November 21: Recycled, or maybe vintage, insights

I think I found a mascot.

How do newspaper columnists do it? Here I was all set to type up some fresh insight about Voltaire, and at the last minute I remembered it was an insight I'd had two months ago. That insight was probably not all that fresh then, either, but my lack of knowledge about Voltaire prevents me from knowing who's had what insights about him. (The reason ignorance is bliss is that the ignorant brain always has that morning-fresh feeling.)

Of course, when it comes to recycling insights, I observe that newspaper columnists seem to be washed clean of shame. Maureen Dowd's been writing the same column for fifteen years. At this point, all she has to do is hit F6 and the column is extruded -- shitty pop-culture metaphors gently circling, one atop another, like the coils of a McDonald's shake. The Internet is unfair.

You could say that Voltaire's "English Letters" recycle the same insight -- which was that England equals progress, and guess what French-speaking nation does not -- but at least he makes himself find fresh examples. Today it's inoculation; the English have had the good sense to steal this disease-fighting practice from the Turks, who (Voltaire says) did it to make sure the pipeline of good-looking prostitutes would continue to flow. Lady Mary Wortley Montague, who seems like an extremely interesting person, brought it to England, and Voltaire, who seems like a guy who knows how to kiss up, manages to credit someone higher-ranking:

Lady Wortley Montague...at her return to England, communicated the experiment to the Princess of Wales, now Queen of England. It must be confessed that this princess, abstracted from her crown and titles, was born to encourage the whole circle of arts, and to do good to mankind. She appears as an amiable philosopher on the throne, having never let slip one opportunity of improving the great talents she received from Nature, nor of exerting her beneficence...The moment this princess heard of inoculation, she caused an experiment of it to be made on four criminals sentenced to die.

See how enlightened she is? She performs medical experiments on prisoners! (My understanding, however, is that by the standards of the House of Hanover this is enlightened.)

The only other insight I'm going to dust off from the inoculation story is the notion that Western Civilization, so called, is largely a collection of stuff from other civilizations that we stole and then repurposed. Like how a bunch of John Philip Sousa instruments got turned into jazz. Recycling can be fun!

September 4: Voltaire hails our new bourgeois overlords

Those who wish to change their own country often fall in love with another country, to try to make their country jealous. While I think the make-the-other-person-jealous strategy is low-percentage -- although it does work in that song "Judy's Turn To Cry" -- it is a time honored strategy on the geopolitical level. The classic example is liberals and France, but you could also use Dick Cheney and the Soviet Union, or social conservatives and the America of 1940s movies. Voltaire and England is still another example.

The great thing about England is that it isn't France:

There is no such thing here as haute, moyenne, and basse justice—that is, a power to judge in all matters civil and criminal; nor a right or privilege of hunting in the grounds of a citizen, who at the same time is not permitted to fire a gun in his own field.

No one is exempted in this country from paying certain taxes because he is a nobleman or a priest...The feet of the peasants are not bruised by wooden shoes; they eat white bread, are well clothed, and are not afraid of increasing their stock of cattle, nor of tiling their houses from any apprehension that their taxes will be raised the year following.

As you see Voltaire is so in love with the bourgeois that he champions the small-business owner's hatred of taxes; although, as he notes, it's a lot easier to swallow when the people at the top are paying too. Voltaire is also a fan of class mobility -- in this case, downward:

...indeed, a peer’s brother does not think traffic beneath him. When the Lord Townshend was Minister of State, a brother of his was content to be a City merchant; and at the time that the Earl of Oxford governed Great Britain, his younger brother was no more than a factor in Aleppo, where he chose to live, and where he died. This custom, which begins, however, to be laid aside, appears monstrous to Germans, vainly puffed up with their extraction... I need not say which is most useful to a nation; a lord, powdered in the tip of the mode, who knows exactly at what o’clock the king rises and goes to bed, and who gives himself airs of grandeur and state, at the same time that he is acting the slave in the ante-chamber of a prime minister; or a merchant, who enriches his country, despatches orders from his counting-house to Surat and Grand Cairo, and contributes to the felicity of the world.

Having inherited a certain anti-bourgeois prejudice from the academy, this is bracing. And, while I am no historian of ideas, it's probably a pretty radical stance to take, for 1728.

And, like many who have Seen The Future, Voltaire makes wrong predictions:

The Government of England will never rise to so exalted a pitch of glory [as Rome], nor will its end be so fatal. The English are not fired with the splendid folly of making conquests, but would only prevent their neighbours from conquering.

The sun never sets on wrong predictions. On the other hand present-day London is more delightful than barbarian Rome must have been.

Finally, apropos of our own moment:

The Romans never knew the dreadful folly of religious wars, an abomination reserved for devout preachers of patience and humility. Marious and Sylla, Cæsar and Pompey, Anthony and Augustus, did not draw their swords and set the world in a blaze merely to determine whether the flamen should wear his shirt over his robe, or his robe over his shirt, or whether the sacred chickens should eat and drink, or eat only, in order to take the augury. The English have hanged one another by law, and cut one another to pieces in pitched battles, for quarrels of as trifling nature.

Fun fact: Lesley Gore, who sang "Judy's Turn To Cry," went to Sarah Lawrence.

Apr 5: The post I forgot to title

Okay, first of all, Hobbes uses "from whence," which I was told you should never do. And Goldsmith used it yesterday. So there. (Actually, in these less formal times, you should probably never use "whence" under any circumstances; but it's nice to know that, should one insist on a certain dandyish éclat to one's sentences, "from whence" has impeccable sanction.)

Secondly, I became inclined to Hobbes's side because of this:

Nevertheless it is not prudence that distinguisheth man from beast. There be beasts that at a year old observe more, and pursue that which is for their good more prudently than a child can do at ten.

I've had a ten-year-old in the house and agree heartily.

Thirdly, much of this passage brought me back to college -- specifically, the part of college when I had to read philosophy, and woul realize I've just read between two and five pages of this tome and registered none of it. If I close my eyes I can see the fluorescent lighting now. (In retrospect I realize I should have bought more used, already-highlighted books.) I think it was this part that brought back those fluorescent-lit evenings:

All fancies are motions with in us, relics of those made in the sense, and those motions that immediately succeeded one another in the sense continue also together after sense...

I can't bring myself to excerpt any more of that sentence.

As a consequence of thirdly, I would have to say that fourthly I can't be relied on to file a good report of these chapters "Of Imagination" and "Of the Consequence or Trail of Imaginations," except to note that, for all his eye-glazing potential, Hobbes (whom I've never read) is kind of entertaining when he's on the attack. Sometimes it happens in the same sentence, viz:

No man therefore can conceive anything but he must conceive it in some place, and indued with some determinate magnitude, and which may be divided into parts; nor that anything is all in this place and all in another place at the same time; nor that two or more things can be in one and the same place at once: for none of these things ever have or can be incident to sense, but are absurd speeches, taken upon credit, without any signification at all, from deceived philosophers, and deceived or deceiving schoolmen.

Before the colon? Boring philosopher. After the colon? Interesting blogger. A right-wing one, I suspect:

If this superstitious fear of spirits were taken away, and with it prognostics from dreams, false prophecies, and many other things depending thereon, by which crafty ambitious persons abuse the simple people, men would be much more fitted than they are for civil obedience.

That's what we need more of around here -- civil obedience. While not necessarily sharing Hobbes's thirst for that goal, I have to note that I think he's dead wrong. Nothing conjures up civil obedience faster than fear and dreams of ticking-bomb scenarios and the like.

I don't know how much more (if any) Hobbes is scheduled for this year. I suspect he's too cranky for the editors of the DRG to serve up too often. But I'm down for it.

Feb 20: Our Far-Flung Correspondents

Voltaire on the Quakers today, and while this may be a classic, what it feels like is that you're reading a magazine article -- a high-toned one, like The New Yorker or Atlantic. It's the famous writer doing a little reporting on this odd and somewhat prominent religious sect. He gets to know one of them, then he tells us their history, then he gives us the current state of play. The tone is exactly the same -- clear, witty, detached. ("George Fox... took it into his head to preach, and, as he pretended, with all the requisites of a true apostle—that is, without being able either to read or write.") Voltaire even puts himself in the story, in the manner of the New Journalists, as we learn that he's uncircumcised.

(And here I have to digress to tell the story about a prop guy on one of my shows, who one day confided in a fellow writer, "I'm leaving this world the same way I came into it. Foreskin intact." Other than that, though, that guy was nothing like Voltaire.)

The equivalent today would be an article on the Scientologists, and there are parallels:

Rich convert William Penn = Rich convert Tom Cruise
Pennsylvania = Hollywood Boulevard
Native American esteem for the Quakers = Battlefield Earth

There it breaks down a little. The Quakers do seem more admirable than the Scientologists, what with the pacifism. Here's Voltaire's Quaker friend:

We never war or fight in any case....Our God, who has commanded us to love our enemies, and to suffer without repining, would certainly not permit us to cross the seas, merely because murderers clothed in scarlet, and wearing caps two foot high, enlist citizens by a noise made with two little sticks on an ass’ skin extended.

Xenu has never topped that. No magazine article would be complete without interesting facts, and so Voltaire also tells us why they thee'd and thou'd so much -- because it gives people airs if you address them in the second person plural. I wonder if that distinction even signified much back then.

And what of the Quakers going forward? Voltaire proves that he is the better class of writer by avoiding the Remains To Be Seen dodge:

I perceive it dwindles away daily in England....Their children, whom the industry of their parents has enriched, are desirous of enjoying honours, of wearing buttons and ruffles; and quite ashamed of being called Quakers they become converts to the Church of England, merely to be in the fashion.

Kids and their ruffles, right?

Feb 10: The French they are a funny race

Among my many character defects is that outmoded prejudices seem funny to me. Current prejudices not so much, because we can do something about them, but back before WWII there used to be a lot of hooey about the characteristics of the “Anglo-Saxon” “race” that seems, well, funny to me – it’s like one of those old-time bathing costumes. (this book is only tangentially about that but it has great examples of admissions officers of the 20s talking frankly about the natural manliness of Anglo-Saxons when compared to, say, Italians (and especially Jews).) It really reinforces that Harvard is, as they say, a construct.

All this is prologue to the blurb in today’s DRG:

"Voltaire once visited Congreve. This famous dramatist requested to be regarded only as a plain gentleman. "Had you been that I should never have come to see you," Voltaire cynically replies."

“Cynically”! This is a complement, but, because he’s a Frenchman, of course he’s cynical. To me it betrays an undercurrent in this project – all of our Western Heritage was really just a way to lead up to Imperial Britain, and we in America are maintaining it and maybe improving it a little around the edges, probably by drinking coffee. In fact it’s remarkable (though not amazing) how un-American the HC is. There’s a volume of American Historical Documents (sexy already!) And Franklin’s Autobiography. And “Two Years Before The Mast”. And they shoehorn some Emerson in. (Granted, according to the universities of the time, American literature has as yet not been produced by 1910.)

Anyway, Voltaire (and this has to be the most ridiculous anniversary yet: it’s Congreve’s anniversary of his baptism. I think it’d be easier if they just threw darts at the books.) It’s “Letters on the English” (natch) – number XVIII (Tragedy) and XIX (Comedy).

Tragedy first: Voltaire complains about Shakespeare’s barbarity (He did not know “one rule of the drama”.) He then translates “To Be Or Not To Be” and a passage of Dryden which I very much enjoyed, especially in light of having to vote on the writers’ contract. Here, here it is:

“When I consider life, ’t is all a cheat,
Yet fooled by hope, men favour the deceit;
Trust on and think, to-morrow will repay;
To-morrow’s falser than the former day;
Lies more; and whilst it says we shall be blest
With some new joy, cuts off what we possessed;

See, Dryden knew all about negotiating year 3 residuals against a fixed cap. I’m helpless about the translations, of course. But I do like this line: “Their dramatic pieces, most of which are barbarous and without decorum, order, or verisimilitude, dart such resplendent flashes through this gleam, as amaze and astonish.”

Having just weighed in against prejudice I'm about to contradict myself, but it seems very French to condemn plays for not conforming to regulations.

The comedy essay isn’t as interesting, as he discusses a bunch of playwrights I’ve never heard of, then summarizes their plots, with all of the intense interest plot summarization is known for. And then, at the end, Voltaire himself explains why his essay isn’t interesting:

If you have a mind to understand the English comedy, the only way to do this will be for you to go to England, to spend three years in London, to make yourself master of the English tongue, and to frequent the playhouse every night. I receive but little pleasure from the perusal of Aristophanes and Plautus, and for this reason because I am neither a Greek nor a Roman. The delicacy of the humour, the allusion, the à propos—all these are lost to a foreigner.

First of all, kudos to Voltaire for saying Aristophanes isn’t funny to read (although I think you could rescue it in staging -- it would still smell like a museum, perhaps). But it also shows why we who labor in comedy are building our houses out of straw. (Maybe the only difference is, we know we are the whole time.)

Jan 13: Rousseau Seeks Sanctuary In England

Today, after a typical Sunday biking with the kids etc., we relax and turn to the Classics. Whose birthday is it today…Lou Costello’s? No Rousseau’s. Actually, it isn’t – he merely arrived in England on this date in 1766.

Burke and Rousseau side by side (or, perhaps, one on top of the other like in a pousse-café), both equally Classic. I guess it’s the job of the HC not to pick sides, although they might have made the classics more fun by trying to pick of fight, along the lines of “Rousseau: Threat or Menance?” But that seems Relevantizing, which I tend to think of as not something they did in 1930 and, in any case, kind of dumb. (My friend Chris Harris used to have a room bit he’d do, Idealistic Young High School Teacher – “Romeo and Juliet were just kids like you! And if Shakespeare were alive today, he’d be a rapper!” Maybe the HC’s older hucksterizing voice is better.)

Okay, onto vol. 34, Rousseau’s “Inquiry on Inequality,” pp. 215-228…and what a find! between pages 166 and 167, there’s a bookmark (a piece of torn newspaper – judging from the large P. 33, and knowing my dad’s history, I’m guessing it’s a seventies-era New York Post. But it could be from a Sunday Times-Union as well. It has been between these two pages for so long that its shadow – vaguely New Hampshire-ish on the right-hand page – remains. So I’m not the first person to look at this after all!

Vol. 34, incidentally, is “French and English Philosophers – Descartes Voltaire Rousseau Hobbes”. It’s like an old episode of Steve Allen’s Meeting of Minds.

Okay, the live blog:

• More of the philosophical presupposition that kind of drives me crazy, The State of Nature. I don’t know why it drives me crazy, maybe because it’s not provable. I assume that’s what the attraction is as well.

• Naked savages, in their liberty, better than us with our European pleasures. This dude sounds like half a right-winger (without the other half – that the naked savages must then be converted to Western ways without the pleasures, thus getting the worst of it all around).

• Also political systems are compared to a father and his children, which I’m sure pleases all the ladies!

• “I shall not now enter upon the inquiries which still remain to be made into the nature of the fundamental pacts of every kind of government, but, following the common opinion, confine myself in this place to the establishment of the political body as a real contract between the multitude and the chiefs elected by it.” Good call. Don’t enter upon it, dude, not in the slightest. This is bringing back memories fo my own liberal education, and how I thought I was going to like political theory and how I actually didn’t. But this time I’m not going to get a lot of coffee and Suzy Qs in order to learn it. Three more pages, three more pages…

• Some social contract stuff, here, I believe. R. posits that religion has been good for tranquility because it has beguiled the people into thinking their kings are divine, thereby reducing the amount of overthrows.

• Scanning quickly now….

By thus discovering and following the lost and forgotten tracks, by which man from the natural must have arrived at the civil state; by restoring, with the intermediate positions which I have been just indicating, those which want of leisure obliges me to suppress, or which my imagination has not suggested, every attentive reader must unavoidably be struck at the immense space which separates these two states.

’ Keep scanning, keep scanning…

• Conclusion (or, as I like to think of it, “Executive Summary”):

“It follows from this picture, that as there is scarce any inequality among men in a state of nature, all that which we now behold owes its force and its growth to the development of our faculties and the improvement of our understanding, and at last becomes permanent and lawful by the establishment of property and of laws.”

Your starvation is progress, notes Rousseau bitterly. Well, I’d give him that.