So only the few and the proud will be interested in
my érudit maudit concept. In fact, however, our society is
opulent enough that it is possible to live decently at quite a low
relative economic level. And while certain pleasures and comforts will
need to be sacrificed, the most painful sacrifice will be success
itself. People often talk about “true success”, but nobody really
believes that success is anything but money. Those making the
bohemian sacrifice will have to choose between taking a lot of ribbing
and nagging about their personal failure, and just cutting unsympathetic
people out their lives. Neither option is an appealing one.
I was highly disappointed when the Lutheran Church of
my birth switched from the old Bach chorales and Gregorian liturgy to
something more contemporary, and I was also disappointed when I
found out awhile back that a fair-sized Catholic bookstore carried
nothing at all on Gregorian chant. But I doubt that the traditionalists
in either church would would take much comfort in the support of an
unbeliever whose motives are entirely musical.
The American wars against the "Barbary pirates"
around the turn of the nineteenth century featured an American suicide
bomber attacking Muslims, a peace treaty declaring the United States not
to be a Christian nation, and the namesakes of several naval vessels:
first, the inadvertent suicide bomber Lt. Richard Somers, and second, one
Reuben (or Ruben) James. A few decades later, a mutiny on the USS
Somers, commanded by Herman Melville's' cousin Guert Gansevoort, was
the likely prototype for Melville's Billy Budd (and perhaps also
his story "Benito Cereno"). Later still, the WWII USS Reuben James
lent its name to a famous pro-war agitprop folk song -- which was later
retrofitted as an anti-war song.
Surf guitar (created with jimmied
equipment) sounds great with a dirty saxophone, regardless of whether
either of the players can play. This is absolute music in its purest
form -- the rock-bottom music of the state of nature. How could
anything be more minimal than this? It's nothing but "a
sound". But then the people called
"minimalists" took a great idea and ruined it.
But the big
question is this: if Nietzsche had been an Austen character, could he have
married one of Austen's Dashwood sisters? I think that the answer is
“maybe -- but probably not.” In his favor is Jane Austen’s own bias toward
reserved, dignifiedsuitors.When
she concocted improbably happy endings for her books, Austen made sure
that the “nice guy” got the girl -- whereas she forced the dashing,
impulsive seducer to slink offstage in disgrace. Now, according to the
testimony in Gilman’s book, Nietzsche was tolerably like the characters
Austen favored, and during his younger days he probably even had the
ardent sincerity Marianne (the “sensibility” sister) demanded. At the same
time, however, both sisters expected what we would call
an upper class income (1000 to 2000 pounds), and Nietzsche probably would
have been out of luck for that reason.
For little birds hoping for
refuge, by and large, the odds are not really good. Cao Zhi and Prince
Rakoczi escaped with their lives, but the Chinese poet had to sit
helplessly and watch while his friends, one by one, were murdered by the
his brother the Emperor. (The almost mawkish pathos of the poem here is
very rare in the Chinese poetry). Temujin escaped too, but he
devoted his life to tracking his enemies down and killing them. He was
not a sparrow, but the fiercest of sparrowhawks, and from him there was
no refuge.
A number of interesting
perceptions in Richards’ book would fit quite well in a book which was
actually about Aloysius Bertrand’s poems. Richards’ comments on Bertrand’s
“creative parody”, “jerkiness”, use of “mosaic”, and “break
from monologic romanticism”, are all interesting. But there just isn’t
enough of the good stuff.
“Liberating potential” is supposedly
crucial to theory, but in fact theory, like any other methodology in the
methodologized university, has been imposed on a generation of scholars
from above by standard bureaucratic processes -- chiefly the
establishment of objective standards and procedures for the control of
hiring, firing, and promotion. It would be interesting to see Connery
apply the tools he has used to analyze text formation within the Chinese
bureaucratized elite to the rules for text formation in the
bureaucratized academic world of today.
There is, however,
a plausible candidate for "the original Humbert”. Umberto Saba was an
Italian poet from Trieste, where he was a neighbor of James Joyce. He
wrote personal, unmodernist poems in pure classical Italian, and has come
to be regarded as one of the three great Italian poets of the first half
of the twentieth century (along with Ungaretti and Montale).
Tess of the
D'Urbervilles and Billy Budd were both published in 1891. In
each of these two books a guileless and naive (but not legally innocent)
protagonist is condemned to death and hanged for the murder of a
malicious villain. Both of the condemned were, in addition, young and
physically attractive. Were these two books triggered by a real-life
incident?
In my "Recent Reading" box (above on the right), you will see a list of
the books that I've read recently. I've been meaning to write about these
books, but sometimes they sit there for
weeks because I just don't know what to say.
I think that my error has been the idea that the quality of what I
write must be in some way commensurate with the quality of the book
I'm writing about. In many cases this is impossible, and this
error has led others to write a lot of shitty criticism.
The
hollyhock played a unexpectedly large role in XIX-c French
avant-garde literature, appearing twice in the works of Gerard de
Nerval, once each in poems by Verlaine and Rimbaud, once in a Berthe
Morisot painting named for the flower, and it also fugures in
the works of Jean Giono.
Recently I happened on some photographs of Gautier,
however, and his grumpy, distinctly non-effete appearance caught my eye.
(The photo I've posted isn't the worst: there's another one where
he looks like a street wino). It's no great discovery to point out that
apolitical escapism is a reaction to political hopelessness and to the
debasement of political life, but these pictures made me feel that
Gautier's aestheticism was also reactive, and that he had been
engaged in a lifelong struggle against his inner
oaf. A little research
brought up some more evidence: Gautier's totem animal was the
hippopotamus.
I can't be fair to Emma. For me, reading the book
was unbearable, like watching the slow-motion crash of an airliner I had
almost boarded. Give Flaubert credit for writing a powerful book.
Emma is the misogynist's idea of Woman: emotional,
incapable of rationality, but exciting. From a social Darwinist point of
view, she was the natural prey of the seducer Rodolphe and the usurer
Lheureux, and could never have been anything else -- whereas the hapless
Charles (the me-figure in this story) was her own natural prey. From a
Buddhist point of view, her story is a tidy little morality play about the
fatally self-defeating essence of desire. Or it could be a bourgeois
homily on debt, or on the virtues of chastity and faithfulness. But I
don't think those are messages I was intended to get.
Tso Chuan, ca. 450 B.C. This chronicle is
almost the only more-or-less reliable extended record of actual Chinese
life before the foundation of the Qin dynasty (ca. 200 B.C.) The early
chapters have monsters, and cannibalism and fratricide appear from time
to time. The reason why Confucius advocated serenity and restraint was
because it was badly needed then. (Legge's bilingual OUP version
is one of the physically ugliest books of all time).
Kenneth Rexroth
Awhile back I had occasion to cite a
translation by Kenneth Rexroth, which I had retrieved from the
Rexroth Archive. As
poet, translator, radical, and critic (in the old-fashioned sense of the
word), Rexroth has been important to me for decades. One of these days
I'll write something, but I happened on the Archive again just now
and thought I'd throw it a link.
"When my pack meets you, if I am the last one and make no greeting,
don’t let yourself think that it’s because of that business with
the cushions. And if my pack meets your pack and smiles are
exchanged, don’t let yourself think that one of them comes from me."
-- Max Jacob
My first stop is always
Bookfinder.com, whichfinds sellers stocking any given title
and is good for books in English, French, German, and Italian (but not Spanish).
Once I’ve pulled up a list on Bookfinder, I look for the ABE
booksellers there. ABE is an umbrella for thousands of small booksellers, and
you will ultimately be buying from one of them. (Bookfinder will direct you to Amazon
if they’re a good source, but ABE is usually the best -- preferable to
Amazon, Alibris, BookAvenue, Half.com, Barnes & Noble, or any of the
others. I’ve never had a bad experience with
ABE).
Every guy I knew growing up was a Charles Bovary. My
dad was a Charles Bovary. I wasn't going to have to marry any of them, so
I liked them all fine. I am somewhat of a Charles Bovary myself. His big country wedding sounded like
an enhanced version of the kind of weddings we had where I grew up -- a lot of fun,
really.
The Good Old Days
This is for some teachers I know.
Antonio Machado was one of the major
Spanish poets of the early twentieth century. He taught for many years
in what we would today call high school. "Juan de Mairena" was
his fictitious alter
ego.
Mairena was -- notwithstanding his angelic
appearance -- basically rather ill-tempered. From time to time
he would receive a visit from some paterfamilias
complaining, not about the fact that his son had been flunked, but
about the casualness of Mairena's examination process. An angry
scene, albeit a brief one, would inevitably occur:
"Is it enough for you just to look at a boy in
order to flunk him?" the
visitor would ask, throwing his arms wide in feigned astonishment.
Mairena would answer, red-faced and banging
the floor with his cane, "I don't even have to do that
much. I just
have to look at his father!"
Antonio Machado, Juan de
Mairena, XVII, (paraphrase)
The only thing Aucassin ever does
is pine for Nicolette. His kingdom is attacked and his aged father is
unable to fight, but Aucassin only wants to continue pining. When his
father finally cons him into defending his birthright with a lying
promise, Aucassin goes absent-mindely into battle and is almost killed
before he remembers where he is. Then he fights bravely and captures the
enemy baron who has been attacking their kingdom continuously for decades.
When Aucassin finally finds Nicolette after her first escape, he
immediately falls absent-mindedly off his horse, throwing his shoulder out of joint,
so that she has to set it for him. Then she has to explain to him that they
need to flee, since his father intended to have Nicolette burned to death;
otherwise he would have blissfully wandered around until she was captured .
I think that my error has been the
idea that the quality of what I write must be in some way commensurate
with the quality of the book I'm writing about. In many cases this is
impossible, and this error has led others to write a lot of shitty
criticism.
Perhaps
this page will be of
some use to first-time readers of Sonnets to Orpheus. This index
helps the reader see the books by tracking the repeated themes scattered
through it.
Erik Satie was a truculent alcoholic who lived for decades in tiny, squalid apartments
which no one was ever allowed to enter. After his death his family and
friends had to remove two loads of garbage and rubbish before they could
retrieve the manuscripts and other effects which were heaped haphazardly
about the room.
He had only one very short serious relationship with a woman, and hid
his true feelings behind a sarcastic, whimsical mask which no one was
ever able to penetrate.
Hampton is wrong. Ibsen was a square,
and he wrote the play to show that Doctor Stockman was right, and that
his cowardly, corrupt, thuggish enemies were wrong. Everyone in town
except Stockman was willing to market a toxic health spa to sick people. An Enemy of the People
is a square play. Partly for that reason, it may not be Ibsen's best
play -- but "the moral of the story" is absolutely clear.
Like a parson bowdlerizing
Shakespeare, Hampton felt the need to misrepresent Ibsen in order to
make him palatable to the cynical modern audience. I have speculated
elsewhere
that we may now be living in a post-ethical age. I didn't say in so many
words that I think that this is a bad thing -- but it is.
A whistling shepherd Jesus with handsome feet turning
the Cross into a shepherd's crook seems odd enough already, but from my
secular twentieth-century point of view, the clever twist in the last line
sounds far too much like a punchline.
Passages from Lao Tzu, Po Chu-i,
and Ted Hughes with different points of view about permanence vs.
the
destructive power of water. Po Chu-i puts a new twist on it: for him the
smoothing and levelling action of water represents a civilizing influence.
(Refers to my Ruins of Rome
page).
After failing to track down some
tasty quotations from Leibniz, Foucault, and Harry Stack Sullivan that I'd
been using for years, I conclude that they are probably all fake. But
Kenneth Burke bails me out --for he did the same thing, crediting come of
his own ideas to Thorstein Veblen and John Dewey.
A Platonic dialogue (with a flavor
of Shakespearean low comedy) and a neglected classic, Melville's The
Confidence Man prophesies New Age investment counselors, prosperity
theology, and much more, and has much to say about the more serious topics
of aloneness and conviviality, gifts, debt, and friendship, and
philanthropy and misanthropy.
The
strange sixteenth-century Portuguese fiction Menina e moça
is unlike anything else I’ve ever read, most resembling some of the
dark works of our own time (and perhaps also Gothic novels, or the stories
of Kleist). It portrays a nightmarish, inescapably unhappy world where
love is doomed by curses, haunts, social pressures, tragic
misunderstandings, faithlessness and fate. (This
page has become the home page for the "Menina and Moça
Project", the goal of which is to get the book translated into English),
Poetry is supposed to be "what's lost in translation",
and the translator has been defined as a traitor, but there's one poem
which has become part of the canon in at least five different languages:
At the turn of
the sixteenth and seventeenth century, a Frenchman was able to read
a poem on the ruins of Rome signed by Joachim du Bellay; a Pole knew
the same poem as the work of Mikołaj
Sęp-Szarzyński;
a Spaniard, as the work of Francisco Quevedo; while the true author,
whom the others adapted without scruple, was a little-known Latin
humanist, Ianus [Janus] Vitalis of Palermo.
(P. 10 in
“Starting from my Europe”, by Czeslaw Milosz (in The Witness of
Poetry, Harvard, 1983, Norton Lectures, pp 1-21.)
Samuel Butler on Rat-traps
"Dunkett found that all of his traps failed one after
another, and was in such despair at the way the corn got eaten that he
resolved to invent a rat-trap. He began by putting himself as nearly as
possible in the rat's place.
'Is there anything', he asked himself, 'in which, if I
were a rat, I would have such complete confidence that I could not suspect
it without suspecting everything in the world and being unable henceforth to
move fearlessly in any direction?'
He pondered for awhile and had no answer, till one night
the room seemed to become full of light, and he heard a voice from Heaven
saying 'Drain-pipes'.
Then he saw his way. To suspect a common drain-pipe would
be to cease to be a rat".
Samuel Butler's Notebooks, Dutton, 1951, p. 158 (abridged)
12-08-04
He wasn't the snob I thought he was when I mistook
him for T.S. Eliot or Ezra Pound. It took me 30 years to recover from my
college English department.
To me, most of these books aren't really odd, but
many of them probably will be to others. A pretty good expression of my
tastes, and almost all of them are books that I like.