Likewise I claim there's no difference between an usurping tyrant and an outlaw or a roaming brigand. This definition was given to Alexander: Because a tyrant, having an army, has the greater power to massacre and burn down house and home and raze all flat, they call him a general; but because an outlaw has only a small following and cannot do as much damage or bring the same ruin upon a country, he's called a thief or brigand. Not being book-learned, I won't quote a swarm of authorities but go on with the story I began.
- from Wright's adaptation of The Canterbury Tales, from "The Manciple's Tale," pg. 328.
Dec 2, 2017
Oct 14, 2017
every Man must dance in Chains
Hath any Commentator well accounted for the Limitation which an antient Critic hath set to the Drama, which he will have contain neither more nor less than five acts? Or hath any one living attempted to explain, what the modern Judges of our Theatres mean by that Word low; by which they have happily succeeded in banishing all Humour from the Stage, and have made the Theater as dull as a Drawing-room? Upon all these Occasions, the World seems to have embraced a Maxim of our Law, viz. Cuicunque in Arte sua perito credendum est*: For it seems, perhaps, difficult to conceive that any one should have had enough of Impudence, to lay down dogmatical Rules in any Art or Science without the least Foundation. In such Cases, therefore, we are apt to conclude, there are sound and good Reasons at the Bottom, though we are unfortunately not able to see so far.
Now, in reality, the World have paid too great a Compliment to Critics, and have imagined them Men of much greater Profundity than they really are. From this Complaisance, the Critics have been emboldened to assume a Dictatorial Power, and have so far succeeded, that they are now become the Masters, and have the Assurance to give Laws to those Authors, from whose Predecessors they originally received them.
...For these Critics being Men of shallow Capacities, very easily mistook mere Form for Substance. They acted as a Judge would, who should adhere to the lifeless Letter of the Law, and reject the Spirit. Little Circumstances which were, perhaps, accidental in a great Author were, by these Critics, considered to constitute his chief Merit, and transmitted as Essentials to be observed by his Successors. To these Encroachments, Time and Ignorance, the two great Supporters of Imposture, gave Authority; and thus, many Rules for good Writing have been established, which have not the least Foundation in Truth or Nature; and which commonly serve for no other purpose than to curb and restrain Genius, in the same Manner as it would have restrained the Dancing-master, had the many excellent Treatises on that Art laid it down as an essential Rule, that every Man must dance in Chains.
- from The History of Tom Jones, 186. The Latin phrase means "Anyone expert in his profession should be believed."
Now, in reality, the World have paid too great a Compliment to Critics, and have imagined them Men of much greater Profundity than they really are. From this Complaisance, the Critics have been emboldened to assume a Dictatorial Power, and have so far succeeded, that they are now become the Masters, and have the Assurance to give Laws to those Authors, from whose Predecessors they originally received them.
...For these Critics being Men of shallow Capacities, very easily mistook mere Form for Substance. They acted as a Judge would, who should adhere to the lifeless Letter of the Law, and reject the Spirit. Little Circumstances which were, perhaps, accidental in a great Author were, by these Critics, considered to constitute his chief Merit, and transmitted as Essentials to be observed by his Successors. To these Encroachments, Time and Ignorance, the two great Supporters of Imposture, gave Authority; and thus, many Rules for good Writing have been established, which have not the least Foundation in Truth or Nature; and which commonly serve for no other purpose than to curb and restrain Genius, in the same Manner as it would have restrained the Dancing-master, had the many excellent Treatises on that Art laid it down as an essential Rule, that every Man must dance in Chains.
- from The History of Tom Jones, 186. The Latin phrase means "Anyone expert in his profession should be believed."
Sep 28, 2017
Literary history is an artifice
We envisage the literature of every century as a corpus of works grouped around a core of classics; and we derive our notion of the classics from our professors, who took it from their professors, who got it from theirs, and so on, back to some disappearing point in the early nineteenth century. Literary history is an artifice, pieced together over many generations, shortened here and lengthened there, worn thin in some places, patched over in others, and laced through everywhere with anachronism. It bears little relation to the actual experience of literature in the past.
- from The Forbidden Best-sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France, Robert Darnton
- from The Forbidden Best-sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France, Robert Darnton
Sep 17, 2017
inadvertently to read fiction for the right reason
The mistake is that too many people are confused about what reading fiction is for. They believe you're supposed to read novels to be improved, to be present at the clash of great ideas, to be challenged by new and profound ways to look at life. And then it turns out, they're too tired.
Oh, they buy the books, the serious award winners, described by publisher and critic alike as important, ground-breaking, even deeply disturbing. They pay their dues. But when the moment comes, once again they fall off. Just for now, just as a stopgap, sheepishly they slink off, inadvertently to read fiction for the right reason: because it's fun.
- Donald Westlake, introduction to Murderous Schemes, 1996
Oh, they buy the books, the serious award winners, described by publisher and critic alike as important, ground-breaking, even deeply disturbing. They pay their dues. But when the moment comes, once again they fall off. Just for now, just as a stopgap, sheepishly they slink off, inadvertently to read fiction for the right reason: because it's fun.
- Donald Westlake, introduction to Murderous Schemes, 1996
Sep 4, 2017
Hardly a topic was left unchallenged
He lighted the candles, for it was now dark, made the tea, and supplied the friend with whom he had been playing golf (for I believe the authorities of the University I write of indulge in that pursuit by way of relaxation); and tea was taken to the accompaniment of a discussion which golfing persons can imagine for themselves, but which the conscientious writer has no right to inflict upon non-golfing persons.
...
[Next morning], during breakfast nothing was said about the mezzotint by Williams, save that he had a picture on which he wished for Nesbit's opinion. But those who are familiar with University life can picture for themselves the wide and delightful range of subjects over which the conversation of the two Fellows of Canterbury College is likely to extend during a Sunday morning breakfast. Hardly a topic was left unchallenged, from golf to lawn-tennis.
- from "The Mezzotint" by M.R. James. James taught Classics at Cambridge; Canterbury College is at Oxford.
...
[Next morning], during breakfast nothing was said about the mezzotint by Williams, save that he had a picture on which he wished for Nesbit's opinion. But those who are familiar with University life can picture for themselves the wide and delightful range of subjects over which the conversation of the two Fellows of Canterbury College is likely to extend during a Sunday morning breakfast. Hardly a topic was left unchallenged, from golf to lawn-tennis.
- from "The Mezzotint" by M.R. James. James taught Classics at Cambridge; Canterbury College is at Oxford.
While in intense dental agony
Cavities ...[were] one of humankind's oldest miseries. Terrified of tooth extraction, people often suffered intense and chronic pain - and many of these people were history's major policymakers. It is surprising that history books omit the fact that, for instance, Louis XIV and Elizabeth I (to mention only two policy-shaping figures) often had to render major decisions while in intense dental agony. Louis, in 1685, signed the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (which had granted religious freedom), causing thousands to emigrate, while he was in the throes of a month-long tooth infection. It had developed into a raw, unhealing opening between the roof of his mouth and his sinuses.
Elizabeth, on the other hand, suffered chronically from deep, massive cavities but feared the misery of extraction. In December 1578, an unrelenting tooth pain kept her awake day and night for two weeks, necessitating drugs that were themselves heavily disorientating. ... Throughout the weeks of misery, she had continued to oversee legislation that affected the lives of millions of subjects.
... A volume of speculative history could be written on the effects of severe and protracted dental pain on policy-making.
- from the endlessly quotable Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things, Charles Panati, 212.
Elizabeth, on the other hand, suffered chronically from deep, massive cavities but feared the misery of extraction. In December 1578, an unrelenting tooth pain kept her awake day and night for two weeks, necessitating drugs that were themselves heavily disorientating. ... Throughout the weeks of misery, she had continued to oversee legislation that affected the lives of millions of subjects.
... A volume of speculative history could be written on the effects of severe and protracted dental pain on policy-making.
- from the endlessly quotable Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things, Charles Panati, 212.
Aug 9, 2017
An acute epidemic disease
Incidentally, it is not absurd to class this ecological role of humankind in its relationship to other life forms as a disease. Ever since language allowed human cultural evolution to impinge upon age-old processes of biological evolution, humankind has been in a position to upset older balances of nature in quite the same fashion that disease upsets the natural balance within a host's body. ... Sooner or later, and always within a span of time that remained minuscule in comparison with the standards of biological evolution, humanity discovered new techniques allowing fresh exploitation of hitherto inaccessible resources, thereby renewing or intensifying damage to other forms of life. Looked at from the point of view of other organisms, humankind therefore resembles an acute epidemic disease, whose occasional lapses into less virulent forms of behavior have never yet sufficed to permit any really stable, chronic relationship to establish itself.
- Plagues and Peoples, William McNeill, 1976, pg. 22.
- Plagues and Peoples, William McNeill, 1976, pg. 22.
Jul 18, 2017
To this post a figure was tied
The room had been fashioned into a small museum, and the walls were lined by a number of glass-topped cases full of that collection of butterflies and moths the formation of which had been the relaxation of this complex and dangerous man. In the centre of this room there was an upright beam, which had been placed at some period as a support for the old worm-eaten baulk of timber which spanned the roof. To this post a figure was tied, so swathed and muffled in the sheets which had been used to secure it that one could not for the moment tell whether it was that of a man or a woman. One towel passed round the throat and was secured at the back of the pillar. Another covered the lower part of the face, and over it two dark eyes - eyes full of grief and shame and a dreadful questioning - stared back at us.
- a strange image from the mostly banal The Hound of the Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle, pg. 160, 1902. Reminiscent of John Fowles' novel The Collector.
- a strange image from the mostly banal The Hound of the Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle, pg. 160, 1902. Reminiscent of John Fowles' novel The Collector.
Jun 28, 2017
Sad and baffling riddles
By 1909 a gathering pessimism converged upon the Liberals and those allied with them. "A thousand sad and baffling riddles" had somehow replaced the simple verities of politics, wrote Masterman[...]. He saw the world divided vertically "between nation and nation armed to the teeth" and horizontally between rich and poor. "The future of progress is still doubtful and precarious. Humanity at best appears as a shipwrecked crew which has taken refuge on a narrow ledge of rock beaten by wind and wave; we cannot tell how many, if any at all, will survive when the long night gives place to morning."
James Bryce, another member of the Liberal government as Chief Secretary for Ireland and since 1907 as Ambassador to Washington, found discouragement in the central theme of his life, the democratic process. In a series of lectures he delivered at Yale in 1909 on "Hindrances to Good Citizenship," he admitted that the practice of democracy had not lived up to the theory. The numbers who could read and vote had increased twenty times in the last seventy years but "the percentage of those who reflect before they vote has not kept pace either with popular education or with the extension of the suffrage." The "natural average man" was not exhibiting in public affairs the innate wisdom which democracy had presumed he possessed. [...]
One of the most influential of English studies of the mental processes at work in public affairs was Hobhouses's Democracy and Reaction, published in 1904. An Oxford don whose deep interest in the labour movement led him to leave the University for the staff of the Manchester Guardian, Hobhouse found that the average man "has not the time to think and will not take the trouble to do so if he has the time." His opinions faithfully reflect "the popular sheet and shouting newsboy...To this new public of the streets and tramcars it is useless to appeal in terms of reason."
The Columbus of this discovery was a surgeon, Wilfred Trotter. [...] In his two essays on "The Herd Instinct" in the Sociological Review in 1908 and 1909 he found man's social behavior springing from that same dark and sinister well of the subconscious whose uncovering marked the end of the Victorian age. [...] Because of man's innate desire for group approval, he is at the mercy of this irrational force and vulnerable to the herd reaction. "It needs but little imagination to see," he concluded, "how great are the probabilities that after all man will prove but one more of nature's failures."
- from The Proud Tower, Barbara Tuchman, pgs. 382-384, 1966
James Bryce, another member of the Liberal government as Chief Secretary for Ireland and since 1907 as Ambassador to Washington, found discouragement in the central theme of his life, the democratic process. In a series of lectures he delivered at Yale in 1909 on "Hindrances to Good Citizenship," he admitted that the practice of democracy had not lived up to the theory. The numbers who could read and vote had increased twenty times in the last seventy years but "the percentage of those who reflect before they vote has not kept pace either with popular education or with the extension of the suffrage." The "natural average man" was not exhibiting in public affairs the innate wisdom which democracy had presumed he possessed. [...]
One of the most influential of English studies of the mental processes at work in public affairs was Hobhouses's Democracy and Reaction, published in 1904. An Oxford don whose deep interest in the labour movement led him to leave the University for the staff of the Manchester Guardian, Hobhouse found that the average man "has not the time to think and will not take the trouble to do so if he has the time." His opinions faithfully reflect "the popular sheet and shouting newsboy...To this new public of the streets and tramcars it is useless to appeal in terms of reason."
The Columbus of this discovery was a surgeon, Wilfred Trotter. [...] In his two essays on "The Herd Instinct" in the Sociological Review in 1908 and 1909 he found man's social behavior springing from that same dark and sinister well of the subconscious whose uncovering marked the end of the Victorian age. [...] Because of man's innate desire for group approval, he is at the mercy of this irrational force and vulnerable to the herd reaction. "It needs but little imagination to see," he concluded, "how great are the probabilities that after all man will prove but one more of nature's failures."
- from The Proud Tower, Barbara Tuchman, pgs. 382-384, 1966
Jun 27, 2017
Punching my sister
"In 1964, 300 years after he made his mark on the world, a page in one of his [Isaac Newton] notebooks, penned cryptically in 1662, was finally decoded; on it, addressed to God, was a list of sins 19-year old Newton had committed."
Some selections:
2. Eating an apple at Thy house
3. Making a feather while on Thy day
4. Denying that I made it
14. Wishing death and hoping it to some
15. Striking many
16. Having uncleane thoughts words and actions and dreamese
17. Stealing cherry cobs from Eduard Storer
18. Denying that I did so
24. Punching my sister
25. Robbing my mothers box of plums and sugars
26. Calling Derothy Rose a jade
44. Beating Arthur Storer
- from Lists of Note, ed. Shaun Usher
Some selections:
2. Eating an apple at Thy house
3. Making a feather while on Thy day
4. Denying that I made it
14. Wishing death and hoping it to some
15. Striking many
16. Having uncleane thoughts words and actions and dreamese
17. Stealing cherry cobs from Eduard Storer
18. Denying that I did so
24. Punching my sister
25. Robbing my mothers box of plums and sugars
26. Calling Derothy Rose a jade
44. Beating Arthur Storer
- from Lists of Note, ed. Shaun Usher
Jun 26, 2017
The possibility of poetry
Theoretically - and, indeed, empirically - a case can be made that there ought to be more first-class poets at the present than in earlier centuries. There are, after all, many more people, and more of them receive an education that could expose them to the possibility of poetry. There are all those workshops, throughout the country, which every year award diplomas to a new cohort of MFAs, among whom some significant percentage should have what it takes.
Whether or not workshops are, in fact, the most fertile grounds for the breeding of good poetry, I think that the twentieth century has produced a bumper crop of excellent to world-class poets in America[...] But [...] I think the great preponderance of the best poetry was written before our present laureate (Rita Dove, born in 1952) had indited her first poem to paper.
And for this simple reason - that the workshops, which have a monopoly on the training of poets, encourage indolence, incompetence, smugness and - most perniciously - that sense of victimization and special entitlement that poets have now come to share with other artists who depend on government or institutional patronage to sustain their art, pay their salaries, and provide free vacations.
[Furthermore, by ignoring canonical poetry in these workshops], at a time when Theory has taken over graduate English departments, where it was once possible to study poetry in a serious way [...] justice is done while at the same time drastically simplifying the curriculum. Why bother with dead white males when there are so many living poets who share Levinson's sense of the world they so systematically misrepresented?
In this devaluation of the past, academic theorists offer aid and comfort to the indolence of the workshops, where the poetry that is studied is, by and large, the poetry that is written there....[Yet], in the absence of critical standards, all poets are equal. [...And] what better way to compensate for the demands of Organic Chemistry that to twang the lyre?
I do believe there is a remedy and that is the disestablishment of the poetry workshops as an academic institution. The art of poetry is poorly served by its bureaucratization, and only the trade is advanced. I will even venture a prophecy (which is the prerogative of poets, if not of critics) - that they will, in my own lifetime, self-destruct. Not because of Jesse Helms, or his like, mandates a holy war against the poets funded by the NEA, but because students, wiser than their teachers, choose other electives.
- from "The Castle of Indolence," Thomas Disch
Whether or not workshops are, in fact, the most fertile grounds for the breeding of good poetry, I think that the twentieth century has produced a bumper crop of excellent to world-class poets in America[...] But [...] I think the great preponderance of the best poetry was written before our present laureate (Rita Dove, born in 1952) had indited her first poem to paper.
And for this simple reason - that the workshops, which have a monopoly on the training of poets, encourage indolence, incompetence, smugness and - most perniciously - that sense of victimization and special entitlement that poets have now come to share with other artists who depend on government or institutional patronage to sustain their art, pay their salaries, and provide free vacations.
[Furthermore, by ignoring canonical poetry in these workshops], at a time when Theory has taken over graduate English departments, where it was once possible to study poetry in a serious way [...] justice is done while at the same time drastically simplifying the curriculum. Why bother with dead white males when there are so many living poets who share Levinson's sense of the world they so systematically misrepresented?
In this devaluation of the past, academic theorists offer aid and comfort to the indolence of the workshops, where the poetry that is studied is, by and large, the poetry that is written there....[Yet], in the absence of critical standards, all poets are equal. [...And] what better way to compensate for the demands of Organic Chemistry that to twang the lyre?
I do believe there is a remedy and that is the disestablishment of the poetry workshops as an academic institution. The art of poetry is poorly served by its bureaucratization, and only the trade is advanced. I will even venture a prophecy (which is the prerogative of poets, if not of critics) - that they will, in my own lifetime, self-destruct. Not because of Jesse Helms, or his like, mandates a holy war against the poets funded by the NEA, but because students, wiser than their teachers, choose other electives.
- from "The Castle of Indolence," Thomas Disch
Far and near and low and louder
The dews drop slowly and dreams gather: unknown spears
Suddenly hurtle before my dream-awakened eyes
And then the clash of fallen horseman and the cries
Of unknown perishing armies beat about my ears.
We who still labour by the cromlech on the shore,
The grey cairn on the hill, when day sinks drowned in dew
Being weary of the world's empires, bow down to you.
Master of the still stars and of the flaming door.
- "The Valley of the Black Pig," W.B. Yeats, 1895
On the idle hill of summer
Sleepy with the flow of streams,
Far I hear the steady drummer
Drumming like a noise in dreams.
Far and near and low and louder
On the roads of earth go by,
Dear to friends and food for powder,
Soldiers marching, all to die.
East and west on fields forgotten
Bleach the bones of comrades slain,
Lovely lads and dead and rotten;
None that go return again.
Far the calling bugles hollo,
High the screaming fife replies,
Gay the files of scarlet follow:
Woman bore me, I will rise.
- from A Shropshire Lad, No. 35, A.E. Housman, 1895.
Suddenly hurtle before my dream-awakened eyes
And then the clash of fallen horseman and the cries
Of unknown perishing armies beat about my ears.
We who still labour by the cromlech on the shore,
The grey cairn on the hill, when day sinks drowned in dew
Being weary of the world's empires, bow down to you.
Master of the still stars and of the flaming door.
- "The Valley of the Black Pig," W.B. Yeats, 1895
On the idle hill of summer
Sleepy with the flow of streams,
Far I hear the steady drummer
Drumming like a noise in dreams.
Far and near and low and louder
On the roads of earth go by,
Dear to friends and food for powder,
Soldiers marching, all to die.
East and west on fields forgotten
Bleach the bones of comrades slain,
Lovely lads and dead and rotten;
None that go return again.
Far the calling bugles hollo,
High the screaming fife replies,
Gay the files of scarlet follow:
Woman bore me, I will rise.
- from A Shropshire Lad, No. 35, A.E. Housman, 1895.
Jun 22, 2017
Superb incompetence to command
Let me say that when I talk of disasters I speak with authority. I have served at Balaclava, Cawnpore, and Little Big Horn. Name the biggest born fools who wore uniform in the nineteenth century - Cardigan, Sale, Custer, Raglan, Lucan - I knew them all. Think of all the conceivable misfortunes that can arise from combinations of folly, cowardice, and sheer bad luck, and I'll give you chapter and verse. But I still state unhesitatingly, that for pure, vacillating stupidity, for superb incompetence to command, for ignorance combined with bad judgement - in short, for the true talent for catastrophe - Elphy Bey [Elphinstone] stood alone. Others abide our question, but Elphy outshines them all as the greatest military idiot of our own or any other day.
Only he could have permitted the First Afghan War and let it develop to such a ruinous defeat. It was not easy: he started with a good army, a secure position, some excellent officers, a disorganised enemy, and repeated opportunities to save the situation. But Elphy, with the touch of true genius, swept aside these obstacles with unerring precision, and out of order wrought complete chaos. We shall not, with luck, look upon his like again.
- from Flashman by George MacDonald Fraser, 1969
Only he could have permitted the First Afghan War and let it develop to such a ruinous defeat. It was not easy: he started with a good army, a secure position, some excellent officers, a disorganised enemy, and repeated opportunities to save the situation. But Elphy, with the touch of true genius, swept aside these obstacles with unerring precision, and out of order wrought complete chaos. We shall not, with luck, look upon his like again.
- from Flashman by George MacDonald Fraser, 1969
Jun 19, 2017
Some frightful catastrophe
"The United States finds itself in possession of enormous power and is eager to use it in brutal fashion against anyone who comes along without knowing how to do so and is therefore constantly on the brink of some frightful catastrophe."
- from a letter by E.L. Godkin, 1895
- from a letter by E.L. Godkin, 1895
The fifth of August, 1942
"The Book of Yolek"
Wir haben ein Gesetz
Und nach dem Gesetz soll er sterben.
The dowsed coals fume and hiss after your meal
Of grilled brook trout, and you saunter off for a walk
Down the fern trail, it doesn't matter where to,
Just so you're weeks and worlds away from home,
And among midsummer hills have set up camp
In the deep bronze glories of declining day.
You remember, peacefully, an earlier day
In childhood, remember a quite specific meal:
A corn roast and bonfire in summer camp.
That summer you got lost on a Nature Walk;
More than you dared admit, you thought of home;
No one else knows where the mind wanders to.
The fifth of August, 1942.
It was morning and very hot. It was the day
They came at dawn with rifles to The Home
For Jewish Children, cutting short the meal
Of bread and soup, lining them up to walk
In close formation off to a special camp.
How often you have thought about that camp,
As though in some strange way you were driven to,
And about the children, and how they were made to walk,
Yolek who had bad lungs, who wasn't a day
Over five years old, commanded to leave his meal
And shamble between armed guards to his long home.
We're approaching August again. It will drive home
The regulation torments of that camp
Yolek was sent to, his small, unfinished meal,
The electric fences, the numeral tattoo,
The quite extraordinary heat of the day
They all were forced to take that terrible walk.
Whether on a silent, solitary walk
Or among crowds, far off or safe at home,
You will remember, helplessly, that day,
And the smell of smoke, and the loudspeakers of the camp.
Wherever you are, Yolek will be there, too.
His unuttered name will interrupt your meal.
Prepare to receive him in your home some day.
Though they killed him in the camp they sent him to,
He will walk in as you're sitting down to a meal.
- Anthony Hecht. The quote at the beginning is John 19:7 - "We have a law, and according to the law he shall die."
Wir haben ein Gesetz
Und nach dem Gesetz soll er sterben.
The dowsed coals fume and hiss after your meal
Of grilled brook trout, and you saunter off for a walk
Down the fern trail, it doesn't matter where to,
Just so you're weeks and worlds away from home,
And among midsummer hills have set up camp
In the deep bronze glories of declining day.
You remember, peacefully, an earlier day
In childhood, remember a quite specific meal:
A corn roast and bonfire in summer camp.
That summer you got lost on a Nature Walk;
More than you dared admit, you thought of home;
No one else knows where the mind wanders to.
The fifth of August, 1942.
It was morning and very hot. It was the day
They came at dawn with rifles to The Home
For Jewish Children, cutting short the meal
Of bread and soup, lining them up to walk
In close formation off to a special camp.
How often you have thought about that camp,
As though in some strange way you were driven to,
And about the children, and how they were made to walk,
Yolek who had bad lungs, who wasn't a day
Over five years old, commanded to leave his meal
And shamble between armed guards to his long home.
We're approaching August again. It will drive home
The regulation torments of that camp
Yolek was sent to, his small, unfinished meal,
The electric fences, the numeral tattoo,
The quite extraordinary heat of the day
They all were forced to take that terrible walk.
Whether on a silent, solitary walk
Or among crowds, far off or safe at home,
You will remember, helplessly, that day,
And the smell of smoke, and the loudspeakers of the camp.
Wherever you are, Yolek will be there, too.
His unuttered name will interrupt your meal.
Prepare to receive him in your home some day.
Though they killed him in the camp they sent him to,
He will walk in as you're sitting down to a meal.
- Anthony Hecht. The quote at the beginning is John 19:7 - "We have a law, and according to the law he shall die."
Jun 14, 2017
That quiet rapture
I want that quiet rapture again. I want to feel that same powerful, nameless urge that I used to feel when I turned to my books. The breath of desire that then arose from the coloured backs of the books, shall fill me again, melt the heavy, dead lump of lead that lies somewhere in me and waken again the impatience of the future, the quick joy in the world of thought, it shall bring back again the lost eagerness of my youth. I sit and wait.
- from All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque, 1928, pg. 171
Where the ice is thick
Parker sat down beside her, put his sunglasses on, leaned back on the chaise longue with his face in the sun, and said, "I'm going away for a while."
Still looking at the book, she said, "I knew."
"It may just be for a day or two. If I'm not back in two days figure me to be gone for a couple weeks at least."
"Or maybe for ever," she said.
He looked at her, but her eyes were still on the book. He said, "I'm not walking out on you."
"Maybe not on purpose," she said. "I've known men like you before."
She might have been talking about her airline pilot husband, who wound up smeared like raspberry jam across some mountaintop. Parker didn't like the analogy.
"You've never known anybody like me before," he said. "I only walk where the ice is thick."
"You walk on ice," she said. "That's what I mean."
- from The Green Eagle Score, Richard Stark, 1967
Still looking at the book, she said, "I knew."
"It may just be for a day or two. If I'm not back in two days figure me to be gone for a couple weeks at least."
"Or maybe for ever," she said.
He looked at her, but her eyes were still on the book. He said, "I'm not walking out on you."
"Maybe not on purpose," she said. "I've known men like you before."
She might have been talking about her airline pilot husband, who wound up smeared like raspberry jam across some mountaintop. Parker didn't like the analogy.
"You've never known anybody like me before," he said. "I only walk where the ice is thick."
"You walk on ice," she said. "That's what I mean."
- from The Green Eagle Score, Richard Stark, 1967
Apr 17, 2017
More than meaningless etiquette
Among the Germanic Goths, a man married a woman from within his own community. When women were in short supply, he captured his bride-to-be from a neighboring village. The future bridegroom, accompanied by a male companion, seized any young girl who had strayed from the safety of her parental home. Our custom of a best man is a relic of that two-man, strong-armed tactic; for such an important task, only the best man would do. From this practice of abduction, which literally swept a bride off her feet, also sprang the later symbolic act of carrying the bride over the threshold of her new home.
A best man around A.D. 200 carried more than a ring. Since there remained the real threat of the bride's family attempting to forcibly gain her return, the best man stayed by the groom's side throughout the marriage ceremony, alert and armed. He also might serve as a sentry outside the newlywed's home. Of course, much of this is German folklore, but it is not without written documentation and physical artifacts. For instance, the threat of recapture by the bride's family was perceived as so genuine that beneath the church altars of many early peoples - including the Huns, the Goths, the Visigoths, and the Vandals - lay an arsenal of clubs, knives, and spears.
The tradition that the bride stand to the left of the groom was also more than meaningless etiquette. Among the Northern European barbarians (so named by the Romans), a groom placed his captured bride on his left to protect her, freeing his right hand, the sword hand, against sudden attack.
from Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things by Charles Panati, 1987
A best man around A.D. 200 carried more than a ring. Since there remained the real threat of the bride's family attempting to forcibly gain her return, the best man stayed by the groom's side throughout the marriage ceremony, alert and armed. He also might serve as a sentry outside the newlywed's home. Of course, much of this is German folklore, but it is not without written documentation and physical artifacts. For instance, the threat of recapture by the bride's family was perceived as so genuine that beneath the church altars of many early peoples - including the Huns, the Goths, the Visigoths, and the Vandals - lay an arsenal of clubs, knives, and spears.
The tradition that the bride stand to the left of the groom was also more than meaningless etiquette. Among the Northern European barbarians (so named by the Romans), a groom placed his captured bride on his left to protect her, freeing his right hand, the sword hand, against sudden attack.
from Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things by Charles Panati, 1987
Apr 16, 2017
For diplomatic reasons of his own
The historians still argue about the exact whereabouts of the ensuing massacre, and over the last several hundred years they have deployed the meager literary and archeological remains - old manuscripts, gold and silver coins found buried in peat moss, shards of Roman armor, the local place names of Knochenbahn (Bone Lange) and Mordkessel (The Kettle of Death) - to suggest as many as 700 theories about the likely point of attack. Some historians place Varus's column among the upper tributaries of the Ems River, others place it nearer the rivers Lippe or Weser, but all the authorities agree that the Romans died like penned cattle. ...
Varus committed suicide. So did every other officer who knew it was the practice of the Cherusci to nail their vanquished but still living enemies to the trunks of sacred oak trees.
Arminius sent Varus's head to Maroboduus, a barbarian king in Bohemia on whom he wished to make a favorable impression, and Maroboduus, for diplomatic reasons of his own, forwarded the head to Rome. Dio Cassius reports the effect as memorable, Augustus so shocked by the utter destruction that he "rent his garments and was in great affliction," and Gibbon remarks on the emperor's consternation with his familiar irony, "...Augusts did not receive the melancholy news with all the temper and firmness that might have been expected from his character."
...
The Treaty of Versailles returned the administration of Illyricum to the incompetence of the Balkan tribes, and I can imagine both Gibbon and Augustus comparing the foolishness of Woodrow Wilson to the stupidity of Publius Quictilius Varus. ... Confronted with the chaos of unregulated capital markets - also with rogue states and renegade ideologies, with war in Africa, civil unrest in Judea, tyrants in Parthia and Leptis Minor, too much cocaine crossing the frontier near Chalcedon, too many poisons in the Mediterranean sea - the would-be makers of a postmodern peace dream of Gibbon's "supreme magistrate, who by the progress of knowledge and flattery was gradually invested with the sublime perfections of an Eternal Parent and an Omnipotent Monarch." Augustus would have been pleased to grant them an audience.
- from "Furor Teutonicus: the Teutoburg Forest, AD 9" by Lewis Lapham
Varus committed suicide. So did every other officer who knew it was the practice of the Cherusci to nail their vanquished but still living enemies to the trunks of sacred oak trees.
Arminius sent Varus's head to Maroboduus, a barbarian king in Bohemia on whom he wished to make a favorable impression, and Maroboduus, for diplomatic reasons of his own, forwarded the head to Rome. Dio Cassius reports the effect as memorable, Augustus so shocked by the utter destruction that he "rent his garments and was in great affliction," and Gibbon remarks on the emperor's consternation with his familiar irony, "...Augusts did not receive the melancholy news with all the temper and firmness that might have been expected from his character."
...
The Treaty of Versailles returned the administration of Illyricum to the incompetence of the Balkan tribes, and I can imagine both Gibbon and Augustus comparing the foolishness of Woodrow Wilson to the stupidity of Publius Quictilius Varus. ... Confronted with the chaos of unregulated capital markets - also with rogue states and renegade ideologies, with war in Africa, civil unrest in Judea, tyrants in Parthia and Leptis Minor, too much cocaine crossing the frontier near Chalcedon, too many poisons in the Mediterranean sea - the would-be makers of a postmodern peace dream of Gibbon's "supreme magistrate, who by the progress of knowledge and flattery was gradually invested with the sublime perfections of an Eternal Parent and an Omnipotent Monarch." Augustus would have been pleased to grant them an audience.
- from "Furor Teutonicus: the Teutoburg Forest, AD 9" by Lewis Lapham
Apr 9, 2017
His only escape
Until now repairing old accordions and playing them had been his only escape.
- from Switch, William Bayer, 1984, pg. 81
- from Switch, William Bayer, 1984, pg. 81
Apr 2, 2017
Even in the endless stories about college professors or advertising writers or housewives
In comedy, heroes go through all the terrible things that we fear or face in our own lives - but they teach us to look at disaster with enough distance that we can laugh at it. In non-comic fiction, the hero shows us what matters, what has value, what has meaning among the random and meaningless events of life. In all stories, the hero is our teacher-by-example, and if we are to be that hero's disciple for the duration of the tale, we must have awe: We must know that the hero has some insight, some knowledge that we ourselves do not understand, some value or power that we do not yet have.
This is true even in that great bastion of extreme realism, the academic/literary genre (those who refer to their genre as "serious literature" - as if the rest of us are just kidding). One reason why the academic/literary genre usually reaches such a small fragment of the reading public is because in their pursuit of seriousness, they have beaten down the Romantic impulse wherever it rears its head. But the Romantic impulse is still there. Even in the endless stories about college professors or advertising writers or housewives entering midlife crises and trying to make sense of their senseless lives, the heroes always seem to face some uncommon problems, always seem to be extraordinarily contemplative and perceptive, always seem to reach a moment of epiphany in which they pass along a key insight to the reader. Despite their seeming ordinariness, these heroes always turn out to be extraordinary, once we truly understand them. ...
What really makes Loman [from Death of a Salesman] a figure of awe is that he expected himself and his sons to be great, that he measured himself against such high standards that, by trying to meet them, he became exactly the Romantic hero that Arthur Miller was trying to avoid. He was one of the knights of the round table who failed to find the Holy Grail - but he was nobly searching for it nonetheless.
- from Characters and Viewpoint, Orson Scott Card, 1988, pg. 96
This is true even in that great bastion of extreme realism, the academic/literary genre (those who refer to their genre as "serious literature" - as if the rest of us are just kidding). One reason why the academic/literary genre usually reaches such a small fragment of the reading public is because in their pursuit of seriousness, they have beaten down the Romantic impulse wherever it rears its head. But the Romantic impulse is still there. Even in the endless stories about college professors or advertising writers or housewives entering midlife crises and trying to make sense of their senseless lives, the heroes always seem to face some uncommon problems, always seem to be extraordinarily contemplative and perceptive, always seem to reach a moment of epiphany in which they pass along a key insight to the reader. Despite their seeming ordinariness, these heroes always turn out to be extraordinary, once we truly understand them. ...
What really makes Loman [from Death of a Salesman] a figure of awe is that he expected himself and his sons to be great, that he measured himself against such high standards that, by trying to meet them, he became exactly the Romantic hero that Arthur Miller was trying to avoid. He was one of the knights of the round table who failed to find the Holy Grail - but he was nobly searching for it nonetheless.
- from Characters and Viewpoint, Orson Scott Card, 1988, pg. 96
The rest of the time the "heroes" just talk about their feelings!
In the United States, the TV series Survivor is often credited (or blamed) for turning reality shows into a craze. ... Audiences in Homeric Greece, in the Roman Empire or in medieval Europe would have found the idea familiar and highly attractive. Twenty challengers go in - only one hero comes out. "Wonderful!"a Homeric prince, a Roman patrician or a crusader knight would have thought to himself as he sat down to watch. "Surely we are about to see amazing adventures, life-and-death battles and incomparable acts of heroism and betrayal. The warriors will probably stab each other in the back, or spill their entrails for all to see."
What a disappointment! The back-stabbing and entrails-spilling remains a mere metaphor. Each episode lasts about an hour. Out of that, fifteen minutes are taken up by commercials for toothpaste, shampoo and cereals. Five minutes are dedicated to incredibly childish challenges, such as who can throw the most coconuts into a hoop, or who can eat the largest number of bugs in one minute. The rest of the time the "heroes" just talk about their feelings! He said she said, and I felt this and I felt that. If a crusader knight had actually been able to sit down and watch Survivor, he would probably have grabbed his battleaxe and smashed the TV out of boredom and frustration.
- from Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari, pg. 242 (2017).
What a disappointment! The back-stabbing and entrails-spilling remains a mere metaphor. Each episode lasts about an hour. Out of that, fifteen minutes are taken up by commercials for toothpaste, shampoo and cereals. Five minutes are dedicated to incredibly childish challenges, such as who can throw the most coconuts into a hoop, or who can eat the largest number of bugs in one minute. The rest of the time the "heroes" just talk about their feelings! He said she said, and I felt this and I felt that. If a crusader knight had actually been able to sit down and watch Survivor, he would probably have grabbed his battleaxe and smashed the TV out of boredom and frustration.
- from Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari, pg. 242 (2017).
Mar 29, 2017
So much needless fear and sorrow
Nothing can ever happen twice.
In consequence, the sorry fact is
that we arrive here improvised
and leave without the chance to practice.
Even if there is no one dumber,
if you're the planet's biggest dunce,
you can't repeat the class in summer:
this course is offered only once.
No day copies yesterday,
no two nights will teach what bliss is
in precisely the same way
with exactly the same kisses.
One day, perhaps, some idle tongue
mentions your name by accident:
I feel as if a rose were flung
into the room, all hue and scent.
The next day, though you're here with me,
I can't help looking at the clock:
A rose? A rose? What could that be?
Is it a flower or a rock?
Why do we treat the fleeting day
with so much needless fear and sorrow?
It's in its nature not to stay:
Today is always gone tomorrow.
With smiles and kisses, we prefer
to seek accord beneath our star,
although we're different (we concur)
just as two drops of water are.
- Wisława Szymborska, "Nothing Twice"
In consequence, the sorry fact is
that we arrive here improvised
and leave without the chance to practice.
Even if there is no one dumber,
if you're the planet's biggest dunce,
you can't repeat the class in summer:
this course is offered only once.
No day copies yesterday,
no two nights will teach what bliss is
in precisely the same way
with exactly the same kisses.
One day, perhaps, some idle tongue
mentions your name by accident:
I feel as if a rose were flung
into the room, all hue and scent.
The next day, though you're here with me,
I can't help looking at the clock:
A rose? A rose? What could that be?
Is it a flower or a rock?
Why do we treat the fleeting day
with so much needless fear and sorrow?
It's in its nature not to stay:
Today is always gone tomorrow.
With smiles and kisses, we prefer
to seek accord beneath our star,
although we're different (we concur)
just as two drops of water are.
- Wisława Szymborska, "Nothing Twice"
Mar 23, 2017
It is difficult to guard against madness
"I cannot be sure that this child will not turn my head if I go on hearing him often; he makes me realize that it is difficult to guard against madness on seeing prodigies. I am no longer surprised that Saint Paul should have lost his head after his strange vision."
- Baron Friedrich Melchior von Grimm on the six-year old Mozart, quoted in The Lives of the Great Composers, pg. 95.
- Baron Friedrich Melchior von Grimm on the six-year old Mozart, quoted in The Lives of the Great Composers, pg. 95.
Mar 21, 2017
A Ball of Shit
The family priest taught the young Rameau how to speak and read, so that the strange child could learn the Bible. Through this knowledge of language he was soon able to understand the holy man's philosophy, which, in brief, was that the world was a ball of shit adrift in a sea of sin and the sooner one passed to heaven the better. As the Gelreesh confessed, he took these lessons to heart, and so later in life when he helped free his patients' souls from excremental bondage, he felt he was actually doing them a great favor. It was from that bald and jowly man of God that the creature became acquainted with the power of pity.
- from "The Beautiful Gelreesh" by Jeffrey Ford (2003)
- from "The Beautiful Gelreesh" by Jeffrey Ford (2003)
Mar 11, 2017
Correct answers
"There was a restaurant critic who, when asked his opinion of certain Italian wines, answered that he drank only French wines. We may as well have restaurant writers who are vegetarians, or who eat only kosher food, or who cannot be bothered with fish because of the bones.
And when our critics are not averting their noses from what they did not learn to like at their mothers' knees or on the grand tour, they reserve judgment on what they eat until they have looked it up to see if it was made according to Hoyle. ... Some of these critics have never lost touch with their earliest educations, when the correct answers were in the back of the book."
- Seymour Britchky on restaurant criticism. His comments seem equally applicable to literary criticism.
And when our critics are not averting their noses from what they did not learn to like at their mothers' knees or on the grand tour, they reserve judgment on what they eat until they have looked it up to see if it was made according to Hoyle. ... Some of these critics have never lost touch with their earliest educations, when the correct answers were in the back of the book."
- Seymour Britchky on restaurant criticism. His comments seem equally applicable to literary criticism.
Mar 5, 2017
The World of the Story
These stories [detective stories] develop a growing sense of discrepancy, of something wrong which may lead to something worse. In most pure detective stories, the very worst is averted through the efforts of the principal character, and evil is quelled and punished. But in stories of suspense the worst often occurs, and its fearful truth lights up the world of the story like nocturnal lightning.
...
[The crime genre] is a free form of popular art, and like any other popular art it exists to be enjoyed. Its value lies first in its style and strength as a story, then in its revelation of the shapes and meanings of life in all their subtlety and surprise.
...
A strong popular convention like that of the suspense story is both an artistic and a social heritage. It keeps the forms of the art alive for the writer to use. It trains his readers, endowing both writer and reader with a common vocabulary of structural shapes and narrative possibilities. It becomes a part of the language in which we think and feel, reaching our whole society and helping to hold our civilization together.
- a few thoughts on the crime genre from Ross Macdonald, from his introduction to Great Stories of Suspense, 1974.
...
[The crime genre] is a free form of popular art, and like any other popular art it exists to be enjoyed. Its value lies first in its style and strength as a story, then in its revelation of the shapes and meanings of life in all their subtlety and surprise.
...
A strong popular convention like that of the suspense story is both an artistic and a social heritage. It keeps the forms of the art alive for the writer to use. It trains his readers, endowing both writer and reader with a common vocabulary of structural shapes and narrative possibilities. It becomes a part of the language in which we think and feel, reaching our whole society and helping to hold our civilization together.
- a few thoughts on the crime genre from Ross Macdonald, from his introduction to Great Stories of Suspense, 1974.
Mar 4, 2017
Maps of reality
As the American gangster and multiple murderer Charlie Birger stood on the scaffold in 1927, he looked wistfully at the sky and said: "It is a beautiful world, isn't it?" But he had noticed it too late. ...
Once a man has deliberately closed his mind to all kinds of data - like the blueness of the sky - he has left himself connected to external reality by a dangerously thin thread - the thread of his immediate purposes. And, odd as it sounds, he is now living in a kind of cave inside his own head. That cave contains an enormous number of filing cabinets, full of photographs of the outside world, and the walls are covered with 'maps of reality' - ideas of how to deal with the problems of living. Religious people have religious maps; politicians have political maps; psychologists have psychological maps. Ordinary people have maps derived from their parents, from people they admire, and from their own experience - the latter usually being the least important. And when confronted by a new situation, each of them skims quickly through a drawerful of old photographs, glances hastily at his maps, and then responds 'appropriately.'
- from A Criminal History of Mankind by Colin Wilson, 1984, pg 99.
Once a man has deliberately closed his mind to all kinds of data - like the blueness of the sky - he has left himself connected to external reality by a dangerously thin thread - the thread of his immediate purposes. And, odd as it sounds, he is now living in a kind of cave inside his own head. That cave contains an enormous number of filing cabinets, full of photographs of the outside world, and the walls are covered with 'maps of reality' - ideas of how to deal with the problems of living. Religious people have religious maps; politicians have political maps; psychologists have psychological maps. Ordinary people have maps derived from their parents, from people they admire, and from their own experience - the latter usually being the least important. And when confronted by a new situation, each of them skims quickly through a drawerful of old photographs, glances hastily at his maps, and then responds 'appropriately.'
- from A Criminal History of Mankind by Colin Wilson, 1984, pg 99.
Feb 25, 2017
The Queen's Ambiguities
Of course the prophecy [that in the year 1588 AD, empires would fall] could not be kept secret. ... The makers of almanacs were permitted [by Elizabeth I], probably encouraged, to argue against it. One, by Thomas Tymme, "A preparation against the prognosticated dangers of 1588," was mostly pious exhortation, but the other was full dress academic argument. Its title page, somewhat abbreviated, runs "A discoursive problem concerning prophecies, how far they are to be valued or credited...devised especially in abatement of the terrible threatening and menaces peremptorily denounced against the kingdoms and states of the world this present famous year 1588, supposed the Great-wonderful and Fatal Yeare of our Age. By I.H. Physition."
...
To suppress an unpleasant argument and arrange to have it refuted, to hold out one hand in friendship and keep a sword in the other, to follow at the same time two apparently irreconcilable lines of policy and play two contradictory roles with such histrionic gusto that even old friends never quite know earnest from acting, this was how, by choice or by what she thought necessity, Elizabeth I regularly played the game of high politics. Even in the thirtieth year of her reign, when the queen's ambiguities cannot have been altogether unexpected, they continued to confuse not only her enemies but her servants and advisers. People were puzzled at the time, and many have been puzzled ever since by her behavior in that anxious winter while England expected the shock of the great Armada.
- The Armada, Garrett Mattingly, 1959, pg. 187
...
To suppress an unpleasant argument and arrange to have it refuted, to hold out one hand in friendship and keep a sword in the other, to follow at the same time two apparently irreconcilable lines of policy and play two contradictory roles with such histrionic gusto that even old friends never quite know earnest from acting, this was how, by choice or by what she thought necessity, Elizabeth I regularly played the game of high politics. Even in the thirtieth year of her reign, when the queen's ambiguities cannot have been altogether unexpected, they continued to confuse not only her enemies but her servants and advisers. People were puzzled at the time, and many have been puzzled ever since by her behavior in that anxious winter while England expected the shock of the great Armada.
- The Armada, Garrett Mattingly, 1959, pg. 187
Feb 7, 2017
All that is human in me
Well - one at least is safe. One shelter'd hare
Has never heard the sanguinary yell
Of cruel man, exulting in her woes.
Innocent partner of my peaceful home,
Whom ten long years' experience of my care
Has made at last familiar; she has lost
Much of her vigilant instinctive dread,
Not needful here, beneath a roof like mine.
Yes - thou mayst eat thy bread, and lick the hand
That feeds thee; thou mayst frolic on the floor
At evening, and at night retire secure
To thy straw couch, and slumber unalarm'd;
For I have gain'd thy confidence, have pledged
All that is human in me, to protect
Thine unsuspecting gratitude and love.
If I survive thee, I will dig thy grave;
And, when I place thee in it, sighing say,
I knew at least one hare that had a friend.
- William Cowper (1731 - 1800), "My Pet Hare"
Has never heard the sanguinary yell
Of cruel man, exulting in her woes.
Innocent partner of my peaceful home,
Whom ten long years' experience of my care
Has made at last familiar; she has lost
Much of her vigilant instinctive dread,
Not needful here, beneath a roof like mine.
Yes - thou mayst eat thy bread, and lick the hand
That feeds thee; thou mayst frolic on the floor
At evening, and at night retire secure
To thy straw couch, and slumber unalarm'd;
For I have gain'd thy confidence, have pledged
All that is human in me, to protect
Thine unsuspecting gratitude and love.
If I survive thee, I will dig thy grave;
And, when I place thee in it, sighing say,
I knew at least one hare that had a friend.
- William Cowper (1731 - 1800), "My Pet Hare"
Jan 29, 2017
Horror and scorn and hate and fear and indignation
"When we see...the evil, the vice, the ruin that has befallen the most flourishing kingdoms which the mind of man created, we can hardly avoid being filled with...a moral sadness, a revolt of good will - if indeed it has any place within us. Without rhetorical exaggeration, a simple truthful account of the miseries that have overwhelmed the noblest nations and finest exemplars of virtue forms a most fearful picture and excites emotions of the profoundest and most hopeless sadness."
- Georg Hegel, Reason in History, 1837
Be still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle,
Earth and high heaven are fixt of old and founded strong,
Think rather, - call to thought, if now you grieve a little,
The days when we had rest, O soul, for they were long.
Men loved unkindness then, but lightless in the quarry
I slept and saw not; tears fell down, I did not mourn;
Sweat ran and blood sprang out and I was never sorry:
Then it was well with me, in days ere I was born.
Now, and I muse for why and never find the reason,
I pace the earth, and drink the air, and feel the sun.
Be still, be still, my soul; it is but for a season:
Let us endure an hour and see injustice done.
Ay, look: high heaven and earth ail from the prime
foundation;
All thoughts to rive the heart are here, and all are vain:
Horror and scorn and hate and fear and indignation -
Oh why did I awake? when shall I sleep again?
- A.E. Housman, 1896
- Georg Hegel, Reason in History, 1837
Be still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle,
Earth and high heaven are fixt of old and founded strong,
Think rather, - call to thought, if now you grieve a little,
The days when we had rest, O soul, for they were long.
Men loved unkindness then, but lightless in the quarry
I slept and saw not; tears fell down, I did not mourn;
Sweat ran and blood sprang out and I was never sorry:
Then it was well with me, in days ere I was born.
Now, and I muse for why and never find the reason,
I pace the earth, and drink the air, and feel the sun.
Be still, be still, my soul; it is but for a season:
Let us endure an hour and see injustice done.
Ay, look: high heaven and earth ail from the prime
foundation;
All thoughts to rive the heart are here, and all are vain:
Horror and scorn and hate and fear and indignation -
Oh why did I awake? when shall I sleep again?
- A.E. Housman, 1896
Jan 26, 2017
I cannot call it a nightmare....
"I cannot call it a nightmare, for I was quite conscious of being asleep. But I was equally conscious of being in my room, and lying in bed, precisely as I actually was. I saw, or fancied I saw, the room and its furniture just as I had seen it last, except that it was very dark, and I saw something moving round the foot of the bed, which at first I could not accurately distinguish. But I soon saw that it was a sooty-black animal that resembled a monstrous cat. It appeared to me about four or five feet long, for it measured fully the length of the hearth-rug as it passed over it; and it continued to-ing and fro-ing with the lithe sinister restlessness of a beast in a cage. I could not cry out, although as you may suppose, I was terrified. Its pace was growing faster, and the room rapidly darker and darker, and at length so dark that I could no longer see anything of it but its eyes..."
- from "Carmilla," J. Sheridan Le Fanu, 1872
An unsettling article claims that "A startup company has now launched the first clinical trial in the United States to test the anti-aging benefits of young blood."
Link here:
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/08/young-blood-antiaging-trial-raises-questions
- from "Carmilla," J. Sheridan Le Fanu, 1872
An unsettling article claims that "A startup company has now launched the first clinical trial in the United States to test the anti-aging benefits of young blood."
Link here:
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/08/young-blood-antiaging-trial-raises-questions
Jan 23, 2017
Like the Dirac equation
"Roughly speaking, the scientist tries to name things and the artist tries to avoid naming things. ... The novelist...doesn't want to clarify and distill the meaning of [a concept such as] love so that there is only a single meaning, like the Dirac equation, because no such distillation exists. And any attempt at such a distillation would undermine the authenticity of readers' reactions, destroying the delicate, participatory creative experience of a good reader reading a good book. In a sense, a novel is not complete until it has been read. And each reader completes the novel in a different way."
- Alan Lightman, "Words," A Sense of the Mysterious.
- Alan Lightman, "Words," A Sense of the Mysterious.
Jan 22, 2017
A most intimate uprooting
"To live is to give oneself, perpetuate oneself, and to perpetuate oneself, to give oneself, is to die. Perhaps the supreme delight of procreation is nothing other than a foretasting or savouring of death, the spilling of one's own vital essence. We unite with another, but it is to divide ourselves: that most intimate embrace is naught but a most intimate uprooting. In essence, the delight of sexual love, the genetic spasm, is a sensation of resurrection, of resuscitation in another, for only in others can we resuscitate and perpetuate ourselves."
- Miguel de Unamuno, The Tragic Sense of Life, 1921.
Our Sunday morning when dawn-priests were applying
Wafer and wine to the human wound, we laid
Ourselves to cure ourselves down: I'm afraid
Our vestments wanted, but Francis' friends were crying
In the nave of pines, sun-satisfied, and flying
Subtle as angels about the barricade
Boughs made over us, deep in a bed half made
Needle-soft, half the sea of our simultaneous dying.
'Death is the mother of beauty.' Awry no leaf
Shivering with delight, we die to be well...
Careless with sleepy love, so long unloving.
What if our convalescence must be brief
As we are, the matin meet the passing bell?...
About our pines our sister, wind, is moving.
- John Berryman
- Miguel de Unamuno, The Tragic Sense of Life, 1921.
Our Sunday morning when dawn-priests were applying
Wafer and wine to the human wound, we laid
Ourselves to cure ourselves down: I'm afraid
Our vestments wanted, but Francis' friends were crying
In the nave of pines, sun-satisfied, and flying
Subtle as angels about the barricade
Boughs made over us, deep in a bed half made
Needle-soft, half the sea of our simultaneous dying.
'Death is the mother of beauty.' Awry no leaf
Shivering with delight, we die to be well...
Careless with sleepy love, so long unloving.
What if our convalescence must be brief
As we are, the matin meet the passing bell?...
About our pines our sister, wind, is moving.
- John Berryman
Jan 15, 2017
Endless contrapuntal tension
"The idea of the polis, in fact, long preceded its full implementation, just as it long survived its political obsolescence. One major key to Greek history during this period is the endless contrapuntal tension between rational progressivism and emotional conservatism, civic ideals and ties of consanguinity, blood-guilt and jury justice, old religion and new secularizing philosophy. It is in this clash which provides the main dialectic underlying Greek (in effect Attic) drama, and which also lurks behind the constant polarization of polis-dwellers into two mutually destructive groups: the Few and the Many, oligarchs and populists, reactionaries and radicals. Cross-currents abounded; the lines were neither clearly nor neatly drawn; but the central dichotomy existed, to form a major, often a tragic, element in Greek political history. Legitimate political dissent was often hard to distinguish from treachery or pure sedition, stasis; and stasis could, all too easily, escalate into bloody civil war. Conservatives praised eunomia as the bulwark of the community; radicals countered with isonomia, equality under the law, the implementation of which produced - according to one's viewpoint - either democracy or mob rule."
- Ancient Greece, A Concise History by Peter Greene, 1973, pg. 64.
- Ancient Greece, A Concise History by Peter Greene, 1973, pg. 64.
Satan covers a gloomy earth with his sombre wings.
"Bad government, exactions, the cupidity and violence of the great, wars and brigandage, scarcity, misery and pestilence - to this is contemporary history nearly reduced in the eyes of the people. The feeling of general insecurity which was caused by the chronic form wars were apt to take, by the constant menace of the dangerous classes, by the mistrust of justice, was further aggravated by the obsession of the coming end of the world, and by the fear of hell, of sorcerers and of devils. The background of all life in the world seems black. Satan covers a gloomy earth with his sombre wings. In vain the militant Church battles, preachers deliver their sermons; the world remains unconverted. According to a popular belief, current towards the end of the fourteenth century, no one, since the beginning of the great Western schism, had entered Paradise."
- The Waning of the Middle Ages, Joseph Huizinga, 1924. Page 21.
- The Waning of the Middle Ages, Joseph Huizinga, 1924. Page 21.
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