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Because the butterflies are dying out

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

From Ernst Junger’s Aladdin’s Problem:

Kornfeld was a renowned sculptor, but he no longer practiced.  He said: “We sculptors are like the butterfly collectors who hang up their nets because the butterflies are dying out.  For us, it is heads that are growing rare …”

He added: “For me, a tyranny would be advantageous, though naturally, I can’t say that out loud.”

“But Herr Kornfeld – our experiences would tend to confirm the opposite.”

“My dear Baroh, you are confusing tyrants and demagogues – that is a common error in our time.  The demagogue stirs one and the same dough; he is a pastry chef, at best a plasterer and painter.  The tyrant supplies individual shapes.  Down to his bodyguards.  Think of the Renaissance: tyrants ruled everywhere, from every small town up to the Vatican.  That was the great era for sculptors, for art in general.”

I recognize the style of the Roman Curia

~ Walter Shandy ~ 1 Comment

Paolo Sarpi was a  16th-17th century Venetian monk and later statesman who argued for the liberty of the Venetian Republic against the Pope’s efforts to bring it under closer control and, more broadly, for a division of power between church and state.  In doing so he angered the pope enough to draw down an assassination attempt that left him for dead with 15 stiletto wounds.  But he survived and, through his joking reply to his surgeon’s comment on the nastiness of the wounds, we all gained one of the most spirited puns in history:

Agnosco stylum Curiae Romanae

I recognize the style of the Roman Curia

(Stylum as style, stiletto, and pen (that signed the order).)

Sarpi is maybe the only person, real or fictional, whose response to a stabbing beats Mercutio’s in Romeo and Juliet

No, ’tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a
church-door; but ’tis enough,’twill serve: ask for
me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man (3.1.something)

Such a notion could not, of course, coexist with any clear sense of spatial geometry

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

From Martin West’s The Orphic Poems in his commentary on the Derveni papyrus theogony.

But although civic calendars were based on the moon, it was of no use to those who really needed to know the time of year.  They went by the stars.  If Orpheus’ ‘many’ has a point, I wonder whether he imagined that the moon’s phases were different as seen from different parts of the earth, so that there were always some peoples to whom it was invisible.  Such a notion could not, of course, coexist with any clear sense of spatial geometry. (pg 93)

West was always one of the most dryly funny classicists.  This jab in particular hits home because I had the same debate a few months back on moon phases seen from different places on the earth.  I managed to reason to it but it took shamefully long.

I see the better … Ovid, Petrarch, and Foscolo

~ Walter Shandy ~ 2 Comments

Spoken by Medea in the Metamorphoses as she first argues down her passion for Jason

Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor (7.20-21)

I see the better and approve, but I pursue the worse

Petrarch later adapts this line as the conclusion to one of his Canzoniere written after Laura’s death:

né mai peso fu greve
quanto quel ch’i’ sostengo in tale stato:
ché co la morte a lato
cerco del viver mio novo consiglio,
et veggio ‘l meglio, et al peggior m’appiglio (264.132-136)

Nor ever was weight so oppressive
as that which I sustain in such a state:
For with death at my side
I seek my new plan for living,
And I see the better, and yet to the worse do I cling

And Ugo Foscolo in his Sonnetti takes it back up over four centuries later:

Tal di me schiavo, e d’altri, e della sorte,
conosco il meglio ed al peggior mi appiglio,
e so invocare e non darmi la morte. (2.12-14)

So much a slave of myself, of others, and of the fates,
I know the better and cling to the worse,
and can pray for death but not give it to myself

It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

Reading Ovid’s version of the Narcissus story in the Metamorphoses made me wonder if Melville had it specifically in mind in the early chapters of Moby Dick.  I remember vaguely that he had bought a set of classics in translation in the the years (1849?) leading into the writing of the novel but can’t recall what beyond the tragedians and Homer were included there.  I only half-entertain the idea because the divide between Ahab and Ishmael can, by one obviously reductionist view, be collapsed to the former being unable to recognize the whale as ‘shadow of a reflected form with no substance of its own’ and his accordingly being incapable of letting it go.

And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all (Moby Dick ch 1)

What [Narcissus] sees he knows not; but that which he sees he burns for, and the same delusion mocks and allures his eyes.  O fondly foolish boy, why vainly seek to clasp a fleeting image? What you seek is nowhere; but turn yourself away and the object of your love will be no more.  That which you behold is but the shadow of a reflected form and has no substance of its own.  With you it comes, with you it stays, and it will go with you – if you can go. (Loeb edition translated by Frank Justus Miller, pg 155)

 

Quid videat, nescit: sed quod videt, uritur illo,
atque oculos idem, qui decipit, incitat error.
430Credule, quid frusta simulacra fugacia captas?
quod petis, est nusquam; quod amas, avertere, perdes.
Ista repercussae, quam cernis, imaginis umbra est:
nil habet ista sui; tecum venitque manetque,
tecum discedet, si tu discedere possis. (Metamorphoses 3.428-434)

A spectral version of moral reasoning can survive in the world of the trolley problems

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

From Roger Scruton’s On Human Nature (pgs 95-96):

A spectral version of moral reasoning can survive in the world of the trolley problems; but it exists there detached from its roots in the person-to-person encounter, lending itself to mathematical treatment partly because the deskbound philsopher has thought the normal sourches of moral sentiment away.

That is not to deny that moral reasoning makes comparisons. When Anna Karenina ask herself whether it is right to leave Karenin and to set up house with Vronksy, she is asking herself which of two courses of action would be better. But although she is making a comparative judgment, it is not one that can be resolved by a calculation… Her dilemma is not detachable from its peculiar circumstances … Dilemmas of this kind exist because we are bound to each other by obligations and attachments, and one way of being a bad person is to think they can be resolved by moral arithmetic. Suppose Anna were to reason that it is better to satisfy two healthy young people and frustrate one old one than to satisfy one old person and frustrate two young ones, by a factor of 2.5 to 1: ergo I am leaving. What would we think, then, of her moral seriousness.

These men much despise us

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From Herodotus’ Histories (4.134) as Darius’ invading Persian army finally catches the Scythians and force a battle:

When the Scythians had lined up in battle order [against the Persians] a hare ran into the space between the armies, and each of the Scythians gave chase as they saw it.  As the Scythians fell into disorder and shouting, Darius asked what the uproar in the opposing army was.  Learning that they were chasing a hare, he said to those with whom he was accustomed to discuss everything: “These men much despise us.”

Τεταγμένοισι δὲ τοῖσι Σκύθῃσι λαγὸς ἐς τὸ μέσον διήιξε. Τῶν δὲ ὡς ἕκαστοι ὥρων τὸν λαγὸν ἐδίωκον. Ταραχθέντων δὲ τῶν Σκυθέων καὶ βοῇ χρεωμένων, εἴρετο ὁ Δαρεῖος τῶν ἀντιπολεμίων τὸν θόρυβον· πυθόμενος δὲ σφέας τὸν λαγὸν διώκοντας, εἶπε ἄρα πρὸς τούς περ ἐώθεε καὶ τὰ ἄλλα λέγειν « Οὗτοι ὧνδρες ἡμέων πολλὸν καταφρονέουσι … »

English ‘despise’ is maybe a little harsh for καταφρονειν but its Latin root – directional prefix de (down) + spicere (look, regard) – best mirrors the structure of the Greek κατα (down) + φρονειν (think, consider).

I will tell you, but we must not frighten the ladies

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

From book 2 of Cardinal de Retz’s  Memoires.  It’s less the punchline that’s charming than his scene construction – the carriage load of (drunken) friends stopped on the way home from partying and now variously rocking, sobbing, and praying in fear.

In short, we did not set out till peep of day (it being summer-time), and the days at the longest, and were got no further than the bottom of the Descent of Bonshommes, when all on a sudden the coach stopped. I, being next the door opposite to Mademoiselle de Vendome, bade the coachman drive on. He answered, as plain as he could speak for his fright, “What! would you have me drive over all these devils here?” I put my head out of the coach, but, being short-sighted from my youth, saw nothing at all. Madame de Choisy, who was at the other door with M. de Turenne, was the first in the coach who found out the cause of the coachman’s fright. I say in the coach, for five or six lackeys behind it were already crying “Jesu Maria” and quaking with fear.
Madame de Choisy cried out, upon which M. de Turenne threw himself out of the coach, and I, thinking we were beset by highwaymen, leaped out on the other side, took one of the footmen’s hangers, drew it, and went to the other side to join M. de Turenne, whom I found with his eyes fixed on something, but what I could not see. I asked him what it was, upon which he pulled me by the sleeve, and said, with a low voice, “I will tell you, but we must not frighten the ladies,” who, by this time, screamed most fearfully. Voiture began his Oremus, and prayed heartily. You, I suppose, knew Madame de Choisy’s shrill tone; Mademoiselle de Vendome was counting her beads; Madame de Vendome would fain have confessed her sins to the Bishop of Lisieux, who said to her, “Daughter, be of good cheer; you are in the hands of God.” At the same instant, the Comte de Brion and all the lackeys were upon their knees very devoutly singing the Litany of the Virgin Mary.
M. de Turenne drew his sword, and said to me, with the calm and undisturbed air he commonly puts on when he calls for his dinner, or gives battle, “Come, let us go and see who they are.”
“Whom should we see?” said I, for I believed we had all lost our senses.
He answered, “I verily think they are devils.”

When we had advanced five or six steps I began to see something which I thought looked like a long procession of black phantoms. I was frightened at first, because of the sudden reflection that I had often wished to see a spirit, and that now, perhaps, I should pay for my incredulity, or rather curiosity. M. de Turenne was all the while calm and resolute. I made two or three leaps towards the procession, upon which the company in the coach, thinking we were fighting with all the devils, cried out most terribly; yet it is a question whether our company was in a greater fright than the imaginary devils that put us into it, who, it seems, were a parcel of barefooted reformed Augustine friars, otherwise called the Black Capuchins, who, seeing two men advancing towards them with drawn swords, one of them, detached from the fraternity, cried out, “Gentlemen, we are poor, harmless friars, only come to bathe in this river for our healths.” M. de Turenne and I went back to the coach ready to die with laughing at this adventure.

There’s a similar scene in Don Quixote (part 1, chapter 20).

 

It is incomprehensible to me how many clothes you are taking off

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From Robert Musil’s diaries (Tagebucher 1 – 286,7), as Musil follows his wife’s preparations for bed.

Towards the end of November.  I have gone to bed early, I feel I have caught a slight cold, indeed I’m perhaps running a temperature.  The electric light is switched on; I see the ceiling or the curtain over the door of the balcony.  You began to get undressed after I had already finished doing so; I am waiting.  I simply listen to you.  Incomprehensible walking to and fro.  You come to put something on your bed; what can it be? You open the cupboard, put something in or take something out, I hear it shut again.  You put hard objects on the table, others on the marble top of the chest of drawers. You are constantly in motion.  Then I hear the familiar sounds of hair being let down and brushed.

Water rushing into the wash-basin.  Before that, clothes being slipped off; now more of them; it is incomprehensible to me how many clothes you are taking off.  The shoes.  Then your stockings move to and fro constantly just as the shoes did before.  Your pour water into glasses, three, four times, one after the other.  In my visualization I have long exhausted every conceivable possibility, whereas you, in reality, clearly still have things to do.  I hear you putting on your nightdress.  But still you are far from finished.

This was deemed offensive for its accuracy in my house.