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How admirably society was functioning!

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

From Robert Musil’s Man Without Qualities, ch1 of part 1:

Just a moment earlier something there had broken ranks; falling sideways with a crash, something had spun around and come to a skidding halt—a heavy truck, as it turned out, which had braked so sharply that it was now stranded with one wheel on the curb. Like bees clustering around the entrance to their hive people had instantly surrounded a small spot on the pavement, which they left open in their midst. In it stood the truck driver, gray as packing paper, clumsily waving his arms as he tried to explain the accident. The glances of the newcomers turned to him, then warily dropped to the bottom of the hole where a man who lay there as if dead had been bedded against the curb. It was by his own carelessness that he had come to grief, as everyone agreed. People took turns kneeling beside him, vaguely wanting to help; unbuttoning his jacket, then closing it again; trying to prop him up, then laying him down again. They were really only marking time while waiting for the ambulance to bring someone who would know what to do and have the right to do it.
The lady and her companion had also come close enough to see something of the victim over the heads and bowed backs. Then they stepped back and stood there, hesitating. The lady had a queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach, which she credited to compassion, although she mainly felt irresolute and helpless. After a while the gentleman said: “The brakes on these heavy trucks take too long to come to a full stop.” This datum gave the lady some relief, and she thanked him with an appreciative glance. She did not really understand, or care to understand, the technology involved, as long as his explanation helped put this ghastly incident into perspective by reducing it to a technicality of no direct personal concern to her. Now the siren of an approaching ambulance could be heard. The speed with which it was coming to the rescue filled all the bystanders with satisfaction: how admirably society was functioning! The victim was lifted onto a stretcher and both together were then slid into the ambulance. Men in a sort of uniform were attending to him, and the inside of the vehicle, or what one could see of it, looked as clean and tidy as a hospital ward. People dispersed almost as if justified in feeling that they had just witnessed something entirely lawful and orderly.

The written word has taught me to listen to the human voice

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

From Marguerite Yourcenar’s Mémoires d’Hadrien:

Like everyone else I have at my disposal only three means of evaluating human existence: the study of self, which is the most difficult and most dangerous method, but also the most fruitful; the observation of our fellow men, who usually arrange to hide their secrets from us, or to make us believe that they have secrets; and books, with the particular errors of perspective to which they inevitably give rise. I have read nearly everything that our historians and poets have written, and even our story-tellers, although the latter arc considered frivolous; and to such reading I owe perhaps more instruction than I have gathered in the somewhat varied situations of my own life. The written word has taught me to listen to the human voice, much as the great unchanging statues have taught me to appreciate bodily motions. On the other hand, but more slowly, life has thrown light for me on the meaning of books.
But books lie, even those that are most sincere. The less adroit, for lack of words and phrases wherein they can enclose life, retain of it but a flat and feeble likeness. Some, like Lucan, make it heavy, and encumber it with a solemnity which it does not possess; others, on the contrary, like Petronius, make life lighter than it is, like a hollow, bouncing ball, easy to toss to and fro in a universe without weight. The poets transport us into a world which is vaster and more beautiful
than our own, with more ardour and sweetness, different therefore, and in practice almost uninhabitable. The philosophers, in order to study reality pure, subject it to much the same transformations as fire or pestle make substance undergo : nothing that we have known of a person or of a fact seems to subsist in those ashes or those crystals to which they are reduced. Historians propose to us systems too perfect for explaining the past, with sequence of cause and effect much too exact and clear to have been ever entirely true; they rearrange that dead, unresisting material, but I know that even Plutarch will never recapture Alexander. The story-tellers and spinners of erotic tales are hardly more than butchers who hang up for sale morsels of meat attractive to flies. I should take little comfort in a world without books, but reality is not to be found in them because it is not there whole.

 

and the original

Comme tout le monde, je n’ai à mon service que trois moyens d’évaluer l’existence humaine : l’étude de soi, la plus difficile et la plus dangereuse, mais aussi la plus féconde des méthodes ; l’observation des hommes,qui s’arrangent le plus souvent pour nous cacher leurs secrets ou pour nous faire croire qu’ils en ont ; les livres, avec les erreurs particulières de perspective qui naissent entre leurs lignes. J’ai lu à peu près tout ce que nos historiens, nos poètes, et même nos conteurs ont écrit, bien que ces derniers soient réputés frivoles, et je leur dois peut-être plus d’informations que je n’en ai recueilli dans les situations assez variées de ma propre vie. La lettre écrite m’a enseigné à écouter la voix humaine, tout comme les grandes attitudes immobiles des statues m’ont appris à apprécier les gestes. Par contre, et dans la suite, la vie m’a éclairci les livres.

Mais ceux-ci mentent, et même les plus sincères. Les moins habiles, faute de mots et de phrases où ils la pourraient enfermer, retiennent de la vie une image plate et pauvre ; tels, comme Lucain, l’alourdissent et l’encombrent d’une solennité qu’elle n’a pas. D’autres,au contraire, comme Pétrone, l’allègent, font d’elle une balle bondissante et creuse, facile à recevoir et à lancer dans un univers sans poids. Les poètes nous transportent dans un monde plus vaste ou plus beau, plus ardent ou plus doux que celui qui nous est donné,différent par là même, et en pratique presque inhabitable. Les philosophes font subir à la réalité, pour  pouvoir l’étudier pure, à peu près les mêmes transformations que le feu ou le pilon font subir aux corps :rien d’un être ou d’un fait, tels que nous l’avons connu,ne paraît subsister dans ces cristaux ou dans cette cendre. Les historiens nous proposent du passé des systèmes trop complets, des séries de causes et d’effets trop exacts et trop clairs pour avoir jamais été entièrement vrais ; ils réarrangent cette docile matière morte,et je sais que même à Plutarque échappera toujours Alexandre. Les conteurs, les auteurs de fables milésiennes, ne font guère, comme des bouchers, que d’appendre à l’étal de petits morceaux de viande appréciés des mouches. Je m’accommoderais fort mal d’un monde sans livres, mais la réalité n’est pas là,parce qu’elle n’y tient pas tout entière.

Given over to his journées de lecture

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

From Roberto Calasso’s Ardor:

Having listed the other sacrifices, the sacrifice to brahman still has to be described. And so we read: “The sacrifice to brahman is the daily study of the Veda.” There is a line that starts off with the sacrifice as a long ceremony, structured into hundreds of movements and actions—and therefore entirely visible—and which leads up to a later and invaluable variant, the sacrifice as an invisible and imperceptible activity, as it is performed through the study of the Veda.
Study of the Veda, known as svādhyāya or “inner recitation,” had to be done beyond the confines of the village, to the east or north, where the roofs were out of sight. It was the first indication of a process by which the simple acquisition of knowledge would get gradually more distant from society and unshackled by it. But study could also be carried out in other ways, even in bed: “And, in truth, if he studies his lesson, even stretched out on a soft bed, oiled, adorned and completely fulfilled, he is burned by tapas up to the tips of his fingernails: and so the daily lesson must be studied.” Here we see a figure we thought was modern: the reader, described much as the young Proust might have been described, given over to his journées de lecture. Once again we can see Vedic open-mindedness: to practice tapas we don’t have to cross our legs or subject ourselves to those “mortifications” that some regard as the very meaning of the word tapas. No, even luxe, calme et volupté may help—or at least not hinder. It is enough that the fervor of the mind runs without respite, and burns “up to the tips of the fingernails.

But this is not the order of the linguistics

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From T.J. Clark’s Heaven on Earth: Painting and the Life to Come (pg 135):

Paintings are not propositions: they do not take the form of image-sentences.  They are not even like propositions.  That is, they do no aim to make statements or ask questions or even, precisely, to seek assent.  They are best not seen, it follows, as strings of individual image-elements or phonemes, arranged according to some overall grammar, out of which a governing meaning is generated for the array as a whole – maybe a complex or ambiguous one, but nonetheless a meaning derived from a knowable lexicon and a set of combinatory or semantic rules.  Naturally a painting ‘takes a view’ of things; it adopts an attitude to them; it discriminates and prioritizes, putting a small world in order.  But this is not the order of the linguistics.  It is an ordering of things more open and centrifugal – more non-committal – than grammar can almost ever countenance.

 I hope sincerely it will be all the age does not want

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Somewhere I have a facsimile of the Kelmscott Chaucer I’ve never managed to put any time into.  I start with it, grow frustrated at the heft, switch to my Penguin Middle English edition, remember I like Boccaccio better, pull down my lovely and mostly unread Mondadori Meridiani edition, remember how limping my old Italian is when it isn’t Dante, and reshelve everything in failure.  Maybe this quote from a letter of Edward Burne-Jones – where I read myself as part of the problem – will help next time.

I have just finished my Chaucer work and in May I hope the book will see the light. I hope sincerely it will be all the age does not want – I have omitted nothing I could think of to obstruct the onward march of the world.  The designs are carved in wood … the lines as thick as I could get them.  I have done all I can to impede progress — you will always bear me witness that I have not faltered — and that having put my hand to the plough I invariably look back.

I shall await you with a sprig of blossoming chrysanthemum and poor saké

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

From Ueda Akinari’s The Chrysanthemum Vow in his Tales of Moonlight and Rain.  Mine is the Anthony Chambers translation from Columbia Univ. Press in 2007.  I cried like a man at this story and tested a new cocktail to settle the spirits.

During this time, thinking what a good friend he had found, Samon spent his days and nights with Akana. As they talked together, Akana began to speak hesitantly of various Chinese thinkers, regarding whom his questions and understanding were exceptional, and on military theory he spoke with authority. Finding that their thoughts and feelings were in harmony on every subject, the two were filled with mutual admiration and joy, and finally they pledged their brotherhood. Being the elder by five years, Akana, in the role of older brother, accepted Samon’s expressions of respect and said to him, “Many years have passed since I lost my father and mother. Your aged mother is now my mother, and I should like to pay my respects to her anew. I wonder if she will take pity on me and agree to my childish wish.” Samon was overjoyed: “My mother has always lamented that I was alone. Your heartfelt words will give her a new lease on life when I convey them to her.” With this, he took Akana to his house, where his mother greeted them joyfully: “My son lacks talent, his studies are out of step with the times, and so he has missed his chance to advance in the world. I pray that you do not abandon him, but guide him as his elder brother.” Akana bowed deeply and said, “A man of character values what is right. Fame and fortune are not worthy of mention. Blessed with my honored mother’s love, and receiving the respect of my wise younger brother—what more could I desire?” Rejoicing, he stayed for some time.

Although they had flowered, it seemed, only yesterday or today, the cherry blossoms at Onoe had scattered, and waves rising with a refreshing breeze proclaimed that early summer had arrived. Akana said to Samon and his mother, “Since it was to see how things stand in Izumo that I escaped from Ōmi, I should like to go down there briefly and then come back to repay your kindness humbly as a servant living on bean gruel and water. Please allow me to take my leave for a time.” Samon said, “If it must be so, my brother, when will you return?” Akana said, “The months and days will pass quickly. At the latest, I shall return before the end of this autumn.” Samon said, “On what day of autumn shall I expect you? I beg you to appoint the time.” Akana said, “Let us decide, then, that the Chrysanthemum Festival, the ninth day of the Ninth Month, shall be the day of my return.” Samon said, “Please be certain not to mistake the day. I shall await you with a sprig of blossoming chrysanthemum and poor saké.” Mutually they pledged their reunion and lamented their separation, and Akana returned to the west.

Would that I might always have the desire of chasing butterflies

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

From Lafcadio Hearn’s essay on butterflies in his collection Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, one of a number of haikus he includes:

Cho wo ou
Kokoro-mochitashi
Itsumademo!

[Would that I might always have the heart (desire) of chasing butterflies!*]

*Literally, “Butterfly-pursuing heart I wish to have always;”—i.e., I would that I might always be able to find pleasure in simple things, like a happy child.

It somehow reminded me of Lear’s speech in Act V (Scene 3, 3130ff):

No, no, no, no! Come, let’s away to prison.
We two alone will sing like birds i’ th’ cage.
When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down
And ask of thee forgiveness. So we’ll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news; and we’ll talk with them too-
Who loses and who wins; who’s in, who’s out-
And take upon ‘s the mystery of things,
As if we were God’s spies; and we’ll wear out,
In a wall’d prison, packs and sects of great ones
That ebb and flow by th’ moon.

 

On the verb Nazoraeru

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

From Lafcadio Hearn’s Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, in the tale Of a Mirror and a Bell.

Now there are queer old Japanese beliefs in the magical efficacy of a certain mental operation implied, though not described, by the verb nazoraeru. The word itself cannot be adequately rendered by any English word; for it is used in relation to many kinds of mimetic magic, as well as in relation to the performance of many religious acts of faith. Common meanings of nazoraeru, according to dictionaries, are “to imitate,” “to compare,” “to liken;” but the esoteric meaning is to substitute, in imagination, one object or action for another, so as to bring about some magical or miraculous result.

For example:—you cannot afford to build a Buddhist temple; but you can easily lay a pebble before the image of the Buddha, with the same pious feeling that would prompt you to build a temple if you were rich enough to build one. The merit of so offering the pebble becomes equal, or almost equal, to the merit of erecting a temple… You cannot read the six thousand seven hundred and seventy-one volumes of the Buddhist texts; but you can make a revolving library, containing them, turn round, by pushing it like a windlass. And if you push with an earnest wish that you could read the six thousand seven hundred and seventy-one volumes, you will acquire the same merit as the reading of them would enable you to gain… So much will perhaps suffice to explain the religious meanings of nazoraeru.

The magical meanings could not all be explained without a great variety of examples; but, for present purposes, the following will serve. If you should make a little man of straw, for the same reason that Sister Helen made a little man of wax,—and nail it, with nails not less than five inches long, to some tree in a temple-grove at the Hour of the Ox,—and if the person, imaginatively represented by that little straw man, should die thereafter in atrocious agony,—that would illustrate one signification of nazoraeru… Or, let us suppose that a robber has entered your house during the night, and carried away your valuables. If you can discover the footprints of that robber in your garden, and then promptly burn a very large moxa on each of them, the soles of the feet of the robber will become inflamed, and will allow him no rest until he returns, of his own accord, to put himself at your mercy. That is another kind of mimetic magic expressed by the term nazoraeru. And a third kind is illustrated by various legends of the Mugen-Kane.

Achille n’est plus seulement hante par sa propre mort, mais par le gouffre meme de la mort.

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

From Marcel Conche’s essay La disproportion d’Achille in his collection Essais sur Homere (pg 88-89):

La nature demonique d’Achille – ou le cote demonique de sa nature – se revele surtout apres la mort de Patrocle. Si la mort de Patrocle est, pour lui, un veritable “tremblement de terre”, c’est qu’il ne s’y attendait pas.  Jusque-la, il vivait persuade que son sort etait de perir en Troade, loin des siens.  Sa mere, Thetis, le lui a dit, et il le sait: le destin, au lieu de “longs jours”, ne lui accorde qu’une “vie trop breve” (1.416).  L’angoisse de la mort est, chez lui, constamment presente: c’est elle qui explique son impatience en plusieurs circonstances, ou qui le fait, plusieurs fois, envisager d’abandonner la partie et de rentrer en Phthiotide, avec ses Myrmidons.  Il exprime, sur fond d’angoisse, un regret intense d’avoir a quitter la vie: “Il n’est rien pour moi qui vaille la vie … La vie d’un homme ne se retrouve pas” (9.4001, 408).  Il va jusqu’a conseiller aux Acheens de “voguer vers leurs foyers” (9.417).  Mais autant Achille est persuade de sa mort – car il ne croit pas vraiment pouvoir encore choisir entre la vie breve mai glorieuse et la longue vie sans gloire -, autant it est convaincu que son ami, son “autre lui-meme” (18.82), lui survivra.  Pour lui, avec la mort de Patrocle, l’aveni qu’au-dela de sa propre mort il se figurait encore, s’effondre brusquement.  Qui, maintenant, ira chercher son fils a Scyros pour le ramener en Phtie? Il gemit devant le corps dechire du heros: “Avant ce jour mon coeur comptait en ma poitrine que je perirais seul, ici, en Troade, loin d’Argo, nourriciere de cavales, et que tu reviendrais, toi, en Phthie, afin de ramener mon fils de Scyros sur ta rapide nef noire, et de lui montrer tout: mon domaine, mes serviteurs, ma vaste et haute demeure” (19.327-333, trad. Mazon). D’une certaine facon, en ce jour, la mort est survenue avant la mort.  Desormais, Achille n’est plus seulement hante par sa propre mort, mais par le gouffre meme de la mort.  Lui mort, la vie gardait une signification, qu’elle a perdue maintenant.  De la une nouvelle colere, plus “terrible” que l’autre, plus sanguinaire.

Moderation began its fatal inroads

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

More from A.J. Liebling’s Between Meals (pg27-28).

When [Yves] Mirande first faltered, in the Rue Chabanais, I had failed to correlate cause and effect. I had even felt a certain selfish alarm. If eating well was beginning to affect Mirande at eighty, I thought, I had better begin taking in sail. After all, I was only thirty years his junior. But after the dinner at Mme. B.’s, and in light of subsequent reflection, I saw that what had undermined his constitution was Mme. G.’s defection from the restaurant business. For years, he had been able to escape Mme. B.’s solicitude for his health by lunching and dining in the restaurant of Mme. G., the sight of whom Mme. B. could not support. Entranced by Mme. G.’s magnificent food, he had continued to live “like a cock in a pie” — eating as well, and very nearly as much, as when he was thirty. The organs of the interior — never very intelligent, in spite of what the psychosomatic quacks say — received each day the amount of pleasure to which they were accustomed, and never marked the passage of time; it was the indispensable roadwork of the prizefighter. When Mme. G., good soul, retired, moderation began its fatal inroads on his resistance. My old friend’s appetite, insufficiently stimulated, started to loaf — the insidious result, no doubt, of the advice of the doctor whose existence he had revealed to me by that slip of the tongue about why he no longer drank Burgundy. Mirande commenced, perhaps, by omitting the fish course after the oysters, or the oysters before the fish, then began neglecting his cheeses and skipping the second bottle of wine on odd Wednesdays. What he called his pipes (“ma tuyauterie”), being insufficiently exercised, lost their tone, like the leg muscles of a retired champion. When, in his kindly effort to please me, he challenged the escargots en pots de chambre, he was like an old fighter who tries a comeback without training for it. That, however, was only the revelation of the rot that had already taken place. What always happens happened. The damage was done, but it could so easily have been averted had he been warned against the fatal trap of abstinence.

 

There’s a definite Proustian tang to the phrasing and thought structure of – “organs of the interior — never very intelligent, in spite of what the psychosomatic quacks say — received each day the amount of pleasure to which they were accustomed, and never marked the passage of time.”