October 5: Can we have class outside?

Sure, they look attentive. But they're actually looking at the reflection in the window of a guy doing devil sticks.

The Shorter version of today's reading, by Cardinal Newman (though written before his title, I believe, back when he was just plain Larry Oliver*) is that ancient Athens was awesome. This can't be good news for those who are trying to beat back the Newman is gay rumor:

But a freshman like Eunapius soon got experience for himself of the ways and manners prevalent in Athens. Such a one as he had hardly entered the city, when he was caught hold of by a party of the academic youth, who proceeded to practise on his awkwardness and his ignorance.

However, as to this Eunapius, Proæresius took a fancy to the boy, and told him curious stories about Athenian life. He himself had come up to the University with one Hephæstion, and they were even worse off than Cleanthes the Stoic; for they had only one cloak between them, and nothing whatever besides, except some old bedding; so when Proæresius went abroad, Hephæstion lay in bed, and practised himself in oratory; and then Hephæstion put on the cloak, and Proæresius crept under the coverlet.

Of course, what can you expect, right? When in Greece, etc. And speaking of Greece, one of the downsides of the otherwise perfect Athenian campus is that it was located, literally, in a shithole:

Learned writers assure us distinctly that the houses of Athens were for the most part small and mean; that the streets were crooked and narrow; that the upper stories projected over the roadway; and that staircases, balustrades, and doors that opened outwards, obstructed it;—a remarkable coincidence of description. I do not doubt at all, though history is silent, that that roadway was jolting to carriages, and all but impassable; and that it was traversed by drains, as freely as any Turkish town now.

But it doesn't matter, not to Newman, because you didn't come here for the wireless in the dorm or the meal plan, dammit:

It is but a crib or kennel,—in which he sleeps when the weather is inclement or the ground damp; in no respect a home. And he goes out of doors, not to read the day’s newspaper, or to buy the gay shilling volume, but to imbibe the invisible atmosphere of genius, and to learn by heart the oral traditions of taste...No awful arch, no window of many-coloured lights marks the seats of learning there or elsewhere; philosophy lives out of doors. No close atmosphere oppresses the brain or inflames the eyelid; no long session stiffens the limbs. Epicurus is reclining in his garden; Zeno looks like a divinity in his porch; the restless Aristotle, on the other side of the city, as if in antagonism to Plato, is walking his pupils off their legs in his Lyceum by the Ilyssus.

Yes -- they have class outside; the most distracting form of class, in my opinion (though classrooms in the age of texting must also rank up there). Isn't it wonderful? Short answer: no. In my opinion.

Leaving Academe aside, this passage does bring up one of the key differences between L.A. and other cities, which is that your place is less likely to be a hovel than it is in other, more crowded cities -- the apartment we owned in Brooklyn would seem minuscule to us after all this time here. But the advantage of the laughably tiny urban apartment is that it makes you go out, makes you be a public person. Here you can just get drunk in your backyard and it's perfectly pleasant. And when you get drunk in someone else's backyard, you have to get yourself driven home. It's not authentically Athenian. Newman wouldn't approve.



*Joke stolen by me, but I can't remember from whom. Also, h/t to my dad for the America link.

October 4: You won't have Demosthenes to kick around anymore

What I like about Plutarch is that he's honest about the flaws these eminent men have, in this case Demosthenes:

The oration which Apollodorus made use of, and by it carried the cause against Timotheus, the general, in an action of debt, it is said was written for him by Demosthenes; as also those against Phormion and Stephanus, in which latter case he was thought to have acted dishonorably, for the speech which Phormion used against Apollodorus was also of his making; he, as it were, having simply furnished two adversaries out of the same shop with weapons to wound one another.

A total pro. These days he'd get his own column in the Times.

One may associate Demosthenes with the pebbles he put in his mouth to help him enunciate, but there's also another tale which I liked even better:

Hereupon he built himself a place to study in under ground, (which was still remaining in our time), and hither he would come constantly every day to form his action, and to exercise his voice; and here he would continue, oftentimes without intermission, two or three months together, shaving one half of his head, that so for shame he might not go abroad, though he desired it ever so much.

He shaved half his head. That's intense. In some ways he reminds me of Nixon -- an unnatural politician who, nevertheless, succeeds because he wants it so much. And he's willing to go negative with the best of them:

It was evident, even in time of peace, what course Demosthenes would steer in the commonwealth; for whatever was done by the Macedonian [Philip of Macedon, Alex's father], he criticized and found fault with, and upon all occasions was stirring up the people of Athens, and inflaming them against him. ...So that, when the others commended Philip for his able speaking, his beautiful person, nay, and also for his good companionship in drinking, Demosthenes could not refrain from cavilling at these praises; the first, he said, was a quality which might well enough become a rhetorician, the second a woman, and the last was only the property of a sponge; no one of them was the proper commendation of a prince.

In the event, the Athenians were overcome by Philip, so maybe Demosthenes should have been more accomodating; but then he wouldn't have been as famous. Although a guy with half his head shaven off is at least notorious.

OT: You know you're in Los Angeles when

1. You get mail from the "Gregory Peck Reading Series" from the LA Public Library.

2. You open the envelope and the top third of the mailer says "Presents Robert Wagner and Jill St-John"

3. You unfold the mailer and it says, "Reading from A.R. Gurney's Play "Love Letters."

But of course. I can't help thinking that there are two random actors checking a book out of the L.A. Public Library right now who you'd rather see doing this; and besides, I think of "Love Letters" as something you see a poster for at a playhouse in a summer resort, with people from, like, "Law & Order" in one or both of the roles. It's actually kind of surprising it hasn't been made fun of in passing on "The Simpsons."

I confess to knowing nothing about the play, however. Is it any good? Why don't you ever see it done with a gay couple? Wouldn't more people show up if "Love Letters" was being read by George Takei and, say, Richard Chamberlain? Is it because the plot hinges on something like, I don't know, breast augmentation? (I've been in Hollywood too long.)

So many questions. So little interest in looking up the answers myself.

October 3: House to house fighting.

OK, now picture him reciting Chaucer

If, on a sitcom, your writers' room is run well, then problem areas in a script are clearly identified and attacked; indeed, they're identified at the story-breaking level so you don't have to rewrite them in the script, which can be much harder. But when your room is not run well, you spend a lot of time during rewrites arguing over straight lines and words within straight lines -- "since" vs. "because" or "maybe" vs. "perhaps," and you start backpedaling away from jokes that worked perfectly well and don't have obvious replacements, and it takes you forever and you eat dinner out of takeout containers and see your spouse at breakfast. Whereupon I would often say, "House to house fighting."

I think there are some people who enjoy house to house fighting, because it seems like their image of real comedy writing -- we're supposed to be eating takeout dinner in a room that still smells like takeout lunch! As if we were in a Neil Simon play or something. I can't stand it myself, mostly because I'm lazy and like to be home, but also because I like flow. I like flow in hockey games and rappers and in writing; writing shouldn't be that difficult (rewriting, that's another story). And writing that's supposed to be funny and enjoyed by a large audience -- I don't think that should feel difficult to do. As a rule -- there will always be difficulties, that's where you have to be good at your job. It's like what the pro athletes say -- I play for free, what you have to pay me for is practice.

I bring all this up because I have nothing to say about today's reading, the first 350 lines of the Canterbury Tales. I remember reading them, indeed I was required to recite the first 16 lines for English 125, and still can in a way that makes my wife (an actual English major) burst out laughing. I sound like someone doing the worst Swedish Chef impression in the world. But reading it is house to house fighting.

In listes thryes, and ay slayn his foo.
This ilke 40 worthy knight hadde been also
Somtyme with the lord of Palatye, 41
Ageyn another hethen in Turkye:
And everemore he hadde a sovereyn prys. 42
And though that he were worthy, he was wys,
And of his port 43 as meek as is a mayde.

Observe all the footnotes. The whole thing is like this. They're like fish bones. I'm a poor General Reader -- perhaps I should be busted down to Corporal Reader -- but all the Chaucerian irony, the existence of which I dimly remember being instructed about, is lost on me. Shakespeare doesn't bug me at all (because I wound up reading a lot of sixteenth-century history, no doubt), but I'm afraid this is too much.

October 2: Charles Darwin's Reporting Includes, But Is Not Limited To, Atrocities

Different Chuck D., although the working title for "Origin of Species" was "Welcome To The Terrordome."

Darwin's hanging out in Argentina, waiting for the Beagle to pick him up and take him back to civilization, and it gives him a chance to write a bunch of what I believe they call three-dot items, had three dots been invented in 1839. He's interested in everything! Indians, for example:

One glance at the rastro tells these people a whole history. Supposing they examine the track of a thousand horses, they will soon guess the number of mounted ones by seeing how many have cantered; by the depth of the other impressions, whether any horses were loaded with cargoes; by the irregularity of the footsteps, how far tired; by the manner in which the food has been cooked, whether the pursued travelled in haste; by the general appearance, how long it has been since they passed. ...With the sun for their guide, mare’s flesh for food, their saddle-cloths for beds,—as long as there is a little water, these men would penetrate to the end of the world.

Also, imperialist atrocities against Indians are also interesting:

My informer said, when he was pursuing an Indian, the man cried out for mercy, at the same time that he was covertly loosing the bolas from his waist, meaning to whirl it round his head and so strike his pursuer. “I however struck him with my sabre to the ground, and then got off my horse, and cut his throat with my knife.” This is a dark picture; but how much more shocking is the unquestionable fact, that all the women who appear above twenty years old are massacred in cold blood! When I exclaimed that this appeared rather inhuman, he answered, “Why, what can be done? they breed so!”

...The escape of the Indians to the south of the Rio Negro, where in such a vast unknown country they would be safe, is prevented by a treaty with the Tehuelches to this effect;—that Rosas pays them so much to slaughter every Indian who passes to the south of the river, but if they fail in so doing, they themselves are to be exterminated.

Also? Somebody found an arrowhead!

He told me it was found near the island of Cholechel, and that they are frequently picked up there. It was between two and three inches long, and therefore twice as large as those now used in Tierra del Fuego: it was made of opaque cream-coloured flint, but the point and barbs had been intentionally broken off. It is well known that no Pampas Indians now use bows and arrows.

It's like a letter from a summer camp where you can go watch a real live genocide. I suppose when you've spent a sea voyage watching the nature red in tooth and claw, the brutalities of man v. man start to seem inevitable/natural.

October 1: Of Princedoms, And Why It Seems Like A Lousy Job, Except For The Meal Plan, Which Is Excellent

It's fast food week!

In case we think the Renaissance was all possibility and overwrought Italian dudes getting models pregnant, Machiavelli reminds us that you might also get yourself beseiged:

Moreover, it is to be expected that the enemy will burn and lay waste the country immediately on their arrival, at a time when men’s minds are still heated and resolute for defence.

The citizens are going to win this war, but still all their cows and stuff were laid waste and burned. And that's when they're ruled by a good prince.

Reading "The Prince" is like opening the owner's manual to your car and seeing that all the chapter headings are about all the complicated stuff you have to do to keep it from blowing up at any moment: "I have already said that a Prince must lay solid foundations, since otherwise he will inevitably be destroyed." In this case, (Chapter XII) it's mercenaries he's talking about -- are there any examples where the use of mercenaries turns out well for a state? -- but consider the poor Popes:

For in the ten years, which was the average duration of a Pope’s life, he could barely succeed in humbling one of these factions; so that if, for instance, one Pope had almost exterminated the Colonnesi, he was followed by another, who being the enemy of the Orsini had no time to rid himself of them, but so far from completing the destruction of the Colonnesi, restored them to life.

You can change water into wine, but Italian politics, you cannot change.

Quarterly report: The wall

This project is becoming irksome, but not necessarily in the way you think.

What's becoming irksome is that as I go from un- to under- to employed writer these readings goad me, not because I have to do them, but because I won't be able to savor them as much as I used to. I'm squeezing them in, and I don't like it.

Not that I don't do some not-this-again eye-rolling; even the stuff I like, by the nature of my water-beetle breeziness, there's only so much I can gin up by the fifth or sixth reading. On the other hand, when I do gin something up that I'm semi-satisfied with, it's gratifying. Like Shahrazad (pedantic spelling which I learned doing this project), I've escaped death one more time.

Other than that I don't have any big thoughts on What It All Means this time. Or maybe I would, if I didn't feel so beset.

September 30: I hate working

because now I can't give today's Emerson (King of Blowhards) essay the attention it deserves. I think I'll bullet-point my way through it. (One of these days I should live-blog one of these suckers -- it's hard to believe from my 1/8th-inch-thick analysis, but I actually do read these before starting to type.) OK:

• Emerson is to assertion what In-N-Out 100x100 is to lunch -- heavy on the overkill. For instance:

What fact more conspicuous in modern history, than the creation of the gentleman?

How about...the steam engine? But he's writing about "Manners" so manners is the most important and crucial thing that anyone could possibly imagine, and the proof of it is that he, Emerson, is writing about it.

The gentleman is a man of truth, lord of his own actions, and expressing that lordship in his behavior, not in any manner dependent and servile either on persons, or opinions, or possessions.

Although he also said this, about the non-gentlemanly life, awhile back:

He who knows the most, he who knows what sweets and virtues are in the ground, the waters, the plants, the heavens, and how to come to these enchantments, is the rich and royal man.

Truly this man was King of the Blowhards.

• It's also worth noting that, for an American scholar, he is quite into the natural aristocracy of everything. I'm a horrible elitist myself (that is, I believe in it, but I'm bad at it) so I don't disagree. In fact, I give him credit for recognizing that this elitism must be based in flux because the people you want in it might come from someplace completely un-obvious:

It is a spontaneous fruit of talents and feelings of precisely that class who have most vigor, who take the lead in the world of this hour, and, though far from pure, far from constituting the gladdest and highest tone of human feeling, is as good as the whole society permits it to be.

Emphasis added there at the end, because I think that's right too -- nobody's forcing us to have stumblebums and airheads as our most powerful and admired people, that's just who we've anointed, though they are mighty far for purity or the gladdest tone of human feeling. In fact, their next human feeling with be their first, it seems like.

• And dig, if you will, this passage:

Fine manners show themselves formidable to the uncultivated man. They are a subtler science of defence to parry and intimidate; but once matched by the skill of the other party, they drop the point of the sword,—points and fences disappear, and the youth finds himself in a more transparent atmosphere, wherein life is a less troublesome game, and not a misunderstanding rises between the players.

Doesn't it seem like they should be making out? And this:

Know you before all heaven and earth, that this is Andrew, and this is Gergory;—they look each other in the eye; that grasp each other’s hand, to identify and signalize each other. It is a great satisfaction.

Mm-hmm. No wonder he doesn't talk about women in this excerpt.

• Finally, here's the meat:

September 29: Larry King and the Mandate of Heaven

If you're seeking after wisdom, I'll be at Nate 'n' Al's.

I say this with some trepidation, because I am who I am, whereas Confucius has been around for thousands of years. But if you were deciding to read a bunch of the Harvard Classics, and if you landed on Confucius in its century-old (at least) translation, and if the reading assigned were this reading, then you might be thinking what I'm thinking, which is that Confucius sounds like Larry King. Specifically, He sounds like a (less insane version of) Larry King's old "USA Today" column, where, on the page, random synapses would fire, tied together by three dots. I used to collect them. Here are some:

I get a good feeling when I see a police officer on a horse.
I never get tired of listening to Canada's National Anthem.
How do women choose from all the lipsticks available to them?
Jell-O is still one of the all-time great desserts.
If the first phone call of the day is a good one, all of them usually are.
The designs of the new ties are better than ever.
How do you celebrate Flag Day?

I hesitate to say it, but as I look at these, the word that comes to mind is "inscrutable."

Confucius isn't as random, because, of course, he's a wise old man, not a crazy one, but they're just as bullet-pointy:

The Master said: “Honeyed words and flattering looks seldom speak of love.”
The Master said: “In governing, cleave to good; as the north star holds his place, and the multitude of stars revolve upon him.”
“Our manner is the hard part. For the young to be a stay in toil, and leave the wine and cakes to their elders, is this to fulfil their duty?”
“A man without love, what is courtesy to him? A man without love, what is music to him?”
“Preaching to princes brings disgrace, nagging at friends estrangement.”

In Confucius's defense, he died in 479 B.C., where advice not to nag was still relatively fresh, having only been given a hundred thousand times, as opposed to a trillion like now. And, to be fair, because I'm painfully conscious of having insulted this world-historical figure by comparing him to Larry King, there's definitely things here and there to hang on to:

THE MASTER said: “In learning and straightway practising is there not pleasure also? When friends gather round from afar do we not rejoice? Whom lack of fame cannot vex is not he a gentleman?”
The Master said: “A man and his faults are of a piece. By watching his faults we learn whether love be his.”
The Master said: “A scholar in search of truth who is ashamed of poor clothes and poor food it is idle talking to.”

Although I have to say, it's one thing not to be ashamed of poor food. It's another thing to claim it's a positive good -- which I, whatever Confucius might say, do not officially recommend.

UPDATE: Fixed link. Sheesh.

September 28: This will be short

This will be short.

This will be short because I'm a dumb humanities major and I can't follow Pasteur's lecture on germ theory, with sentences like:

Whilst the microbe-producing pus, when acting alone, gives rise to a thick pus, white, or sometimes with a yellow or bluish tint, not putrid, diffused or enclosed by the so-called pyogenic membrane, not dangerous, especially if localized in cellular tissue, ready, if the expression may be used for rapid resorption; on the other hand the smallest abscess produced by this organism when associated with the septic vibrio takes on a thick gangrenous appearance, putrid, greenish and infiltrating the softened tissues.

I do know that it's gross.

This will be short because, other than wondering why this reading is later than the reading from Lister, who based his discovery on Pasteur's after all, I don't have anything else to say (also, this is a good reading for fans of the word "putrid," which who isn't?)

This will also be short because it is all glorious and temperate and Californian outside, with nice autumn light (I wish the Lawrence Weschler article "L.A. Glows" were online, because I could link to it), and I'm going out to enjoy it.

This will be short because I deserve to write a short one. Dammit.

And, finally, this will be short because I am short.

Photo by Flickr user JenWaller used with a Creative Commons license.

September 27: Jesus (the bad news and the worse news)

The bad news: According the Pascal's Fundamentals of the Christian Religion: Christianity only works if you feel like shit:

We can then have an excellent knowledge of God without that of our own wretchedness, and of our own wretchedness without that of God. But we cannot know Jesus Christ without knowing at the same time both God and our own wretchedness.

There's a lot more of this wretchedness stuff, and also this:

Without Jesus Christ the world would not exist; for it should needs be either that it would be destroyed or be a hell.

But isn't it already a hell, because we're so wretched? It seems like a terrible argument. I mean, under these circumstances, having everything be meaningless would be a tremendous comfort; better than concluding that it all adds up to a hellish wretchedness.

There's also the bad news that Pascal's God prefers riddles -- that the very fact that he's hidden proves his existence -- that only a real God would occasionally decide, not only not to answer your prayers, but not even bother to listen to them. "Recognise, then, the truth of religion in the very obscurity of religion, in the little light we have of it, and in the indifference which we have to knowing it."

I don't even get this, really, but it's sort of surprising at a method of apologetics to claim that God shines intermittently like a cheap neon sign. (Although I've always been fond of the saw that the universe is run by a god who's 90% malevolent but only 10% competent.)

But that's not the worse news. The worse news is that Pascal proves the truth of Christianity from the evidence of how hateful the Jews are:

To give faith to the Messiah, it was necessary there should have been precedent prophecies, and that these should be conveyed by persons above suspicion, diligent, faithful, unusually zealous, and known to all the world.To accomplish all this, God chose this carnal people, to whom He entrusted the prophecies which foretell the Messiah as a deliverer, and as a dispenser of those carnal goods which this people loved.

... For when blessings are promised in abundance, what was to prevent them from understanding the true blessings, but their covetousness, which limited the meaning to worldly goods?

Wow. It's bad enough that Pascal wrote this in 1660; but it's worse that the Harvard people decided to point us to it in 1930. Maybe the world is wretched and a hell after all.

Two links from the aggregator

• Objects in this close reading may be less significant than they appear.

• From Quick Study:

Can anyone argue with this point by Doug?

I think newspapers have hurt themselves greatly by the ways they've come to think about arts coverage. There's a huge audience out there, but newspapers have pursued a dumb strategy when it comes to A&E coverage.

I've never really considered myself a journalist, at least not primarily, but have enjoyed writing for newspapers over the years (even at the cost of having to put up, from time to time, with the usual cheap and ignorant condescension by academic towards reporters); and the piecemeal destruction of serious cultural coverage by newspapers has been painful to watch, since it is often accompanied by efforts to be that much more "hip, hot, and happenin'" in ways that are almost always pretty cringe-inducing.

You'd think, what with newspapers becoming a luxury good, they'd try to focus more on the carriage trade; but the opposite appears to be happening. I suspect that all newspapers, outside of NYC, should adopt a your-readers-are-our-shoplifters attitude -- or, go completely tabloid and lurid. LA, in particular, could use a tabloid, because it would provide narrative for a metro area that could use it.

September 26: Delusional

In my "relevant" translation of Don Quixote, this chapter would take place here.

This is the part in Don Quixote where the Don spends the night at an inn, which he thinks is a castle, and has to watch his arms overnight in the side yard (chapel) so that in the morning the innkeeper (noble lord) can confirm him in his folly (knight-errancy).

As always it's better to be a true believer than a skeptic, for the Don emerges from his evening unscathed (or, more precisely, he's braced for scathing, so he doesn't really feel it), while the innkeeper, who "when he heard him speak in that manner; and that he might have an occasion of laughter, he resolved to feed his humour that night" winds up having two of his guests clubbed by the Don and, in the end, "without demanding of him anything for his lodging, he suffered him to depart in a fortunate hour." It doesn't do to be too skeptical, maybe; or, if you are skeptical, maybe you should give the true believers a wide berth.

In some ways this reminds me of the current financial crisis (but everything does, right now) -- the Don believes that this crappy inn is actually a high-end castle that could use a new 1-year ARM; full of theories of chivalry and finance, he is confident such a place can always be flipped. And the innkeeper is a practical man who lets himself get sucked in, thinking that this theory is crazy but he can take advantage of it, only to wind up stiffed at the end. While the true believer rides serenely on, probably to a commentary position at CNBC.

OT: George and Ira Eliot

So Beche-la-mer over at Two Cents (a blog that linked here, thanks very much) notes that it's both George Gershwin's and T.S. Eliot's birthday today. She wrote this:

One of these mornings
You're going to rise up singing,
Then you'll spread your wings
And you'll take to the sky.
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.

And I reply thusly:

I'll build a stairway to paradise
At the first turning of the second stair
With a new step every day
I turned and saw below
I'm going to get there at any price
The same shape twisted on the banister
Step aside, I'm on my way
Under the vapor in the fetid air
I've got the blues, and up above it's so fair
Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears
Shoes, come on and carry me there
The deceitful face of hope and despair
I'll build a stairway to paradise
At the second turning of the second stair
With a new step every day.

One could do this all day.

September 25: Utilitarian In Love

John Stuart Mill's romance -- he was in love with a married woman for 20 years, then got to marry her when her husband kicked; then she died -- might make a good costume-drama movie starring, I don't know, Colin Firth? I feel like I ought to make a more original suggestion than Colin Firth; but he is good at communicating how his over-articulateness can't get at what his heart is feeling:

In general spiritual characteristics, as well as in temperament and organisation, I have often compared her, as she was at this time, to Shelley: but in thought and intellect, Shelley, so far as his powers were developed in his short life, was but a child compared with what she ultimately became.

Are you crying, Mill? Are those tears? Get a hold of yourself, man!

It is not to be supposed that she was, or that any one, at the age at which I first saw her, could be, all that she afterwards became.

There we go. That's better. And more objective.

The tricky part about the Mill-in-love movie is that it's hard not to make fun of Mill, he is so serious, and yet he's your hero, and also on the side of the angels. The solution is the make the movie from her point of view, which doesn't survive -- though that's probably a feature, not a bug, as it allows more freedom for invention and a better part for Keira Knightley. (Ask for Keira Knightley, settle for someone who's been on British TV.) You wish Mill would be more helpful in describing her, but he can't help being Mill (you may recall he was raised extremely weirdly), so this sentence looks promising:

What I owe, even intellectually, to her, is in its detail, almost infinite; of its general character a few words will give some, though a very imperfect, idea.

But it's followed up with a Generalization:

With those who, like all the best and wisest of mankind, are dissatisfied with human life as it is, and whose feelings are wholly identified with its radical amendment, there are two main regions of thought.

Grrr. Open your heart, man! Say something ardently. Oh, wait:

Ardently as I should have aspired to this complete union of our lives at any time in the course of my existence at which it had been practicable, I, as much as my wife, would far rather have foregone that privilege for ever, than have owed it to the premature death of one for whom I had the sincerest respect, and she the strongest affection. That event, however, having taken place in July, 1849, it was granted to me to derive from that evil my own greatest good, by adding to the partnership of thought, feeling, and writing which had long existed, a partnership of our entire existence. For seven and a half years that blessing was mine; for seven and a half only!

Using "ardently" and "practicable" in the same sentence seems like pure Mill. But, in that context, that exclamation point really hits.

Finally: I don't mean to keep poking fun at Mill, but I can't resist noting that his chapter headings ("Commencement of the Most Valuable Friendship of My Life. My Father’s Death. Writings and Other Proceedings up to 1840") remind me of the chapter headings in one of my favorite favorite books ("Effect upon my father of his disclosure. My Xtian confidence in journeying to Enfield. Paternoster Towers and its mistress. Unfortunate detachment of my posterior trouser-buttons. Melancholy death of Silas Whey.")

Still, I can totally see this movie, and perhaps you will -- Christmas 2011.

September 24: With Great Power Comes Great Personality Defects

I don't know what it stands for, either. Cool badge, though.

The battle of Salamis, we are told, was the Most Significant Battle In Human History -- at least in the non-metaphorical division, because what about the Battle Against Greasy Buildup? But we're talking about a different Greece today, and if its Grecian spirit -- inquiry, the individual, democratically elected leaders sandbagging their rivals, etc. -- had been vanquished by the Persians all those centuries ago, today we'd be the ones wanting Iranian blue jeans. Or something.

Anyway, the genius behind the Greek victory was Themistocles, and we get some of his story today via Plutarch. What emerges is a guy who was a paragon of virtue, old-school definition, as opposed to virtue, contemporary definition. In other words, he got things done, but not in Common Cause-approved ways. Here he is performing a little trickeration on the rubes:

Themistocles, being at a loss, and not able to draw the people over to his opinion by any human reason, set his machines to work, as in a theatre, and employed prodigies and oracles. The serpent of Minerva, kept in the inner part of her temple, disappeared; the priests gave it out to the people that the offerings which were set for it were found untouched, and declared, by the suggestion of Themistocles, that the goddess had left the city, and taken her flight before them towards the sea.

And here he is after his success, as un-humble as an NFL wide reciever:

When chosen admiral by the Athenians, he would not quite conclude any single matter of business, either public or private, but deferred all till the day they were to set sail, that, by despatching a great quantity of business all at once, and having to meet a great variety of people, he might make an appearance of greatness and power. Viewing the dead bodies cast up by the sea, he perceived bracelets and necklaces of gold about them, yet passed on, only showing them to a friend that followed him, saying, “Take you these things, for you are not Themistocles.” He said to Antiphates, a handsome young man, who had formerly avoided, but now in his glory courted him, “Time, young man, has taught us both a lesson.”

Hey, it turns out the homos saved Western Civilization! I'm not sure Western Civ. has returned the favor (although I imagine it's better here than in Iran). Themistocles eventually drove the Athenians crazy, apparently, and you can see why. Still, he is the kind of shitkicker who you like to have in a crisis. Another noteworthy thing about Themistocles is that, when push came to shove, he was anything but grandiose. Here he abandons his post-Salamis grand designs in the face of hardheaded advice:

Themistocles, being desirous to try the opinion of Aristides [his archrival, whom he has brought back because of the urgency of the situation], told him that he proposed to set sail for the Hellespont, to break the bridge of ships, so as to shut up, he said, Asia a prisoner within Europe; but Aristides, disliking the design, said, “We have hitherto fought with an enemy who has regarded little else but his pleasure and luxury; but if we shut him up within Greece, and drive him to necessity, he that is master of such great forces will no longer sit quietly with an umbrella of gold over his head, looking upon the fight for his pleasure;...Therefore, it is noways our interest, Themistocles,” he said, “to take away the bridge that is already made, but rather to build another, if it were possible, that he might make his retreat with the more expedition.”

I think it's in Murray Kempton's great essay about Eisenhower where he says one of Ike's principles was "Always give an enemy an exit," and here you see another example of that. Again, not particularly virtuous, but effective.

September 23: Montaigne, corpse groom

At home in Bordeaux.

I was excited about today's reading, because one of the useful things my undergraduate education accomplished is that it exposed me to Montaigne, who is right up my alley, and then I remembered that the free translation is from the 1500s and is almost impossible to follow:

Allthough they say, that in vertue it selfe, the last scope of our aime is voluptuousnes. It pleaseth me to importune their eares still with this word, which so much offends their hearing. And if it imply any chief pleasure or exceeding contentments, it is rather due to the assistance of vertue, than to any other supply, voluptuousnes being more strong, sinnowie, sturdie, and manly, is but more seriously voluptuous.

Even the fact that they occasionally use the word "lustie" doesn't help. Fortunately a brief Google found a free translation from Australia, and here's the same passage:

Let the philosophers say what they will, the main thing at which we all aim, even in virtue itself, is pleasure. It amuses me to rattle in their ears this word, which they so nauseate to hear; and if it signify some supreme pleasure and excessive contentment, it is more due to the assistance of virtue than to any other assistance whatever.

That's a little clearer, and kicks off my favorite passage in this Essay, "To philosophize is to learn how to die," which (typical for Montaigne, IIRC), veers almost immediately away from how a philosophy helps you get ready for the inevitable end, and takes up the subject about how Montaigne is ready for his inevitable end. Step 1 is "Brooding." Step 2 is, "See Step 1":

In the company of ladies, and at games, some have perhaps thought me possessed with some jealousy, or the uncertainty of some hope, while I was entertaining myself with the remembrance of some one, surprised, a few days before, with a burning fever of which he died, returning from an entertainment like this, with his head full of idle fancies of love and jollity, as mine was then, and that, for aught I knew, the same destiny was attending me....I am at all hours as well prepared as I am ever like to be, and death, whenever he shall come, can bring nothing along with him I did not expect long before.

He doesn't write like a Tim Burton character, but I guess he thinks of himself as one. He is also one of our first collectors of "oddly enough" manners of death:

Hast thou not seen one of our kings killed at a tilting, and did not one of his ancestors die by the jostle of a hog? Aeschylus, threatened with the fall of a house, was to much purpose circumspect to avoid that danger, seeing that he was knocked on the head by a tortoise falling out of an eagle’s talons in the air. Another was choked with a grapestone; an emperor killed with the scratch of a comb in combing his head. Aemilius Lepidus with a stumble at his own threshold, and Aufidius with a jostle against the door as he entered the council-chamber. And between the very thighs of woman, Cornelius Gallus the praetor; Tigillinus, captain of the watch at Rome; Ludovico, son of Guido di Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua; and (of worse example) Speusippus, a Platonic philosopher, and one of our popes.

That put me in mind of this Onion piece:

In the grief-management retreat I attended after Brad died, I met a lot of people who share my point of view. How would you feel if your wealthy relative careened into a swimming pool on a runaway golf cart that had been sabotaged by "slobs" and then drowned? It wouldn't seem quite so funny then, would it? Especially if those responsible had never been brought to justice and had, in fact, won the big tournament by sinking a lucky putt at the very last second.

But to return (Montaigne style) to my favorite part, which isn't at all on theme. It's about virtue v. pleasure:

Those who preach to us that the quest of it [virtue] is craggy, difficult, and painful, but its fruition pleasant, what do they mean by that but to tell us that is always unpleasing? For what human means will ever attain its enjoyment? The most perfect have been fain to content themselves to aspire unto it, and to approach it only, without ever possessing it. But they are deceived, seeing that of all the pleasures we know, the very pursuit is pleasant.

In other words, if Virtue is really its own (and only) reward, then what's the point of getting off the couch to seek it? But what if, instead of thinking about whether it makes us good, we only thought about whether it makes us happy? (Or "lustie.")

September 22: Guess Who's Coming To Poitiers

Rated I for "Almost all of these people were illiterate."

So maybe you're in a Starbucks or something and there's two leftie types at the next table -- I won't say "old hippies," but out here, they could be -- and one of them says something like, "You know, war is just boys playing with destructive toys," the other says something like, "Yes, and the so-called 'media' is just a way of manufacturing consent," and you, as a nonhippie, roll your eyes and think, "Then what the hell are you two doing in a Starbucks?"

Well, I hate to say it, but if I'm reading my Froissart correctly, they're onto something.

Today we have his chronicle of the Battle of Poitiers, and not only is it completely unclear what they're fighting for, or how, but they don't seem to be particularly energized by the cause, whatever it is. They just like fightin' and killin'. Here they've captured the French King and they bring him to the Prince of Wales:

When the two foresaid lords saw and heard that noise and strife among them, they came to them and said: ‘Sirs, what is the matter that ye strive for?’ ‘Sirs,’ said one of them, ‘it is for the French king, who is here taken prisoner, and there be more than ten knights and squires that challengeth the taking of him and of his son.’ Then the two lords entered into the press and caused every man to draw aback, and commanded them in the prince’s name on pain of their heads to make no more noise nor to approach the king no nearer, without they were commanded. Then every man gave room to the lords, and they alighted and did their reverence to the king.

Emphasis added. I suppose it's just like keeping Hirohito, and when your own country's power structure is based on hereditary principles, disrespecting another country's hereditary principle is bad in the long run, but it seems so...calm. Especially because a few minutes before the King was having at the English big-time:

The fighters on both sides endured much pain: king John with his own hands did that day marvels in arms: he had an axe in his hands wherewith he defended himself and fought in the breaking of the press.

An axe in his hands! One thing for these old-school nobles -- they didn't just talk the talk, they chopped the chop. But just the fact that he's doing marvels in arms makes me marvel: isn't there a better use for the king than just an axeman? After all, it wound up costing twice the GDP of France to ransom him back after he got captured. It makes you think that these powerful people were careless about their country's fate -- quite a contrast to our time!

I recommend this reading, also, to the medieval-fetishist, as the translation dates from 1525, I believe, and so has old-timey diction and plenty of people who are "hight" someone-or-other, and knights crying "Saint George!" and, of course, warlike churchmen:

The prince was informed that the cardinal’s men were on the field against him, the which was not pertaining to the right order of arms, for men of the church that cometh and goeth for treaty of peace ought not by reason to bear harness nor to fight for neither of the parties; they ought to be indifferent: and because these men had done so, the prince was displeased with the cardinal, and therefore he sent unto him his nephew the lord Robert of Duras dead: and the chatelain of Amposte was taken, and the prince would have had his head stricken off, because he was pertaining to the cardinal, but then the lord Chandos said: ‘Sir, suffer for a season: intend to a greater matter: and peradventure the cardinal will make such excuse that ye shall be content.’

"Peradventure (HIGH OFFICIAL X) will make such excuse that ye shall be content." Yeah, right. Those hippies in Starbucks might be onto something. Maybe the Pentagon should hold bake sales.

September 21: Italy, Hell, etc.

I like Dryden's Aeneid translation; you have to get into the jingle of the iambic pentameter, but once you do it's fine -- it's like swimming in the ocean. Of course if you immerse yourself in it too much your sensibility will wrinkle under the punchlines of DA-da DA-da da(pause) DA DA-da DA-da -- or its variants:

But you, if pious minds by pray’rs are won,
Oblige the father, and protect the son.

Or

A soldier’s fauchion, and a seaman’s oar.

I might add that one of the great things about being a dilettante ("Through Trivia's grove they walk," as Dryden says) is that it doesn't bug you when you don't know what "fauchion" means.

In this excerpt Aeneas descends into the underworld, and the highlight is that it's pretty much as bad as we feared:

Just in the gate and in the jaws of hell,
Revengeful Cares and sullen Sorrows dwell,
And pale Diseases, and repining Age,
Want, Fear, and Famine’s unresisted rage;
Here Toils, and Death, and Death’s half-brother, Sleep,
Forms terrible to view, their sentry keep;
With anxious Pleasures of a guilty mind,
Deep Frauds before, and open Force behind;
The Furies’ iron beds; and Strife, that shakes
Her hissing tresses and unfolds her snakes.

I don't know why Dryden hates sleep so much; maybe we're living in the Golden Age of Napping without realizing it.

Oh, I almost forgot the part that lets me get on my soapbox. Aeneas has found the Sybil's temple, which has previously-on-the-classical-myths tableaux on it, and we find this:

Here hapless Icarus had found his part,
Had not the father’s grief restrain’d his art.
He twice assay’d to cast his son in gold;
Twice from his hands he dropp’d the forming mold.

You know what I take that to mean? Don't write about your kids -- don't use your kids in your business. Last night, for professional reasons, I had to look at "Dan In Real Life," and immediately I hated that guy because he puts his family in the paper. Stage parents are generally terrible (TRUE STORY) but at least the kids get to act, which can be somewhat fun; when you're written about you're as passive as Icarus getting gold poured over him. I am glad to have classical sanction for one of my prejudices.

September 19/20: Peoples of the Books (let's blog two today)

Note to Muslim fanatics: please don't kill me. Note to Disney lawyers: ditto.

As it turns out, yesterday's reading (Don Quixote), and today's (Koran), both partake of that wonderful cocktail -- fire, books, and religion:

‘Yet, on mine honesty,’ replied the curate, ‘his father’s goodness shall nothing avail him. Take this book, old mistress, and open the window, throw it down into the yard, and let it lay the foundation of our heap for the fire we mean to make.’

Do they envy man for what God has given of His grace? We have given to Abraham’s people the Book and wisdom, and we have given them a mighty kingdom. And of them are some who believe therein, and of them are some who turn from it, but Hell is flaming enough for them.
Verily, those who disbelieve in our signs, we will broil them with fire; whenever their skins are well done, then we will change them for other skins, that they may taste the torment. Verily, God is glorious and wise.

I hope that it will not be considered terribly Eurocentric if I go with Cervantes' bumbling enforcers over the white-hot holy book, if I prefer the curate-cum-critic:

therefore, taking eight of them together, she [an old woman] threw them all out of the window, and returning the second time, thinking to carry away a great many at once, one of them fell at the barber’s feet, who, desirous to know the title, saw that it was The History of the famous Knight Tirante the White. ‘Good God!’ quoth the curate, with a loud voice, ‘is Tirante the White here? Give me it, gossip; for I make account to find in it a treasure of delight, and a copious mine of pastime.

To the Koran's how-to-treat-your-woman advice:

Men stand superior to women in that God hath preferred some of them over others, and in that they expend of their wealth: and the virtuous women, devoted, careful (in their husbands’) absence, as God has cared for them. But those whose perverseness ye fear, admonish them and remove them into bed-chambers and beat them; but if they submit to you, then do not seek a way against them; verily, God is high and great.

In fact, controlling for the differences in dogma, culture, etc., you might see the two readings as pointing out that the flame of purity inevitably becomes something just a fire you entertain yourself by. People can't live like fanatics forever; they are always going to be tripped up by some romance or other:

‘This book,’ quoth the barber, opening of another, ‘is The Twelve Books of the Fortunes of Love, written by Anthony Lofraso, the Sardinian poet.’ ‘By the holy orders which I have received,’ quoth the curate, ‘since Apollo was Apollo, and the muses muses, and poets poets, was never written so delightful and extravagant a work as this...Give it to me, gossip, for I do prize more the finding of it than I would the gift of a cassock of the best satin of Florence.’

It's a bit of a stretch, but another thing to note in these readings is that the curate is letting himself be subject to a different way of experience -- not only by love poetry, but also by the classical culture Christianity was supposed to supersede; whereas the Koran is trying to get all of experience subject to itself. Most of the reading is actually about property rights:

Men should have a portion of what their parents and kindred leave, and women should have a portion of what their parents and kindred leave, whether it be little or much, a determined portion. And when the next of kin and the orphans and the poor are present at the division, then maintain them out of it, and speak to them a reasonable speech.

Although that paragraph ends, "Verily, those who devour the property of orphans unjustly, only devour into their bellies fire, and they shall broil in flames." Again with the fire!