaway (including The Winter Palace)
http://www.evastachniak.com/2013/02/0...
March 18, 2012
The Winter Palace on CBC Studio One
CBC Studio One invited me to take part in their Book Club session. I was interviewed on stage by host Sheryl MacKay and co-host Jen Sookfang Lee.
Here is an audio recording of this wonderful Vancouver evening.
http://www.cbc.ca/nxnw/studio-one-boo...
Here is an audio recording of this wonderful Vancouver evening.
http://www.cbc.ca/nxnw/studio-one-boo...
On the absence of stories...
Here is something of interest, a blog entry I have written for Canadian Book Shelf...
http://canadianbookshelf.com/Blog/201... ...more
http://canadianbookshelf.com/Blog/201... ...more
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