Word: harped
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Hats off, though to Chaim Potok. Davita's Harp, the author's sixth novel and the first narrated by a woman, successfully balances the stuff of newspapers with the stuff of diaries. Here, the key events of the 1930s--the Depression, the rise of fascism, the Spanish Civil War and the outbreak of the Second World War--intersect with, indeed, shape, the life of an irresistible young girl in an altogether fine, albeit sentimental, book. Potok, the author of The Chosen and My Name is Asher Lev, triumphs where so many before him have failed, by writing a historical novel...
...harp referred to in the title belongs to Ilana Davita Chandal, the precocious daughter of parents active in communist causes in New York City back in the days when political idealism consoled the victims of economic depression. Ilana'a immigrant mother, Anne, descends from orthodox eastern European Jews. Her fervent embrace of Marxism stems from a bitter disillusionment with religion--forever associated with a cold father more interested in following holy men than his family--and from her husband, Michael. The scion of a wealthy New England family, Michael Chandal abandoned riches for rags when, as a youth, he witnessed...
Ilana's earliest memories are of Party meetings in their house and the countless times the family has to move because landlords will tolerate neither their politics nor their gatherings. No matter where they live, though, the Chandals hang a small wooden harp on the entrance door that emits a sound with every visitor. It seems that all that passes through the door the politics the passions, play on the impressionable Ilana, too. Potok has written a Bildangstoman, a portrait of the artist as a young girl whose watchful eyes and curious mind set upon the whirlwind times and enigmatic...
...spiritual odyssey which lies at the heart of Davita's Harp begins one summer on Long Island. In order to escape the heat of the inner city, Ilana's parents rent a cottage on the beach next door to Anne's cousins, a recently widowed Orthodox Jew named Ezra Dinn and his young son, David. The sounds that come from the Dinn's house during the course of the summer, the Kaddish or prayer for the dead, the morning prayers and Sabbath hymns, catch Ilana's ear while she is sitting on the beach building sand castles or reading...
...sure enough, this Sunday afternoon, these very experiments will take place. Jeffrey L. Goldberg '86, who will direct Sunday afternoon's Musical Offering explains his role: "What I'm doing may not satisfy purists who aren't used to hearing Bach on synthesizer, harp, trombone, or sax, but Bach can stand and transcend particular musical instruments." He added, "As the Musical Offering was Bach's response to the newest instrument of his day--the piano--we're applying it to the newest instruments of ours...